3: The Breeder

The wolf circled me once. Slowly. The way you'd walk around a horse you were thinking of buying, or a cut of meat you weren't sure had spoiled.

I turned with it. I didn't want it at my back. It seemed like the kind of thing that should matter, even though nothing I did would matter, even though if it wanted my throat it could take it before I finished blinking.

On its second circuit it stopped in front of me, close enough that its breath washed over my face. Hot, smelling of pine resin and blood and something darker, like turned earth after rain. It lowered its massive head until those burning eyes were level with mine.

Then it changed.

I'd watched my family shift a hundred times, and it was never pretty: bones cracking, skin splitting, the wet sound of muscle tearing and reknitting. This was worse, because it was faster. The great black body folded in on itself, the fur flowing back into skin like water draining from a basin. There was one long, ugly sound, half growl and half groan, and then where the wolf had been there was a man, crouched on one knee in the moss.

He stood.

He was tall. Taller than any of my uncles, broad through the shoulders, with the hard, scarred build that comes from fighting, not from lifting things. Black hair, too long, falling into his face. He was naked and gave no sign of noticing or caring. Moonlight picked out the old scars across his chest, four parallel claw marks and others I couldn't name, and the faint gold still smoldering in his eyes.

He was beautiful the way a cliff edge is beautiful. Something you look at while knowing it will kill you.

"You ran," he said.

His voice was low and rough, as though he didn't use it often. There was no anger in it. That frightened me more than anger would have.

"You'd have run too."

"They all run." He tilted his head. "Most of them stay on the path, though. They think it'll go easier if they're obedient." A pause. "It doesn't."

"Good to know."

Something flickered in his face. Not quite surprise.

"What's your name?"

"Does it matter?"

"I write them down," he said. "Afterward."

The word hung in the cold air between us. Afterward. He said it the way a farmer talks about weather, as if it were simply the way of things.

"Ruby," I said. "Ruby Ashgrove."

"Ashgrove." His mouth twisted. "Morwen's line."

"Her granddaughter. Her human granddaughter." I laughed, and it came out jagged. "She gave me this cloak tonight for my birthday. Then she had me tied up and thrown in a cart. So if you're expecting me to beg, Alpha, you'll be disappointed. I've got nobody left to beg for."

He studied me for a long moment.

"I'm Lucan," he said finally. "You should know what's going to happen to you."

"I know the stories."

"The stories are wrong about most things." He came closer. I made myself not step back. "They're right about this. I'm going to mark you. My blood goes into you through the bite. If your body accepts it, the mark settles and you carry my line. If it doesn't—" He stopped.

"I burn."

"You burn." His jaw tightened. "It takes a few hours. There's a fever. I'll stay with you. It's—" Another pause, as if he were reaching for a word that didn't exist. "It's quicker if you don't fight it."

"Eleven girls," I said. "Eleven, and not one of them lived. Why do you keep doing it?"

"Because my line dies with me if I don't. When an Alpha line dies, the pack tears itself apart, and far more than eleven people die in that." His voice had gone flat and hard. "Because the Pact is older than I am. Because your families keep sending them. Pick a reason, Ruby Ashgrove. None of them will make you any less dead."

"You're a monster."

"Yes."

He said it simply. No defense. No flinch. Somehow that was worse than if he'd denied it.

"Then get it over with," I said. My voice shook, and I hated it. "Go on. I won't close my eyes for you."

He didn't move for a heartbeat. Then he reached out, slowly, the way you'd reach for a wild thing, and drew back the hood of my cloak. His fingers brushed my hair aside, baring the side of my neck to the cold. They were warm. So much warmer than Grandmother's.

I thought he would simply bite. Lunge, tear, be done.

He didn't. He stood there with his hand at the nape of my neck, and I felt his breath against my skin, uneven. I felt the tremor in his fingers. For one wild second I thought he wasn't going to do it at all.

"I'm sorry," he said, so quietly I barely heard it.

I took it for mockery. It would be a long time before I learned how wrong I was.

His teeth sank into the curve where my neck met my shoulder.

The pain was immediate and enormous, a white blaze, a sun going off under my skin. I screamed. I didn't mean to. My knees gave, and he caught me against his chest and held me there, one arm around my back, his mouth still sealed against my throat.

I felt his blood come into me. I don't know how else to describe it. Something hot and alive pushing into my veins, crawling up into my skull and down through my chest, and everywhere it went, I burned.

So this is it, I thought, very clearly. This is how it ends.

He released my neck. Blood ran warm down my collarbone and soaked into the red wool. The clearing was spinning. His face swam above me, those gold eyes, and there was something in them I couldn't name. It looked like grief.

"Ruby," he said. "Ruby, stay with me—"

But the fever was rising, and the moon was going out, and the last thing I felt before the dark took me was his arms tightening around me, and the strange, impossible thought that the monster was holding me as if I were something he was afraid to drop.