Semua Bab The Rogue’s Savage Claim on Me: Bab 11 - Bab 20

ELOWENTuesday night.The shift had been good — better than good. Carmen had complimented my energy, Mina had dragged me into the back to share gossip about the new bouncer, and my regulars had tipped well. I felt almost normal. Like the girl I used to be before dead animals and golden eyes and a wolf who slept on my porch.I stopped at the grocery store after. More steaks — because apparently that was my life now, buying meat for a monster — and the basics I'd been too scared to shop for last week. The normalcy of it made me want to laugh. Or cry. I wasn't sure which.The bus ride was quiet. I watched the city lights fade into darkness and thought about him waiting for me. About the way his tail had swayed this morning when I'd come out with coffee. About his head in my lap on the porch yesterday, heavy and warm, while I'd read and he'd dozed in the sun.This is insane, I thought for the hundredth time.But I was smiling when the bus groaned to a stop.He wasn't at the tree line.I s

I licked it again, just to watch it respond, before forcing myself to move on. She needed cleaning, not... whatever this was. Whatever this new body wanted.I found blood on her arm, her cheek where she'd pressed it into the dirt. I cleaned that too, gentle now, careful. She didn't stir.The blood had soaked into her torn dress, dark stains spreading through the fabric. I licked at it anyway, tongue rasping against the cloth, trying to clean it even though some part of me knew it wouldn't work the same way.But there was more blood. I could smell it — her scent, mixed with copper, mixed with me. Coming from between her legs.I nosed lower, following the trail, pushing aside the ruined fabric of her leggings where I'd torn through them. She was swollen there, flushed, and when I licked her I tasted blood and my own seed, still leaking from where I'd filled her.Hurt her. I hurt her.The knot. It had been too big, stretched her too far. I could see the small tears at her entrance, pink

I don't know how long I sat there, clutching my pillow, trying to process the unprocessable.My wolf was a man. Or my wolf had turned into a man. Or there was a man in my house who happened to have the exact same eyes as my wolf and also had appeared naked on my floor after I'd had extremely vivid hallucinations about having sex with a giant canine.None of the options were good."Okay," I finally said, more to myself than to him. "Okay. Let's just... let's think about this logically."He perked up at the sound of my voice, ears— no, not ears, he didn't have wolf ears anymore, but his whole body oriented toward me the same way."Evidence," I continued, my voice shaking only a little. "Evidence that you are, in fact, my wolf. One: the eyes. Gold. Definitely not normal human eye color. Two: the hair." I gestured vaguely at the dark red mess around his face. "Same color as his— your — fur. Three: you're acting like him. The whining. The slow blink. The making-yourself-small thing."He bl

When I came back out, he was exactly where I'd left him — but his eyes had been fixed on the bedroom door, waiting.Good boy, some traitorous part of my brain whispered.I shoved the thought away."Here." I held out the clothes. "Put these on."He took them, turning them over in his hands, sniffing them —"Please stop smelling things."— and then looked back at me with obvious confusion."Clothes," I said, miming pulling a shirt over my head. "You wear them. On your body. To cover yourself."Something clicked in his eyes. He'd seen me put on clothes. He'd watched me through the window enough times.He held up the shirt, studied it for a moment, and then attempted to put his head through the arm hole."No, that's— here, let me—"I crouched down beside him, taking the shirt from his hands. "This hole is for your head. These are for your arms. See?"I helped guide it over his head, trying very hard not to notice how soft his hair was, or how good he smelled — like pine and earth and some

FAOThe world was too loud.That was the first thing I noticed about being human — everything was muted except the sounds. As a wolf, I could hear a rabbit's heartbeat from fifty yards away, but the sounds had been layered, organized, easy to parse. Now everything crashed together in a chaotic symphony: the hum of the cold-box in the kitchen, the drip of water from somewhere, the creak of the wooden structure around us, her heartbeat, her breathing, the rustle of her clothes when she moved.And I couldn't smell anything properly.Well. That wasn't quite true. I could smell her — would always be able to smell her, the bond made sure of that. But everything else was flat, dull, like trying to see through fog."Okay," she said, setting down her cup of dark liquid. Coffee. She'd called it coffee. "Food. You need food. I need food. We're going to eat breakfast like normal human beings."I didn't know what most of those words meant, but I understood food.My stomach made a sound. A loud one