Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,34
the other side as the first of the wolfyn broke out into the open, moving fast and silent.
“Follow me,” Dayn said, and moved off, headed south.
She fell into step beside him without comment. And was surprised to realize that she trusted him as her leader, her alpha. She wasn’t second-guessing everything he said, wasn’t trying to understand it within her old framework. Instead, she was following where he led.
Be careful. You’ve only known him a few hours, half a day at most, argued her rational, practical, logical, boring self, projecting a warning that was quickly lost to the joy of running beside Dayn as he sped up. The wolfsbene power flowed higher again, as if called by the sheer relief of being free to run as they chose, with their pursuers left far behind.
He plunged into a loose thatch of trees and immediately veered in the opposite direction, heading them back north after making a fake to the south, to lead the wolfyn toward the southern crossing as he and Keely had planned.
The memory soured some of the relief. I used you, you used me. That’s what people like us do. The bitch’s words haunted Reda, because they were so unlike the man who jogged beside her…and yet, the wolfyn had known him for two decades, Reda for six hours or so.
The trail they were on widened, giving her room to move up and run shoulder-to-shoulder with him. But where before her blood had throbbed in time with their strides, now she felt like they were subtly out of sync, thrown off-rhythm by the questions circling around in her head.
He glanced over. “Go ahead. Ask.” His expression was cloaked in shadows.
A chill tightened her skin. “Are you reading my mind?”
“I told you, I can’t connect with you.”
There was no reason for that to sting, yet it did. Which was proof positive that she needed to get a grip on herself. “Then what is it you think I should be asking?”
“Whether I drank from Keely and made her forget about it. Yeah, I did. Wolfyn blood is powerful stuff for my kind. I needed a hit once per year, just as she needed a mate one night a year, so she could have a satisfying run during the blood moon without jeopardizing her brother’s leadership.”
Reda’s stomach gave a slow roll, not just at the idea of him drinking the wolfyn’s blood—with or without her knowledge—but also because he had so easily walked away from his long-time lover without so much as a backward glance. And only a few minutes later had been kissing her, Reda, and making her feel needed. Special. Powerful.
Don’t go there.
Dayn slowed to a ground-eating walk, shifting his rucksack. “I know it looks bad. Abyss, it is bad. Keely and I traded sex, but then I stole her blood, which makes us far from even.”
Reda didn’t know what to say, or even what more he could say that would ease the tightness in her chest, so she let it go. And after a while, the tightness eased on its own, and she thought that maybe that was part of being brave, too—letting things go.
They kept traveling for an hour. Two. The forest closed in on the road they were using, and she became very aware of the dark wall of trees on either side of them, the occasional rustles and crashes of startled creatures.
At the sound of a not-too-distant howl, she stiffened. “Is that the pack?”
“Just a loner looking for trouble,” Dayn said, voice slightly rusty from disuse. At her look, he elaborated, “A male can get kicked out of his pack if he challenges the alpha and loses, or if the alpha thinks he’s likely to challenge and wants to avoid the fight. Sometimes he can join another pack, but unless he can really suck it up and play beta, there’s usually the same problem there, too. Which means he ends up on his own, except during the moon time.”
Sliding cautiously into the conversation, she said, “Why then?”
“Because those are the only three days that tradition allows a wolfyn male to claim the Right of Challenge, which is the ability to fight the pack’s leader for the right to rule. That’s also when disputes are settled, punishments are decided, matings are formed or broken. The wolfyn have boiled most of the family stuff and politics down to these three days, leaving the rest of the year essentially peaceful.”