Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,37
daughter, and planned to train for the queen’s guard.”
“Oh.” It was ridiculous to feel a twinge. But she did.
“My parents didn’t approve because she was common-born and they had plans for me. We argued and I stormed out, and was gone when the castle fell. Worse, the last things between us in their lifetime were angry words and accusations.” He spread his hands; the gesture was visible now in the pink light of a new day. “I’m not proud of myself. I wish I had been a better man, a better son. Hell, a better prince. But I can’t go back and change that. All I can do is be better the next time, whatever form that next time takes.”
“Oh,” she said again, only this time it was a softer noise, one of understanding that was what he meant when he talked about moving forward and looking ahead. He wasn’t trying to get away from the past, or ignore it. He was trying to fix the future.
And in that, he was nothing like her father and brothers, who spent so much time looking ahead of themselves that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.
Her opinion of him, which was already dangerously high, notched up again. And that, combined with the wolfsbene, made her far too aware of the way their arms brushed now and then as they walked. The contact was almost undetectable through the layers of sweaters and leather, but she knew. She knew.
Yet even though the heat of arousal stayed high in her bloodstream, her energy—at least for hiking—was rapidly fading. She didn’t say anything, though, just pushed onward until Dayn nudged her with his elbow and pointed to a narrow game trail leading away from the main track. “There. That’s what I was looking for. It leads to a hunting cabin about a mile in.” His teeth flashed. “It’s Kenar’s, and we know for a fact that he’s way behind us. The pack will need to rest, so we should be safe. I brought a couple of wards. I’ll set one down here to warn us if someone’s coming up the trail, then set the other to surround the cabin.”
She nodded and said, “Okay.” But what she really meant was, Thank God.
The sun was coming up over the horizon, signaling the end of a nearly interminable night, but she didn’t look around, didn’t care where they were or what it looked like in the light of day. Her focus narrowed to the few feet in front of her as she followed Dayn up an incline that at times turned so steep that they were going almost vertical, using roots and rocky outcroppings as hand and footholds.
Then, finally, he crested the climb and turned back to her. “Come on. We’re here.”
She gave him her hand, trusting his strong grip to pull her up onto what proved to be a wide ledge at the base of a rock-strewn mountain face. Near the back, snugged up against the rock ledge, a small log cabin was nearly hidden among squat, scrubby pine trees that looked short, proportion-wise, but towered over the small structure.
Barely even registering that reminder that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, she followed Dayn to the cabin and obediently hung back at his gesture, too tired to insist on helping him scout the area and set the wards. As he rejoined her, he was mixing some sort of powder into the contents of the waterskin he’d carried over his shoulder.
As he reached her side, he tipped his head back and drank deeply.
Reda’s attention was caught far too thoroughly by the way his throat worked, her eyes locking on a rivulet that escaped and tracked down. She felt the tickle against her own flesh, and the sensation reached inside her to stroke the kernel of heat that was all that was left of the wolfsbene’s power.
She quivered slightly as he lowered the waterskin and offered it to her. “It’s a mild stimulant. It’ll clear the fog and keep you from going so deeply unconscious that you can’t run if we need to.”
As she took the potion, the quiver grew claws, dug in and spread through her body—a potent combination of fear and arousal that instead of freezing her in place made her want to move into him, curl against him. She didn’t let her hand shake, but as she downed the mixture, which had a mellow citrus flavor but the aftertaste of too-strong black tea, she was