Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Unknown

He’d been stumbling through the woods surrounding Oakhame, his head a mess of memories and doubts, until he’d felt her fear.

Heart thundering, he’d forgotten his worries. There was only her.

He started towards the nearest ladder, her shirt flapping around his thighs, the sword down his back jostling with every step. He kicked aside fallen branches and piles of perfect, gleaming fruits, their unnatural beauty hardly registering as he gave himself over to his heart.

He allowed it to pull him away from the ladder, though his head swore that she would be up there, lost somewhere in the treetop town. He’d seen her ascend a ladder just like this one, arms bound behind her back, but the bond between them simply shook its head. Trusting it had got him this far, so he turned away, slipping unseen back into the undergrowth.

Perhaps here his heritage would not only be accepted, but revered. Still, it was better to avoid discovery, to avoid having to find out what sort of reception awaited him.

His heart tugged him into the thick brush. Fighting through it occupied his hands and body, and tiny thorns sliced his exposed skin. It did not take long for his mind to overwhelm his senses, reminding him that this might be a mistake, that she might meet him and turn him away. After all, being mates may mean nothing to her. She didn’t know him; even if she too had seen glimpses of him and his life, it was not as though they’d ever formally met.

And if she hadn’t been privy to flashes of his days, then she truly would not know him at all. The mate bond joined them together, but it was no guarantee of love.

But every time a doubt swelled, it was cut through by the tang of her terror. He could worry later. Now, he had to help her.

Then – there. Pine and wild berries. He inhaled deeply, and his ears strained to hear any trace of her. His heart thumped wildly in his chest, and the air in his lungs felt thin. She was close. He drew his sword, slashing through the last of the dangling thorns. His forearms stung from a multitude of short, deep cuts, but he did not – could not – feel their pain.

He’d expected to see her in the small clearing before him, but instead there were two eleves. One reclined, back against a fallen log; the other paced back and forth, trampling an uneven path into the forest floor.

“Efaffion allowed his curiosity to get the better of him,” the seated eleve said. Deep brown skin shimmered in the dawn light, which always seemed to catch their faces at just the right angle to enhance their delicate bone structure.

The pacing one stopped, raising one sleek eyebrow at the other. “Efaffion is a fool. That does not concern me.” Flicking white hair over his shoulder, the eleve continued his pacing.

Backing away slowly, he felt a pang as his heart tried to pull him onwards. He couldn’t go straight through two eleves – could he?

Oakhame was a relatively small community, he knew, though it was not entirely self-sufficient. They called in a number of tradesmen for things their magic could not supply, and for things they were too lazy or too disinterested in to take care of themselves.

Scarred and with a sword in hand, he could probably pass as a sword for hire. He reached up to brush his hair back from his pointed ears, unease pooling in his gut. He flinched as his fingertips touched the base of the point, feeling the shape of the cartilage morph from something that could pass for human – or pure werewolf – to something that certainly could not. Quickly covering up his ear tips, he continued to back away. He would have to find another way around.

Taking small, silent steps, he stole away from the eleves. His pulse throbbed, thundering against his jaw. Fire crackled just beneath his skin. Keeping his gaze fixed on the pacing eleve, watching as he curled a lock of white hair around his index finger, he clutched the hilt of his sword impossibly tighter.

He tried to steel himself, urging himself to make his ears apparent no matter how much it scared him. He did not have the strange, eternal beauty of the eleves – they would not recognise him as one of them without his pointed ear tips. He took another step backwards. His heart raced. He couldn’t do it.

If they caught him, he would show them his ears. Then, and only then, would he allow someone to see the ugly truth of his heritage.

His breath came in hot, tight gasps. Brow furrowing, he stopped, resting a hand across his chest. His heartbeat was unnaturally quick, and painfully hard against his ribcage. His palms burned with energy. He clenched his hands into fists: one straining around the sword, the other biting into itself and marking the crescent moons of his nails into his palm.

Something wasn’t right. Fear caused his heart to speed and stumble, but he’d faced far worse than two eleves. He’d fronted his pack on the battlefield, and, even before that, he’d suffered at the hands of people he’d trusted – people who’d been his friends. Even then, his heart had not pounded like this; even as the water had crested his head, even as it had surged down his throat and filled his lungs. He’d screamed and he’d sobbed, but his heart had beat steadily all the same.

This was different. This was new.

He stumbled back another step, resting his spine against the smooth trunk of an aspen tree. Its white bark crinkled and curved at his back. Pressing his palm flat against his heart, he slid down the length of the tree until he met the mossy ground.

He didn’t understand. Fire was swelling within him. The hilt of the sword burned with heat, and he let it clatter to the forest floor. He wouldn’t need it, not now. If anyone came near him, the fire rising from his hands would be more than enough to keep them away.

He closed his eyes, and took a long, deep breath. His eyelids twitched. Pine and wild berries filled the air around him, surging into his lungs, filling his blood and bones with peace, with joy. Slowly, the fire abated, as did the thumping of his erratic heart.

His blood cooled. He breathed in the scent of her, the smell of beautiful wilderness, of tart sweetness cut through with the balm of a cool night after a humid day. He opened his eyes.

Brown eyes met his. They shone in the eternal dawn, limned with gold and framed by thick, dark lashes. A bruise stained her olive skin purple, starting just above her temple and cradling her cheek. A cut ran down the length of the bruise, raw and painful looking, but no longer bleeding. Other, smaller cuts slashed her cheekbone and forehead, and as his gaze travelled down, he saw that more – longer and deeper ones, too – had sliced through the exposed skin of her forearms and hands.

She swallowed. Taking a shaky step towards him, he noted that she flinched as her weight shifted. He pulled himself to his feet, aching to reach for her, to steady her, to soothe her.

But she did not know him, and, really, he did not know her. The binding of their hearts was beautiful, but until they gave it meaning, it carried none.

“I don’t know why I came here,” she whispered, eyes wide. “It – it was like before. An urge I couldn’t deny. But…”

“But what?” he asked, utterly enraptured by her.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” Offering him a tiny, uncertain smile, she tucked a wave of dark blonde hair behind her ear. An ear, he noted worriedly, that was round and smooth – and nothing like his.

“I felt it too,” he murmured, suddenly self-conscious. It had been days since he’d last bathed properly, and the grime of sleeping in the woods – combined with his scarred face, and the sword lying at his feet – couldn’t make for the most flattering of first impressions. “Well – I think I did.” He grinned. “I thought I was having a heart attack.”

As she smiled back, the last of his unease dissolved. “That doesn’t sound good. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. More than fine.” Their gaze held, and he wondered what shade of grey his eyes were in that moment. He felt as though they were not grey at all, and were instead a glossy, shimmering gold. She winced, and one of his hands shot out to steady her. “Are you, though?”

She leant into his touch for a moment, and then pulled away sharply, as if remembering herself. A throb of pain shot through him at that, but he reminded himself that they’d just met, that she didn’t know him, that he didn’t know her. Despite the curling attraction and already growing affection at his core, it was not wise to be overly forward.

Resting her weight heavily against an old oak opposite the aspen he himself had so recently relied upon for support, she gestured limply at herself. “I’ve been better.”

“What happened to you?”

She suppressed a grin, though it seemed to be a battle she was quickly losing. “I was captured by an eleve. Efaffion,” she added, nose crinkling with disgust, “not that that’s his real name, anyway. I jumped down from up there,” she pointed to a bridge crossing between two wooden platforms, hung between boughs, that was mostly obscured by leaves from their position on the ground, “to get away. Then I had a minor run-in with another couple of eleves, and a leurcher, and then – well, then I found myself drawn to you.” She paused, and took a deep breath. “Hi.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Lily.”

“Hello.” He smiled, and took her bruised and battered hand gently in his. A missing piece of him dropped into place, and the tension of the last few days slipped from his shoulders. “I’m Elijah.”

He was home at last.