Chapter 26

After they finished, they lay there on the ground for a while, just staring up at the stars. Being chased and hunted down, fighting for their lives, and capping it off with a moment of absolute pleasure underneath a moonlit night made for a wild series of emotional highs, lows, and everything in between. Lola was still breathing heavily as she laid her head on Russel’s chest. She loved the warmth of his skin and she wriggled in closer to him. He let her, the arm curled around her pulling her in closer to himself.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” he told her, kissing the top of her head.

She looked up at him, a wicked smile on her face.

“No you’re not,” she replied with a small giggle. “You meant every word you liar.”

He laughed right back at her.

“You’re absolutely right. I thought I was going to lose you so many times tonight,” he said, his voice turning somber.

“To be fair, there were a lot of times I thought I was going to lose you too. I…” She paused, her voice hitching a little bit. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to come back to me.”

“It was hard,” he replied after a time. “Becoming that…thing is not easy. The more control I give over to the wolf, the harder it is to remain human.”

“Do you want to be human?” she asked tentatively, her voice halting.

“Yes,” he said, not even hesitating. “Being human grounds me. I feel more…stable when I have control. And besides, I’ve seen what happens when a werewolf loses all humanity and gives in to the wolf all the way. I’ll never allow myself to become that. I’d rather die first.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

But Russel didn’t elaborate further and she didn’t press him for more information. She could see an almost unbearable pain cross his face when he thought about that particular memory. Seeing him like that made her feel bad for even asking the question.

She sat up, the pebbly, rocky ground suddenly feeling very painful against her naked skin. She brushed a bit of dirt and grass off herself. Then she looked down at him. His nakedness was very alluring and made her feel…certain ways despite it still being caked in ghoul blood but she felt it was a good time to get moving again. It was the middle of the night, it was cold, and they were both extremely filthy. They needed to do something about those things. Russel saw her start to get up and stood up too. He looked down at himself.

“Let’s head back to grab our supplies. Then we can find a small pond or something to bathe in. It will probably be freezing but I’d rather turn into an icicle than have this foul ghoul blood all over me,” he said.

“Good,” Lola responded. “I wasn’t going to say anything but you stink.”

“It’s all the ghoul blood,” Russel remarked with a somewhat indignant look on his face.

“Sure it is,” Lola teased.

They spent the next ten minutes walking back to the spot where the ghouls and the oni had attacked them. They had thrown their packs down in the ensuing chaos and left them there, more concerned with their own lives than their stuff. Russel grabbed them up, put on his own, and then handed Lola hers. Along her desperate run from Russel, she also dropped her blade but when they backtracked their way to the spot still covered in ghoul bits and pieces, they found it and she picked it up.

Once they had their packs, supplies, and weapons back, they trekked through the area looking for somewhere they could get clean.

“I am pretty sure there’s a pond or something close by,” Russel explained after they spent a good twenty minutes searching for a source of water.

“This is your kingdom right? Shouldn’t you know more about it?” Lola asked.

“I’ve learned the maps growing up but let’s just say, I wasn’t the best of students,” he replied with a shrug.

“I hope that doesn't mean we’re going to be out here until the sun comes up, walking around naked and filthy, still looking for a place to get clean,” she said but in a joking way. Mostly.

She was getting extremely tired. All the events of the night had wreaked havoc on her body and all she wanted to do was sleep for a week straight. She was honestly surprised with herself that she was even up and walking around. It wouldn’t last much longer. She was well aware of that. There was going to be a moment when her body just gave out on her and she wouldn’t be able to keep going.

Hopefully, they found a place to bathe before that happened.

As luck would have it, they did. It was maybe two and a half or three miles from where they had gotten attacked. Russel was the first to spot it and once he did, he ran full out for the shallow and small pond. He left Lola behind, a look of jealousy that he still had so much energy in him on her face. She tried to hurry her own pace but by that point, she was so tired out, she couldn’t manage it. Once she got the water’s edge, she plunged in. The shock of how cold the water was woke her up a lot and within minutes, she was shivering.

“Soap!” she called out, her teeth chattering.

Russel looked over at her, right in the middle of scrubbing at his own body with the bar of soap he’d pulled out of his sack. He walked to her and handed it over without a fight even though he was in a much worse state.

“Here,” he said. “Do you need any help getting clean?”

She looked at him, her brow furrowed in irritation and splashed water at him.

“Not a good time for that,” she said.

“What are you talking about? I’m just trying to make sure you get clean quickly so you can get out of here. You’re shivering,” Russel said, his voice full of feigned indignation. “What did you think I meant?”

“You know what,” she said, splashing him again with one hand and scrubbing herself almost raw with the other.

“You need to get your mind out of those dark, filthy places young lady.” He splashed her back playfully.

Things devolved from there into an almost all-out water fight. It felt stupid, in retrospect, to do that when they were both so exhausted and the water was so cold but it also helped a lot too. It gave the both of them a moment in time when all the worries and overwhelming fear they’d lived through disappeared. A moment to just themselves where they didn’t have to think about all the horrible things they’d been through both together and separately.

After a time, the moment came to an end, as all things must do. They emerged from the pond looking refreshed almost and as clean as they possibly could get without an actual bath. The one they had shared in Wrexon had been the last one and Russel actually dreamed of sharing another one in his family’s castle palace once they got there. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to address the whole Lola situation but he had something going for him that he thought might work. His father had never actually met Lola and didn’t know what she looked like. He could just lie and say she was someone else. Ordinarily, with a werewolf’s acute sense of hearing, they could pick up on the elevated heart rates of people when they tell a lie. But growing up in the castle, he got really good at lying so it was possible for him to get away with that.

Lola, however, had not trained herself to lie to a werewolf. Not only that, but there was the slight problem that if he asked her to lie about who she was, she would ask why. And then he would have to tell her that his appearance in Gloucester had not been a coincidence. That he had really been there to kill her on orders from his father, the one they were now going to for sanctuary. It was a horrible situation to be put in and he wasn’t even sure why he had lied to her for so long anyway. He had, after all, just spent the last few weeks doing everything he could to keep her safe and alive. She would have to believe him that he still wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

Right?

He wasn’t so sure. Lola had been through massive trauma. Physically. Emotionally. Even mentally. There was just no way to tell for sure how she would react when she learned the truth. So, the best course of action would be to press onward and not tell her.

What could go wrong with that?