Dark eyes
Elara
“If it’s your intention to scare me, then honestly, I really don’t care. I either live or I die.” I shrugged, tearing my face from the dark wolf in front of me. His face was human—it was just those glowing eyes of his and his full lips peeled back in a snarl.
He stood up, adjusting his shirt as though he hadn’t just tried to sniff all over me. I scoffed.
“What do you want? It’s my house. I’m going to go anywhere I want to go. I can do whatever I want to do. You won’t tell me what to do in my own house.”
I threw up my hands at how suddenly possessive he was getting. He said nothing. He simply lowered himself into the chair Kendrick once had been in. His eyes were still on me.
“What do you want?” I huffed, feeling impatient around his presence. I hated how I felt. Parts of me genuinely wondered why he couldn’t just be civil and let me go.
“You have some responsibilities in front of you,” he said. “As my mistress.”
I shook my head. “I’m not your mistress, big guy. I’m a liability to you, remember? You might not necessarily say it, but your demeanor is more than enough to tell me.”
He chuckled. “I’d rather have you be gone as well—and maybe, yes,” he said. “You are my liability. But you’re going to die if I let you leave by yourself. You don’t know your way back to the human world, and if I do that, let you go…”
He shrugged, his eyes moving around the room as though he was searching for something. “Your death would hurt,” he said slowly. “You don’t know what it’s like for my kind to be without a mate.”
“Oh, you mean like your father?” I cocked my head to one side.
“You know yours?”
He said nothing. He simply pressed his lips together again, his eyes unreadable. He had that strange depth swirling in those orbs of his. They were pretty, but they were also strange, and I hated strange.
This whole place reeked of strange. Then again, I was obviously in a fantasy world, surrounded by creatures from fantasy from all walks of life.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with a solemn voice. “You don’t understand our reality, and it’d be stupid if I were to start explaining it to you. You still wouldn’t understand because of one obvious truth.”
I raised my eyebrow. “And please, tell me, oh great wise sage—what is this truth?”
I crossed one leg over the other. For a good moment, he said nothing—almost as though he was biding his time, measuring his words—until he sighed, looked at me, and shook his head.
“I don’t want your pity, big guy. I don’t need it. You’re the one that wouldn’t let me leave. You could just send somebody to show me the way back, but no.” I shook my head.
“You people just choose to be difficult intentionally. You choose to want to spite me intentionally. So what, I’m human? I didn’t choose to be human.”
I felt a pang at my own words—but what was that pang for? I continued anyway. “You make it look as though I decided to come here knowing fully well what your strange, very cold den is all about. But honestly speaking, I don’t care. The reason I’m training—and I’m sure you know that—is because I simply want to survive, not because I want to be part of this happy-go-lucky group of merry individuals farting around on their asses every full moon.”
He suddenly slammed his hand down on the table. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but I bit my lip, biting back the yelp that threatened to come out when his hand formed into a fist.
“This is your reality now,” he said. “Like it, don’t like it, I don’t fucking care.”
I felt a pang at his words. What was I expecting? A smile for the way I spoke to him? Yeah, right. I’d be lucky if he didn’t strike his bejeweled fingernails across my neck.
“You’re here now,” he said slowly. “Might as well get used to it.”
He stood up and slowly walked out of my room, taking his time, not fearing that maybe I would attack his back or something. It was when he left that I realized I hadn’t breathed since he slammed his hand down.
“This is my reality,” I thought. I shook my head. “Too much thinking for one day,” I told myself out loud. I stood up and walked over to my bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
The next morning Logan came by, mumbling something about teaching me the ways of the Pack.
“I don’t want to know about the ways of the Pack,” I said, mumbling like a child—especially given the way he simply looked at me with a near look of longing in his eyes.
“Oh, the beauty of you,” he said. “I remember there was a time I was like you.”
He sat in the living area of my suite. “I was crying to everyone. Oh yes, I was young, I was a fool wolf, and my tongue was like fire. No one could win me in a battle of words—until they got me in trouble.”
He smiled still. “It got me in trouble. And you know what happened?”
I shook my head.
“I was beaten nearly to death. Because of my own words, my little sister was taken by the resident dominant male. And she was with him for years, until I finally found the strength to go and get her back.”
He continued smiling. “But by the time I found her, she was now his through and through. She had given him several pups and stood rightfully by his side as his mate. But of course, her eyes were dead. Goddess knows what he did to her in those years.”
He still smiled as though it was a fond memory. “So come,” he said, stretching out his hand. “It’s not like I don’t understand where you’re coming from.”
I started. “Oh no, darling, you don’t understand where I’m coming from. It’s a given fact. But you do need to understand where you’re going—whether it is home or whether it is death. You see, the value of life here is not so in the human world. One person dies and everyone seems to lose their minds. Well, here life and death is literally in the power of the tongue.”
He smiled slowly. “Now come, human. Step lively. It’s going to be a long day.”
“Where are we going?” I stood to my feet.
“We’re going to the library. You’ll do well from reading a few books. You know, I have a feeling your mind is dusty and filled with cold weathers—unused in a while.”
My mouth dropped open as I followed the mad old man.