Chapter 17 17
Elias's POV
"Everyone who tries to help us, they die," Narnia broke off with a bitter sound in her voice. “Nyrand risked everything to protect us. Malarik gave his life. How many other people will be affected by what I am?”
I paused and turned around to her. In the dim glow of my fur I could see tears rolling down her face as they ran in clean paths through the dirt and ash layered on her skin.
“Perhaps the Archon was right,” she added, lowering her voice. "Maybe I should have surrendered. May be if I’d just disappeared with them, Malarik would still be alive. The sanctuary would remain. All that knowledge would not be gone.”
I inched forward and grabbed the girl's arms with my front paws, pulling her to me. The bond was all I had, and every ounce of belief in my being coalesced into a single idea.
No.
“Elias,” she began, but I growled quietly, not letting go of her.
I couldn't talk, wasn't able to say the words I so desperately wanted to. But through the bond, through that connection that linked us forever in soul I tried desperately to make her get it.
Malarik didn't die to have you surrender. He died so we don’t have to. He died hoping we could change things, could make a better world than the one that came before. Do not let his death be in vain.
I stared at Narnia, then felt her realization in the bond. She nodded, using the back of her hand to dab at her eyes.
"You are right," she whispered. "I am sorry. I'm so sick of running.” “Just tired of being the reason people get hurt.”
I let go of her shoulders and rested my forehead against hers. The contact flowed warmth between us both, a reassurance that we were not in this alone. Whatever befell us, we confronted it together.
We traveled on in the tunnel in deep silence. The only noises were our footsteps, the drip of water from somewhere above and the echo of our breathing in the distance. I could feel the mate bond humming between us all the time now, something I was getting used to. I noticed when Narnia’s legs were tiring out. I sensed when pain spiked up her ankle from an old injury. I felt her thinking about how scared she was getting.
And she felt me too. My determination. My guilt over Malarik's death. How desperately I needed to be able to keep her safe.
When she had collapsed from exhaustion, I knelt and motioned for her to climb back onto my back. She did not argue this time. She pressed her arms around my neck and let me carry her, her fatigue worming through our connective embrace.
Hours passed. Or maybe it was just minutes. Time had a strange quality in the absolute darkness of the tunnel. But then, I noticed something up ahead. Not the silvery luminescence I gave off, but drab grey. Natural light.
The exit.
We surfaced in a narrow canyon, the tunnel entrance concealed by a curtain of vines and moss. Outside it was night, but after the total darkness of the tunnel, even starlight proved glaring. I inhaled fresh air, feeling pine and earth and freedom.
Narnia slipped off my back and peered out. We were in the middle of nowhere, away from any town. On our right and left rose rocky walls, while a slender stream wandered between stones at the foot of the ravine.
“We need to get some rest,” she added, more softly. "Just for a few hours."
I agreed. We were both worn down, physically and spiritually. But we could not risk a fire. The smoke would be seen for miles, and the Guild wouldn't stop looking.
In the ravine wall, we found an overhang that provided a little wind protection. I sat down, wrapping my body around itself like a shield, and motioned for Narnia to do the same in front of me.
After a moment she hesitated and then sat down to the ground leaning against my side. Rich with thick warm fur I felt her body give slightly as I warmed her.
Physical proximity, coupled with a mate bond that had gone through the roof. Every place that her body made contact with mine, sent off a spark in our connection. I could feel her heart beating as well as I could my own. Felt her exhaustion, her grief, her bewilderment at what we had become to each other.
“I hear you,” Narnia continued softly after a few minutes had passed. "Inside me. Your emotions, your pain. Is that the bond?"
I sent, yes, via our connection.
“I hear you too,” she added. "It is overwhelming. It would be like having someone else in my head, I guess.” As if that’s not pleasant as well. Just strange."
I saw her glance sideways slightly at me, her heterochromatic eyes probing my wolf face. "Can we talk? I mean, really talk? You can hear me even if you cannot talk?"
I nodded carefully.
“And can you transmit thoughts to me? Simple ones?"
I concentrated and forced a clear thought down the link. Yes. Short thoughts. Not full conversation.
"At least that is something," she murmured with rather a sad little smile. "I don't understand you at all, Elias. About you. Your life before all of this. I knew that we hardly knew each other and were, nevertheless, bound to one another for all time.”
She leaned back against me, her hand running slowly along my fur as she stared out at the lake. "Tell me about your childhood. What was it like as a young child, growing up in the Guild?”
I shut my eyes and dredged up memories I tried to keep buried. That's what I sent her over the bond- not words, but pictures and feelings. The Guild fortress, cold and dark stone corridors. The unending practices that left me bruised and bloodied. The priests who’d taught me that wolves were synonymous with monsters, that killing them was holy work. Isolation in being reared as a weapon rather than a child.
I showed her the first wolf I’d ever killed. I was twelve years old. It was a wounded, silver-chained creature and my teachers told me to kill it. I thought of the fear in the wolf's eyes. How its blood seemed black in the torch light. The priests congratulated me afterward and told me I was turning into a real warrior of the faith.
I showed her the years of hunting, of fighting, with everything in my own sight pointing to the hand of justice. And then the panic when I started to transform, when everything flew apart that I believed in.
Narnia absorbed everything into our connection, giggle tears cascading down her face. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. "They used you. They used a child to create a killer.”
“Wolves were monsters, I was taught,” I messaged her. “But you’re the most human person I have ever known.”
She chuckled softly, but it was a shattered noise. "I do not feel very human. I’m like a curse that brings everyone down with me.”
"You are not a curse," I projected strongly. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”
Narnia turned and regarded me full on, her hand reaching up to rest upon my muzzle. "Tell me about your father. Your true father, not the one the Guild made you think he was.”
I hesitated. She shared the reluctance, the tangled mess of feelings surrounding Kael Varron.
"Please," she said gently. "I need to understand."
So I told him what little I was able to and what Malarik had confided. My father, who was the Guild's hunter beyond a doubt and known throughout the entire kingdom as Man feared by wolves. But when told to capture her, he had shown her mercy. He had spared her a swift death instead of allowing the Guild to experiment on her and her unborn baby. And maybe at the very last moment, he had seen something in Selene that touched on his own humanity.
“Do you think he regretted it?” Narnia asked. "The killing? The years of hunting?"
“I have no idea,” I texted candidly. "He died when I was young. But Malarik appeared to feel like he turned things at the end. That you killed your mother broke something in him.”
“My mother dreamed of him,” Narnia said, her voice just above a whisper. She also knew he would come for her. She chose to curse him, and she also chose to trust in you. She’d thought you might be different.
There was a long silence. And then she started talking about her life. Growing up in the Regal Moon Pack under Corvin’s treachery. About the relentless abuse, the isolation, of other wolves who either joined in tormenting her or turned a blind eye to save themselves.
“I dreamed my mother would come back for me,” she said, her voice soft. “I would dream that she came to me in the night, and all of it had been a mistake, that she never meant to leave me with Corvin. That she loved me and needed me.”
Her voice broke slightly. "But she is not coming back. Killed by your father, and she died twenty years ago. And I suppose I must accept that she loved me enough to curse the man who killed her, loved me enough to try to mould a better future even knowing she herself would never live to see it.”
I held her close not knowing what to say.
“She knew he would hate me, and she gave me to Corvin!” Narnia continued. “But perhaps she also knew I would survive. That I was strong enough to withstand it until I could get away. That I would matter somehow."
One of my hands pawed at her, stroking her face as I sent the thought down through our bond.
You matter. You are everything to me.
Narnia's breath caught. She looked straight at me, her eyes wide and intense and full of something I could sense travelling through the link between us. Gradually she inched forward, and her face was nearing mine.
The space between us filled and stretched with the moment. We were so close I could feel her breath on my fur, could see the starlight that shimmered in her irises.
Then she jerked away, looking out the window.
“I’m afraid we can’t,” she replied, her voice tense. "Your people killed my mother. My people killed your father. This is a bond forged in blood and tragedy. How can anything good be built on that?”
I sensed her struggle through the bond. She desired this relationship as much as I did. Wanted to take the mate bond, to lean into what our souls had decided. But guilt and grief caused her to hesitate.
“I don’t have answers,” I wrote to her. “I just know that being with you feels right in a way nothing else ever has. And that has to count for something.”
Before a reply could be made, there came through the night a sound.
Howling.
But not the gutturaled howls of Guild hunters. These were pure and wild, unmistakable. Wolf howls. Real wolves, not men transformed by magic.
Narnia's entire body went rigid. Recognition and terror rushed through her to me down the bond.
"That is the Regal Moon Pack's howl," she murmured, going pale. "My uncle's wolves. They have found us."
She rose up slowly and faced the sound. “But why would they be chasing this far from their range? We are far outside their borders.”
A rustling in the dark reached my ears. Bodies flying through the forest, feigned stealth coloring every deadly leap and shuffle. They were surrounding us.
And then they stepped out from those shadows. Gunslingers, the human ones with bone and steel. There were a dozen or more of them arranged in a semicircle that would prevent escape.
I jumped up on my feet, and positioned myself between Narnia and the intruders with my muscles taut, prepared for battle.
The wolves had found us. And, by the look on their faces, it wasn’t to give help.