But there was no hint of crow’s feet around her eyes, or a tiny twitch of laugh lines around her withered lips. Lilith was being entirely honest with him.
“We should find lunch,” he murmured, his voice sounding more like gravel.
Finally she chuckled. “Yes, we should. And I am sick to death of this hideous form.” She tugged at the clasp holding her cloak in place.
Placing a hand over hers to still her actions, he shook his head. “You should stay in disguise—”
She opened her mouth and he could practically hear the rebuttal fly off her tongue, but she surprised him by closing it and instead taking a deep breath before finally saying, “And I will. I learned my lesson. But we’ve barely walked five miles in the past three hours. Staying in this form requires I walk as though lame, and I should think you’d like us to hurry up, no?”
Actually, he’d nearly forgotten about the quest or anything else, for that matter, after what she’d done this morning. He still couldn’t get the image of her licking his finger out of his head.
He’d not known how to approach the subject, so he’d pretended it’d meant nothing to him, but the very opposite was true. Giles had been enjoying their leisurely pace more than he should have.
What she said made sense, so he nodded, though he didn’t really feel like it.
“Good.” She stepped back from him and scanned their woods.
They were in a well-lit clearing but with limited views, thanks to the towering pines all around.
“Do you sense anyone else about? It would do me no good to shift if there were others to see it happen.”
Giles wondered why she would ask him that. Surely as a wolf she’d know more about their surroundings than him. Lilith had been acting strangely all morning. Was it the heat causing her to behave in such a manner, or was there more to it than that?
He shook his head. “I’ve seen no one else for hours. But with your senses, shouldn’t you be able to—”
Sucking on her bottom lip, she shook her head tentatively. “No. Well, let me amend that. A true shifter is just as capable in either form. Sight, sense, smell, touch, all of it sharp and heightened, whether human or animal. But I am only half-shifter, so though I can shift, in human form I’m not as…capable.” The last she said in a low murmur.
Tipping her chin back up so that she would look at him, he shook his head. “You have no need to be ashamed of that, Lilith.”
Her soft, delicate fingers gripped his hand. “It is a vain conceit, this pride of mine.”
She said it with a thread of laughter behind it, but he sensed that it bothered her to share as she had. Wolves were unbelievably proud; that she could admit this to him was astonishing. To say the least.
Gently rubbing his thumb across her jawline, he smiled. “You should see me when I lose at poker.”
She laughed and gently pulled away from him. “I do believe you just made a joke, knight.”
He shrugged. “It happens on occasion.”
Lilith handed him the cloak. “If you could spread that out for us, I will go find us lunch.”
“I can come with you.” He frowned.
“You could,” she smirked, “but then you’d get to see how brutal I can actually be. Better for you if you think me a simple, country maiden.”
And with a wink she called her fire down. Giles stood within the heat of her flame. It was intensely hot, and broke him out in a sweat. But it also felt good. It felt a lot like home.
A second later the red wolf gave him a wolfish grin and then turned on its heel and trotted back into the tree line. He watched until she faded from sight. One day he would go with her on a hunt, just to see her in action.
But until then…
Fisting the cloak, he found them a suitable spot to sit and spreading out the cloak like a blanket. It wasn’t large enough for the both of them, but it didn’t matter. He’d take the ground, no big deal.
Foraging for dry sticks and anything else that could be used as tinder, he brought it back to their makeshift camp. Setting it up, he surrounded it with large stones, but kept it unlit for now.
Giles suspected Lilith wouldn’t tell him so, but she had to be hungry. The way she’d devoured food in the past two days, he could only imagine that her instinct demanded a lot of calories, and more than the rabbit or mouse she’d likely bring back.
But when he went off in search of berries or nuts, he came up empty. There’d been plenty of food to pluck straight from the trees at their last camp; if he’d been wise he would have thought to pack some with them, but it’d been in such abundance he’d failed to imagine it wouldn’t always be so.
For a brief moment he wished they were walking through Wonderland instead of these woods. Breads and cheeses and all manners of delights could be found on the trees that grew there. But Wonderland was the only part of Kingdom with such unusual trees; in this part of the endless woods they were surrounded by nothing more than pines that bore not a single cone to dig seed from.