Red and Her Wolf (Kingdom, #3)

The poison latched on. It was thick and dark and filled his gut. He swallowed more and more, all of it. Gagging, he forced himself to keep it down and out of her. Her nails dug into his cheek, she was kissing him back with passion, twining her tongue with his.

But it was too much. Ewan wanted her. Wanted to taste her, to hold her, but the acid spewed hot in his gut, with one final pull he felt it coming back up. Pushing her away, he ran to a tree and retched.

Black blood spewed from his lips, covered the ground in gore. Up it came, with no end in sight. His body broke out in chills and then burned with fever. It felt like hours, but must have only been minutes when he sank to his knees, spent and panting, feeling as if his soul had born torn from his body.

“Ewan, I…”

Her soft hands were on his shoulders, rubbing gently. Expressing thanks with no words.

The world spun and shifted around him. There was nothing left in his gut, but still he felt the need to give up more. He grabbed his stomach, moaning. Black spots danced in his vision.

“Ewan,” her voice held a frantic edge to it, “you gotta come.” She tugged on his hand. “The land is dying; we gotta get out of here.”

It took everything he had to crack open eyes that felt full of sand and busted vessels.

The woods were melting. The trees ran with blood, branches were now skeletons, their limbs interlocked into a macabre structure. Sightless eye holes peered at him.

The crone’s dirty secret revealed. All the sugar drop trees and gingerbread rocks had been nothing more than past victims spelled to appear as sweets.

If he hadn’t already thrown up, he’d have done so again when the stench of decay assailed his nose. The breeze was alive with the rotten scent of flesh hung out to dry. Toxic waste ran where the chocolate river once flowed.

“Please, Ewan, come on.” She tugged on him, snapping him from his stupor.

“We must hurry,” he said, voice rough and scratchy. Shaking his head, attempting to right his vision, he called the becoming to him. The shift had him howling, his body too weak to handle the change.

But her tiny hands, and soft pleas of encouragement, spurred him on, drove him to ignore the desperate ache filling his limbs. They ran, trying not to slip on the thick sludge beneath them. Violet cried as her feet gave out beneath her. She landed on her butt in a thick pile of something foul and sticky.

Dizzy, vision blurring with spots, Ewan nudged her to sit on his back.

“Are you sure?” she whimpered, biting her lip.

He grunted, barely able to hold his head up. She didn’t hesitate again, quickly straddling him.

Adrenaline was the only thing that kept him running.

Chapter 10

She shivered, hugging her arms tight to her body, wondering if she’d ever be able to sleep again. All that blood and gore. The knowledge of where it had all come from… she swallowed the bile trying to work its way up her throat.

Night kept their secrets, held them within her dark arms, making it impossible for Violet to see too far beyond their camp.

Ewan’s back was to her, his chest heaved hard and though he’d feared starting a fire, the moon was bright enough that she could see the gray pallor tinting his skin. She sighed.

“Are ye okay?” His deep voice was a caress, and her lashes fluttered like moth’s wings against her cheekbones.

“I should be asking you that,” she said with a half snort. He was the one that’d risked his neck to save them, and yet he still asked after her welfare.

Finally he rolled over, his liquid gold eyes sliding slowly along the length of her body. She shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with the chill nip in the air. She bit her bottom lip as her lower stomach dipped with a sudden rush of nerves.

“Ye are my mate, Red. I’ll always worry after ye. Now are ye okay?”

A lump lodged in her throat, the kindness in his words, the deep timbre of his voice, it did something to her. Confused her more, made her care. It was hard to speak, so she nodded instead.

His eyes closed and a look of relief swept over his patrician features, making him seem softer, more approachable, and a million times more sexy. Her fingers twitched as a lock of midnight black hair flipped over his left eye.

“Good,” he smiled and her heart dropped. “Get some rest when ye can take it, Red. I doona think we’ll have too many more nights like these soon.”

“Are we close then?” There was a sort of quiet detachment in her question, maybe she should have felt fear. Any sane person probably would, but so much of this felt surreal. It’s not that Violet hadn’t known about the wonders of this world, she’d lived here once, long ago. But to see the stories of the mortal world open up before her eyes, to battle the cannibal crone and walk through a forest made of literal candy… sometimes it was hard to believe that all this wasn’t a dream.