Red and Her Wolf (Kingdom, #3)

Calling the unbecoming, he grit his teeth through the transformation, grunting when his bones popped and snapped back to human proportions. Panting, covered in sweat and his own gore, he dropped to his knees. Black hair covered his face as he tried to remember the stories his sire had told him long ago.

His father had never talked much with Ewan, an absent father most of the time, a drunkard the rest. But once he’d overhead him while thick in his cups, swearing that his bitch whore could never screw the neighbor’s runt again now that he’d marked her.

Ewan had hidden within deep shadow inside the den, trembling when his father had yanked his mother by her hair, dragging her out and laughing in her terrified face that she now bore his mark and she could never run off again without him knowing about it. He’d never seen his mother again after that, his father had become little more than a ghost passing in and out of his life, leaving a seven year old Ewan to care for his three younger siblings.

Ewan had marked Red.

But he didn’t know how to track her, always relying on his smell, but there was none to find here. Malvena had covered all traces.

Ewan gripped his skull, tugging his hair and gnashing his teeth.

“Red,” he croaked, “where are ye, lass?”

The wind stirred leaves, whispered through feathers of the dead carcasses at his feet. His body ached, screamed whenever he twitched. But he held still and tried to focus on something other than the frenetic beat of his wild heart.

“Red.” He squeezed his eyes shut harder, colorful lights danced behind closed lids. “Answer me.”

This time when the zephyr brushed against his nude back, a violent bump bump followed in its wake. His spine stiffened.

Bump. Bump.

He snapped his eyes open.

Bump. Bump.

It was like a fist knocking at the wall of his chest.

Bump. Bump. Bumpbumpbump…

He ran, following the sound of her rapidly beating heart.

Bumpbumpbumpbump. Ewanewanewan… Ewan.

“I’m coming, Red,” he roared, letting the sound fill his head, his lungs, his heart, and soul. Tree limbs tore at his already ravaged flesh, but he didn’t dare stop.

He couldn’t smell her. But he felt her. Warmth and sunshine; her violence and mayhem. She was HIS, his women, all of her. Her violence, her pleasure and pain.

His vision narrowed down to a pinprick, dodging trees the best he could, covering his eyes when he couldn’t avoid a slapping branch. Running faster, panting desperately for air around the fire ripping through his chest.

Rocks tore up the soles of his feet. He slipped on the blood, forced to run up the hill with both hands and feet. Nails splitting as he clawed his way up.

Ewanewanewanewanewan….

The moment he crested the hill he heard her everywhere.

Ewan. Ewan. Ewan.

He stopped, grasping onto his aching side, lungs heaving as he twirled. Everything was dark and black. Ewan wiped the stinging wetness out of his eyes, the salt left a bitter sting behind.

“Red!” he roared, brogue so thick it sounded more like riyad.

Then a flash of bright pink energy sparked like a firework’s display above the enormous tree lines a hundred yards ahead.

One breath in. A deep breath out.

In and out.

Arms pumping.

Leg muscles flopping like a dying fish out of water. He tripped on a stone, rolling down the hill the rest of the way. Barely registering the fresh cuts and scrapes as he forced his battered body to stand up. He tried to run, but could barely do more than hobble. Adrenaline was the only thing he ran on now.

“Ewan! Come quickly. Come.” It was Danika’s voice. “She needs you, boy. Come.”

He broke through the trees, following the grunts and groans and the impossible to miss stench of brimstone. That noxious, sulfurous odor that leaked from Red’s pores when in a killing trance.

At first it was only shadows on a ground, but then he got closer and horror gripped his spine in an icy fist.

Malvena was bound, her body thrashing as Red kneeled on top of her. Black iridescence pulsed from Malvena’s body and Red cried as the black light turned to flames around her.

***

Violet was trapped, unable to break free of the contact as Malvena’s powers siphoned into her. Each vaporous inhale was a blade, ripped her up from the inside.

It was too much. Too much pain. Too much power. Her skin felt like it would rip off her body, she was bloated with darkness, on the verge of an explosion, and still her greedy soul inhaled.

She couldn’t stop.

Couldn’t stop.

Aunt Mir had knocked Malvena out with a direct bolt of power to her temple, then she’d told Violet to open her mouth.

She convulsed.

“Take it in, Vi, all of it,” Aunt Mir’s words were small, and the pain was so, so large.

Violet willed her body to stop. To close her mouth. Told her brain no more. But she was so hungry. So hungry.

Jerking, fingers digging like claws into Malvena’s tiny shoulders, Violet drank and drank. That dark soul twisted in her gut, churned through her bowels.

Malvena stopped jerking. Her once lovely face now contorted into a wordless scream.

Hands shook Violet.

“Stop…ple…”

Something hot and wet seeped from her nose and ears.

“Nay, stop…” A deep burr, a desperate growl.