“Eat,” he commands.
Seething, I glare up at him, but I’m too hungry to refuse. It’s pathetic how a single day without food sends all my resolve flying out the window. As I think of all the ways I’d like to stab him with that pointy stick, I part my jaw. He holds out the meat, and I take a bite, ripping its flesh with my teeth. Grease drips down my chin.
A dark smile plays on his lips—he’s enjoying this far too much.
“You’re a beast,” I mutter around the bite in my mouth.
The insult doesn’t phase him. “A beast? Sure. A beast who will get you to Duren even if I have to bind and gag you every night. So any ideas you have about escape, you give up now, do you understand? Because I’m happy to repeat this act every night. I assure you, I don’t mind.”
“I wasn’t planning to escape!”
He reaches into his pocket and takes out a small object, dropping it in the grass beside my bound feet.
It’s Adan’s cockleshell.
Oh, shit.
At my silence, he wipes the rabbit grease from my chin with his thumb, then slowly pops his thumb in his mouth to lick off the juices.
I gape at him—there’s something deeply carnal about that action, something that stirs a buzz in me I can’t place a name to.
“What is his name?” Wolf asks, licking his lips.
I’m not sure which emotion is greater—fury that he seems to somehow know about Adan or baldfaced awe that he figured it out so easily. Does his godkiss let him read minds, too?
“Answer me, Lady Sabine.” Wolf grips my jaw, forcing my head upward.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” I mutter between squished lips.
“Oh, I’ve hurt plenty of women.”
My eyes narrow with seething anger as I explain, “I don’t doubt it, but I mean that Lord Rian wouldn’t like his bride bruised.”
He snorts to concede that I’m right. “Perhaps. But I don’t have to be kind.”
“Ha! What kindness have you done?”
“I could take back my shirt and have you stand before me bare, little violet.”
My heart thundering, I twist my head out of his grip, keeping my eyes on the cockleshell in the grass.
Adan’s sunlit voice reaches out from my memory:
“I’ll show you the sea, Sabine. You and me, we’ll cross the waves together and leave this place once and for all.”
Wolf snorts. “As you wish. When you feel like telling me the details of your plan to run away with your lover, I might feel like loosening your binds. Until then, finish eating this before it attracts every predator in the valley.”
He thrusts the stick at me. I manage to take it awkwardly in my bound hands, then tear into the rabbit.
Wolf settles back on the far side of the clearing, extending his legs and using a log for a pillow. I have nothing—no blanket, no bedroll, only the borrowed shirt steeped in his masculine scent.
His eyes close.
At least now I can scowl at him openly without fear of punishment. He’s even more of a devil than I first suspected. That untamed long hair that flaunts every social norm. Those honed muscles that’ve doubtlessly bloodied countless men like Thom Wallsor. The scars on his torso from a lifetime of fights.
I take my time searing Wolf with a long, assessing look. Do all men look like that bare-chested? So raw? Battle worn? So dominant, like a ram?
They can have my body . . .
My head feels cloudy. I’m too frustrated to get through my recitation. But I grit my teeth and force it.
. . . my mind is my own.
And my heart? Well, my heart belonged to Adan the first moment he ambled through the convent gate.
Because of the strict chastity vows, no males were allowed to set foot in the Convent of the Immortal Iyre, and frankly, the Sisters didn’t need them. For as mean-hearted as those old crones were, I have to give them credit for their mettle. They hauled stones for the new chapel. They bricked and mortared the buildings themselves. They repaired the wagon when the axle broke.
And yet there was one thing they needed men for:
The goats.
Immortal Iyre’s teachings forbid Sisters from touching any male anatomy, even that of a goat. So once a year, a farmer was admitted into our sacred feminine space to castrate the newborn male kids. During my first eleven years at the convent, it was blind old Mr. Porter with his steady hands and oak-handled knife. But the fae gods called Mr. Porter to join them in eternal rest, and the following year, Adan came in his place. Beautiful, golden-haired Adan, who the animals called “The Boy Who Shines Like Sunlight.”
Now, my stomach clenches with longing, but it’s all I can do to fish the cockleshell he gave me out of the grass with my bound hands and hug it to my chest.
I’ll show you the sea, Sabine.
Another voice squeaks its way into my head, this one in the here and now. A tiny nut-brown mouse noses out of the grass by my feet.
Food?
Its curious little face breaks through my frustration. I can’t help but smile.
For you? I tell it. I’ll gladly share.
Shifting my feet under me, I manage to lower to the ground and pluck off a piece of the rabbit meat to hold out, though Wolf’s rope certainly doesn’t make it easy. The mouse’s nose works double-time as it scampers closer.
“What are you doing?” Wolf’s bark from across the fire makes me jump—I’d thought he was asleep.
“There’s a mouse,” I answer coldly.
“I know there’s a fucking mouse. I heard it rustling the grass ten minutes ago. What are you doing?”
One of his eyes is open, glaring at me suspiciously like feeding a mouse is somehow part of a grand escape plan.
Scoffing, I don’t give Wolf another second of my time and turn back to the mouse with a smile reserved only for it. In a softer voice, I murmur, “It’s hungry.”
The mouse creeps up to my hand, whiskers exploring as it happily accepts the scrap of meat, making a dining table out of my palm.
Wolf is silent for a long time, but I feel his eyes studying me. His energy chews up the air around us as surely as the fire devours the wood.
“Never seen a mouse before that you didn’t want to stomp?” I mutter in a hard tone. “I’m not surprised you’ve never had a pet. Or anything else to love, I’d wager.”
He adjusts his position, arms clenching tighter. “I’m trying to figure out what you hope to gain by feeding a fucking mouse.”
A sigh slips out of my lips. I’m prepared to have choice words for Wolf, but when I turn to him, I’m surprised to see that his suspicion has vanished. Instead, he looks positively fascinated, even gobsmacked, by what I’m doing.
Something about that look softens my anger.
Taking a deep breath, I explain, “It isn’t always about personal gain. All creatures, even a mouse, deserve to be understood.”
Judging by his pinched brows, this concept is completely foreign to him. There’s a challenge in his voice when he says, “Even the wildcat that will eat that mouse later tonight?”
“Yes, even the wildcat.”
His jaw works for a moment, and then he says in a guarded tone I haven’t heard before, “And me? Can you understand what’s in my head?”