“I know, sir,” Wynne said gently. “But you should still eat. You are getting thin.”
Lindsay made an irritated sound. “Thou’rt trying my patience, Wynne.”
Wynne turned then, fixing Lindsay with a look of such penetrating pity that it made Lindsay want to cover himself and turn away.
“You have not slept in two days, nor have you eaten.” Wynne paused and smiled sadly. “And you are thee-and-thou’ing me again.”
Lindsay closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the chair in surrender. “I am fine,” he said. “Go, Wynne. Leave me be.”
Wynne huffed out a breath and walked to the door again. But before he left, he turned. “Will you at least eat?” he said. “Please? Just a little something?”
“Don’t fret,” Lindsay said. “I will be going hunting soon. I will eat then.”
Wynne sighed and left the room.
Lindsay watched as the two logs Wynne had set on the fire gradually burned, blackening first, then glowing red, then finally turning white and collapsing to nothing. The cottage was quiet now and the world still. Rising, he dropped his clothes where he stood and silently left the room. Moments later, he was unlatching the kitchen door and stepping out into a cold, wet night.
He looked up at the night sky, searching. The moon was little more than a bone-white, crooked finger, beckoning him. Her call was weak, but it was enough. Enough to shift by. His shift was slow and painful though, in no little part due to weakness from lack of food. Wynne was right that he needed sustenance.
When the shift was over, he was lying on his side, panting hard, his ribcage rising and falling quickly. Getting to his feet, a little shakily, he began a trotting run towards the Biesbosch. The cottage was on the outskirts of Dordt, so he was soon in open fields.
After a short, hard run, he ducked into a patch of willow forest. The land here couldn’t be more different from Edinburgh’s hills: flat wetlands, soft, muddy ground under his paws as he ran, great clumps of reeds and grasses brushing his flanks. His progress was greeted with the muted calls and flapping wings of agitated waterfowl. After a while, he stopped to hunt, catching a couple of mallard and making a swift, desultory meal of them. Then he ran again, on and on, under the weak, distant moon.
At last, exhausted, he lay down, setting his head on his outstretched paws.
He had always been able to find some solace in his shift—until now, now when he needed solace most of all. But how could he find solace in this self? This part of him that most unequivocally and unreservedly needed its mate?
His mate.
Drew.
Drew Nicol.
A soft whimper escaped his throat as he remembered Drew as he’d last seen him, stiff and formal as he heard out Lindsay’s awkward farewell.
“Send word to me by Francis if you need me. If you need anything at all.”
Drew hadn’t replied. He hadn’t needed to. Anger had still burned in his grey-blue gaze.
How long till he relented?
Would heeverrelent?
Lindsay whimpered again. This pain was like nothing he’d ever felt before, even in the worst moments of his slavery. It was not a pain that provoked a night-sung howl of grief, bayed to the moon. Only this. The soft, private whine of a fatally wounded beast.
He lay there for a time, despairing, his nose in his paws. But at last he looked up, up at the moon. At that curving silver finger that seemed to say,Come.
Obedient to his mistress, Lindsay staggered to his feet and set off for home.
