He lowers his head, his breath hot and ragged, his tusks brushing my shoulder.
He nuzzles my neck. A soft, animal comfort.
His world, my world... it is gone. There is only the stench of sweat and blood, and the thrum of his massive, pounding heart, right next to my ear.
15
THREK
My heart is a wild drum against my ribs, a frantic, heavy thud-thud-thud that I feel in my entire body as I brace myself on my arms. I am a cage of shaking muscle, over her. She is so small beneath me, so warm and fragile.
Her scent is everywhere.
I lower my head, my tusks brushing the soft skin of her shoulder, and I just breathe. I breathe her in, and her scent is changed. It is no longer the clean, cold smell of snow and berries I first found. It is us. It is the salt of her skin, the musk of my skin, and the raw, copper-and-earth scent of our joining. It is the scent of mine.
The thought is not just a command. It is a fact. It is the only truth in my broken mind, a clear, complete loop. She is mine. She is mine. She is mine. The woman who screamed my name.
I wait for the rage to come back, for the screaming, red storm that always follows a fight, that follows any release. I wait for the elven magic to surge and demand I kill or break.
But it is… quiet.
The red haze, that terrible, violent fog that has ruled my mind for as long as I can remember, feels distant. It is a sleepingbeast, pushed far, far away by her. By this. Her voice, her scent, her body... she is the silence in my head.
A violent, rattling shiver runs through her small body, and it vibrates through me.
She is cold.
The thought is a blade, sharp and clear. The cabin is a box of ice. I must make her warm.
My body protests as I move. It is an agony. My leg is a bonfire of new pain from the Worg bite. But I move.
I pull myself off her, away from her. The loss of her warmth is a new kind of pain.
She is asleep. She did not wake. She is a small, pale, broken thing, curled on the hard, dirt floor, her body smeared with grime and blood. My blood. The Worgs' blood.
It is wrong. It is wrong on her.
Fire.
The thought is an instinct. I need fire.
My mind is empty. How? I am a beast. I break. I kill. I do not make.
But my hands move.
I do not understand why.
I stumble to the corner of the small den, my leg screaming at the movement. There is a pile of wood. It is dry and good. Beside it, I see two stones. One is a piece of black rock, the other gray.
I have never seen these things.
But my hands know them.
My claws are clumsy, but I turn my hand, my fingers gripping the black rock. My other hand grips the gray. My hands seem to remember something I do not. They know the angle. They know the force.
I strike.
Sparks. A small fire. Not enough.
