She gave me a fierce look and nodded. “Running this family, right?”
“Right. I’ll need you to cut through the darkness with your light when I get lost in eternal nights.”
She rested her head on my chest but didn’t move her stare. “You’ll need me to lead you back to me when the darkness tries to eat you whole and take you away from me. I won’t allow it, Matteo Fausti. To this family, you’ll be their leader, but you’ll always bemylove.”
My hold on her became tighter, and she gasped some, but didn’t try to pull away. “Don’t make a promise to me that you can’t keep.”
Our eyes held.
I counted the breaths she took.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
“I promise you, Matteo Fausti. You’re it for me. I couldn’t imagine being cagedorfree in life with anyone but you. I’m—I’m not sure if I could make it. Maybe that’s why I kept going for so long when I thought I couldn’t take another day. Mom. The thought of her burned in my darkness. You. You were there all along with me in the darkness.” She kissed me, a kiss that sealed the words she’d vowed to me underneath the stars.
A strangled noise came from my throat, half human, half animal. The hell she’d been through put me inside of her nightmares at night, and I’d spend the rest of my life keeping her in heaven.
Before Stella even registered the noise, I tucked her behind me, the gun I kept strapped to me already in my hand.
“Wha—” Stella started.
“Don’t shoot!” A woman’s voice interrupted.
“Evelina,” I said.
“It’s me and Wolf, Teo.”
I lowered my gun and tucked it back in. Evelina and Wolf appeared out of the darkness. His humongous black wolf—the real wolf—followed behind. He was sniffing around, and when he came close to Stella, she stiffened.
“He won’t hurt you,” Evelina said, patting his head.
Stella’s eyes flickered down. She was being as still as a statue. The wolf nudged her hand, and to show her that he was, mostly, friendly, I patted his head. Evelina’s hand and mine hit when she went to pet him again, and she started laughing. Wolf, the man, made a low growl in his throat and pulled Evelina close. Stella was already close, and I added some pressure so she would feel me. Prove to her that there was nothing to be fucking jealous of.
Wolf said something to the wolf in Russian. The wild dog left Stella’s side and sat next to Wolf. The wolf’s tongue lolled out.
“You have met a wolf before,” Wolf said in broken English, but it was enough to understand.
Stella nodded. “Boris,” she said. “He has one. She ate Ivan’s heart.”
My eyes narrowed. She turned to me.
“The night you showed up in Sub Rosa. After Ivan was killed. Boris got Ivan’s heart in a box. He fed it to the wolf.”
“A treat,” Wolf said.
Stella gagged.
“Okay,” Evelina said. “We were just doing a sweep of the land, and now we’ll leave you both alone. No more visitors.” She made a noise with her mouth, like she was calling a puppy, and both wolves followed behind her.
I took Stella’s left hand, and she didn’t even notice that I did. She was fixated on the disappearing forms ahead of us.
