Because I'm not just a fucking wolf.
I'm the same kind of monster that mauled her.
"Please." Tears are streaming down her cheeks, catching the moonlight like her silvery scars. "Killian, please, you're still in there. I know you are. Fight it. Please."
I am fighting.
I'm fighting harder than I've ever fought anything in my fucking life.
But the hunger is everything. It's all I am now. The man I used to be is drowning in it, and the thing that's replacing him looks down at the woman beneath it and sees nothing but my next meal.
"I love you," Regina whispers. "Whatever happens. I love you."
Shelovesme.
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs.
And the thing inside me lunges for her throat.
Time slows. I feel every detail with horrible fucking clarity. The coarse fur of my muzzle brushing her jaw, the salt-sweet taste of her skin, the thundering of her pulse just beneath the surface. My jaws open wide.
Too wide.
Her hands crackle with magical energy. Not the usual energy. This is green. Green and ancient and lethal.
But she hesitates.
KILL ME,I think desperately.PLEASE JUST FUCKING KILL ME?—
Blood fills my mouth and I jolt awake with a snarl.
Regina is in my arms.
She's warm and soft and breathing, her head tucked under my chin, her fingers curled into my shirt.
She's alive.
She's whole.
My canines are fully dropped. There's blood in my mouth, but not hers. Mine. My tongue is throbbing and stings where I bit it. My claws are out, pricking against her back where my hand is pressed.
And she's so close—her throat is right there, her pulse fluttering against my collarbone, and some part of my brain is still spiraling with the aftershocks of the nightmare.
What the fuck.
What the fuck wasthat?
I force myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way my father taught me when I was a pup learning to control the shift. The ragged edge of panic slowly dulls, replaced by something cold and heavy settling in my chest.
Just a dream.
It was just a dream.
I'm stressed about Regina seeing me up close as a wolf one day and freaking out. Anxious she'll see me as a monster like the one that attacked her.
Thathasto be all that was. A bad dream brought on by stress and anxiety, not some kind of horrible fucking omen.
I pull her closer, press my face into her hair, and don't sleep again that night.
