“It’s… it’s too hard.”
He made that comforting rumble again before he gently asked, “What are your instincts telling you?”
Sweat dewed on her temples, sticking the fine hair there to her skin. Josephine fumbled to curl her fingers around the cup, but found that she could not make herself rise. Stuck there at his feet, she found herself answering, “That you could kill me. That if I make one wrong move, you’ll have my throat.”
Instead of telling her how ridiculous that was, seeing as he was chained to the wall and she knelt just out of reach, he said, “Do you understand why you feel that way?”
“Because you’re a predator.”
“That is true, but not all of it, I think.” The tangled hair around his shoulders moved as he tilted his head to one side. “What are you?”
ChapterTwelve
Josephine closed her eyes.There was a name for what she was, but it was ill-fitting. “I don’t know. My father infected me with lyssa and it made me— I am different than I was before. Changed.”
The shifter made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. “You aren’t a shifter, then?”
“No.”
“What were you before this change?”
Her whisper was so quiet, it was barely audible even in the insulated space of the cell. “Arrant.”
She expected some reaction, perhaps even derision, but the shifter only made that soft sound again. “And these instincts you feel, the ones that tell you I’m a threat, did you have them before?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Certainly she had intuition, as all creatures do, but there was no beast in the back of her mind with its own will, its own senses. It could not truly speak, but it often felt separate from her, like it was trying to tell her things through impulses.
Only on full moon nights did it have true autonomy.
That was why her bedroom had a lock on the outside. Josephine knew better than to try and escape. But the beast? The beast never stopped trying.
“So you don’t understand any of your instincts, then,” he surmised, sounding troubled. “You don’t knowwhyyou’re so afraid of me. Why you can’t look me in the eye.”
Pride smarting, Josephine finally summoned the will to stiffly rise, cup in hand. She moved her gaze away from him as she scurried over to the tiny sink in the corner. “You’re a predator. Predators are dangerous. I know that much from experience, sir.”
“Ah, I didn’t mean to insult you,lille mus,”he replied. “I only meant that you don’t understand hierarchy.”
“What does that mean? Of course I understand hierarchy. It’s a power structure. I know quite a bit about that. It’s muscle versus weakness.” Josephine filled the cup as much as she could without spilling any water. Holding it in both hands, she crept back over to the shifter and cautiously deposited it by his feet.
He waited until she made her way over to the square cushion by the wall to answer, “Yes and no. Shifters have a hierarchy. Where you fall in that hierarchy determines your role in the pack, and that is decided based on your natural tendency toward dominance or submission. Most people are a blend, but there are those who exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. The most dominant usually become alphas or security for their packs. The least dominant tend to take the day to day tasks, like money management, caring for cubs, and making sure dens are being looked after. They essentially run the pack.”
He huffed a breath through his nose, as if he thought something was at all funny in their situation. “You might believe that the submissives in a pack don’t have power, but you’re wrong. They haveallthe power. Us dominants are just— what would you say?Muscle.”
Josephine sank onto her cushion and curled her legs to one side. Wrapping her shawl tightly around her shoulders, she said, “I’m not a shifter.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “But youarea submissive. One at the very farthest end of the spectrum, I think.” In a softer voice, he added, “That’s rare. Very rare.”
She folded her hands in her lap and made a study of them. Instead of replying to him, she pressed her tongue flat against the roof of her mouth, soothing that curious ache.
When the sound of his chains rattling against one another filled the cell, she dared to peek at him through the fringe of her lashes. Her breath caught.
Whatever he was, the shifter wasmagnificent.
He was not pretty, nor elegant. His face was quite brutish, his hair unkempt, and his scars many, but when she watched him move, Josephine was stricken by his grace, the power of his limbs.
Her fingers twitched in her lap.I could draw a man like that for hours.
