He wants me to talk to the damn beast?
A blind wrestling match with a giant naked Viking was starting to look better and better. Still, he was enough of a realist to know that this was unlikely to improve his situation. Bad enough that he was fully clothed in a smoky sauna without adding a concussion to his problems.
It really was getting damn hot. He’d had enough experience with extreme conditions to know that he had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before he passed out from heat exhaustion. Even then, Ragvald probably wouldn’t take pity and drag him outside.
He grimaced, but there didn’t really seem to be much choice. Reluctantly, he turned his focus inward.
Well?he demanded silently.
Nothing. Not a growl; not a nip.
The taste of smoke was making him jittery. Adrenaline swirled uselessly around his system, searching for an outlet. The motherfucking beast had picked one hell of a moment to sulk, because Buck was absolutely spoiling for a fight.
For the first time, he reached for the animal. It felt like plunging his arm shoulder-deep into icy water to close his hand around a red-hot blade. He dragged it, snarling and scratching, up into his conscious mind.
“Well?” he said out loud, because maybe if he convinced Ragvald he was giving this ridiculous nonsense a fair shot, the man would stop trying to achieve one hundred percent humidity. “You’re the one who got us into this mess. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Blank white eyes glared at him balefully from inside his skull. In the steamy darkness, he could practically see the thing—a gray, feral presence skulking at the edge of his vision.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that.You’rethe damn squatter that moved uninvited into my skin. What right have you got to be pissed off?”
You put me in a cage.
Buck started. He knew shifters had whole conversations with their animal halves, but he’d always imagined it would feel like a kind of supernatural schizophrenia—a growling foreign voice in his head.
This wasn’t a voice. It was just… a thought. Something coming up naturally from the depths of his own brain, like when you suddenly had a hankering for a snack. It wasn’t even really words, any more than he would actually think,Boy, some chocolate chip cookies sure would hit the spot about now.That was just how you explained it, if someone asked what was on your mind.
He shook his head, smoke stinging his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my brain.”
The vast canine shape circled, half-seen in the smoke. It was every predator that had ever lurked outside the firelight; the monster in the dark.
You put me in a cage.
Except that wasn’t quite right, becauseYouwas alsowe, andmewasusandyouandourselves.
You/we put me/us/yourself in a cage.
“Stop that,” he snarled back. “And damn straight I did. You’re a curse. An infection. Shit, just look at me now. Talking to a motherfucking hallucination.”
Animal eyes, gleaming through the smoke.Are you/we?
It was so damn hot. And dark. Hard to remember that this was just a crude hut, barely more than a pile of logs and earth. Not a vast cave, somewhere in the depths of his soul.
He shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not listening to a damn animal.”
You/we used to.
“Since fucking when?”
Paws padding over hard-packed earth. Was that the brush of fur against his arm?
Before you/we turned away. Before you/we put me/us in a cage, and refused to let us/me out unless we/I tore down the bars. Before you/we changed.
“Are you seriously trying to claim I’ve always been a motherfucking shifter?”
No. But I have always been here.
Memory. The smell of other smoke. Air scorching his lungs. Moving fast, leading the pack. Others at his heels—in khaki fatigues, or beige firefighting gear, carrying guns or chainsaws or hand tools. The crack of trees splintering in the heat; the snap-whine of enemy fire.
