“Yes, I can!” I move my hand from his arm to clutch at his tunic. “There must be a different way. I’morderingyou to find a different way.”
I’m fully aware that once seventeen guards attack, Neri will fight back like the beast he is, especially with me here, and it won’t be pretty.
He isn’t a bit happy about it. In fact, worry etches his features into harder lines. But he jerks me close with a low growl of displeasure regardless, just as a chill wind blasts the tavern door open and sparkling frost surges into the building in thin streams, wrapping around us like an icy fist.
Everyone on the floor shields their faces as I sense the sifting begin. That first second when the world beneath my feet vanishes.
The last thing I see before I shut my eyes is Eryx and his men lunging for us, just as the aether swallows us whole.
* * *
“Well, fuck.”
At the sound of Neri’s voice, I blink open my eyes and stare up into his golden gaze. Then I look around, baffled.
We’re in the godsdamn alley. In a corner near the entrance at the main road.
“What did you do?” I scold, keeping my voice down, even though the minstrel is strumming and singing loudly enough nearby to drown me out. “This is not the tor!”
The wolf tosses up his hood, which had blown down, then yanks mine over my head again. He otherwise ignores me and cocks his ear. “Eryx and his men are headed this way. Come on.”
With his claws retracted, he grabs my hand and drags me deeper into the lover-infested wedding celebration taking place there. My pulse kicks up as we work through the writhing masses, but the partygoers are thankfully too preoccupied with their beer and each other’s bodies to notice our intrusion.
Someone—an older gentleman—slurs something about the God of the North coming back from the dead as we pass, but his friend just lets out a hearty guffaw, slaps the man on his shoulder, and says, “You’ve had one too many tankards tonight, old friend.”
As though everything that just happened inside the tavern was a drunken dream.
Neri quickens his steps and guides me through people and tables, past one of several steel barrels where flames burn high, warming the entire alleyway. He suddenly halts and tugs me close, glancing right and left before walking me backward until I’m pressed between him and the tavern’s stone wall.
“Kiss me.” He flattens one hand on the building and curls over me to make himself smaller. “Like you mean it.”
I press my spine harder against the rough stones, anything to put distance between us, and contort my face into a disgusted scowl. “I’d rather let them kill me.”
He growls deep in his chest as angry voices drift from nearby, voices heading toward the alley. “They’re hunting for us, so they very well might,” he warns. “Now stop lying through your teeth and kiss me, woman. And be convincing about it.”
I’m struck with a sudden urge to both obey him and throttle him. It makes me check my mental wards because I donotneed him in my head right now.
The moment I realize the wards are indeed intact, if a little flimsy, I consider forming a quick shielding construct around us. But if Eryx can see through glamours, there’s a good chance my construct will only become a beacon screaming our whereabouts.
“Just sift us back to the tor!” I whisper-shout, stomping my foot, not unlike the petulant child the wolf thinks I am.
I can see that he tries. Once. Twice. But a strange and foreign expression falls over his face. One I’ve never seen him wear before.
A mask of indignity.
“It seems I can’t.” Irritation drenches his words. “I can’t sift.”
After a small and even more confused shake of my head, I gape at him. “What do you mean you can’t sift?”
“I. Don't. Know. What Idoknow is that you can either kiss me so that we blend in, and Eryx and his men overlook us, or you’re going to have the blood of one bitch of a massacre on your hands. Because I will not hesitate a second time. If I could sift, I could get us and Eryx back to the tor in a heartbeat and be done with this. But I can’t. So if they come for us, and if they attack, which they will, I will have no choice but to rip those men apart.”
“Fucking devils,” I grumble, but the voices get louder and closer.
I grab the front of Neri’s cloak, and after one more second of deliberation, jerk him down, tilting my head up as our mouths collide.
Gods, I expect to hate it. To despise myself for this. To despise him even more so. I also wait for the onslaught to come, expecting his kiss to be as brutal and rough as he is. Though I remember his soothing touch far too well, the press of his lips on my thigh, I tell myself that it was for show. That gods can’t really be gentle or tender or sensual, or any of a hundred other words I don’t want to attach to the Wolf of the North, no matter what he’s shown me so far.
But instead of mauling me, he pulls back, just for a moment, tracing his thumb over my lips before meeting my gaze. Softer than a beast has any right to, he takes my chin in his hand, his eyes alight, the molten gold of his irises swirling, hypnotizing. His fangs retract a little, becoming slightly less terrifying, yet just as erotic.
