Into my life.
Keeping my head held high, praying my shaky legs won’t betray me again, I make my way to my seat, between Stepmother and my cousins, and watch Valen follow me with slow, measured strides. He doesn’t even limp anymore; his wound is obviously already healing.
He’s the very picture of a predator stalking through a flock of innocent sheep.
My cousins gasp when he stops right behind me, that awareness of his presence back with a vengeance, and Stepmother grabs her daughter and scuttles away.
“I’m not eating with a wolfman behind me!” she shrieks. “He’s going to kill us all.”
A fair point. I nod. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Now…” Suppressing my fear is second nature to me. An old pastime. My first line of defense, my wall, my castle. So I reach for a platter of food. “Shall we? I’m famished.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROSAMUND
The food I’m consuming lies like lead inside my stomach. The musicians play, and people talk, slowly returning to their seats, resuming the evening’s festivities. A somberness hangs over the hall, and it doesn’t dissipate until the end.
Having Valen standing behind me all this time, tall and forbidding, covered in drying blood, surely has something to do with it.
The evening has dragged on, endless. Making conversation with my cousins was always a pleasure in the past, but tonight it feels like a chore, my mind jumping all over the place. It keeps revisiting the animalistic growl and the spray of blood as the werewolf killed those men to protect me. The feral glow of his amber eyes. The clawed hands and long teeth.
Yet, I wish I could stay here forever, to avoid returning to my rooms with my brawny bodyguard in tow.
What do I do? Chain him outside? Lock him up in my closet? Sit in front of the fire and have tea and cake with him?
An inexplicable urge to laugh grips me.
I don’t know if I can do this. Or how. Delayed shock from the attack is to blame for the hysteria, I’m sure. Not the fact thatI’ve accepted my fate and my bodyguard, and my concerns have shifted to the mundane, practical questions.
I feel confused, dazed. The memory of Valen saving my life is a warm spot in my otherwise cold body, even if he only did it to benefit himself.
Somehow, by focusing on the wolf’s brutality, I underestimated his cunning. He’s playing a longer game, just like me. Little by little, he’s gaining more freedoms, more of my sympathy and empathy. I need to step back, resurrect the wall between us.
At this point, I should be worried about my sanity. About my clarity and good sense.
But I can’t. The path is blocked, the maze closing in around me, allowing me no escape.
Just like in a nightmare, I have to stand and let the terror overtake me, sink its teeth into me, and worry me like a bone until I jerk awake.
A sullen Bert accompanies us back to my room, grumbling in his beard about ungratefulness and foolishness, and frankly, he’s right.
This confused state I’m in can’t go on.
Yet, when we arrive, and Bert opens the door for me, bowing, I turn back to Valen and the dark expanse of the corridor. It’s freezing and… and drafty.
“What if—?” I start.
“He’s staying outside,” Bert says flatly.
“It’s cold,” I say, and curse myself inwardly for speaking my thoughts out loud. “Maybe?—”
“I’ll stay outside,” Valen interrupts me. “We wolves run hot. Don’t worry about me, Princess.”
“I’m not worried.” Turning my back to him, I rush to enter the room after Bert. “Not about you.”
Only, Valen follows inside. “You’re wounded.”
I stop, frowning. “Hm? What?”
