If only it also helped get her out of my mind...
Sniffing the air, I catch a whiff of potential prey. Boar. Snarling, I crouch down and lean into the earth’s music to locate the animal.
There.
Loping off, I hunt by smell, darting around rocks and between shrubs and scraggly trees until I reach a small stream, and I see it.
A young wild pig. Not a baby anymore, and wandering alone.
Being a wolf means to be ruthless. When you’re fully shifted, it’s easy to grab, kill, and devour without any thought about ethics or sympathy. When in half-shift, though... not so much.I don’t go about killing animals and people, no matter what the world thinks. I’m not above punching stupid bastards in the face if they deserve it, or ripping the throats out of anyone going after my loved ones, but I consider that another matter.
The pig stops drinking and lifts its snout, sniffing. It has caught a whiff of me. It’s time to move before it bolts. My energy is low, and I need this done now.
Closing my mind to empathy and regret, I go in for the kill. I make it swift. As painless as possible. It’s dead before it knows what hit it, and I gut it there, at the stream, clean it out, and head back.
I stop on the way to gather dry grass and twigs, and two flintstones for the fire. Then I have a moment of panic because, when I climb onto the outcrop, I don’t see her... until she stands up, long dark hair dancing around her, and I can’t help the way my stupid heart pounds at the sight of her.
Damn.
Then her gaze lands on the pig I’m holding, and she scrunches up her nose, a jolt of revulsion going through her. “Is that...?”
“Dinner.” I grin because she’s cute. I’m aware I should be fucking annoyed at her aversion to blood and raw meat, to dead animals... and to me.
It just goes to show how fucked I am when it comes to her.
I will get over her. Soon. I’ll drop her off, leave her in her future husband’s hands, and scrub my mind clean of her.
I won’t spend my nights jerking off to images of her, fantasies involving her. I’m not an idiot. I’ll grab the first female I see and fuck this need out of my system.
Right.
But first things first. Crouching down, I set the carcass aside and gesture at her. “Your knife, please, Princess. Time to start afire and prepare the banquet. I hope you brought your best gown for the fucking ball.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ROSAMUND
Pulling my knife from its sheath at my belt, I pass it to him without another word. I try not to look at the dead animal left in the dirt beside him—a big rabbit? A small sheep? What is that? Oh Gods, is it a pig?—as he gets to work, kneeling and hitting the blade with a flintstone to start a fire.
The sparks fly, landing on the mass of dry grass and twigs he has gathered while out there hunting, and a small flame jumps.
I kneel across from him and bend down to gently blow on it. I may not know much about surviving out here, feeling out of my depth, but I know how to build a fire.
He abandons the knife and stone and gets to his feet. “Going to grab some wood. Be right back.”
I should be helping him, but he asked me to stay put, and like a pet, a child, a puppet, I obeyed. I don’t want to make things more difficult than they are. I pride myself on being realistic, even though Della said I’m not. He knows what to do, I don’t, and getting in the way won’t help, that’s for sure. I just hate feeling... helpless and useless.
He appears in almost no time, leaping down the rocks like a wild thing—which he is, I remind myself, realizing I’ve been seeing him more and more as a man and less as a wolf with eachpassing day. He’s hugging a huge bunch of broken branches, and as he lands beside me with a thump, he lets it all fall to the ground.
“Miss me?” He grins widely at me and crouches down to arrange a few branches over the small fire.
“I...”
“Relax, Princess. I’m only teasing.”
Which doesn’t account for the strange sense that Ihavemissed him, and do miss him whenever he’s out of my sight. Every time I hear a sound, I think it’s him, and the relief I feel is less about my safety and more about needing to see his face...
Good Gods.What’s going on with me?
