Page 21 of Wolfsbane

Daire

A laugh bubbled out of me, loud and harried and half insane.

Yes, why didn’t I just cast some spells to get us out of this mess?

I laughed so hard that tears collected at the corners of my eyes. I wiped them away with one hand, gasping for breath. My other hand was, of course, cupped over my dick, because I was standing in a cave in the middle of the woods, buckass naked with a raccoon I’d called “buddy” and a werewolf whose other half I had stolen.

Running had been hard enough, but laughing was what was going to finally do me in. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My head started to throb from the lack of oxygen and I gasped. The sound rattled in my chest.

I leaned back against the rocky cave wall. I might’ve bruised my shoulders, but who cared? I was a werewolf, apparently, so I’d just heal. Which was just freaking fantastic.

No, running barefoot in the woods wasn’t comfortable, but if I’d stepped on any sharp rocks, my skin had already stitched back together. If I got hurt, I’d be just fine. No big.

When I lifted my head, my chest heaving with the effort to breathe, Viktor was looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

I was pretty sure he was right.

“I can’t,” I admitted, grinning. What else was there to do? If we were counting on me for anything, we were fucked.

I didn’t even know how I’d shifted before. That’d been a stroke of luck, or the full moon, or—or something. But it didn’t feel as easy as changing shoes, and it’d hurt.

At least . . . my shoulders dislocating had hurt. Was that just part of the process, or because of how I’d been tied up?

Viktor was still staring at me, his jaw flexing like I was the most frustrating creature he’d ever met.

Welcome to the party, boyo. He certainly wasn’t the first person to think so.

“I don’t have magic,” I said. “I’ve never cast a single spell.”

And I watched his eyes harden with the same disappointment I’d grown so used to. Harried, exhausted, overwhelmed, all I could do was smile back at him.

For all my life, there’d been a spark of potential in my chest, the promise of something more. Now, it had gone out.

I hoped that it was somewhere, hidden under new wolfish instinct or tied up in the ritual. It’d be just what I deserved, for even the potential of my magic to disappear. Maybe that was the price I had to pay.

For being a coward.

Was that the wolf or me? I didn’t know anymore.

It didn’t fucking matter, either. Wherever that voice came from, it was right.

“Altair thought they could track him with his blood. They can track you?” he asked.

I snorted. “They don’t even need my blood.”

I was my mother’s son, after all. Her blood ran through my veins.

Viktor huffed through his nose. He stepped toward the cave’s mouth to peer out of it with narrowed eyes. “Then we need to keep moving.”

I snorted, sliding down the wall inch by inch until my bare ass hit the dirt. Shit, was that an ant under my thigh? I jerked away from the tickling feeling, hugging my knees close to my chest. “I’m not going.”

Viktor scowled at me. He crossed his arms over his chest, which would’ve been downright intimidating if it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t do much worse to me than had already happened.

My mother was going to kill me, with a blade in my chest or funneled through this werewolf, it didn’t matter.

But Viktor didn’t say anything. He just kept glaring like he expected me to break first, and I couldn’t let the silence hang. If that counted as breaking, I guess I was the first to do it.

“It’s dark out. We’re lost in the woods. I don’t have shoes. I’m naked⁠—”