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“How much did I bleed?” I said. I was remembering afterwards, he’d gone and gotten a warm washcloth and he’d gently rubbed it all over my pussy and my inner thighs. “Was there blood all over my legs?” Did I remember this, actually?

He eyed me. “You really don’t remember?”

No, maybe I did remember. Maybe it was only that haze of it, the afterglow, the goodness, the connection of us, it had made everything into a gushing and flowing sort of syrupy mush of good, and I hadn’t cared, or… or I’d liked it.

Something about bleeding as he took me made it feel really real, like he’d altered me, forced me open to take him, torn his way inside, and I’d felt it in the depths of me, as if I’d always known it needed to be like that, needed to be serious, needed to be blood.

Magical, yes, but the dark and deep kind of magic, the kind that started in the depths of the forest, the kind that was tied to the hunt, the kind that was transcendent and transformative.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t apologize. It seemed like my due, actually, when we did it, like I was owed it, like you were supposed to give me that, and I was supposed to take it, and having it made it, uh, real.”

My voice came out quiet. “I was just thinking something like that.”

“But I, uh, think it’s just like that, with wolves,” he said. “You’ve done it with other people now, so you know that it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be less intense and just light and about surface pleasure.”

Sure, I guessed it could. But more often than not, it was just unsatisfying, I thought. The surface, it wasn’t what I wanted from sex.

“You weren’t faithful to her?” I said.

“She wasn’t faithful to me,” he said. “Did you know that Vincent—”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “But that’s not fair, really, because you and I—”

“Oh, that went on after I ended things with you,” said Damian, bitter. “And not just him. She was… she…” He squared his shoulders. “But you should understand, Leo, I loved her.”

I drew back, feeling that twist more painfully than I thought it would.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “Fifteen years. We had children together. She was good to me. She—”

“Did you want her?” I interrupted. “Before I arrived, I mean. It was obvious that the old cyning, that Hank Hardesty, wanted you and his daughter together. So, before I showed up, what did you think of that idea?”

He cleared his throat. “What? When I was thirteen years old?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She was more attractive than I was.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’ve never been as attracted to anyone as I was to you.”

“But she was prettier. And she had money. And she was blond. And she was shaped like a pin-up girl. And you did want her. And when you scent-matched to me, you were disappointed. Some part of you was disappointed.”

He rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip, his green eyes thoughtful. “Is that what she says in her little manifesto?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Sort of.”

“Maybe,” he said.

The twist again, deeper, more painful.

“But she didn’t want me back, you know? At all. And I was not the kind of guy who enjoyed forcing myself on a woman.”

I laughed a harsh little laugh. “You sure about that?”

His nostrils flared.

“I mean, maybe it’s the wolf, or your alpha side, or the scent match, or her being in heat, or maybe some part of you really does—”

“Stop.” He got up off the couch. He crossed to the television and there was a small circular trash can there. It had a bag in it, and he pulled it out and came back. He started to fill it with things that were sitting out on the coffee table. “If it’s like that, you liked it, too.”