Maeve
I’m not sure what time it is now, but it’s full dark, and the rain is relentless. I smooth my hand over Soren’s chest while he lays on his back beside me, his eyes open but hazy while he stares at the ceiling.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk after this. I’m not sure I even want to try. I feel… an overwhelming sense of possession at the moment, especially after the last… three hours or so.
We hadn’t stopped after the first time. He took me again, rolling me over onto my belly and ravaging me from behind until I was screaming his name. And again, but with me kneeling, his cock sliding down my throat while he tangled his fingers in my hair. Then… again, just now, but softer, slower, our bodies spent but unable to stay away from each other. He licked between my legs until I shimmered with light–actual light–my powers finally thawing, and I’d spread my legs again and let him bury himself between them, both of us coming undone at the same time, locked together, tangled in an old, dusty blanket on the floor of an ancient cabin, in a clearing, surrounded by the wolves he killed.
The thought has reality spiraling back to me. My breath catches in my throat, and Soren’s fingers catch mine before I can pull away. “We’re safe here for the moment,” he says as if reading my thoughts. I relax for a split second before he continues, “But we’ll need to move on by morning. We’re not far from a depot where you can catch a train.”
“Well, you can come with me,” I tell him, perching my chin on his chest. “Back to Moonrise.”
He chuckles, but his eyes are still dark, still focused on the ceiling. “That’s funny, Maeve.”
“I’m serious. Come back to Moonrise with me–”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
He glances at me, and his expression… wrecks the bubble of delusion. Pops it. Shatters it.
I sit up slowly, looking down at him. “I–Soren, I want you to come with me. I can keep you safe from the Hounds–”
“You can’t.”
I frown, searching his eyes for answers. “I’m going to be queen in a few weeks–”
“I’m aware.” His voice is suddenly cold. I feel a sweeping sensation cutting through the haze of pleasure still gripping my body, and it’s enough to get me to my feet, clawing at the ground for any clothing I can find.
“Maeve–”
“It’s fine,” I spit out, pulling what might be a man’s shirt over my head. It brushes my thighs while I dig through the blanket for my underwear, hoping to find it in one piece.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Soren rises to his knees, sliding his backpack toward himself. “We can talk about this–”
“So you can tell me we can’t do this?”
He rises, stepping into a pair of boxes. He licks his lips, his eyes downcast on his task. “We can’t do this–”
“What is this, actually?” I hate the way I sound–like a broken, jealous girlfriend. Like I’m attached. That’s new for me, a new tone I don’t like. A new feeling I hate–rejection.
Soren pulls a shirt over his head and looks at me, shaking his head. “Whatever you’re thinking–”
“Was it not good for you?”
“Of course it was,” he says sharply, taking a few steps in my direction. “But that doesn't change the fact that I’m a criminal, Maeve. You can’t bring me back to your home.”
“If I say–”
“You are going to be queen soon. What am I to you?” he asks, eyes wide and dark. “Nothing. I am so far below your rank–”
“That doesn’t matter to me–”
“It matters to me,” he admits, shaking his head. “And it will matter to your family. I can't go back with you for that reason, for more than one reason.”
“Because of the Viper? I can fix that. When I have my powers back–”
“No, Maeve–”
“Do you know who I am? Who I am when I have my powers at their full strength?” I say, my voice edging on a shout. “This is ridiculous, Soren.”
“What do you want, Maeve?” he asks, his voice serious and steady.
“You! You fucking idiot!” I shout, losing my patience, my nerve. My cheeks go a deep red as a blush burns through me. I close my eyes, not wanting to see the look on his face.
“Maeve.”
“I didn’t mean–you know what, I did mean that. I don’t–I don’t want to go home. I can’t go home knowing you’re in trouble–”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
I open my eyes, turning to him, struggling with what to say. I could tell him how I feel, how he’s the only person who’s ever looked me in the eyes and seen more than my powers. He’s seen me–seen me at my lowest, my most vulnerable.
I draw in a breath, shaking my head, and keep my mouth shut while ripping the backpack from the floor in search of pants. “I’m sorry. It was just sex–”
“It wasn’t just sex–”
“It’s okay; it really is. You’re right.”
“Maeve,” he growls, edging toward me. I start pulling things from the backpack, the only thing that survived when he burst through his clothes and shifted. I toss a thick envelope on the ground that immediately spills its contents, followed by a familiar piece of paper… and more cash than even I, a very wealthy princess, have ever seen.
The money falls to the floor around my feet.
I look up at him, confused. “What is this?”
Soren’s eyes meet mine, but they’re… sad. Guilty, almost.
“Where did you get this?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He grinds his teeth but then sighs, fixing me with his signature cold look. “I killed someone the other night, after you fell asleep. I got paid for it.”
I laugh, thinking he’s fucking with me, but Soren isn’t laughing. “Wait, you did? Why–”
“Maeve–”
I shake my head, my hands trembling as I kneel to pick up the money. “This isn’t right. This isn’t right–”
“Maeve!”
“You’re being hunted,” I whisper, my brain whirling. “Soren, I can help you. We can go to Moonrise, and you don’t have to live like this anymore. I can help. We–we can–”
“We can be together?” he asks, but his voice is… hollow. I look up at him, and his expression is enough for tears to begin to well in my eyes. “We both know we can’t do that, Maeve.”
“Why?”
“You’re smarter than that,” he accuses me, his eyes remaining… despondent, like he feels the same ache I do when I look up at him. “This wasn’t just sex to me, but it can’t go any further. We both know it. You know it.”
“Then what now?”
“You go home–”
“No–”
“--where it’s safe–”
“I said no!”
“Maeve–” Soren holds out a hand, shaking his head while his eyes plead for me to stop, to just shut up.
But I can’t. This is insane. “I can help you get out of this, Soren, whatever it is, I can help. Just come back with me if you won’t let me go with you–”
“This ends here,” he snaps, his voice cutting through my desperation like a knife. “It’s done, Maeve. You need to go home. You have to go home.”
“N-no!” I bite out, my powers sizzling to life as sudden, untamable fury rips through my veins, coiling beneath my skin. “What is wrong with you, Soren? Do you enjoy this? Constantly being on the run, having to steal and lie your way through life–”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me–”
“Then explain,” I gut out over the thundering rain. Small holes in the crumbling metal roof above our heads begin to drip water. Drip, drop, drip. The sound pinging off a nearby chair is the only soft sound to be heard over our raised voices.
Soren just stares at me, his jaw tight, his hands curled into fists.
“What are you so afraid of?” I press, losing my grip, my voice shattering into a pitiful whimper. “Is it me? You’re–you’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
“I’ve never been afraid of you,” he asserts, but his voice is heavy.
“Soren, you need to understand–”
“I am not going to lead you to Hannibal, Maeve. I won’t do it. I can’t.”
“But you can–”
“I don’t work for him directly. I’ve made that very clear from the start–”
“But you work for someone close to him, someone who could lead me to him, to his assassin–”
“I’m the fucking assassin, Maeve!”
Time slows to a crawl. I hear every lazy raindrop sliding through the holes in the roof. I watch Soren take a breath, then another, watching the muscles under his shirt contract and expand with each inhale. When I look up at him, he’s looking down at me, his eyes heavy and dark with raw emotion that makes my stomach clench.
“No.”
“I am.”
“But you–you can’t be?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re–you’re just not.”
He takes a step in my direction. My body instinctively moves back a step, and it’s like a nail being driven through a coffin, sealing our fate.
I think about his recent battle, how he took out six wolves in less than five minutes. The skill needed in order to do that goes beyond the biological, beyond his advantages as a large, strong, obviously well-bred wolf.
I picture his black Ghost issued gloves, long lost, but still clear as day in my mind. I think about our fight in his old apartment, how easily he’d thrown me to the ground over and over, nearly putting me through a wall.
The average man couldn’t do that, even when I’m as powerless as I am now.
I grope for a chair, a stool, anything to sink onto before my legs give out.
“We’re only seven miles from a train depot. It’s small, but I can buy you a ticket there,” he says like he didn’t just drop a bomb on me and absolutely ruin my life. “You’ll be in Moonrise by tomorrow night, maybe the morning after–”
“Are you working with my family?” I ask, my throat going impossibly tight. “Did someone in my family put you up to this?”
“No,” he rushes out.
“But you’re a Ghost, aren’t you? You–you’re some kind of spy working on the inside–”
“No, Maeve, that’s not what this is.”
I stumble across the room, needing to put distance between us. Everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I felt, comes crashing down around me like a crushing blow straight to the heart. My chest just… stops functioning. I can’t breathe. I can barely lift my face to look at him as pain like I’ve never felt before echoes through me, drilling into my bones, pounding the marrow like someone is taking a hammer to my body.
Soren moves in my direction, his face drenched in sudden concern, but I hold out my hand, my powers flaring, flames I know better than to conjure in my state licking between my fingers.
The column of his throat bobs as he watches my powers form then fade. His eyes lift to mine again and hold. I press my back to the wall and slowly sink to the ground, curling my knees against my chest.
Soren, silently and slowly, kneels a few feet from where I’m sitting, and for what feels like several long, aching minutes, neither of us speak. Rain washes over the building in angry sheets that pop across the roof, drowning out the sound of my thundering heartbeat.
His eyes never once leave mine–not once–not until he looks down at his scarred, tattooed hands and says, so quietly I almost miss it, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You already have.”
His eyes briefly meet mine before looking down again. “That was never my intention.”
“But it was,” I snarl. “It was your intention to hurt me. You stole from me. You tossed me around like a rag doll–”
“I defended myself when a feral witch attacked me,” he cuts in harshly, arching a brow in challenge. “We’re not going back there, Maeve. We’ve already hashed that out. It has nothing to do with the present.”
“You’ve been lying to me this entire time.”
“I kept you in the dark to keep you safe and out of the mess I am trapped in, Maeve.”
“You just refused my help to get out–”
“There’s no getting out,” he interrupts. “That’s what you’re not getting.”
“Then explain.” My voice cuts out, splintering into something weak and barely audible. “Please.”
He sighs heavily, rolling his neck as he scans the room, looking anywhere but my face. “Then what?”
My heart trembles. I hate this feeling–this fragile, sucking, empty feeling that makes me want to scream and sob, to beg him to just… change.
Soren isn’t the kind of man capable of changing. I know that for a fact. He is what he is down to the marrow of his bones and will never apologize for it.
I know–because I’m the same.
“You’re the second most wanted man in all of the Allied Kingdoms,” I whisper. “What do you think is going to happen, Soren?”
His eyes flicker to mine, unblinking. “If you’re going to kill me,” he says slowly, his tone deadly, utterly serious, “I want you to do it here. Where I fucked you.”
My chest quakes, the familiar warmth flooding through me, breaking me.
“Promise me,” he continues. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you’ll kill me right here, in this fucking cabin. I want it to be by your hand, Maeve.”
I can’t do more than nod. My mouth goes painfully dry as I curl my fingers over my knees, my nails biting into my skin. “I want to know everything. From the beginning.”
“It’s a very long story.”
“I have time.”