Posey
The shadow shifts form, the massive wolf finally coming into full view just seconds before his body rolls into its human form, cloaked in tendrils of night. Silver eyes. A mask that gleams in the moonlight–all those gems. All that iron. Minerals I’ve touched. Mended to fit. Armor of black coating his body. His usual cloak. I’m not imagining it.
He’s wearing the newly mended helmet, and it glows with his powers.
Blood seeps down my legs as I curl them against my chest, trying to wiggle back as far as I can against the tree.
His determined steps align with my rapidly beating heart. Dread worse than being thrown and bitten by those wolves rips through my senses. Tears blur my vision. I extend a trembling hand like I can push him away. “Please–” I croak, choking on a sob. “P-please don’t, Aris. Don’t h–hurt me! I–I don’t want to–to die like this–I just–” Sobs cut through the words. I can barely get them out. “Please don’t hurt me! Please don’t! I can’t help it! I never–I never–I never asked for this–I can hide it–oh, Goddess–please don’t–”
Strong arms scoop me off the ground. I try to scream, but it comes out as a mangled sob. His hand comes up to rest against the back of my head. My body stiffens. I try to muffle my cries, waiting for him to snap my neck, but his fingers curl in my hair, and his touch is so warm, so soft. My mouth opens against his armor in a silent cry I can’t hold back, and he wraps his cloak around both of us, shielding my naked, shredded body from the cold. I might be dying anyway. The world fades, and warmth rushes in, numbing my body to the point I can’t feel a thing. Stars streak overhead before disappearing, and a strange, twisting sensation pulls me apart until I just give in, slumping, my mind ceasing to function.
I don’t remember closing my eyes, but when I open them again, I’m in an unfamiliar room. Another starry mural covers the ceiling, and the deep, dark blue velvet canopy covering the four-poster bed is half drawn, shielding one half of a room that smells like Aris from view.
His room.
His bed.
Oh Goddess. Oh… no. No, no, no…
I fly out of bed. I’m in one of his shirts. A black button down that’s soft to the touch. The wounds on my legs are completely healed, nothing but silver streaks against the cool alabaster of my skin. The second my bare feet touch the shallow, soft as cashmere carpet, I see him, sitting in a winged-back armchair next to a roaring fireplace. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t move. He just stares at me, his face painted in shadow, those silver eyes searing mine from the inside out.
I back up until my thighs hit the bed. “Aris.” My heart thuds before breaking into a sprint.
“You’re a fox.” His voice is deep and dangerous, quicksilver eyes unreadable and honed on my face, like he’s looking right through me, inside of me, peeling me apart piece by piece.
My lungs ache as I draw in a shuddering breath.
He uncrosses his legs and splays them in a very male way–unbothered, damn near relaxed as he inspects me. He looks livid. Ready to kill.
“I–I can explain–”
“This entire time,” he says, but his voice breaks with a scolding laugh, and for a moment he struggles to continue, “this whole time, Posey, this was the reason you rejected me? The whole fucking reason you kept me at arm’s length?”
“I’m a monster.” That's all I can manage. The sniffling that comes after is against my will, but I’ve never felt fear like this. I knew that one day I would be found out. I prayed it wouldn’t happen, that burying myself in a temple and forsaking love and company would spare my own miserable life but…. He rises and takes two steps in my direction before stopping.
“No one can know,” I beg, holding out my hands in surrender. “Please! My family doesn’t know! They can’t. It would ruin them. They’d be killed if–if anyone thought maybe they were like me–”
“No one is going to touch them. You have my word.”
“They’re not like me, I swear. They’re wolves. I promise they are! No one else knows. Just you. I faked those tests. I led my family astray for their own safety. I was going into the cloth and taking my vows so that no one would ever know. So I couldn’t get married. I won’t have children, I swear. I won’t pass this on!” I nod several times as tears spill down my cheeks. I begin to fall to my knees, but my legs won’t bend. I’m not sure what I’m begging for anymore. The words spill without my consent. “Just–make it quick. Please. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of me. That’s why I’ve done everything I had to do. All the lies. I tried to be discreet at the manor in Gem Lake, but when the moon is full, I can’t–I can’t help it.”
“I understand.” I look up at him. He’s closer than before. Close enough I can see the way his eyes gloss over. I wince when he raises a hand and reaches for me.
“Just make it quick,” I croak, drawing back my breath with a tangled sob. “Just break my neck. I won’t fight it. I swear I won’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Aris. Oh, Goddess, I am so sorry–”
His hand wraps around my neck. I close my eyes, praying my last prayer. Not for Her forgiveness. But for his. How I wanted to tell him that I was in love with him. That I dream of him. That those two nights in his arms at the cabin were the best moments of my stupid, insignificant life.
That I’m grateful he’s the one to end it all for me.
But the twist doesn’t come.
He steps into me, closing the distance between us, and kisses me.
I shove him away, gasping for breath, but he pulls me back with a deep growl. “Stop.”
“Don’t touch me. I’m disgusting. I’m a monster. I’m a fox, Aris, you saw it!” I shove him again, hard, and he backs up, raising his hands in surrender, but it’s the look on his face that rattles me so greatly my fear vanishes in a heartbeat, replaced by confusion.
He’s smiling. It’s almost deranged. And when he barks a laugh, I startle. “Are you fucking joking, Posey? This whole fucking time? All of this–” He waves a hand around the room and laughs again, much louder this time. “You going into the temple and throwing your life away was because you’re a fox?” Another laugh, this one so hard he groans in pain and clutches his chest.
My cheeks flare with heat, turning crimson. “What is so funny? You fucking bastard! Is this some form of torture? Some sick game before you let me loose, hunt me down, and kill me?”
“I’m not going to fucking kill you, Posey.”
“Then what–”
“What I’d really like to do,” he says, each word clipped and severe as he closes the distance between us again, “is fuck you until you’re screaming my name. I want to do everything I’ve been dreaming about since this summer. Everything I think about when I see you haunting my castle, in the very places I’ve imagined bending you over and punishing you for what you did to us.”
“What?” I rasp. My brain shuts down for several seconds before rebooting.
He simply shrugs and closes me against the bed, forcing me to sit, his hands braced on either side of the mattress by my hips.
“I feel like an idiot,” he admits, sucking his lower lip and then letting it go. “I should have caught on, you know? Gods, when you were in heat? I thought I was losing my fucking mind over you.”
“What is this?” I rush out, my body tingling under the weight of his attention as his gaze rakes over me like hot coals.
“And this whole time, I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“You. Why I felt like you’d ripped my heart out of my chest when you left Gem Lake. You fucking did. You cunning little fox. I should have known then and confirmed it the second you stepped back into my life. I was totally foxed up.”
“What are you saying?”
The next kiss is so overwhelming, I can’t fight it. I don’t want to. He growls against my mouth until I part my lips for him, and then he’s ravishing me with his tongue. He doesn’t stop until we’re both trembling for air. “Aris–”
“I love you,” he says against my mouth. There’s nothing tender about it. It’s all consuming. Meant to lay claim. “I love you. I’m not going to kill you, but I kind of want to for what you put us through the past couple of months. You should have told me in the beginning.”
“You would have hurt me.”
“I would have protected you.” He pulls back so I can see his eyes, and there is he, the Aris I fell in love with this summer. “Like I’m going to protect you now.”
I shake my head. “We can’t. You cannot be with a fox. You can’t do it. If we had children, Aris, there’s a risk they could be like–”
“Like us?”
I stare at him, sure my brain just short-circuited, but he smiles down at me and presses his hand against my heart.
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you feel right here?” He taps my skin. “What do you feel when you look at me? What did it feel like when Morgan was in my presence or when you found out about her and Talon and thought he was me?”
I can’t look away from him. My heart rate skyrockets. The sky could be falling, and I wouldn’t know.
He leans forward, his hand traveling down over the slope of my breast to my stomach, then lower, his fingers brushing my inner thighs. I let out an involuntary huff of air trying to hold back a moan.
“Did you know that knots are impossible unless a man is with his mate, Posey?” he says against my forehead, his lips parting in an involuntary grunt when he feels the wetness pooling under his touch. “That’s one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. I thought it was a fluke, that I was just desperate for any kind of real connection, and my body responded in that way, but look at us now.”
“We can’t be mates. I’m a fox and you’re a wolf.”
“Look at me,” he commands sternly, and I do, but my eyes are full of tears. “Any children we have, because we will have kids, Posey. And we will get married. And you will allow me to protect you for the rest of our lives… our kids will be like us because I’m like you.”
“You’re not–”
“My grandmother Amanda? She’s a full fox, just like you. I thought she was, up until an hour again when i saw you getting torn to fucking shreds–” He cuts himself off with a growl, trembling, but his fingers move upward, and I sigh into the touch, mouthing his name. “She was the only one. My dad and I have both forms. But now there’s you. My mate. I knew it this summer but couldn’t confirm it and didn’t understand why I felt that way. I couldn’t put my finger on what you’d done to me, but then I saw you in your fox form, defenseless, untrained. My mate.” He presses two fingers through my folds, and my head rolls back, giving him access to my neck, which he greedily accepts, groaning into my skin before biting down. He releases me, breathless, and says, “I felt it like a knife through the heart. You’re mine. You’ve been mine this whole time, and I’m not letting you go. I can’t. Stay with me, Posey. Stay here with me.”
I’m beyond breath. I can barely form the words I want to say as he slides his fingers deeper, his body shuddering and my inner walls spasming. A single touch is all it took to bring me to the edge. He licks down my neck to that spot he loves.
“Stay with me. Say you will. Tell me who you belong to now.”
“I’m yours,” I say weakly, too overcome to say what I really want to tell him. Everything blends together into a sensation that sweeps me off my feet. “I’ve been yours. I’ll always be yours. I love–love you. I’m so sorry for what I did to us. I love you.”
He tangles his hand in my hair and tilts my head to the side, licking me again, wetting my skin and sucking until I’m crying out.
“Say it again.”
“I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m–”
Aris’s teeth sink into my neck, breaking the skin.
Golden threads flood between us, and I cry out his name.