Page 67 of The Night Prince

I can’t accept that the human part of me would ever do such a thing.

Movement draws my gaze. A dark figure walks to the water’s edge, hands in the pockets of his long coat. He looks out onto the loch, and the wind stirs his black hair.

I felt something from Blake, this morning. He knows something about me. Something he is concealing.

“Stay where you are,” I whisper, even though I know he can’t hear me.

I stride to the armoire, and pull on a warm coat and boots.

I’m going to find out what Blake knows.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

There’s a light drizzle in the air.

It washes over me as soon as I walk through the tunnel leading to the courtyard and out onto the grounds surrounding Lowfell. It’s dark, and the windows of the castle behind me flicker with soft orange light. Despite the rain, the air is crisp and smells like mud and woodsmoke. I pull my coat tighter, and, boots sinking into the earth, approach the figure who looks out onto the loch.

If he’s embarrassed about what happened last night, or how we woke up this morning, he gives no indication of it.

“You feel different today.” My voice is almost swallowed by the sound of the branches swaying overhead, and the rain hitting the loch.

Blake’s shirt clings to his chest and torso beneath his open coat. A few errant strands of his hair stick to his forehead. “I always feel better after it’s happened. Lighter.”

“Is it the act of shifting you don’t like? Or being a wolf?”

“Both. I cannot control it. I like to be in control.”

“I noticed,” I say. I catch a hint of one of his dimples. “Callum doesn’t think I’m a wolf.”

“What do you think?”

He’s the last person I want to come to for help. Yet... “Am I a wolf?”

He drags his teeth over his bottom lip as he looks out on the mountains. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? You let Callum—and me—believe otherwise.”

He shrugs. “Callum wasn’t too pleased with me this morning. As for you, I’m letting you know now, aren’t I?”

I sigh, and my breath mists in front of my face. “How do you know for sure I’m a wolf?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to share my life force with you if you were human.” He turns to face me. Rain runs down his cheeks and moistens his lips. “I saw you, the night when I shared my life force with you. I caught glimpses of your dreams, your memories, your thoughts. Was it not the same for you?”

I think of the fevered images and sounds that filled my being—screams, and scalpels, and darkness. “Yes.”

A pensive look crosses his face. “I found you. I saw your wolf form. She’s the color of moonlight.”

Something tightens inside me. I feel stripped bare, as if Blake has seen things of me that no one else has. It’s not right. A part of me wants to get away from him, to run back to the castle and find Callum. My legs won’t move. Even when he slips his hands into his coat pockets and turns back to the loch.

I think of all the experiments Blake has done on other Wolves. “Have you ever known a wolf to not shift on the night of the full moon?”

“No. Never.”

“Why didn’t I shift?”

His curiosity pulses inside me. “That’s the question, isn’t it, little rabbit?”

We both look out onto the mountains. The shadows hide their peaks.

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