Page 6 of The Wulver's Bond
The fire in the Wulver’s eyes retreated. His shoulders relaxed, followed by a long exhale through his nose. He scrubbed a hand over his face, mussing the short fur there. ‘Disregard any orders I just gave. I am not going to hurt you.’
Weed felt his jaw unlock, though the rest of him remained tense. He looked at the Wulver curiously. The wolfman’s anger had drained away, leaving behind a sense of deep exhaustion in the weary droop of his mouth and ears.
Without offering explanation, the Wulver turned and set off again. Weed hesitated before skipping to keep up.
‘You don’t like talk of shagging, then?’ he said lightly. He couldn’t help it. It was like discovering a painful cavity—try as you might, it’s utterly impossible to keep from poking it with your tongue.
The Wulver seemed to sigh. ‘I do not… shag.’
‘What, ever?’ Weed jogged to reach the Wulver’s side and looked up at him incredulously. ‘What about the werewolves, then? Everyone knows it was you who—’ He caught the warning in the Wulver’s glance and trailed off. Instead, he added in a mumble, ‘Everyoneknowsit was the Wulvers.’
The Wulver didn’t answer, and Weed was quiet for a short spell. Not out of respect for his new master of course: he was trying to remember what he’d heard about the Wulver’s species back in the fae realm. Aggravatingly, it wasn’t much. He’d neverpaid much attention to gossip, being quite content with his peaceful, trivial existence in his isolated little grove. The sexual exploits of other fae had been distant and unimportant.
Humans didn’t seem to know much about Wulvers, either. All Elsie and Logan had talked about was the prize of acquiring the beast’s pelt. They seemed to think the Wulver was some kind of superior werewolf. Which was close to the story Weed was familiar with, but not the whole picture.
Weed readjusted the rucksack on his back. It was unnecessarily heavy, full of Logan’s shit, bear traps and knives and rope and more of the man’s dreadful clothes. Weed hoped he could dump most of it at some point.
They reached a stone cairn, a small landmark in an otherwise barren landscape of peat bogs and moorland. The sea glittered on the horizon. In the distance, the tops of a few sparse trees were visible where the land dipped into what might be a rocky ravine.
The Wulver stopped, sniffing the air. His head tilted toward Weed. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’
‘Yes,’ Weed said immediately. ‘Almost always, as a matter of fact.’ Not that Elsie starved him, technically, but she certainly hadn’t believed in wasting resources.
‘Is there food and water in your pack?’
Weed shrugged.
The Wulver gave a mild growl. ‘Open it and find out, would you?’
Weed slung off the bag and dug through it obediently. He turned up a large flask of water and several MRE food pouches, along with a stash of trail mix and protein bars. He laid them out on the ground and looked up at the Wulver expectantly.
The wolfman pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Do you really need me to order you to eat?’
Weed smirked. ‘Wouldn’t want to misinterpret your intentions, would I?’
‘Please,just eat whatever you want.’ The Wulver waved a hand in frustration and slumped against the cairn. He watched Weed pick through the food—Weed movedveryslowly, just to see if anything would happen—until he settled on a seed and nut bar coated in caramel.
The sugar hit Weed’s tongue with a shock of taste and texture. It was so sublimely delicious, and so unlike anything he’d been allowed to consume in years, that he couldn’t help a soft, erotic moan from escaping his throat. The Wulver’s ears twitched and he looked away. Weed wondered if the beast could blush under all that fur.
‘Didn’t Elsie feed you?’ the Wulver grunted.
‘She did. But, funny thing,’ Weed answered through a greedy mouthful, ‘I don’t technically need to eat. This body could go on living while starving near to death. It just slows down a lot. Like,a lot.Elsie never let me have the good food, though.’
He washed it down with several gluttonous glugs of water, then grabbed another protein bar, this one drizzled in chocolate, and consumed it with pleasurable abandon. This time Weed moaned louder, on purpose, arching his back and closing his eyes. When he reopened them, licking his lips, he found the Wulver had turned away from him completely. The wolfman’s tail twitched madly, though the rest of him was stock still.
‘Are you done?’ the Wulver asked gruffly, without turning his head.
‘Mmm. For now,’ Weed purred. ‘That was so…satiating.’
The Wulver’s shoulders hunched slightly, and Weed suspected there was definitely a blush happening under there somewhere. Tantalising.
Weed packed away the rest of the food. Before he could hoist the rucksack on his back, the Wulver stuck out a hand. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘You don’t trust me with the supplies?’
The Wulver swapped his own backpack to one shoulder and added Weed’s to the other. ‘You were struggling to carry it.’
Weed blinked. It clearly weighed nothing to the Wulver, but there wasn’t any need for him to double burden himself. Not that Weed was going to complain. ‘Knock yourself out, I guess.’
