Page 71 of Xantera
Mist beads against my face as I turn my monstrous head to find three pairs of amber eyes, one wolfish, two human, tacked onto mine with their heads dipped before Vivian bursts into questions.
Are you okay? Is she okay? What can we do? I thought you’d look like dog shit, but you’re oddly smiling—oh.If a wolf could grin, that’s precisely what she’d be accomplishing. Partly because she never listens and insists on shifting whenever she thinks she should for mybenefit.
Shut up, Viv, I snarl as Merrick raises an eyebrow and Soren barks with laughter, everyone sensing how turned on I am, but those images are for me alone.
I tug on the bones that hold my form together to shutter my pack off from the tortuous images of Saskia’s naked body in the water that will probably haunt me for the rest of my goddamned life.
To see through her eyes but not be able totouch, to feel with her fingers but not be able to wrap my own hand around that beautiful throat…
I turn away from them, resisting their prying thoughts. As soon as I fully shift into a human, my dick’s already straining against my pants.
Great. Just one more problem I need to fix.
Vivian’s smile falters as my scowl cuts through the shadows of the night. Within a blink, she shrinks and straightens into her own human form, too.
“She didn’t get into the Blood Moon Palace, did she?” Vivian whispers.
“Oh, she did.” I scrape a hand through my hair in an effort to realign myself in this body. “But only because the prick practically dragged her inside. It’s like he could sense…”
I trail off, blinking against the memories that threaten to sprout in the darkness of the woods: the Third Guardian, standing on his own balcony that looks more like a perch above the Wall, grinning down at me as I try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, to scale the thing that shoots pain into my limbs whenever I so much as graze it, that blood-red necklace always glinting from around his marble neck.
Remarkable, he would whisper into my mind while his crimson eyes peered down at me.All that muscle and strength and power, and you’re nothing more than a beetle scrambling to climb up a ledge. It really does prove we’re the superior species.
He would say it as if it was a physical ability that kept me from scaling a simple wall rather than a magical one. But the truth is, I’ve climbed every building, jumped from every rooftop, scaled every tree in the vicinity with the ease of lifting a finger.
And when I finally do meet him face-to-face, I can’t wait to find out which of us is truly superior after all. One month ago, I might have been uncertain.
Now, with Saskia as my reason, all of my doubts have crumbled away.
An hour of tossing and turning in my own bed later, and I can’t take it anymore.
I step out of my house and onto the abandoned street, the wind whistling through the open doorways and windows. Everything seems to creak as I walk what used to be downtown—past an old tavern, a bank, and finally the church.
The rusted iron gate in front of the cemetery hangs off its hinges, slightly slanted with just enough room for me to step past it without needing to force it open more.
Weaving through the century-worn tombstones, I find the one I’m looking for in the center toward the back. I come here so often my footsteps have created a rutted path almost as deep as the one that circles the Wall.
All of the gravestones have succumbed to time no matter how often we all come here to take care of them. Hundreds of years is a long time. And some go even further back than that, to before the Wall.
“Hello, Father,” I say, laying a hand against the cold stone. My other reaches out to the opposite side. “Grandfather.”
The guilt that kept me up wrings through my gut. How do I admit my priorities are shifting? I can feel them realigning themselves every second more that passes.
“Can’t sleep?”
Nearly jumping out of my skin, I whip around and exhale, “Mom.” Her white hair glistens in the moonlight as she drifts toward me, all the soft features of her face lifted in a smile. She looks so fragile, unlike the woman I remember in my youth—her hair always running wildly in the breeze, her spirit louder than anything. “You know better than to sneak up behind someone in a fucking graveyard.”
She shrugs, chuckles a little at my misfortune. “Language, son… and I couldn’t sleep either.” My mother backs up until she grazes the small iron bench and sits, making sure to leave enough room for me. She pats the seat next to her and bursts out, “I fucking miss him.”
“Language, Mom,” I laugh and lower myself beside her, then add, “You and me both. I wish he were here to finish this.”
A beat of silence passes as she rubs my forearm. “What’s bothering you, Lucan?”
“Besides the usual leeches draining our people’s life away while we can’t do anything but howl and haunt this dying ghosttown?”
She huffs out a sad little laugh. “Yes, besides that.”
The sigh I stretch out is purely to stall. “This family legacy,” I start. “What if I can’t fulfill it?”
