I hope she knows I love her too, but with my limited speech I’m not entirely certain I have the words. But I am more than willing to try. She deserves to know how I feel about her, not only as my mate, but also because of the time we’ve been spending together.
“I love you. Fate, or the gods themselves, chose you as my mate. And I have never been more grateful for their good taste.” She giggles, the sound still a little wet from her tears. “You are kind, strong, and the fiercest soul I know. I am blessed indeed. I have loved you every moment since I first smelled you, and I will love you until I take my last breath. Perhaps beyond it.”
I gulp a deep breath, my throat aching from speaking so much at once. Even with these changes of late, making me more human and less wolf, speaking is still hard, and I haven’t spoken that much at one time in… years. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve spoken that much total in the last few years. But as much as it hurts, there is one more thing I must know.
“Will you still love me if this curse never breaks? If I’m never human like you?”
She sighs and my heart pinches. It’s not an immediate answer, and a part of me wonders if I have pushed too far, made her think too much about her monstrous lover. Perhaps she has changed her mind about me.
“When you were a wolf, you were my friend. As you are, you have been so much more. If you want the curse to be lifted, I will do everything I can to help you do that. But if you’re only trying to change for me… don’t. I love you as you are.” She giggles, some of the light returning to her eyes. “Fur and all.”
My tail wags slowly, but I still have one more question.
“Even though I’m not human?”
Her smile is soft and fond. “What good have humans ever done to me? I’ll take you, just as you are.”
I purr softly, nuzzling the top of her head.
That’s good enough for me.
CHAPTER 21
Maris
I’ve been awayfrom my home for weeks, and now I’ve been back twice in as many days.
I twitch, instinctively turning away from my own thoughts. This might have been my home once, where I grew up, but no longer. My home is with Gray now, and I have come back to the human village for one reason only.
It is not for my belongings, nor the last remnants of what my mother gave me; I’ve given up on that dream.
Instead, I have a more practical purpose. One of the small buildings at the edge of the village is filled with books, not large enough to be considered a library, but still more than Gray has access to on her own. So we’ve come up with a plan.
Under cover of darkness, we will sneak into the building and steal any books we think will be useful, then take them back to the cave so we can study them in more depth. Gray is carrying several small baskets, all we could find in the cave to shove them in, and I’m doing my best to figure out the right books to grab. It’s a challenge, working only by the light of a lantern, and even harder because neither Gray nor I are the best of readers.
I never had much occasion to read when I was younger, although of course my mother did teach me. It was simply that books are expensive, and we never had enough spare money to afford one, not that Mother would have spent the money in such a way even if we had. Not when we were barely making it as it was.
And Gray, of course, could barely read. She had been taught as a child, when she was still human, but that was years ago. After seven years as a wolf and several more years in this strange half-wolf, half-human state, it’s a wonder she can still read at all.
“This one?” Gray asks, holding up a book. I nod, barely sparing it a look, even if guilt weighs heavily on me for ignoring her.
I’ve gotta focus.
I’m not trying to be unkind; we just don’t have much time, and it’s easier to go through them all later, when we’re safely back at the cave. If we could take them all, I would, but even in this tiny village there are too many for us to steal. It would take more than one trip, and we don’t have time for that. Eventually someone will notice. We have to have everything we need by then, or we won’t get another chance. This is our only shot.
“What’s this?” Gray asks, holding up a pouch she found tucked into one of the shelves, and I squint in the dim light.
I shuffle a step closer to take it from her, prying it open to give it an experimental sniff.
“Ye gods,” I gasp, jerking it away from my face with a cough.
Gray whines softly.
“I’m fine,” I promise, even as my nose is still stinging from that single sniff; it feels like my nose hairs have burnt off. But I know that smell. “This is spark powder. It smells awful, but if you toss it into a fire, it will spark and flare with colors. My mother used to use it in the cottage on winter nights, an entertainment no one else could see.”
I swallow hard, tugging the strings to close the pouch again. Spark powder was one of my mother’s only splurges in a life of scraping by; she used the powder to help give her clothes a more vibrant hue, and we’d discovered its colorful effect on flames almost entirely by accident. I haven’t seen this stuff in years, nor do I have a single clue why it would be here, tucked away with the books in this tiny little building.
I tilt the pouch again, then shove it into the pocket of my skirt, tucking it against my thigh. Is it really stealing if it’s been shoved in here and forgotten?
