Page 22 of Wolfsbane

“Then shift back. You took my wolf. Might as well use him.”

“Right, yeah. I totally have control over your wolf.”

“You should.”

“I don’t!” I spread my arms out. “What about me screams that I have control over anything? I don’t know how to shift. I don’t know how I shifted, and frankly, I don’t really want to do it again, because that shit hurt.”

Viktor’s frown shifted from pure frustration to something else. “It hurt?”

“Yes, it hurt! My arms were going the wrong fucking way.”

I crossed my arms again, blinking fast because—because this sucked. I was naked in a cave, I was pretty sure ants were about to crawl up my actual asshole, and the only person in the world who might help me was someone I’d stolen from. Sort of.

“I didn’t take your wolf,” I grumbled.

“Well, you have him, and rather than use him so we can get out of here, you want to wait for your people to find us and kill us.”

My people.

As if people who wanted me dead could be mine.

The worst thing was, they were. Who else did I have? Mariah Harey? Buddy the raccoon?

Pathetic. I was so fucking pathetic.

I glared at the wall, my nose flaring as I tried to suck in a breath deep enough to ease the queasy feeling in my stomach.

“If you want to go, then go. I’m not stopping you.”

Viktor huffed. He took a step, then two. Then he swung back around to look at me.

“I can’t,” he admitted.

And that? That sounded like very much not my problem.

CHAPTER 11

Viktor

Daire was . . . it was kind of annoying to think he was cute in that moment, when he was basically telling me he’d rather die than continue walking. But he was. Even though he was acting like a child and not thinking clearly or being rational, he was cute. His green eyes, always the brightest color in the room, were lowered, like he couldn’t quite look me in the eye while saying what he was saying. His hair was falling over his forehead, and almost into his face. His arms were crossed over his chest, and hands balled into fists where they were hidden under his triceps.

I wasn’t quite sure what it all meant, but he was dealing with more than one emotion, and . . . well, that much made sense.

His own people had been planning to murder him.

I wasn’t surprised by any level of monstrosity the witches displayed, but he was. He was younger than me, both literally and emotionally. Apparently, even with a mother like the ice-cold head witch, Daire was still somehow an innocent in ways I wasn’t sure I’d ever been innocent.

Maybe it was the difference between our cultures, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like Daire was a wildflower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk. Something that had decided to exist not because of, but in spite of his surroundings.

And part of me didn’t want to change that.

On the other hand, if the witches found us, they were going to change the part where we were alive. And since he firmly believed he could be tracked, I had to believe it too.

I headed over to the mouth of the cave, but when I reached the exit, he made a tiny sound behind me. When I looked back, there was hurt in his eyes.

He thought I was leaving, like he’d said to.

Like I’d stepped on the flower growing where it shouldn’t.