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I sucked in a breath, burning alive beneath his stare.
“I was dying,” he murmured, the darkness of the night cocooning us in our own little world. “I wanted to die. The loneliness hurt too much. The emptiness. The endless, awful searching. I couldn’t do it anymore.” His eyes flashed a darker silver. “The night I gave up was the night Salak and his hunters found me. I waited for him to kill me. I was so grateful it was almost over. But...he brought me back to life. He chose me the moment he met me. He didn’t know me. He didn’t wait to see who I was before deciding to save me. He chose me...just like I’m choosing you.”
I shook my head, my mind swimming. “The Nhil saved me in the same way. They took me into their home and nursed me through my weakness. Without them, I would’ve died, but even they hold judgements about who I am.”
“It’s because they do not see what I do.”
“What do you see?” I breathed.
“That you belong to me. Regardless if you want me in return, I became yours the moment we met.” He closed the distance between us until our closeness made my skin come alive. Tingling, sparkling awareness danced over me.
Little lightning bolts crackled into existence, and he sucked in a breath, his eyes hooding as he towered over me. “When I look at the others in your pack, I don’t feel the same tug. The same need to touch, the same craving just to be near.”
I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, overwhelmed at how honest he was, how intense he watched me, how much my body reacted to his. My blood bubbled with heat. It tingled in my fingertips, exploding with crimson wings in my belly. Lightning might arc between us, but thunder had replaced my heart, and it rumbled with destructive power.
But there was something wrong.
A word that didn’t quite fit.
I caught hold of it, grateful for the distraction, using it to haul myself back into reality. “You just said pack. My pack....” I shook my head. “The Nhil aren’t a pack. They’re a clan. A family.”
He stood stiff, fevers heating his flesh. “Salak isn’t like the mortals you live with.”
“W-What is he, then?”
“My father, my protector. A friend.” The faintest smile crossed his lips. “He’s also a wolf...the alpha. The best hunter and provider of his pack. It was he who found me and decided to feed me instead of eat me. I believe it was his pack that hunted you too. He wasn’t a threat to you. He would’ve cared for you like he cared for me.”
Memories unfurled, thick and fast.
The constant shadow of a pack of bloodthirsty wolves.
The spiral horns of pelted killers, stalking me through shadows, waiting for me to trip and fade. Their howls in the dead of night, waking me with a jolt, forcing me to keep walking, keep running, fighting with my last breath to stay away from their jaws.
I tripped away from him, breaking the spell between us. “You’re wrong. A wolf would never save a creature so close to death. They would claim the easy meal without a second thought.”
The man shrugged, his nostrils flaring a little as he shifted his hurting arm again. “He’s a wild creature, just like your lynx. They have their own will and purpose.”
Apprehension returned. My eyes scanned the trees. Solin would be in his lupic, most likely in a trance with his beloved flames. Niya and Hyath would have gone to their own sleeping furs, and the fire that always burned would be banked and tended to last the night.
They were mortal. They were like me.
Like him.
Yet he’d been found by the very same wolves who’d hunted and haunted me. And he wanted to take me back to them? To be their meal or his?
Backing away, I murmured, “I think you should go.”
“But...” He shook his head fiercely, swallowing a groan as he fought the sickness in his blood. “I’ve just proven I would never hurt you. I want you to come home with me.” His shoulders tensed. “Come home with me so I can keep you safe.”
I kept my arms around my chest as I waded into the river, putting distance between us. It licked around my calves like a protective friend. “Go home to your wolves.”
A niggling worry filled my head.
Perhaps there are no wolves.
Maybe his mind had turned as sick as his body, tainted by the fevers and hallucinations—just like I’d hallucinated certain things while walking all that time alone. I’d dreamed of finding my loved ones. Of eating a succulent orange on the hottest, driest days or finding the den of something warm and soft on the harshest and wettest nights.
I’d sworn I saw things frequently toward the end when starvation and thirst made me mad. He could suffer the same affliction. He could have been alone all along. Everything he said to me could be the fantasies of a mind so hungry for companionship that he would’ve felt this way about anyone he found.
