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Leif managed not to growl; swallowed the sound at the last moment so it was more of a cough.
Ragnar chuckled. “Oh, come now. Growl at me. You don’t have to pretend to be civilized. Not withme.”
Leifdidgrowl, then, unable to help it, and Ragnar’s resulting grin was delighted.
I hate you, he thought, but couldn’t say…because it wasn’t true.
“But. Seriously.” Ragnar sobered and sat upright, crossing his legs and resting his forearms on his knees. “Whydon’tyou sleep? It isn’t because you’re not exhausted – you’ve the ragged face of a wet nurse these days.”
Leif frowned at him.
“You know.” Ago ongesture. “Because they don’t get much…you know what I mean. My point is: youwantto sleep. Youneedsleep. So why won’t you?”
Leif clenched his jaw against the urge to respond. He’d not spoken to anyone about his…dream problem. He confided little to nothing to his brother these days, and less to Erik, who gazed on Leif with the weight of disappointment heavy across the ridge of his knitted brows. He looked at Leif as if he was lost to him; gone mad or grievously wounded. Past hope. Mother and Oliver were the most outwardly supportive – and Oliver even possessed his own kind of magic – but he didn’t feel as if he could have an honest discussion with either of them. He could sense their judgement behind their smiles.
But here was Ragnar, seemingly eager to listen.
Ragnar who was also a wolf.
Who was the whole source of Leif’s misery, now, being the one who’d turned him. Still…
The gritty, sand-filled sensation when he blinked, and a massive, jaw-cracking yawn decided for him.
“It’s…” Deciding didn’t make it easy, however. “The dreams.”
Ragnar stared at him with a wolf’s fixed attention, that, in theory, should have made confessing more difficult, but was instead such a reminder of their shared fate – their inhumanity – that it loosened his jaw. “I’m always a wolf in my dreams.”
Clearly puzzled, Ragnar shrugged. “And you don’t like that because…?”
“I’malwaysa wolf. Shouldn’t I appear as myselfsometimesin my dreams?”
Ragnar’s eyes widened, and then his expression slid into lines of infuriating smugness. “Ah.”
“What do you mean, ‘ah’?”
Like flesh parting beneath the slow slice of a knife, Ragnar smiled. “There’s your mistake: you think of it is awolf, and asmyself.”
Leif had learned not to take the bait in these sorts of conversational traps; Ragnar loved being asked questions, having hiswisdomsought, or some such.
His smile dimmed a fraction, when Leif didn’t prod him, but he pressed on regardless. “You are only ever yourself. There is noyouseparate from thewolf. You’re the wolf and the wolf is you.”
Leif stared at him.
Ragnar lifted his hands, half-helpless, half-frustrated. “Were you searching for a more complicated answer? Something earth-shattering? The truth so rarely is, alpha.”
Because staring was proving effective, Leif did it some more.
Ragnar huffed. “You don’t like to shift, and you spend all day trying to force the wolf down deep, where no one will see or hear him. But he wants – no, heneeds– to come out, and so he does when you sleep. My educated guess would be that he’ll continue to take control in your dreams until you let him out to play during the daylight.”
The worst part was: he knew Ragnar was correct, in this instance. The more he tried to suppress it, the more insistent the wolf became, until it was an effort not to snarl and snap at his family over the last ham roll at breakfast.
That was another thing: his appetite had increased. His taste for meat, specifically. The North had always been a place where large helpings of venison, or pork, or beef, or lamb were heaped onto plates at every meal. Here, there were no tea cakes, or jellies, or watercress sandwiches that one might have expected in the South, but real food, cut into portions intended for warriors. And still, Leif was hungry.
Was almost desperate for a woman in a way he’d never been before. He’d caught himself eyeing a kitchen girl just the other day, and been appalled to discover he was becoming a letch.
He was boiling inside his own skin, on edge and ready to explode at a moment’s notice. Even if he knew it was the wolf driving all his basic urges now, teeth bared and ears pinned, furious over being restrained, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
Ragnar said, “You’re a fool.”
