please please please i don’t want to die
please you’re hurting me robbie you’re hurting me
oh god no
no
let me go let me go LET ME GO LETMEGOLETME
robbie
robbie
ROBBIE
Blood filled my mouth when I opened my eyes.
It tasted good. Like fear. Like whatever I’d hunted down had been scared of me.
I craved it.
I rolled it over my tongue, coating it.
I swallowed it down, but there was always more.
So much more and I—
“There you are.”
I turned my head.
Ezra sat next to my bed in my room.
My mouth was not filled with blood. In fact, it was dry. I was thirsty.
“What happened?” I asked, voice breaking roughly. I cleared my throat. “Did I hurt someone?” I almost didn’t want to know the answer.
Ezra shook his head, expression pinched. “No. Of course not. You passed out. Santos found you. Said you were…. It doesn’t matter what he said. How are you feeling?”
“Like it’s the morning after a full moon. Foggy. Dull.”
“Hmm. Have you overexerted yourself, perhaps? It happens.”
“I don’t know. I just….” I shook my head. “What if something’s wrong with me?”
He scoffed. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I would know if there was. Would you hear me, dear?”
That made me feel better. If anyone knew how to fix this, it would be Ezra. He knew me better than anyone. “Yeah. Of course.”
“You’re special,” he said, pressing his hand against my brow. “More than you could ever know. And I will do anything for you. Would you do the same for me?”
“Yes. Yes.” My headache was fading. The blood in my mouth was nothing but a dream.
He nodded slowly. “Good. That’s good, Robbie. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you all these years. But there is nothing to worry about. You’re tired. Stressed. The dreams you’re having aren’t helping. I don’t know what they mean, and maybe they mean nothing at all. But maybe they do. I could ease you from them if you’d only ask. Take them away like they were never there at all.” His hand pressed harder against my brow. “Leave you to sleep and—”
He didn’t make a sound when I grabbed his wrist and snarled, “Don’t.”
He smiled sadly, even though I could feel the bones of his wrist grinding together. “Because they’re yours?”
I nodded as I let him go. He pulled his arm back, and I wondered if he would be bruised. I felt bad, but not enough to apologize. I trusted him, but I didn’t want him digging around in my head.
“Okay, Robbie. If that’s what you think. I’m here if you ever change your mind.” He frowned. “Or just need to talk. Can I give you some advice?”
“Yes.”
He sighed as he sat back in his chair. He looked pale, skin tight from worry. “You have questions, I know. Questions about who is in that house. Santos said as much, and I should have prepared for this better.”
I sat up quickly. “I wasn’t trying to—”
He held up a hand, cutting me off. “I thought it was for your benefit. I did. Given your history, it seemed like the wise thing to do.” He shook his head. “I should have known better. Secrets never help anyone, especially ones so monumental. The man inside that house did terrible things to many people. There was death because of him. And the only thing we could do was to keep him locked away from the rest of the world and strip him of all his power.”
“But how were you able to keep the witch from—”
“Witch?” Ezra asked. “What witch?”
“The witch inside the house. The prisoner.”
Ezra laughed. “Oh. Oh. Dear, there is no witch inside the house. It’s a wolf. A great and terrible wolf who wanted something that did not belong to him. But he can no longer hurt anyone. He’s… empty. A husk, hollowed out and dim.”
A wolf? But I’d felt…. I could have sworn there was magic, and it was leaking from inside, leaking until it— “A wolf,” I said weakly.
“Yes, dear. One whose name we do not speak because he lost the right.” He looked grim.
“What did he do?” I asked, sure I wasn’t going to get an answer.
Ezra sighed and looked down at his hands. “He took a boy once. A little boy. A princeling, or as close to one as we have these days. This wolf hurt the boy terribly, and it was only by the grace of the moon that he was saved. But not before the wolf forced upon him unbelievable torture that no child should ever have to know.” He looked terribly sad. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand such things. You would never hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. And while the boy wasn’t exactly… innocent, what was done to him was madness.”
“What the hell?” I asked incredulously. “What do you mean he wasn’t innocent? He was a child.”
“I know, I know,” Ezra said, holding up his hands as if to placate me. “But even children are capable of things we wouldn’t expect. And when you come from a family like his, one needs to exercise an abundance of caution. His family… they’re… well. Let’s just say they want something they can never have. Something that doesn’t belong to them.” He stared at me hard. “Something that will go against the very nature of the wolves.”
Alarm bells were going off in my head. I thought the walls were closing down around me. “What? What do they want?”
He reached out and pressed a hand against my arm, fingers circling my wrist. I could see the bruise already starting to form from when I’d grabbed him earlier, the dull ink on his arm red and inflamed.
“To see your Alpha gone,” he said. “To see the Alpha of all come tumbling down and to send our world into chaos. To integrate humans into the wolf pack. You of all people should know the danger of humans and what they’re capable of. This family does not care. They would take all that we’ve worked so hard for and enforce their will upon the wolves. And I cannot stand for that.”
“Why did you never tell me about this?” I demanded. “How the fuck am I supposed to protect her if I don’t know about any of this?”
He looked frail and weak. His hand shook against my wrist. “Forgive an old man,” he said quietly. “All I wanted to do was to keep you from all the darkness. To give you a life where you would only know peace after all you’ve been through. I made a mistake. I underestimated you, dear. I shouldn’t have. You deserve better from me.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know what the future holds for all of us. But if we are to survive, it’s important that you know who our enemies are. The man in the house. The prisoner. He is an enemy, but he’s been declawed.” He looked thoughtful. “But even then, he seems to be capable of some kind of hold. I wonder why that is? Tell me, dear. Why now? Why did this come about now? Did someone say something to you?”
Dangerous ground. “It’s all secret,” I said. “And I don’t like secrets.” It was a deflection, careless and rough.