Wolf Sirens: Forbidden: Discover The Legend (21 page)

I felt like I was part of him, like our flesh had been
separated, like his blood was mine and now we were
united. I wanted to know everything. I considered
it inevitable now that I would become one of them.
There was no way I could leave him or not be part of
his world; I would die first and the more of him I had
the more I wanted.

But it still eluded me how they were killed, if they
were vulnerable. As much as I loved him, or because
I loved him, I wanted to know what Reid hadn’t told
me. Like a covenant he, like Reid, seemed reluctant
to tell me directly.

I lay my head on his chest, breathing in the sweet
smell of his warm breath as we lay on the little couch
in my mother’s living room.

“Are you strong?” I enquired light-heartedly as
we lay side by side.
“Yes.”
“How strong?”
“As strong as five men.”
I threaded my fingers playfully in his. “Even
when not transformed?”
“Like now?” he asked.
I nodded.
“As strong as…four, five men maybe.” He
considered.
“How strong are hunters?”
“Like Cresida?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a wolf but she’s not as strong as an ordinary human wolf, like us,” he said, referring to the
pack. “As a hunter she is strong.”
“As strong as a wolf?” I uttered.
“No, I don’t think so but the fact that she is
wolf also makes her stronger physically, but not as
strong as us still. It’s almost like the mix dilutes her
strength.” He thought. “She doesn’t heal as well as
us,” he added.
“Because it’s not meant to be?”
He nodded.
I ran my fingertip over his lips.
“So how can she frighten you all so much?”
He grimaced. “Have you seen her guns?” He
laughed, grabbing my hand. “She is powerful though,
on the inside. She is intuitive and she’s smart…she’s
a warrior really,” he admitted, taking my palm in his
and entangling our fingers.
“Like an inner strength?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. He admired her.
“Cres reminds me of the statue priestess,” I admitted. We had walked about the deity only recently
holding hands, by the riverbank. Perhaps I shared his
awe of her.
We were quiet for a moment. Sky was still winding his warm fingers around mine. He added, “You
know, legend has it us wolves contain the blood of
a god.”
“Really?”
He smirked.
“You’re lying,” I teased.
“No, have you ever read the monument?”
“I’ve seen it.” I had been preoccupied. I was
remembering him kissing me and our hands intertwined as we strolled past the monument over the
acorns and leaves of poplar trees, before he walked
me home on the cusp of curfew.
“The inscription reads that an angry God…Zeus
created the beasts from his own blood as vengeance.”
“For what?”
He paused and then he admitted, “There are
many different versions…”
“Which one do you like?” I said, eager to hear
more.
“I don’t know but there is one that says she was
his wife and another that she was his daughter, but
anyway, she falls in love with a wolf, so he curses them
and she kills the animal. Well, first she says she will
slay the wolf to prove her love to Zeus and when he
hears of her plan to win him back by killing the wolf
he makes the wolf strong so that it may retaliate and
eat her…but she is not to be underestimated.”
“She still slays him?”
“Yes, then she kills herself.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it was all for show and they really both
planned to run away together, but when her husband
the god intervened, she had to really fight for her
life.”
“What? - And then she couldn’t stand what she
had done?”
“She couldn’t give Zeus the satisfaction – or she
really loved the wolf.”
“–Or both,” I added. The story sounded so familiar, it sounded like a tale of star-crossed lovers.
He frowned, “You don’t see it that way?”
“I don’t know, maybe the wolf didn’t really love
her?” I suggested.
Sky shrugged. We lay silent for a moment.
“Did you love Cresida? Really, Sky?” I asked
wrapped in his long arms on the sofa, in the darkness
encroaching from outside, as the night crept upon
the town of Shade. Soon my wolf man would disappear into the darkness.
“It’s hard to love someone who doesn’t love
themself,” he admitted, then noticing my displeasure
at his answer, he added, “Hmm.” He nuzzled my hair
tickling my ear deliberately, which made me squirm.
“Sky!” I scolded. I looked at him with a serious
expression. “Did you love her? I need to know the
truth.” I frowned.
He stopped and huffed. “I didn’t feel the way I
feel about you that’s for sure,” he said, defeated. Sky
glanced into my eyes as we spooned on the far too
small couch. I turned my head away then to face the
window as the sky turned dark purple; we were almost in the darkness. I couldn’t fully acknowledge
what he was saying. I felt numb.
I knew I should have felt happier than I was made
by his answer. It felt strange hearing him admitting
he felt so strongly, but part of me, the larger part, still
didn’t believe him.
“Sky, I understand.”
He waited for my explanation. “I haven’t felt like
this ever, not even when I thought I knew what love
was, I didn’t.” He felt like heroin to me, I could not
believe he felt as I did.
I didn’t say it, but I thought of my crush on Jeff in
Horkum and the way it had been with Reid. I almost
cringed, recalling the dreary memories. Sky made
them seem further and further away and so distant
and unimportant.
He felt my body shudder. He broke the silence in
the dim light.“You know someone defaced it back in
the eighties.”
“What?”
“The statue,” he explained.
“What did they do?” I imagined a high school
prank. “It seems solid.”
“Someone got a pick or chisel and took out the
word
hunter
from the inscription.”
“Who?” I wondered if they’d ever been caught.
“No one knows.” he yawned. “It was quite the
scandal.”
“Oh, my god, are you yawning? Are you actually
tired?” I teased, referring to his human weakness, in
his need for sleep, though it was considerably less
than my own. I had an idea. “Do you think it was
Cres? Who damaged it?”
“You do realize I’m forty years old? I do get tired.”
I knew thinking of my past had made him
remember how little of it there was compared to his
own. “Yes, so what’s your point, you are a mythical
creature, you need no rest.” I chuckled. I was annoyed
when his age came up; he tended to use it for his own
gain.
“I’m forty in wolf years. If you add my human life
I’m more like sixty-five…more like sixty-eight, actually.” His voice hushed then. “Actually we get sleepy
but we never that get tired, Lila.” He answered the
previous question, “-And,
no,
it was before her time,
probably a practical joke. You know I’ve lived a long
time, I’d had to have been a monk not to have had
another relationship or two.”
I cringed. This indicated he knew why I asked
about her. I was more than a little devastated by that
fact, that he knew I was jealous.
“It’s made me better prepared for women - or one
woman.” He smiled. “All my experience…” he added,
caressing and pressing his lips into my skin so that
his breath heated the hairs on my neck.
“Oh, so I’m a woman now.” I smiled sardonically.
“Yes.” He looked deep into my eyes and smirked.
I turned towards him and kissed his lips once, softly.
“Are you winding me up?” I poked him playfully.
“I’ve never felt this way,” he whispered.
“In sixty eight years?”
He huffed. “Are you put off?”
“Never.”
He laughed and my mouth found his, and we
kissed for a moment.
“Do you really never tire?” I uttered inches from
his soft lips.
His breath brushed my face. “Ha, we never feel
fatigue. Not like when you are human.”
He glided his palm down, from my torso, back
onto the couch and forced his weight gently over me.
I gasped as I suddenly had a flash back of Lily
lunging and collapsing over me, with force.
He stopped.“Have I hurt you?”he said concerned,
his glowing eyes wide. He began to ease his body off
me. Shifting his weight he asked more panicked than
before, “Are you hurt?”
“No, no, just scared,” I trailed off.
He breathed out, then.
“Is it me?”
I shook my head.
“More nightmares?” he insisted.
I had never had someone show so much concern
for me.
“Day-mares now,” I confirmed sulkily.
“It’s night,” he said, glancing around, now barely
visible. He was right, but I didn’t mention I had had
both today. His hands were still about me.
“Well, whatever you call it when I’m awake, umm
flashes, flashbacks.” I frowned, finding the phrase. I
didn’t like the sound of it though. I’d been having
dreams lately of the wolves and fighting, trying to
stop my mother from undoing things I had made,
frustrating nightmares of the kind where you struggle to scream but no voice comes out.
“Maybe if you stop with all those crazy supplements you’re on…”
I cut him off “- Sky this isn’t some sort of vitamininduced mental attack.” I sounded over-frustrated.
His insistence reminded me of the feelings in the
dreams. “I feel so weak compared to you, it’s like it’s
all coming out in the night from my subconscious.”
Fears of being overcome, restrained, unable to move.
He eased further from my body, but I pulled him
back.
“So you have been thinking about them,”he whispered. It was something I had denied today when I
had frozen in thought in the kitchen. He was referring to the remainder of the pack. When he’d asked
I had denied it but I had been deep in thought like a
spooked deer - like Cresida, I mused. Had she seen
dreams too? Was that part of her instinct, one of her
hunter traits, her intuition speaking?
“Aren’t you putting something off?” I changed the
subject.
He was due with the pack by now, the night
wanted him and they would call if he didn’t run to
join them soon. I wished, for not the first time, that I
could run with him. I imagined it as exhilarating and
free, dashing through the forest in the night under
my own raw power in the cold night air, the twigs of
trees scrapping my body as I ran weaving headfirst
easily through the undergrowth. I wanted to dream
that dream tonight, not the ones where I felt forced
and helpless, fumbling and weak, trapped. I considered a night run and at once knew it was hopeless. I
wasn’t allowed out, especially during a full moon. Not
now Sam was angry.
He kissed me with soft lips, roughly, and bounced
up. His hands came down back around my neck and
with far more gentleness than I could have imagined
he lifted his dog tags off my chest and over my head.
“I can’t leave this with you.” He winked. I must
have looked hurt for he added with a smile, “You
might lose it.” He scuffed my head with his palm the
way he would have Reid’s and took off out the door
only to return just as quickly to kiss my ready lips
once more softly and retreat again into the night, to
the pack. I was left alone in the house to ponder our
conversation and the daydream I’d had.
I saw the statue’s face as it was in the park on the
river: weatherworn, covered in spots of moss, her eyes
closed as she wielded her bow at the beast lunging for
her, the soft smoothed angelic features of her stone
face and then her eyes, which suddenly opened to
stare right at me.

“You can confide in me, you know?” he had said,
looking at me. Sky seemed to know when I was staring off into nothingness that I was deep in thought.

“I want to, I have been.”
His hand lingered on my chin.
Something about him looked doubtful- a flicker

I racked my brain for what he could mean with
this look.
Was he as insecure as me? I had been an open book,
I had no secrets, none that I had withheld or would.
He knew exactly what had happened with Reid and
me. I had disappointingly told him more than he had
divulged to me about his relationships with Cresida
and Sam. Experience had taught him not to go into
detail when confessing other relationships to jealous
(insecure) new girlfriends, which perhaps worked to
his advantage, and my disappointment.
He knew that Reid and I had been intimate and
he didn’t want to do the same. We were different.
I know now why he abstained from it. We did everything but have sex, for now we didn’t need that
part. I could not doubt my feelings for him. They
were embarrassingly evident and he failed to hide his
pounding heart from me and fortunately he didn’t try
to conceal it anymore.
Sky and Reid had been best friends, now they
had to be civil. I was glad that they had somehow
managed it. Reid admitted he had somehow sensed
it coming. Why else would Sky act so jealously? Sky
had tried to fight it within himself after the Cresida
episode, and had failed or given in - I hoped it was
mostly the latter - until the internal fight against it
welled over into the world and he fought his pack
brother, to save me, he told himself. But like all human instincts, which remained in the wolves, it was
just mad jealousy in the guise of a conscious good
deed, for all is fair in love and war.
I didn’t see Reid anymore, as I had once not
seen Sky or Lily. Sky admitted that he had peeked
at me and spied on me whenever he could, despite
himself. It was as though I’d broken up a family inadvertently and I couldn’t be sure but I think I was
almost as heartbroken about this as they were. I liked
Reid’s company, I loved being in the pack, even if it
was only as a human decoy, Sam’s pet project. My
uncomplicated relationship with the pack was perhaps shrouded in naivety. I hadn’t suffered the way
they had. According to Sam they had lost me for the
better, but because of that they had also put walls between themselves and their brother. The devil on one
shoulder had wanted me to not care anyway - after
all what could I do about it? The angel on the other
shoulder had felt sorrow for breaking long-held ties
between brothers and between his first love in wolf
life, Sam, though he had been cold to her for years.
My draw on him had helped Sky from under Sam’s
persuasions or hypnotism as he called it, of which
he was glad, as he had only managed it once himself
alone - only to run into Cresida’s arms when she was
just a human. He knew that it was best I stayed as
far away from Sam’s talents as possible and he was
doing his best to avoid her unless necessary. He had
separated himself from her because he wanted me,
though he tried to deny it, and then fight it. He burnt
in jealousy whenever Reid and I touched and sided
with Sam to relieve me from the group for the greater
good. To separate Reid from me, but not from himself - he couldn’t stand that anymore than I could.
I shuddered as Sky revealed to me that Sam had
sensed something in me, an instinct about me and
then because Cresida wanted me, Sam wanted me
more, which she now realized was the wrong move
especially since I had inadvertently stolen her boyfriend and caused the death of a pack member. She
had tried to persuade me and when I avoided Giny’s
appeals she employed her own and when that failed,
she had then devised a plan for Reid to entice me into
their group, so that Cres would be distracted from
guarding the town. I didn’t feel as bad for breaking
Reid’s trust then, knowing they were even more manipulative than I had thought them capable. I was
mad with Reid now and far from sorry, and Sky had
encouraged him at the very beginning, before he had
discovered his own interest in me was caused by the
first inkling of real emotions. Sky wanted to keep me
safe. This is what I was led to believe were the reasons at the time. But one major factor was missing:
the reason why Sam and Cres bothered with a girl
from Horkum at all.