Wolfbreed (38 page)

He stepped inside and Gedim turned to look at him. The man was a mess. His shirt was coated with blood, the left side of his face misshapen and swollen.

Günter sighed. “Why would you do something so stupid?”

“The bastards took my daughter.” Gedim spat up a small bit of blood when he spoke. It rolled over a swollen lip and trailed down his chin. He reached up to wipe it off, but he only smeared it over his face before he winced and pulled his hand away.

“That isn’t what I am talking about.”

Gedim stared at him with the eye that wasn’t swollen shut.

“You need to tell us where she is.”

“Where who is?”

Günter rubbed his forehead. “Stop with the games, Gedim. Your own daughter told them her name. Do you even know what Lilly is?”

“Who’s Lilly?”

“That’s enough!” Günter reached down and grabbed Gedim by his shirt and dragged the man to his feet, slamming him against the wall of the cell. “You think this is just about you and your family? Bad enough that this … this thing you’re protecting slaughtered sixteen of my men. You want me to describe it? How she tore Manfried’s arm from its socket, or ripped Jacob apart, or tore Uli’s jaw free from his skull?”

Gedim stared at him, his right eye wide.

“Any night, you understand, this thing could have feasted on your family’s entrails. But that’s not the worst you’ve done, sheltering this creature. Why do you think they’ve gathered all the Prûsans left from Mejdân?”

Gedim shook his head.

Günter let the man go and stepped back. Gedim slid to his knees.

“The Order is no longer in charge here. We have a bishop from Rome now—a bishop who believes that the Order was not thorough enough in Christianizing the pagans. A bishop who is already convinced that this monster, Lilly, was freed by a Prûsan insurrection.”

Gedim shook his head. “No.”

“You gave him just what he was looking for, you arrogant fool. Did you think they sent out knights of the Order to search for someone—some
thing—
trivial? You better start thinking of what you’re going to say when the bishop’s inquisitor questions you, because if you say the wrong thing, you will grant him an excuse to wipe out every last Prûsan in Johannisburg.”

n the boarding room in Johannisburg, Uldolf sat on a chair next to the bed, watching Lilly sleep. There wasn’t really room on the bed for two people, even if Uldolf could sleep.

“Don’t you remember?”
she had said.

“Remember what?” Uldolf whispered. He reached up and rubbed the hollow where his right shoulder ended. He remembered what she had said in the cave when he had asked her about her own past:
“It’s bad to remember.”

He thought about that phrase, and how he had felt about her since she had said it. Her body might be whole, but he couldn’t help imagining that their wounds were very similar. Maybe that was why his nightmares and the flashes of memory were becoming worse; maybe something in him knew that he couldn’t help her if he still couldn’t face his own past.

What he did know was that she faced demons as painful as his own, and from the way he had found her, they were much more recent. Thinking about it in those terms made her recovery, and her personality, all the more amazing. Less than a month from finding her mute and injured, and she was more talkative now than he had been a year after his own injury.

He balled a fist into his shoulder socket and moved his thoughts away from his own wounds.

Ulfie’s not that brave. Not yet …

He needed to think of his family. That was his concern right now. The Germans had taken them. If Lankut was right, they were looking for signs of some sort of insurrection.

What if what all they really wanted was Radwen Seigson’s son? Maybe if he offered himself, they would let his family go.

But what about Lilly?

He would have to get her out of Johannisburg,
then
try and parlay himself into a trade for his family. If he slipped her out the gate at dawn, he could lead her through the woods …

His thoughts were drifting too far toward desperation. He couldn’t just lead her to the woods and leave her. He knew that his father would want him to make sure she was safe. She was their responsibility.

That could take days.

“What do I do?” He sat, clutching his shoulder, feeling nothing but a dark sense of despair that threatened to engulf him.

After too long like that, he thought he heard something. He lifted his face and looked around.

Singing?

The sound was soft, barely audible. The sound so faint that at first he thought it might be coming from outside.

Then he realized that it was Lilly.

He leaned forward and heard her softly singing a lullaby to herself. “Mother will protect her child. Should any nightmares come.”

Uldolf shook his head. Where had he heard it before? The words ran a chill through his entire body. The voice, he had heard that voice, those words …

The girl
, he remembered.
The girl right before …

“Her name was Lilly,” Uldolf whispered, staring at the curve of Lilly’s face.

How could he have forgotten her? How could he have forgotten the strange girl he had played with in the woods? It was the best memory he had before his life had been torn apart.

Why would he have forgotten that?

He reached over and brushed the hair off her cheek. “Why did you come back?”

Lilly blinked and looked up at him. “Ulfie?”

“Lilly.” He smiled down at her. “I remember you now.”

Her eyes widened and she sat up.

“It was you, the girl in the woods.”

Lilly’s eyes glistened, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She shook her head, as if she was denying it.

“Is that why you were at the pool? Were you looking for me?”

“I—I—” Her hands balled into fists, knotting into the bedding. She sucked in breaths, her back shaking.

Uldolf moved to sit on the bed next to her. He placed his arm around her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“D-don’t.”

“What?”

She turned and wrapped her arms around him. “Don’t remember. Please don’t remember.”

“Huh?” He reached down and lifted her face from where it was buried in his chest. “Why?”

She looked into his eyes and bit her lip.

“Why shouldn’t I remember, Lilly?”

“I—I—” She hugged him, pressing her face back into his chest, shaking her head.

“Lilly?”

Gradually, she stopped shaking her head. She let go of him and settled back so that she faced him. She touched his cheek, looking at him, eyes clear.

“Lilly, what is it?”

“I love you, Uldolf.” Something in her voice, her expression, had suddenly changed.

Uldolf stared at her a long time; the spill of black-dyed hair across her shoulders; the curve of her neck where it met her jaw; the spider lines of the barely healed scratches where she had cut herself; the swell of her lower lip, trembling slightly; the dampness on her cheeks; her glowing green eyes …

“Then why are you crying?”

She turned away. “Because you cannot love me.”

Lilly started to stand up, but Uldolf grabbed her, pulling her back down to him. She gasped slightly and stared at him with wide eyes.

“In the name of all the gods, why not?”

“Your family, I—”

“I’ll deal with that. It isn’t your fault.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“Do you want me?”

“What?”

“Do you want me?”

She shook her head. “This isn’t right.”

He grabbed her and said, “Answer the question!”

In response, she pushed him down on the bed, suddenly showing the strength he had seen in his family’s field. The same strength he had seen, years before, when she had bounded up his oak tree like a giant squirrel.

Lying there, pinned with her hands on his shoulders, something flashed in his mind, the image of claw marks on the trunk of his tree, the fresh white scars bleeding sap—

“Yes!” she yelled down at him. “I want you.
We want you!
” Her face fell on his in a savage kiss, a starving animal digging into a fresh kill. Uldolf reached up and pulled her to him, opening his own mouth, giving in to her desperation.

When she pulled her face away, they were both out of breath.

“I want you, too,” Uldolf whispered.

A sad smile crossed Lilly’s mouth and she shook her head. “No, you don’t.”

He reached up and traced her lips with his fingers.

She shuddered. “Please, stop.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t …”

Uldolf’s hand moved, tracing her shoulder, down the side of her body.

She gasped, but she didn’t pull away. And when he reached for her surcoat, she helped him—yanking her clothes off with the same desperate ferocity with which she had kissed him. Then she pulled at his clothes, igniting the same white-hot need within his body.

They attacked each other as if their lives depended on the outcome, as if each gasping breath was their last. He expected something slower, gentler, especially when he felt her maidenhead tear. He could feel her body tense, but in response, she became even more feral, tightening her grip and pulling him into something bloody, bestial, and abandoned, where there was no thought of anything but pushing hard, far, deep, falling into her until there was nothing left.

hat are we doing?

The thought hung there, in the back of her mind, even as she hungrily took all that Uldolf would give her. She tried to pretend that the desire, the need for him, was too much for her to control …

One part of her thought,
We want this
.

The other part responded,
We can’t
.

Of anyone who had ever taken this from her, Uldolf was the only one who had ever deserved it. He was the only one she wanted to give it to. Lilly fought with herself to hang onto him, to hang onto this moment. She lost herself within herself, not knowing who held him, who pulled him to her.

At this moment, all that mattered was that Ulfie wanted her. Uldolf wanted her. Despite everything, he
wanted
her.

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t remember …

We can forget, too …

Part of her knew that this was wrong, that he still didn’t understand what she was, what she had done. But she wasn’t strong enough to stop it, she was too weak to deny what he asked when, deep in her heart, his asking was everything she ever wanted.

“I want you, too,”
he said.

Both of her.

All of her.

Whatever he wanted, whatever came from this, she gave herself to him. And miraculously, he took her. And beyond all of that, beyond the emotional vortex that stripped her down to her soul, he showed her that this act could be about something other than submission, power, or brutality.

She gave herself to Uldolf, but Uldolf also gave himself to her.

She gasped and clutched at him as the first unexpected waves broke across her body. She shuddered, thoughts fragmenting in the force of her climax.

He gave himself to us
.