CHAPTER SEVEN

Ero didn’t deserve to call himself a wolf.

Nor did he deserve to call himself a man, an alpha, or anything other than a disgusting wretch for what he’d done, when he’d come out of a blood-haze and collapsed back into his human form, coming to his senses to find Wren half-broken across his lap, barely breathing, his body used and torn and stained in blood and come, his robes ripped and reddened, and some terrible sick part of him wanted to hold Wren down and sink his teeth into the nape of his neck and do it again and again and again.

Instead he’d made himself carry Wren back to their camp, laying him down in the blankets and looking down at him worriedly when he barely seemed to be breathing.

“Wren?” Ero breathed, his throat constricting, and shook him gently. “Wren.”

Wren stirred with a low sound, his eyes fluttering open, before he smiled faintly. “I’m okay,” he whispered raspily. “I’m okay, I promise I am, I just…I just need to rest.” He reached up to caress trembling fingers to Ero’s lips. “You’re back.”

“I am,” Ero said raggedly, and gathered Wren up into his arms, holding him fast and burying his face against his hair, struggling to breathe. He could have…he could have seriously hurt Wren, could have killed him… “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I did this to you.”

“I asked you to.” Wren’s mouth moved soft and wet against Ero’s skin as the omega buried his face into his throat. “I wanted you to.”

“Why?”

“You’ve done so much for me. You’ve protected me, fed me, taught me that I can stand with someone else instead of kneeling for them.” Slim arms slid weakly around his neck, yet still managed to hold fast. “This is the first time I could do something for you.” Soft breaths curled against his throat, and Wren nuzzled into him. “And…it…it felt good to be with you. I feel…Ero, around you I just…I feel…”

“Wren…” Ero clasped his wrists gently and pulled his arms back, breaking Wren’s embrace even if it hurt so deeply. He shook his head, looking down into hurt, wounded eyes. “I’m far too old for you. And I’m a monster.”

“If you’re a monster, so am I,” Wren protested. “I…I would have killed humans, if you hadn’t stopped me. We’re no different.”

“But we are,” Ero hissed. “You saw me. You saw what I became. That’s not like other wolves. It’s not normal.”

Wren hesitated, his shaky breaths loud between them, before he looked away, tugging back on Ero’s grip on his wrists. “Why are you so different, then?”

“I don’t know.” Ero let go with one last apologetic stroke over slim wrists. “My age, maybe. We change as we grow older. We get stronger, can control how we change more. But there are so few of us who survive longer than a century, and we almost never find each other.” The smile that creased his lips felt bitter and cold. “It’s not as if we can compare notes often. And it’s not like I can just send them an email.”

“E…mail…?”

“An old way we used to be able to talk, by sending letters over electric signals.”

“Like how dryads talk.”

“Yes. But we could do it with machines, instead of…what they do.” Ero looked down at Wren helplessly. This wasn’t helping—and he didn’t know how to make Wren understand that what this was between them…it was dangerous. “Wren…Wren, I was there.”

The omega’s brows knit together, and he cast Ero a wary glance. “What…?”

“When the Disc came down, I was there,” Ero confessed. “Not right at the impact site, but close enough. I was a researcher, working in the Arctic.” Shaking his head, he looked away, somewhere over Wren’s head, and raked his hand back through his hair. “I still don’t know how I survived, when the ice caps broke up and the sea rose and everything was swallowed as the mountain rose up from the ocean floor to meet the Disc.” He still remembered the fear, the panic, sea water rushing down his throat. “The change is probably the only thing that saved me. I woke up weeks later, washed up on a rocky ocean shore in the ruined remains of Alaska.” He trailed off. The whispers…the whispers had started then, these things that were more felt than heard, deep black poison in his veins. “Sometimes I think that’s the real reason I’m like this. The Echo whispers things to me, and tells me I’m one of the first. Like it owns me.” He shuddered, loathing virulent inside him. “Like I’m some kind of terrible creature it made to test what it can do, before it swept the rest of the world and took so many else.”

“And that’s why you won’t look at me?” Wren whispered, hunching into his shoulders. “Because you’re afraid of what the Disc made you?”

“Yes,” Ero answered, and silently pleaded for Wren to understand. “I’m not safe, Wren. I’m not even sure I’m sane. Just because I seem calm on the outside…”

“But you don’t,” Wren challenged. “Because I can smell you. I can smell you wanting me, I can smell that you get confused the way I do when you look at me. Because you…you’re feeling this strange thing, too, aren’t you? But you’re going to tell me you’re too dangerous.”

“Because it’s the truth,” Ero said, and pulled back, pulled away. He needed some air, some room to breathe where he couldn’t smell himself mingled with Wren, and that quiet thing that whispered mate, mate, mate. “I’m too dangerous for you. I’m too dangerous for myself.” He shook his head, rising to his feet. “I’ll be back.”

Wren didn’t call him back, as Ero strode into the forest.

But those pale green eyes haunted him, chasing him into the dark.

T

Wren curled up on his side to rest his tired body after Ero was out of sight, and glared up at the sky. Stupid wolf. Stupid man. Stupid jerk, acting as he could just…just…twist Wren up this way and then push him off like nothing happened. It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair, when there was something alive inside him now, something that knew the feel of Ero and the scent of him, and that desperately craved more. Something that cried that Wren wouldn’t be able to live without him—as if whatever part of him had been sleeping with his pack had awakened now, and it could only thrive when bathed in Ero’s light.

Was that what Ero had meant about finding one’s mate? That somehow, something triggered that warmth, that perfect feeling of rightness, and you just knew?

But what happened when that feeling was one-sided, and even as Wren yearned for it desperately, Ero pushed him away and put distance between them?

He buried his face against his arms, and told himself he wouldn’t cry. Not over a stranger; not over a man who couldn’t possibly be his mate, no matter what these feelings inside himself whispered.

But he couldn’t stop how his shoulders shook. How his breaths caught.

And how his chest ached, as he let the burning in his eyes overflow.

He didn’t recall falling asleep—but he must have, giving in to his exhausted, ravaged body that was taking its time healing, so drained of energy he had almost nothing left. But he only realized he’d been asleep when he was snapping awake, sucking in a sharp breath as he was brought back to the stretched, searing pain between his thighs, even if the rest of his body seemed to have recovered in his sleep. The reminder of why he was sore sent a hot flush through him…one that turned cold as he realized Ero was nowhere in the camp.

And the sun was shading toward the horizon, edging toward sunset.

Wren had slept all day…and Ero hadn’t come back.

Ero’s things were still here; he wouldn’t leave without those. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d been found by human hunters, hurt and killed, while Wren had been here sleeping? What if—

His racing, panicked thoughts cut off at a deliberate sound from the underbrush, a cracking to warn him of Ero’s approach when he came from downwind, his scent carried away. Ero stepped from the trees; he froze for a moment as they met each other’s eyes, but it was Ero who looked away first. He carried several bags in one hand, faded paper with twine corded; the paper used to be brightly colored with curling script logos on them, but now it was a dim echo of what it had been.

Ero dropped one of the bags next to Wren, and retreated to the other side of the fire to start sorting through his spoils from the other without a word, stacking up cans of preserved food and a few other odds and ends, including everything from matches to a little packet of wet sanitary wipes. Uncertainly, Wren peered into his own bag, biting his lip.

And found a pair of pretty black calf-high leather boots waiting for him, closed up with eyelet hooks and their heels just slightly raised.

Underneath was a pile of clothing, and he lifted out strange things he’d never seen before when he was accustomed to homespun, furs, leathers: short-cropped pants, tights that seemed made of some silken material, a long scarf like Ero’s, gloves, a shirt of some stretchy dark material, socks. All of them made in precisely cut and tailored patterns, rather than ragged patchwork stitched together from the materials at hand.

Wren clutched the garments to his aching chest. Even right now Ero was being so good to him, tending to him, scavenging for him…and yet he called himself a monster.

“Thank you,” Wren whispered.

While Ero turned his face away, and said nothing at all.