“Tell me when you’re ready to ride.” A breeze riffled the locks of his hair.
“I’m good for now.” She took a drink and gazed out over the valley’s blanket of fog, could imagine running atop its defined surface.
With Munro as her guide, the Cursed Forest wasn’t forbidding. She’d begun to view it like immortals in general, seeing miracles within. Beauty even.
Munro was like a miracle to her, a brave wolf who gentled himself and his beast for her.
She was losing her heart to him bit by bit, but he wasn’t hers irrevocably yet—because he remained fixated on turning her.
The more he yearned for her to be different, the more lacking she felt in their relationship. If he ever saw me as an equal, I’d be lost for him.
He closed in on her. “I like carrying you. It gives me my fix of you. At least until night comes.”
Just this proximity shallowed her breaths. “You’re getting that look in your eyes. Are we stopping?” Tell me why you changed directions.
“I’d planned to go for another couple of hours, but I can be persuaded to pitch that tent.”
Each night he’d stopped so she could rest, setting up their conjured tent and sleeping bag. Within those cloth walls, the werewolf had proved to be an intense, generous lover with a bone-melting sensuality.
Hours after she’d fallen asleep, he would wake her with his mouth between her legs, as if he couldn’t wait till dawn for another taste of her. Afterward, as she lay sprawled and sated, he’d rasp in her ear about the immortal life they could have together, the thrill of it, the delights.
She would drift off to his promises of eternity.
Though they’d been taking the edge off their need, he still refused to have intercourse with her, was convinced he would hurt her. Or impregnate her. She wasn’t certain a replica could have children. Had Ren truly been ensouled . . . ?
“Well, what do you say, lass? Stop for the night?”
“I can continue for longer,” she told him, stowing her canteen. “As soon as I know where we’re going.”
He sighed. “Aye. I did vary our route. I’ve finally scented another village, one far enough away from the nymphs’ valley that we might escape detection.”
“Why now? I know we’re close to Dacia.”
“You know, do you? With your superhuman senses?”
Irritation pricked at her. “I don’t need superhuman senses to notice you’re different, like a wolf chasing a target to ground.”
“Observant lass,” he murmured, definitely getting that look in his eyes.
Before she got caught up in his spell, she took a step back. “Did you change our plans because of the moon?” It would be full in seven nights. The only thing he stared at as much as her face was the moon.
“That’s just one risk among many. I canna keep putting you in harm’s way. Once we reach the village, I’ll contact my brother. He should have returned by now. He’ll protect you back at Glenrial while I continue the hunt for Dorada.”
“You’re leaving me behind?” Ren’s hands balled into fists. “And what happens if you find the sorceress? Will you make a wish and turn me?”
Grave nod. “It should work even if you are halfway around the world.”
Ren’s unwavering confidence about her destiny took a nosedive. If she wasn’t with him, she’d have no recourse; her blade would be useless. He could get the ring and transform her, and then she’d have to hate him forever.
Or worse, what if her new wolven Instinct compelled her to forgive him? To love him?
No. She could never blame another force for that, was falling for him all on her own. “You would do such a thing? Even though you know I don’t want to be changed with that ring?” She frowned at her words. I will never become immortal had become I will never become immortal with that ring.
Tension stole through him. “You’ve accepted me. Which means you must’ve accepted immortality.”
“No, I’m exploring this with you while I try to convince you that we can be together as we are. If you see reason, then I might accept you.”
“You’ve begged me to claim you and mark you. Did you no’ think I might set some store by that?”
“I’ve spoken in the heat of the moment, which always passes. Yet day-to-day life doesn’t.”
Munro’s eyes flashed blue, his beast rousing. “Can you think of me for once? I need to rest easy in the knowledge of your safety.”
“I am thinking of you! Vulnerability is relative. If you turn me, you might make me stronger, but I won’t be safer. Not in the Lore. We’d still have the Accession, and the Møriør, and the warlocks to contend with.”
He had no argument against that. But judging by the stubborn flex of his jaw, he still wasn’t budging.
“If you leave me behind,” she told him, “I won’t sit around and wait to be turned. I’ll give your brother the slip and go on the offensive with Jels. Once I remove that threat, then perhaps you’ll relax about my safety and my mortality.”
Munro began to pace. “Say Jels was no more. We still canna stay as we are. I’ve told you that my claiming bite alone could kill you, much less what my beast would do to you under the influence of the full moon.”
She’d given these scenarios a lot of thought. “You don’t have to mark me. We can have intercourse without a bite. And for the night of the moon, Desh can trace us to a place where it has already set.” Assuming the demon wasn’t the one who’d informed on them.
“Then am I never to have my mate under the light of the moon? You canna imagine what you’re asking me to give up.”
“More than I have given up?” Grasping for patience, she said, “I’m looking for a solution that we can both live with.”
“You fucking have no’ found it. If you could just trust me. Have I steered you wrong in bed? Do you no’ enjoy the things I do to you?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to sacrifice more of me to experience more of you. Why must you go to such dangerous lengths to change me? Just be with me.”
“For how long? I can never forget that in two of your lifetimes you’ve died by a Lorean’s hand before you reached thirty. What if that’s your destiny and immortality is the only thing that can change it?”
“And what if the ring doesn’t work right? You intend to meddle with powers you know nothing about to alter me. The choice must be mine.”
“Then make the right bloody one.”