The Wolf King

  She’d been about to kill me. Red wasn’t playing around either. She’d been sane and rational one second and then mad the next. It’d happened when I’d mentioned Ewan was her mate.

  I shook my head. I wanted to help them, but what the hells could I do if one of them was as simple as a beast and another went bloody, stark raving mad at the truth?

  It was no longer safe here, and the skies looked like they were ripping themselves apart. I wasn’t sure running through the lightning was a sound plan, but it was either stay here and get turned into mincemeat or take my chances that I wouldn’t get fried in the rain.

  With a growl, I turned on my heels and ran as fast as my short legs could carry me, playing as long as I possibly could to ensure she’d not follow.

  Blessedly, the lightning arced and struck all around me, but I wasn’t hit, though I smelled the ozone of its blasts everywhere.

  The world wasn’t really much of one. This was a ley line, a time loop. The only places that were tangible were the trees. The path. And the cave. There was nothing else here. There was nothing else at all…

  When I came into view of the entrance to the cave, Ewan perked up. But he looked at me with eyes that knew nothing. There was just nothing there, no recognition, no intelligence… nothing. My heart sank. I’d hoped, somewhere foolishly deep down, that my talk with him yesterday would make him remember me enough to give him some hint of lucidity.

  Something.

  But I feared that not only did their days reset, so too did their memories from before, although Red had seemed to know far more than Ewan had. So maybe not. In order to save them, though, I needed to figure out just what I was dealing with. The only problem was that I was rapidly running out of time.

  Plopping down onto my arse in a puddle of rain, I hung my head and closed my eyes as I felt the terrible roars of lightning strike the world all around me. Fat tears squeezed out the corners of my eyes. This quest was hopeless.

  It was absolutely hopeless.

  A hand fell onto my shoulder, and I jerked, screaming as I jumped to my feet in a fighting stance.

  But it was Ewan. Rain dripped in rivulets down his hair and face as he gazed at me with those dark, expressive eyes.

  He grunted, and something flickered in his dark gaze.

  I blinked.

  “Ewan?” I whispered, voice hushed, almost terrified to hope that I’d seen as I’d seen.

  He took my hand in his, and together we walked into the shelter of his cramped cave.

  I glanced up at the shelf where I’d left the hourglass the day before. It was still there, glimmering like gold flame from the play of fire dancing over its hammered metal. More than half the grains were already gone.

  Two days I’d wasted, and it looked like I’d only have one more left, if that. It was over. I was done. I’d screwed it up bad.

  Ewan whined, the sound so like that of his wolf, and he pointed to my leather pouch. I’d filched it off a woodland witch some years ago. It was spelled to be a bottomless holder. I wasn’t sure, since I’d never tried, but I would bet the thing could even hold Ying if I had a mind to hide a dragon in it.

  “Hey,” I said as he tried to unlatch the tied strings. “Hey.” I slapped at his hands when he again reached for me, and he grimaced, yanking his hand back and wagging it in the universal gesture of pain.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing, male?” I snapped.

  At first, he did nothing, but then he slowly brought his hand to his mouth, miming out something.

  It took me half a second to realize what it was. I frowned hard.

  “Food?” I asked with a note of surprise to it and brought my fingers to my mouth. “You want… food?” I mimed just as he had a second ago, pretending to feed myself.

  Relief washed over his features and he nodded.

  I cocked my head. I’d seen no sign of recognition in him earlier. “Wait.” I took a step back, forced to hunch in the too tight space, and held up my hand. A thought began to creep over me. Could it possibly be?

  “Ewan?” I said slowly. “Do you… do you remember who I am?” I pointed at my chest.

  He gave one short, clipped nod.

  My heart hammered so hard in my chest that I thought it would break free. I planted my palm against it. “Wait. Wait. Wait. Do you… do you remember who she is?” I pointed behind me, back at the woods where I’d just barely escaped Red’s twisted wrath. “What was her name, Ewan? Who was she to yo—”

  His face screwed up, his throat went taut, and the veins on his neck throbbed as his vocal chords rubbed violently together. “Maaaaaattee,” he said.

  And while it wasn’t pretty, or even all that human, I’d clearly heard him say “mate.”

  “Oh my god, Ewan. Oh my god! Oh my god!” I screamed and flung my arms around his neck, and because the cave was so flipping small, the movement forced us to fall back with me spread-eagle on top of him. He held me securely with one arm wrapped around my waist.

  I shoved up until I could look him in the eye. “Oh dear gods, you’re in there, aren’t you? You’re really in there! Please, tell me you’re in there.”

  He grinned sheepishly and nodded hard, his wild hair flying all around his face. And then he was rolling to a sitting position, and I crab walked off him. But he was following me, reaching once more for the pouch at my waist.

  I laughed so hard that tears fell, happy and completely shocked. But still, he needed to learn the concept of personal space, so I again slapped his hands off me, reached in, and pulled out two more hares, tossing them at his chest.

  “Here. I don’t need them. We’re gonna leave this hellhole, I promise you, Papa. I promise.”

  He attacked his hares like the wild man that he looked to be, sinking his fangs in deep and thrashing at the meat, eating it whole again. He was still a man, but a partially transformed one. It was a strange sight indeed. In fact, he’d never done it in front of me before. I watched him with morbid awe, both disgusted and oddly fascinated.

  He remembered. I wasn’t sure how he remembered, but he remembered. Something I’d said had stuck.

  I kneeled by him as he ate. “Tell me everything you know, Ewan. Everything you can remember. What’s her name? What’s my name?”

  But he said no more, only attacked his dinner with the ferocity of a mad wolf.

  I clenched my jaw, moving to sit beside the warmth of the fire and dropping my arms over my bent knees.

  He was in there. I glanced outside, and for a wild, impossible second, I thought that maybe, just maybe, the curse might break, hoped that I’d see a rainbow where there’d only been dark skies before.

  But the world still pounded with chaos and destruction. It wasn’t enough. That hadn’t been nearly enough.

  Clenching my fingers impotently, I stared at the hourglass.

  It was one thing to remain positive, but it was another to remain willfully ignorant. We were running out of time, and soon, there’d be none left at all.

  I sat in silence for what felt like an eternity. After he’d demolished his meal, he shifted quickly back to wolf form and curled up once more in the fetal position, the same way he had the night before. Breathing deeply, he slept like the dead just seconds later.

  And once the light had gone and the world turned to darkness and snow, I held my breath and hoped to the gods that I would not see a repeat of the night before.

  But even as I prayed, I knew exactly what would happen.

  The beast rose and, with one mighty shake of his body, trotted out the exit, headed toward the same fate that would spell our doom. Scrabbling to my feet, I gave chase immediately. But he was too fast for me to catch up to him.

  “Don’t go, Ewan! Be stronger than this!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and screamed at his back, not even trying to be quiet this time as I followed him down the familiar trail.

  “You guys can stop this! You can leave, you don’t have to be stuck here. You don’t have to do this!” I yelled unti
l I felt myself going hoarse, but still I didn’t stop. I said anything and everything I could to get him to pause just long enough to listen to me. But the violently raging winds were ripping my words away almost as fast as they spilled off my tongue.

  “You have children. Awesome, beautiful children. Uriah has a skunk stripe and he’s the spitting image of his mother. Gods, he’s hilarious. He has your sense of humor, Ewan. Irreverent and just a little raw. Erich was your youngest for a time, really adventurous and fearless. You have daughters too. Like a bunch of them. And they all worship the ground you walk on, which is saying something because they’re fierce and independent and just as wild as their mama. And Lleweyn, Lleweyn is your oldest, he’s steady, not much of a sense of humor, but there’s a solidness in him. Like if you’re with him, nothing can ever go wrong.”

  I hiccupped, breath shuddering out of me as I thought of my love, but the words hurt too bad to continue talking about him, so I moved to another child.

  I told him all I could remember, all that I knew in the short time allotted me. And even as I saw the flash of red dart through the limbs of the trees above, I tried. I tried with all my heart and soul to make them both remember, reliving memories both painful and cherished as I tried to open their eyes.

  “Violet, you were the Heartsong. That’s who you were!” I yelled at her even as she dropped from the branch, that wickedly curved blade gripped tight in her hands as she sank it dead center into Ewan’s chest.

  I sobbed as I told them of their life together. Sobbed as I saw their fight slowly die out in them as they both landed killing shots. I whispered, “You had such a glorious life. Please remember. Please come back.”

  They both took their last breath, and we all plunged into the darkness of time itself.

  As I plummeted through the shadows, I watched as the world reshaped and reformed itself into the purgatory Ewan and Red would be forced to endure until the ley line was far too weakened to rebuild itself again.

  I knew then that we’d lose. There wasn’t enough time in that timepiece to fix this. They were too far gone.

  This was over.

  It was the end of us.

  And I finally cried for all I’d lost and the life I would never know again. I felt it all this time, and I let myself grieve in a way I never had before.

  Six

  Ewan

  I woke up in the mud, coughing and hacking, as around me, thunder and lightning tore the sky in two. Something was changing.

  Something was happening.

  The world was angry.

  Frightfully so.

  I got up, ready to run to my shelter, when I suddenly remembered her.

  Long blond hair whipping in the wind. Blue eyes gazing down at me with something that felt all-consuming and overwhelming.

  Gasping, I shook as my mind whirled with ghostly mirages of a world completely altered from this one, where trees brushed the quiet heavens and stars glinted like millions of diamonds in the sky. I heard the laughter of those I loved and would die for.

  “My Wolf…” she whispered, and I tipped my head back and howled, crying out through the lashing rains for the ghost that felt so real.

  The sound of a groan caught my ear. I twirled and saw a different female laying not far away from me. She was dark as the night, with long braids of hair haloing her head like a nest of glistening serpents.

  I knew her.

  I didn’t know her name, but I knew her. She was my companion here.

  I raced for her, kneeled by her side, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  She groaned again, the sound deep and full of pain.

  “Are ye… are ye a’right?” I asked, voice sounding strained and filled with grit.

  She gasped, shoving to a sitting position so fast that we nearly knocked heads. There were streaks of mud on her cheeks and forehead and bits of strewn moss down her neck. She looked like hell, but her face blazed with fiery hope.

  I scrabbled out of reach, just barely, as she stared at me with shocked delight.

  “Ewan? How… do you… do you remember me?”

  She tapped her chest, and I nodded.

  Hopping to her knees, unmindful of the mud and muck, she shook her head. She looked like a wild woman with her hair coated in mud and the way the lightning haloed her from behind.

  “What’s my name? Who is your mate? Why are you here? Do you remember anything at all?”

  “I… I…” I grabbed at my head and moaned as images I couldn’t process scrolled through with a rapidity that left me reeling and breathless. I started shaking, feeling weak and cold all over. My teeth chattered so loud that I could hear it above the din of the rolling thunder and cracking lightning.

  She was up and by my side in an instant. “Oh, Ewan,” she whispered, rubbing my back gently and leading us to the relative safety of my cave. “You’re in there. You’re in there. But I don’t know how to bring you out. I don’t know what I’m doing or how to break this curse. Tell me what to do. We’re running out of time, and I don’t know how to do stop the ley line from splintering and taking all of us with it. Please, tell me what to do. You can talk, though, so that’s a start. If I only knew how to make this process go faster, then I think we might actually stand a chance.”

  But suddenly, all the words were just gone, and I hurt too much. I felt myself crack under the weight of memories that couldn’t possibly be my own.

  She sat me down, and I watched her even as my muscles quaked and snapped, as the ghostly pain of being stabbed night after night throbbed to glorious pain inside me. I ran my callused palm over the spot on my ribs where each night, I was forced to endure the agony of being cleaved.

  She reached into her pouch and pulled out two hares. My stomach grumbled, but there was so much pain that I didn’t want to eat. She looked down at the hares miserably.

  “You won’t eat?” she asked slowly.

  I hated to feel like I’d disappointed her, but I had so many questions, and I didn’t know where to even start. I felt different this time, that was the only thing I knew with any kind of surety.

  “We’re nay leaving here? Are we?” I asked, looking up at her. Some part of me understood that she’d come here for me, though my head was still full of fog and patchy, dark holes that I could not peer through, but that I suspected held some significance for me if only I could see them.

  It was why she spoke to me of a past I’d only had glimmers of before.

  She turned and stared at the golden hourglass she’d left here the first night she’d appeared. I’d noticed it, wondered at it, even prodded it with my stick. In the end, all I’d been able to do was stare at it, practically hypnotized, as the grains fell in a continual and fluid motion through the narrow neck.

  Who was she? And why did I feel a kinship to her already? Like I knew her, or had known her? Like she’d once been a part of my world, a long, long time ago?

  The grains were few now.

  The world outside trembled and heaved violently. I’d always thought the world was trying to break itself apart, but now I saw it literally—a hazy line of blue, growing and stretching wider and wider, like winter ice starting to crack in the spring thaw.

  She hung her head, and I stared at her, watching the play of light and shadow over her dark skin. She was shaking her head, muttering beneath her breath.

  “Wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she said and then snickered. “Man, do I get it now.”

  Like a roof being ripped violently away from a structure, the sky above was also being ripped off, disappearing like a black tower of smoke into the heavens. A terrible, rushing whistle of sound shrieked and set my teeth on edge. This was new.

  I recalled the lightning and the rain and thunder, but there was a black funnel where none used to be before, and it was sucking the very colors into it. I frowned, sensing I should be afraid of this newest development, but I was numb to it. I was also weary to my very core.

  “It’s the end, is it no?” I
asked softly. She looked up at me with eyes rimmed in red and full of misery.

  I was surprised she’d heard me over the cacophony of chaos outside. We had hours left in this place, maybe a day if we were lucky, though I doubted it. Wherever we were, we were finally at its end. Maybe this time when the witch stabbed me, I could finally find my peace. Maybe this time it would all truly be over.

  She nodded. “I… I think so, Ewan.”

  I cocked my head, wondering at the wet sheen in her eyes.

  “Why do you cry, lassie?”

  She snorted, but the sound lacked mirth.

  “Gods, I see you here.” She gestured at me with a closed fist. “You sound so much like him. Even sometimes look like him.” She shrugged. “Why didn’t you fight harder?”

  I frowned. “Fight for what, lass?”

  “Her, you dumb bastard. Your soul. Your heart. How could you have forgotten her? What in the hells would make you forget all that you’d been to each other? Why can’t you just stop!”

  She was up now, bristling before me. Her small frame vibrated like a tuning fork as she held herself ramrod stiff, glaring down at me with open fury.

  My heart hammered in my chest.

  “Do you have any idea what hell I had to go through just to get here? Any at all?” She growled, and though it was probably not the time to be thinking about what a fine wolf she’d have made, considering the world was ending, I couldn’t help it.

  “Do you remember anything I’ve told you? Anything at all?”

  Trees were being ripped from their moorings, exposing long, gnarled roots, as they, too, were being forcibly pulled into the sucking vortex of darkness. But seeing as how there was no other place to run, there was nothing to do but wait our turn.

  I poked at the stone circle where a nice fire usually roared, but I didn’t think I’d make one today. What was the point? I felt the chill of the world encasing us both.

  She collapsed in a heap, falling like a marionette who’d had its strings cut. Her quiet sobs rattled my soul.

  Wanting to comfort her, I scooted slowly toward her, not knowing whether I should. But it was the end of the world, and it was pretty much now or never.