Chapter 6: Colt

Chapter 6: Colt

I’d been following the dragons and went down without warning.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw them piling onto something ahead of me. Disoriented, I watched the writhing mass tear apart the poor creature underneath them, thinking that they had hunted something while I was unconscious. But as I staggered to my feet, my surroundings revealed that I wasn’t in the same place where I had dropped. There were no trees here, only barren black stone. The sky was a bleak and starless violet, the eternal twilight of a strange dream. The vicious swarm of dragons beckoned me, but not to the violence. It was the creature they had in their grip that pulled me forward. Whatever it was that they had, I wanted it to be mine.

I lunged at them, dispelling the crowd with a roar unlike that which I’d ever made. I felt stronger than before. The dragons scrambled away, and I knew it was a dream because, in reality, they would have turned their teeth onto me instead. But here, I stood tall with my head raised and tail bristling, staring down at the creature I had rescued from the monsters, and recognizing her instantly.

Her pale fur held the chromatic glimmer of twilight. Her horn gleamed even in the absence of the moon’s glow. She turned her light purple eyes up to me, and I bared my teeth, confused and hungry all at once. The hybrid. Now was my chance to get her. She recoiled defensively, but my body moved anyway, encroaching on her with the intent of grabbing her. Despite her mouthful of teeth and the horn she wielded at me, I rained down on her, and we descended into a skirmish trying to dominate one another. She twisted and squirmed, kicking me away as I went for the back of her neck until, finally, the two of us were so intricately entangled with one another that I didn’t know where my body ended and hers began. We were a carpet of black and white fur, our tails ensnared, teeth lodged in skin, choking with pain and blistering satisfaction.

At some point in the dream, we lost sight of what we were supposed to be doing. Fighting each other, or feeling each other? Breathing in each other’s smells? I wanted her so wholly and completely that it was impossible to untangle myself from her. I couldn’t get close enough to her, not unless… I could be inside her.

That revelation jarred me awake. As a wolf, I coughed and sprawled, my body ejecting me until I had transformed back into a human and lay prone in the dirt. The trees towered over me, their canopies blocking out the evening sun. Breathing hard, I rolled onto my stomach and propped myself up on my elbows, back rising and falling in stricken exhalations. All around me, the forest remained still. The dragons had left me behind.

I slowly sat up on my knees, running my fingers through my hair. The intensity of the dream left my body quaking. Heat coiled in my chest and my stomach. Parts of my body ached when I remembered she had bitten me, kicked me, and pushed back in an attempt to escape. The dream—it felt so real. The texture of her fur, the smell of her sweetly lupine, and light as rose water. I craved to experience her again, even as the meaning of the dream began to slowly set in. I had dreamed of her like that for a reason.

That was our Moondream. Defying all logic, she was my fated mate. Kiara Vale, the impossible, immaculate wolf-unicorn hybrid who I was supposed to deliver to my father for slaughter.

I was sure she hated it. And me…? I didn’t know how I felt about it. Other than that, I still wanted to possess her. Except my desire for her was a hundred times stronger now, and it would kill me inside, whether to let her go and save her life or to fulfill my urges and capture her. It didn’t matter how this ended—it wouldn’t end happily.

Worse was that if I did slaughter her like Catrina had done to her fated mate Joseph Nym, I would be cursed never to have a fated mate again.

Fuck.

My body ached. I had to catch up with the hunting party despite what had just happened. Bracing myself, I forced another transformation, agony firing through my limbs and under my skin. Once again, my anatomy changed shape, still hot from the transformation I had undergone just minutes ago. By the time I was a wolf, I struggled to stand up, my veins pulsing and ears ringing. Panting, I pushed off in a jog, taking off after the dragons.

The rest of the evening, I dreaded possibly crossing Kiara’s scent. I didn’t want to confront the truth of our Moondream so quickly, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how I didn’t want to capture her yet, either. I wanted to hunt her—alone. I wanted to find her alone. I wanted to sink my teeth into her, yes, but I wanted so much more than that at the same time. It was a relief when we crossed a spot just beyond the eastern borders rife with the stench of Mythguard humans and Kiara, and we drew the conclusion that they had found her first. It meant that she would be far from here. Safe.

Safe from me, that is.

When we finally returned to the mine around three in the morning, I stayed silent as the dragons turned human and reported to Lothair about our findings. Lothair didn’t give me a second glance. Nobody knew about the Moondream. He dismissed us, and I went back to my corner in the caverns, dwelling. That was all I could do.

I was susceptible to obsessing. I always had been. I’d obsessed over Aislin for years since my older sister started dating Gavin Steele, and I got it in my head that, once our packs merged, Aislin and I would make the perfect Beta couple. I had a plan and was so convinced that it would work out smoothly. Aislin’s resistance just made me believe that I had to fight for perfection in order to make it work. I thought that if I were persistent, it would pay off. I just had to make her want me, be coy and desirable and unobtainable, because if I knew anything about Aislin, it was that she was ferocious in her pursuit of things she couldn’t have. She never took the bait, which just made me obsess even more.

I obsessed over Billie, too but in a different way. The love I had for her was complicated, both safe and unsafe. I could take refuge in her being a constant in my life; always somebody I could turn to in Hexen Manor because of how my father smothered her. It was wrong of me to take advantage of that, but I never did anything about it because I liked how she was always there for me, how I was the only one who treated her right, which made her appreciate me all the more. She was my adopted sister and not related by blood, so it was easier for me to be possessive of her, to fall back on her comfort whenever Aislin snubbed me. Before our lives imploded, I even thought she and I could run away from Dalesbloom. I could be everything she needed in a companion: a mentor, a protector, a source of love. How fucked up is that? I realized later that I was manipulating her, taking advantage of how my father robbed her of her independence. And when I heard that my father sexually assaulted her, it struck me how I was no better than him. I didn’t want that.

My obsessing sabotaged my relationships. Aislin and Billie were lucky they had Everett and Gavin to save them from me. But the night after receiving my Moondream, I feared that my obsessing would ruin my heart and mind all over again, exposing too much of me to somebody who didn’t care to reciprocate.

I wanted Kiara so badly. More than I ever wanted Aislin or Billie. And I was pretty sure that it was going to shatter my heart until it was irreparable.

By the time I woke the next morning, the only solution I could think of was to inform my father right away. Obliterate any chances of me wanting to see this Moondream through. If I had to slaughter my fated mate to protect my heart, so be it. I would.

I approached my father in the room where he had his folding table with all his papers. A stack of cardboard boxes densely shrink-wrapped towered in the corner. There were guns buried in whatever was filling those cardboard boxes, I knew. He bent over the papers with the light of a lantern illuminating the print, a pen in his hand as he worked the best he could while exiled in the mine, same as the rest of us.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

My father glanced up at me. “What?”

I stepped closer, seeking his gaze. “I had my Moondream yesterday.”

His eyebrows furrowed. He straightened, looking me up and down as if surprised that I would even qualify to experience such a thing, as if he never expected anybody would ever be bonded to me. “Who is it?”

“Kiara.”

His fists balled up on the table, muscles tightening in his jaw. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s a cruel fucking joke,” I breathed, finally looking away. I hated the Moon Goddess for doing this to me.

But my father only laughed. “What are the chances!”

“How is she part of our Alpha Line?”

“I don’t know. I can only assume she has some connection to the Hexens through her wolf father,” he said. Rising to his feet, my father stepped closer. “So you share… feelings with her now?”

“Most likely. I haven’t felt much except pain.”

“Can you tell where she is?”

“No.”

“But if you were to encounter her, it would be easy for you to persuade her to come with you. You know what happens when fated mates are in each other’s presence.”

Yes. We became blinded by love and lust for one another. That was probably why, in the dream, we had stopped fighting to savor touching one another. I pressed my lips together to keep from spilling this thought. “I’ll be just as easily persuaded.”

“No, you won’t. Not if you want us to succeed,” threatened my father. “You know what you have to do now, Colt. Find her as soon as you can.”

“As soon as I bring her in this direction, she’ll resist. She’ll smell the dragons.”

“Then take her to Hexen Manor. Keep her there under the guise of protecting her from the dragons.”

And risk developing feelings over however long I would have her in my custody until the full moon? Lie to her, pretend to care about our fated bond, only then to slaughter her? I frowned at the ground. It wasn’t my idea of a flawless plan to avoid heartbreak, but it was a plan which was more than what I had thought of on my own. “Okay.”

My father clapped his hand on my shoulder, then cupped the back of my neck, demanding my eyes again. “Good. I know you won’t disappoint me this time.”

I both hated my father and desperately wanted to please him. At least, given new direction, I would have something to put all my efforts toward rather than obsessing over a future I could never have.