Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

16. Dangerous Quest

"Listen, all humans have limitations, but they are mainly self-imposed. It's just how we're and when we push past them... like, Lydia could dream of the past before the Mnemosyne. And she didn't trust herself. She had to have a gadget, so they built a machine. Something that lowered the barriers for belief."

There. Did it make any sense at all?

gentle concern writ on his sister's face intensified to yellow alert. "Volya, dear... Maybe you should lie down."

He removed Nadezhda's hand from his forehead. "Anabelle, she was much younger. Her mind was more flexible. So when she believed she could be one with her horse, she became one... voluntarily. How many people wake up in a cold sweat because their dreams felt too real—"

"They don't turn into centaurs."

"No, they don't. Maybe it takes more than just dreams for the magic to come out spontaneously. When Akrum did it for Yasuwa, it was like he crushed the gates with a battering ram. And Mnemosyne, maybe it did something similar for Anabelle and her father."

Nadezhda chewed her lip. He was making her consider it at least... good. "The same happened to me as well."

"You?"

"Yes." He drew a breath. This next argument was pretty iffy, because he didn't have any data to go on. She, however, might. "The other Walkwe men, the modern ones, they don't transform, do they?"

Nadezhda tapped her lips thoughtfully with two fingers. "Not that I know of."

Holy cow, his gut instinct didn't fail him! "See, then I am no different, and if I am no different, then neither are you."

The examples jumped at him and he barged forward. "Liam tells me that his father got trapped in some old battle while he was in a coma. He gleaned it in his ancestors' memory and had to fight. When my mist-wolf found him there, I called—and Cole wasn't deaf to the call of magic. So we all have dormant magic."

"You focus on just one family, Volya." This time her sage expression wasn't fake for the sake of a joke. Her eyes had the warm yet distant glow, her smile curved softly, not with merriment, with understanding. And a bit of sadness. Her voice dropped to a tactful intervention level. "On your boyfriend's family."

"So what!" Volya flushed like oil in a pan. He couldn't be bothered with whispering. "He's also magical, you know! Even if they said... the Crones said..." that esteemed circle of Crones included his mother, but he didn't need to think about it right now.

"They said I'm profaning the Walkwe's custom by copulating with a human or something. That I can't love Liam or bond with him because he's mundane."

Preposterous! Or, maybe not preposterous, maybe it was the usual nonsense with a Walkwe twist.

He tossed his head. "Well, they are wrong!"

They, the Crones.

They, who grew so effing agitated whenever Liam thrust him in the spotlight.

They, who said he was white, young, awkward, a talentless hack, Russian, sullen, dull, had not a single artistic bone in his body... No way, no how he was a match for Liam. To listen to them, a guy should date his mirror image. Then again, when a guy looks in a mirror, he sees a guy. That one similarity didn't please some of them either.

Those faceless they could collectively take themselves and their concerns to the precipice upon which the centaurs fought Karzhift and hurtle themselves off of it.

Liam was his mate and it was the first thing he got right in his life. "I will prove them wrong!"

A tiny exclamation escaped Nadezhda—apology? disappointment? astonishment? regret?—an ah! could mean so many things. And he would take all of them, so long as it didn't mean pity.