Bleed The Wolves

Chapter 4: Silk and Suspicion

Her tears were fodder to his blind fury.

"Out," he said with the full weight and menace of his enforcer title.

The wolves moved immediately, throats bared as they scrambled to the door. The humans stood dumbstruck, horrified by a brawler in his full height looming and gnashing his teeth.

Thomas didn't care.

"I said, out!" he roared.

A hiccup of a sob came from Suzette as she tried to wipe her tears from her face. That was the girl he knew: weakness, smothered; tears, hidden. But the reek of terror was disproportionate to the departing wolves, something darker lurking beneath that set him on edge.

Thomas moved to her side, pushing the cement table out of the way. "Are you well?" he asked, reaching for her sleeve.

His fingers found the dark-green cotton and she flinched. So did he—she had nearly sweat through the thread-bare fabric and her bones were too prominent. She had always been slimmer than ideal for a mate–his mother's words–but bones shouldn't rush to the touch like that. And she was cold, so cold he could barely feel her body heat at this proximity.

She shrunk from him, too embarrassed to face him head on, too suspicious to give him her back.

There was a spare chair in the corner for when the interrogator wasn't brave enough to sit on the table's attached cement bench. It was metal and cold, but when he brought it to her, she sat.

Her sheared hair exaggerated the sharpness of her lines. In the mountains, the mourning signs were respected. Here, in the white electric light seven floors below the city streets, it made her look wild and lost. Barely at an inch, whoever had cut it had botched the job.

"I'm fine, I'm sorry," she managed, clearing her throat to unstick the words from her tears. "I'm fine."

"No. You're cold." Thomas crouched by her chair to look her in the eye.

Had no one thought to bring her a damned change of clothes? Why the hell wasn't he wearing a coat to offer?

"Are you hungry?" he asked. Not that he could solve that problem either. There were hollows under her eyes, a chalkiness to her beautiful bronze skin. "I'll call the medic back."

"No." As commandeering as ever, Suzette grabbed the fabric at his shoulder when he went to stand. Her sleeve rode up and her bare wrist brushed the scar at his throat.

Thomas stilled, as did she.

Her touch spread through him as slow as dawn, familiar and snug like the first sun of winter. The fissure of familiarity passed down his spine with something like pain. Good pain.

It was the bond of close pack kin. Even after seven years, Thomas wasn't White Pine enough to share it with anyone yet.

But Suzette... her scent sang to him in old colours that didn't match the hewn bone room around them. It was soft blues and lavenders, silk curtains blowing from the winds of their old Pack house.

She felt it too; her hand shifted so her wrist pressed against his neck, the cold of her pulse warming to his, and her tear-damp eyes fluttered closed.

They were back in open woods of full sun. Not blood-sticky shadows of his memory, but a mountain he'd forgotten entirely. Where spring green was a carpet under running feet. Where ice water fell fresh from falls to pound his back. When they were too young and happy and wild for the blood fires and wine.

Thomas had found Suzette crying once. It had been his brother's doing. Thomas had pushed her around for snivelling, then went after Jude to set things straight. Later that night, Suzette had stood behind the soup cauldrons and smiled at him as she passed him his bowl.