Taming the Wolf Prince (Re-uploading Edited Chapters)

Chapter 20 Playing the Serpent

Red didn't even need to follow the scent of her blood. Dots of it were splattered all over the gravel in a direct trail. Aura extinguished, bloodlust multiplied like a virus in his mind. Sweat dripped from his brow just thinking about how he was going to kill someone he'd soul bonded with, but the more his wings burrowed out from his flesh, the more that thought vanished into the jaws of hunger. Shivers of terror consumed him. Still his legs moved beyond his control. Steely hunger drained his rationality until he was nothing but an animal stalking its prey.

He looked up at the tall, Gothic building stabbing the black sky above him. Apparently, she had come to the same conclusion as he, deciding she had a better chance of living praying for a miracle than running for her life.

The doors screeched in protest as he pushed them apart. In his god form, his blazing aura was hard to contain, and his blinding light swallowed the darkness. There was no need to hide it; to do so was purely habit.

She sat just out the reach of his aura. On her knees in the shadows, praying to a multicoloured shaft of light that rained through the stained glass. It cast a ringlet of reflection atop her golden hair like a halo. There was something strikingly beautiful about seeing a naked woman in a religious place – like witnessing the serpent in the garden of Eden. Strangely enough, he wasn't aroused by her body, her golden tumbling waves of hair, nor the way the moonlight made her skin angelically glow; no, he was enraptured by her, admiring her like one of those naked angels in a classical piece of art.

His chest was warm despite his waning mind. It was curiosity as usual that made him inch forward. How did she find herself sleeping with Lupine when they were seen as the penultimate tempters of sin? He wanted to learn more about her, but it seemed their time together would be cut short.

He towered before her, casting a tall, gnarly looking shadow over her form. Tears glittered in those warm brown eyes of hers. He didn't see the defiance that there was earlier in their fight. A strange and unpleasant feeling coiled in his stomach that made him feel psychically nauseous. If she was so afraid of dying then why did she go after him? She knew how dangerous he was. He hadn't even forced anything here; she was the one determined to bed him in an attempt to kill him to restore her status in the church. She could have lived, but there was nothing he could do to save her now.

He laid his hand on her shoulder as if attempting to consolidate her. He wasn't sure why. He'd learned enough social cues to know you were supposed to comfort like this, but he'd never actually been able to do so successfully. It was probably just a thinly veiled attempt to fit in.

It was difficult to speak. All his body did was tell him to kill and kill, and anything but that function was slowly slipping away like sand through his fingers.

"I think your prayers may have summoned the wrong god, woman," he said.

She knew her time was up. He could tell by the fear in her eyes. As their gazes snagged, she shivered, eyes as wide as you'd expect from someone about to be judged. His stance against evil was less of a moral thing and more just an animalistic instinct, but there were some things that made even his stomach churn. Wolf hunters killed so many innocent wolves and used their children as dogs for their hunting, sometimes even selling them into sex work. They were sickeningly evil, even to someone like him.

Red stepped closer and his wings ignited with all the tenacity of Hellfire. She whimpered, eyes glittering in the fiery heat.

Expression blank, Red touched his hand to her face. For a moment, he caressed her. Terrified tears splattered down her cheeks as his hand turned into a vacuum and her soul began to seep like an icy breath her lips.

She screamed. In a last ditch effort she grabbed his face and desperately pressed her lips against hers.

A multitude of emotions exploded like a nuclear bomb inside Red. The imprint returned to him and hit him like a sack of bricks. Empathy, compassion, love, mortal fear -- with a human soul connected to his so directly, suddenly feeling was brought to his machine-like form. Her lips breathed life into him. Colours flashed before his eyes like a dazzling disco ball.