Wolf's Path (Monstrous Hearts: The Short Stories)

Lupercalia

Author's Note: I originally wrote this for a Valentine's Day contest but ended up going way over the word limit. Oops.

Alice always took impish pleasure in asking after his past. He was still so mysterious to her, this lover of hers, this man who had first shown her that wolves might sometimes shake off their fur and become men. In the long hours of night she could sense how ancient he really was, how he thrived in darkness like something that had existed back when struggling fires in their little stone pits were the only sources of light once the sun set.

And so while they curled together in a bed mounded with hand-stitched quilts, she planted kisses along the hard muscles of his chest until a heartbeat reverberated strong and steady against her mouth as she said, "Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Have you ever celebrated it?"

"No." Colton's voice always held a hint of a growl, a trace of his feral nature. He was already close to sleep, one hand lazily tracing the lines of her shoulders and neck, turning gentle whenever it found a fresh bite mark from his earlier frenzy.

She arched into his touch, using the motion to press her breasts against him. "Why not?"

"Never had a reason to." He liked teasing her with cryptic answers, and now teased her further by catching her chin and pulling her face to his. His kiss was rough and lingering, giving her a hint of his sharp teeth, a taste of the blood still on his tongue from an earlier hunt in the woods, but she only clutched him close, unafraid of his wildness.

And when he broke off to let her breathe, she only laughed and insisted, "It's a good excuse to make the day a little sweeter. Candy and flowers and mushy cards. Maybe it's really superficial, but..."

If he were merely a beast wearing the shape of a man, he would have become rough with impatience. Pushing her off to fall asleep, perhaps. Or pinning her body down with his and turning her words into cries.

Instead he caught her chin once more, this time gently, and even the darkness couldn't hide his sudden alertness. When one thumb ran along her lower lip, she realized he'd heard the catch in her voice as it had trailed off, and had sensed the echo of old pain in the way she'd ducked her head to avoid meeting his eyes.

"Is that what you want out of tomorrow?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I've never actually celebrated Valentine's Day. At first, I was always single when it came around. And then once I was wasn't..."

Ah, she never felt shame with him seeing the shattered parts of her. He had witnessed the worst of her unflinching just as she had with him. But even when old wounds finally heal, the scars still pull—ugly, misshapen, thick. Their very presence reminds one of how deep the cut went, how mutilated the tender flesh had been.

There was still a large part of Alice that wished Colton had known her before her last lover. She wished they could have met while she'd still been eager instead of worn down, curious instead of desperate. That her heart could be pristine for him, unmarked with fear. Her most bitter regret wasn't over spending years of her life with Magdalene and her abuse; it was that now no one else would ever know what she had been like whole.

It stole the last of the laughter from her voice and left her words shaking as she murmured, "On our first Valentine's Day together, I asked Magdalene how she liked to celebrate it. I wanted to make a special breakfast for us and maybe go out on a date. She just scoffed and said I'd swallowed the bait for a bullshit holiday thought up by ad executives to sell diamonds."

A low growl rumbled against her as Colton's arm squeezed her closer to him, but he otherwise kept silent, giving her the chance to say more. "I knew that she was wrong and right at the same time. That at first Valentine's Day honored two martyrs and had nothing to do with romance. But I didn't argue about the origins because her point was clear enough—and true. I was being hopelessly romantic and superficial about life."