The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 6: Taking the Cure, Part 10

 Lena nodded, though as he looked over his shoulder Ammas saw the girl bending down and whispering comfort to Carala again. The cursewright shook his head, recalling the same stubbornness she had displayed at Orson's exorcism. Silently he cursed Casimir's absence. He hadn't wanted the boy to hear the details of the princess's seduction, but he could have used his apprentice's help right now.

When he returned to the altar Lena had drawn a respectable distance away. Carala lay quietly, a glassy look in her eyes that told Ammas the charm on her neck had put the wolf's blood into a deep doze, and she was liable to soon follow. Certain words from the Therkostic tongue, the language of the worlds beyond, would send it to an even deeper sleep, but that he wouldn't do until the diagnosis was complete. "All right, Lena. Stand a little further back. Mari?"

"Carala, Princess of the House of Deyn," she said thickly and dreamily. Lena's eyes widened.

Ammas looked at her and shook his head, his lips pressed tightly together.

Lena nodded, but the look of amazement on her face diminished not a whit.

He would deal with it after Carala had taken the cure. Until then, treating her was all Ammas could afford to worry about. "Carala, then. Let me gauge your heartbeat."

She nodded languidly and arched almost sensually up to Ammas's touch as his hand pressed gently against her left breast, his brows knitting together as he read her pulse. Slow, a bit slower than normal, but that was to be expected with the charm's influence.

The last step in the diagnosis he did not announce to Carala, seeking to catch the wolf unawares. From the pouch that held his twinhooks he drew a dark blue crystal flask full of a thick liquid that was colorless and, to a human nose, odorless.

But the liquid was not odorless to a werewolf's nose.

Carala reacted at once as he twisted off the cap. A low, aching gasp escaped her lips. Her spine curved in obvious need, seeking to press her breast to his hand more fully. Ammas maintained his palm where it needed to be, but not before he felt the shape of the girl's nipple at the edge of his hand, perking through the thin fabric of the undershirt, marbling into aroused hardness. Her fingers and toes began to flex and unflex.

Ammas knew already that the diagnosis was positive, but the instructions for this procedure were adamant: he could not soothe the wolf, put it back in its cage, until he had seen an indisputable sign of its presence, and sexual arousal was not enough. So, steeling himself, sweating as profusely as he had before he had tended to Lena's father, he began to raise the flask of wolf essence closer and closer to the princess's flaring nostrils.

The sign he needed appeared almost at once.

Her lips parted, lusher than they had once been, given a sweet fullness by the new fangs behind them. Lasciviously her tongue darted at her lips, her bound hands curling into loose fists, her hips rising as the sudden but growing need in her loins compelled her to seek out something to satisfy it. Ammas's gaze darted to her fingertips, seeing the telltale black color filling her nails. Under his palm, the slow heartbeat began to quicken, first to the rapid pulse of a human being undergoing some excited or terrified condition, then into the far quicker beat of a werewolf.

The princess's heart was now a wolf's heart.

Quickly he moved to cap the flask, concealing the scent from the werewolf princess. A low, cheated howl escaped her lips, even as the fangs behind them began to shrink. The sound of it made Lena shudder visibly. But the wolf was not retreating entirely, and as Ammas lifted his hand from Carala's breast to the charm at her throat, his eyes met hers.