“Let me go!” she cried.
The scent of her fear was sharp, almost metallic, and it churned my stomach. My grip slackened, and she wrenched free, stumbling back.
Picking up her skirts, she stumbled down the snowy path, her feet clumsy and afraid.
Of me.
Cursing under my breath, I took off after her. Thief or not, I couldn’t let a young girl wander about the forest alone. It went against everything I believed in; I could no sooner let her go than I could fly into the sun.
I caught up to her easily, she ran without care for her tracks, leaving ample evidence of her passing. She seemed to be desperate to escape, but all her clattering and noise would be sure to wake up the predators who slumbered in the forest.
Again, I leaped and put myself in her path. She gasped and tried to run around me, but it was easy enough to cut her off. I spread my hands out in front of me to keep her at bay as if I were calming a spooked filly.
Clearing my throat, I spoke, wincing at the way my throat rasped. “I mean you no harm.”
The girl stayed still in the path, clearly debating whether to go right or left to cut around me. I couldn’t stop my sigh this time.
Why was I even bothering? I should’ve let the chit run blindly into the night and out of my life. Why did I care if the wolves got her or if she broke her neck tripping over a tree root?
It would be less hassle for me, in the end.
But the part of me that was still human, that remembered walking down the streets of Kalinovo, my hometown back in Drakazov, and smiling at a pretty, apple-cheeked young womanin the streets—that little part of me rebelled at the idea of causing more harm. I had put enough pain into the world.
Spreading my hands—I darted a quick glance at them to check that my claws weren’t visible, thank the gods—I lowered my voice, trying to project a sense of calm.
“I mean you no harm,” I repeated firmly. “I thought you were a thief.” She was still a thief, but I bit my tongue on that and tried to seem non-threatening.
“I’m not a thief,” her voice wavered when she spoke. “I thought the tower was abandoned.” She swallowed hard; my hearing could make out her wheezy breaths as she gasped for air. “I’m sorry for disturbing you—please—let me go, I promise I won’t return.”
My mind whirled with more questions, but I bit them back. The girl’s obvious fear and the scent of her distress in the air was turning my stomach. Suddenly, it felt important that I prove to her—and myself—that I wasn’t something to be feared.
I wasn’t abeast.
“The forest isn’t safe,” I murmured, daring to take a tiny step closer to her. She didn’t flinch, which I took as a good sign. “Let me escort you home.”
Immediately, she shook her head, her eyes widening. She shuffled back, and it took everything in me not to follow. I dug my fingers into my palms, quelling the beastly instinct to follow her as if she was prey.
I wasnota beast. I was a man.
“There are wolves. And wild beasts,” I said, a little desperately. As if to help me prove my case, a wolf bayed in the night, the call taken up by its fellows. The girl flinched at the sound, andI spoke again. “I’ll follow you a few paces behind. Just until you reach your town.”
She eyed me uncertainly, and I coughed as a sudden inspiration hit me. “All I want is to make sure my presence at the tower remains a secret,” I said softly. “If something were to happen to you, it woud bring a town’s worth of trouble down on me.”
It was true, but the more pressing reason—the one I didn’t tell her—was that I just wanted to feel like a man again.
Just a normal man, escorting his lady home in the night.
She seemed appeased by my honesty, and after a long moment, she nodded. “And once I reach home, you swear to let me go unharmed?”
I nodded. “I swear it.”
With another nod, she raised her hood again, shielding her head from the snowflakes that had started to drift to the ground. Slowly, she set off down the path again, skirting along me with great trepidation. I watched her go, letting her get twenty paces ahead of me before I started to follow in her path.
In the beginning, she turned back frequently, looking back at me as if to see if I was truly going to let her go unmolested. Every time she turned and saw me behind her, with the distance between us neither lessening nor increasing, I heard her heartbeat slow down further until it began to beat steadily again.
As we crunched through the snow, it was almost…peaceful. It had been a long time since I had spent so much time in the company of another human in such harmony.
As the houses of her town came into view, I stopped, my heart feeling heavy. My time with her had come to an end, and I realized I would miss this brief moment of feeling like I was connected to my fellow humans again.
