Greyson
The last of the spiders’ venom had faded from my skin days ago, but I could still feel them.
Not the crawling feeling.
That had stopped sometime around dawn.
This was different.
An itch.
Deep under my flesh, like the poison had laid eggs in my blood and they were hatching.
I scratched at my arm.
Hard.
It did nothing to elevate the itch.
All it did was tear open the healing flesh.
Blood welling up under my nails.
Son of a bitch.
Elma, my wolf, roared in my head.
Stop.
Doing.
That.
“Make me.”
You’re tearing yourself apart.
“It’s itchy”
My wolf could heal almost anything.
A hole in the chest.
A broken femur.
Hell, he’d healed the damage when I was fourteen and decided it was a good idea to get high by drinking alcohol fermented with wolfsbane.
Twenty hours of excruciating pain, but he pulled me through.
But for some reason, he was completely useless when it came to the aftermath of spiders.
I scratched again.
Harder.
Stop it!
he threatened.
Or I will leave you to bleed to death.
“That means you die too, genius.” I reminded him.
Hmm.
His high-and-mighty voice echoed in my skull.
Let me think about it.
Life with a moron…
or sweet eternal silence in Elysium with the goddess and Jodie Kraven’s she-wolf?
I could feel his sarcasm bleeding through.
Oh no.
I really want to stay with you.
“Oh shut up.
You love me.” I smiled wildly.
Sure.
Whatever.
A pause.
Now play with something other than your flesh, Grey.
I lay flat on the cold floor of my borrowed room and took Elma’s advice.
Grabbed a heavy, leather-wrapped stone ball from the pile beside me and started hurling it at the ceiling.
Good boy, Grey.
Keep playing catch.
“Asshole.” I laughed
Elma was one of a kind.
We got along just fine…
He had a wicked sense of humor and a great battle strategy mind.
Overprotective to a fault.
But when it came to my father, he was a pacifist.
A coward.
Thump.
Catch.
Thump.
Catch.
The rhythm was the only thing holding my thoughts together.
Without it, my mind drifted back to Tilly Ann.
A week, two days.
Six hours and counting since the last time I saw her.
Didn’t think it was possible to miss kissing someone until now.
Thump.
Catch.
I missed her taste.
Tilly tasted like…
arousal and caramel.
I’d give about anything to spend some time in that pink flush of wet flesh between her legs.
I’d sell Elma to get sucked off by her too.
Geez, fool, thanks.
Elma retorted.
Do I need to remind you to stay away from your brother’s future Luna and her pink flush of flesh?
Less you catch another bad case of spiders—
“I’m staying away, am I not?” I asked the smart-ass.
I murmured to myself this time.
“I’m staying away.”
A knock at the door interrupted another fantasy.
“Fuck off,” I yelled, not bothering to lift my head.
The door opened anyway.
Saber Cole stood in the hallway with a torch, his face pale, his usual composure nowhere to be found.
He looked like a man who’d just seen a ghost.
I sat up in one fluid motion and hurled the stone ball at him.
It wasn’t a playful toss.
It was a strike.
It caught him right on the bridge of his nose with a nasty crack.
He grunted, stumbling back a step, a hand flying to his face.
“Damn it, Greyson.”
“I did say to fuck off.” I laid back down, focusing on a crack in the ceiling.
“The words were simple.
Even for a sniveling servant.”
He shut the door, leaning against it for a second, collecting himself.
I could smell his anxiety.
And beneath it, something more.
Fear.
I should care.
I knew that.
Chase would care about smelling fear on a beta wolf.
His type didn’t cower easily.
But he was interrupting my fantasy of Tilly Ann.
And genuinely, if I was being truthful…
I really wasn’t a good person.
He didn’t speak.
Just stood there, breathing.
It was the silence that finally got to me.
Saber was never silent. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“When I say ‘fuck off,'” I said to the ceiling, my voice low and very bored, “it’s not a suggestion.
And it’s the last polite warning you will get, Saber.”
“I’m not here for me.” He blurted it out at last.
“Of course not.
You’re my brother’s bitch.” I reached for another stone ball from the small pile beside me.
“What does my illustrious brother desire now?
My soul?
My left lung?
I’m freshly out of body part to give, Saber.”
“He needs help.” Saber moved then, crossing the room with quick strides.
He snatched my jacket from the back of a chair and threw it down beside me.
“I need your help, Greyson.
You have to come.
Now.”
“No.” I let the word hang, smiling without humor.
“See, Saber, one of the few joys of my miserable existence is that there are only three people in this world whose orders I absolutely must obey.
The Alpha.
The Luna.
And my psychopathic older-by-seven-minutes twin brother.”
I watched him closely.
“And that leaves a wonderfully long list of people I can ignore.
And you, my faithful friend, are at the very fucking bottom of it.
So, for the last time.
Fuck.
Off.”
“It’s Chase.” His voice dropped, stripped of all rank and pretense.
“Something’s happened.
It’s…
it’s bad.
Please.
You have to come.”
That got me.
Or at least, it got Elma’s attention.
Because he simply refused to shut up until I stood up.
I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked at Saber.
Really looked.
The panic in his eyes was real.
And I was curious as a fairy’s cat.
“Well.” I breathed, a smile cutting across my face.
“This ought to be good.
Don’t tell me the crippled invalid finally took my heartfelt advice and threw himself off a cliff.”
Saber’s face hardened.
His fear burned away into pure contempt for me.
“Are you going to help him or not, you selfish bastard?”
I stood up in one motion, the movement testing my newly healed body.
Saber took a step back.
Good.
He hadn’t completely lost his mind yet.
I yanked my trousers up and fastened them, toed my boots on without sitting.
Grabbed my jacket and shoved my arms through the sleeves as I walked, deliberately shouldering Saber out of my way as I passed.
“Chase better be close to death,” I said.
“Or you’re going to need a physician, little buddy.”