Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

“What are you doing?” Rosalie demanded.

It was pretty obvious though. I was on my knees, hunched over like an alley cat with my nose to the dirt, sniff-sniffing.

“Sin.” Rosalie gave me a kick in the ass, but there was no time for foreplay.

“I’m sniffing for FIB boots, sex pot. I can smell the nectar of beeswax in ‘em. If they’ve been anywhere around here recently, I’ll know it.”

“Why would the FIB have been anywhere near here, stronzo? It’s a dusty woodland surrounding an abandoned railway station that hasn’t seen a customer in thirty years.”

I did a forward roll and leapt to my feet in front of her. “Fair point, honey pie. But you can never be too careful when it comes to nosey lawmen.”

“You and careful don’t belong in the same sentence.” She cocked a brow at me and I wiggled mine back at hers in a little silent eyebrow strip show.

“I got caught and fried once, baby cakes, I don’t plan on being caught twice. Especially now I have you to dance the dingo with.” I caught her chin. “Kiss me like the world’s about to end.” I leaned in, but she smacked my hand away like a little savage and my smile grew. “Are we about to play slapsy-fucksy?”

“No,” she said, capturing my chin and taking control of me instead, angling my head towards the rusted train tracks that headed out of the trees up to the old railway station. “Jerome might have answers about Roary’s location. Focus. For me, okay?”

“I can do that, sugar,” I promised, taking her hand from my throat and nipping each of her fingers in turn. “Jeromeo will know-eo.” I took off out of the trees, excited to reunite with my foster brother. Damn, it had been a long time since I’d seen him with these eyes. I was going to hug him so tight I might just puncture a lung.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and howled like a fully-fledged Oscura – which I was now, thank you very much. I’d run with the Wolves, cuddled the pups and played merry mischief in their backyard. Yup, that made me one of them now. I’d be getting my Oscura tattoo when I got back there later, I just couldn’t decide if I wanted it on my ass cheek or right there in the middle of my forehead, blazing like a beacon of Oscura glory.

I’d surprise Rosalie with it one way or the other.

“What happened to careful?” Rosalie drawled as my howl turned to a song about a sea frog and a hesitant owl.

“I’ve secured the perimeter,” I said with a shrug, my song falling dead in the middle. I couldn’t remember most of the lyrics anyway – which was weird considering I’d been making them up on the spot.

Rosalie almost cracked a smile and I stepped closer to her as we approached the train station. Ever since we’d escaped Darkmore, her smiles were playing hide and seek with me and we were in a feisty little game that I was struggling to win. She was damn good, but I was the better player. Crafty, cunning and cool – I was great at cunnilingus too, which wasn’t all that relevant to the game, but was always worth noting when the C words came to dance inside my mind.

“Tag – you’re it!” I slapped Rosalie’s arm and sprinted full pelt the last few steps to the station, shoving a rickety wooden door wide and releasing a wild laugh as I raced through the dusty space. Man, it was good to be free. It was like having wings, only the wings couldn’t flap or make me fly, but they still took me places. Places I’d been unable to go for so many years. They let me use my magic whenever I wanted, allowed my Order to be unshackled and my smiles were bigger out here too. They were the stretchy kind, reaching for my ears and trying to tickle them.

“Sin?”

I whirled at the male voice, so familiar, like the squawk of a baby eaglet I’d shared a nest with.

“Jeromeo?” I gasped, my gaze falling on him as he stood from an old iron bench by a crusty window. I half-lunged half-sprang at him like a gazelle, slamming into him and wrapping my arms around his big body, clutching him tight and waiting for his lung to pop. I loved this man and love was a fickle fairy that liked to come and go, pulling up her skirt to lay tiny shits on my head, but when it came to Jerome, she’d laid an egg instead, and inside that egg had been a rainbow.

I kissed the side of his face then finally released him, still clutching the back of his neck.

“There you are,” I sighed, my eyes scraping over his features just as Rosalie walked in. He wasn’t quite as tall as me, his eyes all brown and leafy, his jaw as square as a box balancing on a totem pole, and his curling, dark hair was tidy, pushed back but quaffed a little like a cresting wave.

“Hell, it’s good to see you,” Jerome sighed then looked to Rosalie. “You did the impossible.”

Rosalie shrugged, my girl buzzing like a humblebee. “Have you got my money?”

I knew she didn’t really give a fig about the money, but my honey pie knew how to dance the dance, and it was time to tango I supposed.

Jerome released a laugh then moved to the bench he’d been sitting on, picking up a duffle bag and tossing it to her. She caught it, laying it on a table and cracking it open just enough to glimpse the stacks of auras inside.

“You look good for a guy who’s been locked up in hell for years.” Jerome looked me up and down.

“What can I say?” I purred. “I thrive in the dark.”

My brother smiled again, and I pinched his cheek hard, shaking my head at him as I took in one of my favourite people in the world.

“Life was pretty boring without you around,” he said as I dropped my hand. “I’ve been waiting a long time to get you back.”

“We’ve got a lot of time to catch up on.” I nodded. “Do you still see much of Mrs Piggles?”

Jerome snorted. “That’s what you wanna know about first?”

“Who’s Mrs Piggles?” Rosalie asked, glancing between us curiously.

“Only the best pig in the pageant,” I said, aghast that she hadn’t heard of her.

“What pageant?” Jerome scoffed, amusement colouring his face as he looked to my girl. “She lived wild in the woods out the back of our old foster home. And no, I don’t see much of her, she’s probably dead by now.”

I gasped. “Don’t go saying things like that. She’s out there somewhere living her best piggy life.”

“Sure.” Jerome shrugged, moving to scruff my hair.

“As heart-warming as this little catch up is, I need some information,” Rosalie said, all businesslike and as hot as a candy stick that had been shoved between a Dragon’s lips – the mouth kind, not the pussy kind. She was a classy kind of hot, rough, edgy, the best tits in town and – oh shit I should have been concentrating.

“-help finding Roary Night. You had access to the camera feeds the night we escaped, so surely you saw something that could give us a clue as to where he’s been taken and what kind of security they’ve got around him now.”

Jerome scored a hand over his chin in thought, slipping his boring business hat on and I sighed at the turn this conversation had taken. Not that I didn’t want old Roars back in the boat, but it was getting as serious as cereal in here and that wasn’t my go-to vibe.

“Not that I recall,” Jerome said.

I tried to get a read on him, wondering if he knew more than he was letting on. He was good at those kinds of games, the sneaky, big money kinds. But I’d always been more suited to dancing than dicing.

“Well think harder,” Rosalie snarled. “They took him away then lied, claiming he’d escaped Darkmore with us. So wherever he is, they don’t want him being found.”

“So it’s some kind of cover up,” Jerome exhaled, a crease forming on his brow.

“Like a napkin over a small willy,” I agreed seriously. “Hidden in plain sight.”

“Well, I’ll take a look for you, but I can’t promise-” Jerome started but my lady love lunged, grabbing him by the throat and snarling in his face.

“You will promise,” she hissed. “And you will fulfil on this. Name your price. Get me a location and I will pay whatever you want for it. You’re clearly good for cash, so what is it you desire, Jerome?”

His eyes slid from her to me then back again, but I didn’t step in. It was unFaely anyway, but regardless of that, I was overjoyed that they were bonding so quickly. Look at her gripping his neck like that. My sex pot and my bro, it was the sweetest friendship in the making, blooming right before me.

“Take your hand off of me,” Jerome warned, the gravelly pit of danger in his voice making Rosalie pause. Yeah, my brother was a badass. The kind you didn’t cross or you ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. Or at least, some of you did. The rest might find its way into a sewer, burned in Faesine, or maybe fed to a few stray dogs.

Slowly, Rosalie lowered her hand, a beast in her own right, but a clever one at that. “A price. Name it,” she repeated.

“I’ll think on the price,” he said at last. “In the meantime, let me see what I can find out for you. I’ll stardust home and be back here in an hour.”

“We’ll come with you.” I stepped toward him.

“No,” he said quickly. “The FIB are crawling all over the streets looking for you. You’re safer here. I’ll be an hour, maybe less if I can work fast.”

“I’ll be counting,” Rosalie warned as Jerome took a small pouch of stardust from his pocket. The stuff may have been rare as shit, but my foster-brother knew ways of getting things that most Fae didn’t know how to even get a whiff of in their daily bore-fest of a life.

I wiggled my fingers at him in goodbye as he disappeared into a glittering mist and I was left with my honey pie. I smiled big at her, but her smile hid again and she headed out of a door onto the old platform beside the tracks. I trailed after her, sensing something was off. But I didn’t really know what. I mean, sure, Roary was lost and she had a thing for that Lion boy, but it was also sunny outside and the grass was so green. I’d never seen grass like that, I kinda wished I was a cow so I could enjoy the juicy lucys of it, but they had four stomachs – lucky mothercluckers – and I held just the one, dull stomach that only did the basics. Digesting grass wasn’t for me. Of course, I could always give it a whirl and see what happened, but getting the plops wasn’t on my agenda today.

Rosalie dropped onto the edge of the platform, her legs hanging down over the rusted tracks. I paced behind her, frowning then smiling as my thoughts flitted from one idea to the next while I tried to figure out what mood was ailing her. Always a challenge, these things. Moods and the like. Mine moved like the wind, this way, that way, but no weatherman could forecast me. Rosalie was different, but not how most people were different to me. She was a unique sprig of a dandelion. Blue or pink or any colour dandelions weren’t supposed to be. And when her petals turned to seeds, she deserved the right person to come and scatter them to the wind, setting her free. She had her moon mates, but she had me too. I was good for blowing seeds at least, so if that was what she needed now, I’d fill my lungs and give her all I had to give.

“Sad, that’s the one, ain’t it? I think I’ve landed on it, petal,” I murmured, moving closer. “I’ll help you turn into a seed and fly away on the breeze.”

She glanced back at me and I saw it at last, the raw pain in her eyes that she had done so well at veiling. Or maybe I was just a blind, blind man sometimes. It was difficult to see things through a clear lens when your mind was full of hopping rabbits and escaped crickets, but I had a view now and I was holding onto it while I could.

“That pain in you won’t do,” I said in anger, a storm riled in me by it. “I can’t have it. Won’t abide by it, in fact.”

She released a breath then turned her gaze back to the tracks that no longer led to anywhere. No more trains were coming to this station, and maybe that was how my honey pie felt. Like there was no way forward without her Roary.

“You see, I’m a man of many boxes. All of them stored inside me, some full of clowns and others stuffed with knives. But this one here that you’ve broken open just now, that one’s my darkest dealing, wild girl. I only open that one when I’m about to kill, you understand? I will bleed them out for you, cut down each enemy that stands along the path to your Lion. Because I will wage wars and raze hell to see you smile again.”

I moved to sit beside her, my legs swinging as I took her hand in mine, and she blinked up at me, gazing into my eyes and seeking something there I didn’t dare to hide. Let her see me, why not? Let her peel my skin from my bones and pick through each box until she finds out that I’m a monster made of many malevolent things. Let her find my wasted heart among them all too, discarded like the trash I’d often thought it to be and take it into her palm, caress it, stoke life back into its rotten core. She did it there and then, that look alone enough to heal something shattered in me, though I was the one who was supposed to be healing her.

I lifted her hand, kissing the back of it like I was some prince asking her to be my princess, but we were the opposite of that. A devil and his rogue beauty. Yes, we shared a dark kind of romance, she and me. We were cracked in all the hurty places, but together we filled each other’s wounds and laced each other’s scars in bliss.

“Kiss me now, pretty one,” I urged. “Let me scatter them seeds to the breeze. At least for a moment.”

“I think sometimes you see me like no one else quite does,” she whispered. “You see the lesions on my heart, Sin Wilder.”

“That’s where I love you deepest, Rosa,” I growled and she leaned into me at last.

I inhaled her scent before capturing her lips with mine, tasting her agony and letting it bind me to her deeper. My vows were unbreakable when it came to her. I would break bones and slit throats upon her word alone. Did she know how she quietened the demons in my head? How the world was so perfectly still when her mouth was upon mine?

I kissed her until the bitterness of her sadness sweetened just enough to know I had done right by her. Then we parted and I stared at my world, my reason for reaching for sanity, and I knew no face would ever compare to this one. I would stitch it into the backs of my eyelids so I could see it when I was away from her too.

She laid her head on my shoulder. “Tell me something good. Something that takes my mind off of everything.”

So I did. I told her about the first time I’d seen Mrs Piggles, and the second time, then the third. I told her of the scarf I’d tied around her neck – stolen from an uppity woman who had called me an uncouth ballsack, or something along those lines, then I told her about the string of pearls I’d gotten for Mrs Piggles too from an old lady who I’d helped across the street. Then I told her of the times Jerome and I had gone on adventures together; our first thefts, our first kills. I told her all I knew until Jerome finally reappeared and came striding over to us with a piece of paper clutched in his hand.

We both jumped up and I eyed the note excitedly. “Is that a recipe for a Victoria Sponge, I could reaaaaalllly go for one right about now.”

“No luck, Sin.” He smirked, then handed Rosalie the note. “It’s an address. Warden Pike’s home address to be exact. I didn’t see much on the camera feed, except the obvious fact that the Fae who captured Roary weren’t FIB. They were marked with a symbol for a company I tracked down called Drav Enterprises. A quick and very illegal hack of their accounts showed an account number that flagged in my database. It seems Warden Pike has been receiving money from them for a long time. She’ll have answers, I’m sure.”

“This isn’t close to done,” Rosalie warned. “Once I find Roary, you’ll help us get to him.”

“For a price,” Jerome reminded her. I’d seen a man or two promise my brother an untold price for help before then come up short on the pay-out. Not the best of moves on all accounts, but I knew my wild girl was good for it. Whatever it was.

“I’ll pay in pickles and pears,” I jibed, but neither of them smiled. They were staring at each other, a staring contest perhaps, and my girl won the trophy as Jerome blinked and stepped back.

“Contact me when you have more information.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, Sin, I have a job I need your help with and I’ve got a safehouse ready for you to-”

I shrugged out of his hold, taking a step away and shaking my head.

“I’m not going with you Jeromeo,” I said, frowning in confusion because surely he could see that – surely my love for this beauty beside me shone all around, lighting the space and screaming like a claxon that sang her name in a squawking tone that was impossible to ignore. “This wild girl stole my heart when she stole me from that prison. I’m her monster now. All hers.”

Jerome snorted like I was joking, reaching for me again but when I ducked aside once more, bobbing and weaving like a whale in a jet stream, he fell so very still.

Scary still.

Psycho killer on the prowl still.

I side-stepped to put me in front of my babycakes and raised my chin. “Say it,’ I growled, the badness in me roughening my voice because I could feel the challenge in the air as it ran down my spine.

“You can’t be serious?” Jerome sneered. “You think you…love her?”

“Thinking is for top hats and cats with monocles,” I reminded him. “It isn’t my thinker that fell for her – it’s my thumper.” I put my hand over my heart in demonstration, its violent pounding a testament to that truth.

“More like your cock,” Jerome replied dismissively, and I didn’t like the way his lip was curling just a little, a sneer in my direction which he’d never offered me before. “Come on, Sin, you know how this goes. How many Fae have claimed to love you just because they’re obsessed with fucking you? It’s always the same though, isn’t it? No one actually wants you. They just want the fantasy you paint for them and the feeling of your co-”

Pain and rage and blinding screams were filling up my skull to bursting point, but it wasn’t them who lunged for him first – it was my wild wolf girl who shoved me aside and rounded on Jerome with a feral snarl.

“You say one more vile word about my man and I’ll rip that festering tongue from your mouth before choking you with it, bastardo,” Rosalie hissed with a venom that made my heart stall then race then do a triple flip, tuck, curl, whirly-loo-ha and flamble. Did she just call me hers??

Jerome straightened, fire flaring in his eyes because no one ever spoke to him in a tone even close to that and lived. No one ever threatened him and made it out the room – but she would. Somehow, as I met his rough and ruinous stare, I knew he knew it too.

“Tell me then,” he said, that sneer still in place as he looked from her to me where I lingered at her back, the damsel for her to protect. “What form does he take to suit your desires, oh great queen of the Oscura Clan? What does he have to become for your love to burn so fiercely?”

Rosalie smiled darkly, offering him a sight of all those pearly whites as she offered me her hand.

“Show him, Sin,” she purred, and I purred too, inside and out as I took her hand and looked straight at Jerome as I shifted into her perfect desire – and nothing happened.

The seconds ticked by and Jerome stared from her to me, confusion turning to a calculating comprehension. That fire burned hotter, fiercer, more furiously for a few moments and then he blinked and poof, it was gone.

Jerome straightened, a smile breaking across his dark features at long last as he saw it. “She wants you as…you.”

“Only me,” I agreed. “And she has me.”

“And there was me thinking you don’t have a heart,” Jerome said, a little sting in his tail because he was obviously upset that I’d found new places to be.

“So he stays with me,” Rosalie reiterated, and I shrugged, a pawn to her dominion.

Jerome nodded slowly. “I suppose I’ll see you soon then, brother.”

I nodded. “As soon as a spoon in a lagoon.”

He tossed stardust over his head and was gone just like that, leaving me and Rosalie with an address which I snatched from her hand to double check there wasn’t a cake recipe on the back. No joy. But I was soon going to find out if Warden Pike knew how to bake.