“We’re too late,” she says.
“What do you mean? We’re here and so is Rory. We’ve reached him.”
Vivian lifts her finger to point to where the wolf is standing, and I notice a slight difference between the ground that lies beneath his front paws and his back paws. The ground in front of him is trodden down like the inside perimeter of cages at the zoo where the animals have circled around inside so many times that their repeated path creates a grove in the ground.
Also how the perimeter line of a guarded wolf pack territory might look like.
Rory’s back paws still rest on the rougher, wilder ground of the forest … but I doubt that matters.
“He’s on Remus’ territory,” Vivian says, quietly. She doesn’t move or take a step forward. She looks as if she is preparing to
watch Rory be torn to shreds at any moment … and then possibly be murdered herself as she tries to save him.
Even so, I’m not ready to give up. The whole forest could be descending upon us and that still wouldn’t stop me. Not when we’re already so close.
I start walking toward the wolf, toward Rory. He flinches for a minute and I can see his eyes dart between me and Remus’ territory as if he’s trying to decide whether to pounce back into his run or wait for me to reach him.
“Rory, please,” I say as tears start to swell in my eyes. “Please don’t run. Please.”
I hear a low-pitched growl emanate from him. It doesn’t sound angry or threatening … it sounds like pain. I can feel the sound of it reverberate against my ribs the way you can feel the bass at a rock concert.
“Please,” I whimper again as I walk all the way up to him and fall in front of him onto my knees. I reach out my hand toward him and to my surprise, he sits down on his hind legs to face me and lowers his head.
I run my fingers through his soft fur and wrap them behind his ears. Then I put my head against his and bury my face in his muzzle. I can hear his deep exhale and feel his warm breath near my ear. I wrap both of my arms around him and hold him as though I were holding on to my own existence in danger of being swallowed-up whole.
“I know what you think happened,” I whisper. It takes everything in me to keep my voice steady. “Vivian told me, and I know what you saw and what you think it meant. But Rory, you have to listen to me and believe me; nothing happened between me and Tom at the bonfire … nothing.”
I have to swallow hard, forcing the memory from my mind.
If Rory knew the truth of what happened, it wouldn’t be Remus he was here to kill.
Tom might not have been successful in his underhanded attempt to seduce me, but I doubt that would matter to any one of these boys … least of all Rory.
“I was so upset that you were gone, that all of you were gone, that I just didn’t know how to handle it. I couldn’t feel anything anymore except for an unbearable emptiness, so I tried to distract myself.”
I take another breath. “I just needed to feel something, anything aside from the gut-wrenching pain of missing you. But you have to believe me Rory. I couldn’t bring myself to make love to anyone else, not even when I was drugged-up on mushrooms, because something in me knows that I can’t give myself wholly like that to anyone else.”
I feel his massive ribcage stop moving against me as he holds his breath and I can feel the pounding of his heartbeat start to race like thunder inside his chest. He lifts his head and shakes it, and in what looks like a swift and effortless motion, he turns back into a man right before me.
Rory perches on his bent legs with his hands on the ground in front of him, completely naked and with lingering gold eyes that look as if they’re on fire. If it wasn’t for the immediate danger that I know we’ll soon be in, I’d want nothing more in whole entire world for him to make love to me right this very moment without hesitation.
He is the most beautiful, most powerful man I have ever seen.
His tensed and rippling muscles gleam under the encroaching moonlight. His eyes are the most enthralling thing of all. I can feel the look in his eyes inside my soul.
He falls onto his knees and raises his hands to hold the sides of my face to his. He presses his face against mine so that I can feel the movement of his lips against my mouth as he speaks.
“You didn’t let him touch you? You’re still wholly mine?” His voice is a concoction of pain and hope.
Rory’s words dance around on top of each synapse in my brain … his?
He said that I am his still.
“Yes,” I nod against his temple. “I’m still yours. I didn’t let him touch me, not like that.”
Rory presses his mouth against mine as if nothing else in the world exists; not Remus’ land, not Vivian standing there watching, only us in this moment where everything is temporarily the way that it should be.
When he takes his lips from mine, I say what I have been wanting to tell him the entire time he’s been away from me.