He dragged his eyes up to meet mine, and I saw the romantic part of his soul that he would have rather died than show to the other wolves. “You’ll find someone younger and prettier than me,” he said, huffing a sigh and letting his hands wander over my body, as though memorizing it. “You’ll be the toast of the Old Realm. You’ll have your pick of nubile, sophisticated men and women from your healer’s course, and from the grand cities. You won’t want to come back to a rough old wolf like me.”
“I loveyou, Dushka,” I repeated with more passion.
I kissed him again as well, drawing his tongue into my mouth and sucking on it for a moment. When I let him go, I stared hard into his eyes.
“I love my gruff old bear of a master,” I said, even though I hadn’t been a pup for a year now, “and I don’t care how many pretty men turn my head or how many women want to take a turn with me in bed in Royersford, I will come back to you when I’ve earned my healer’s certificate, because I loveyou.”
Dushka made a sound that might have been a laugh, but could also have been a sob, and clasped the sides of my face, pulling me in for a searing kiss. I molded myself to him and just let him have me. He’d had me in every way imaginable in the last year and a half, and while the novelty of inventive positions and fancy toys had faded a bit, the joy of him kissing me from the heart would never grow old.
“Come on,” he said in a cracking voice as he pulled back. “Uriah and the others want to be on the river early. And Ludvig and your friend Anton are anxious to continue with their mission as well.”
He was right. Anton and Ludvig had arrived in Kettering the day before yesterday, and they’d made it known to us last night that they wanted to leave at first light this morning. We weren’t traveling together, since I wanted to take the river north so we could reach the mountains as quickly as possible. Anton and Ludvig intended to make their way through the forest, meeting with as many wild wolves as possible to convince them to move to our kingdom.
As I rolled out of bed, my body felt heavy, like maybe it didn’t want to go after all.
Which was ridiculous. I wanted to attend the healer’s course in the Old Realm more than I wanted to breathe. It was an astoundingly rare opportunity. Almost no one from the frontier was willing to make the journey to the Old Realm, and even fewer had been accepted into the course in the first place.
It was a miracle that I’d been accepted. I’d sent an application back in the spring, after helping one of Gravlock’s healers, Galina, attend to Magnus when he’d been stabbed. I’d written my letter asking for acceptance as the son of a nobleman from Yacovissi, not as a wolf. I’d forged my father’s signature and everything. Not that anyone in the Old Realm would know what my father’s handwriting looked like…or that he was dead.
I suspected I’d have to keep the fact that I was a wolf secret from everyone I came across in the Old Realm. Fortunately, I still looked like a young, sweet nobleman from the cities. I hadn’t taken on the gruff edge that most of the wolves in Kettering had.
Kettering wasn’t like Gravlock. It still had its rough corners and a whisper of the wild to it. It was the eastern-most settlement in the Wolf River Kingdom. Our territory overlapped the wild territory of the eastern forest, and sometimes I worried that the entire settlement could fall to marauding wild wolves, if they banded together against us. That was a problem for me to worry about when I got back, though.
My fellow Sons probably would have scoffed at the house I shared with Dushka. It was primitive, I would admit, but at least it was made out of stone. Not like some of the mud huts I knew wild wolves lived in, or temporary shelters that others called home. It was only three rooms, all lined up one after another with the common room in the center. The roof needed rethatching, but we had a nice stove in the part of the common room that served as a kitchen, a large bed with a carved frame in the bedroom, and a few other refined furnishings throughout.
We didn’t have a toilet or running water, though, so after I got up, used the chamber pot, and dressed enough not to make a spectacle of myself, I carried the pot outside to the cesspit, then stopped in at the bathhouse that stood near the river for a quick scrub.
I was happy to find Anton already there, standing at one of the trough-like sinks, bathing with a sponge, a frown on his face.
“Something wrong?” I asked him, taking up a spot at the trough beside him and pulling off my shirt for a quick sponge bath.
Anton startled out of his thoughts, then let out a sigh. “No,” he said in the most unconvincing voice I’d ever heard.
I waited for more but there wasn’t any. I started my bath, but kept an eye on my friend and asked, “Are you sure?”
Anton sent me a flat, sideways look, as though he didn’t particularly appreciate me nagging him. I was just trying to be the friend I knew Anton needed.
Anton surprised me by glancing back over his shoulder and checking to make certain the bathhouse was empty. “I think Ludvig and I are over,” he said in a near whisper.
I paused in the middle of washing, quickly turning my look of shock to brotherly sympathy. “I’m sorry. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? And how are you going to manage this trip if you’re…?” I didn’t know how to end the question.
Anton shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s the end for certain. We’ve just been so…distant lately.”
I hummed sagely, as if I understood.
In all honesty, I didn’t know what to say. Like me, Anton had been captured by Karpov the slaver and sold to a wolf leader. I thought Anton and Ludvig had a good relationship, like Dushka and I did. The two of them were both fairly reserved, but I guess relationships changed.
That thought sent a shiver of worry down my spine as Anton and I finished washing up and drying off. I had been telling Dushka since I’d conceived of the idea of going for the healer’s course that nothing would change between the two of us. I really did love him. He was brave and intelligent and caring, even if he didn’t like people knowing that, and we just fit together.
But if things could fall apart between Anton and Ludvig, like they’d fallen apart between Jace and Edik last year, then who knew what might happen to me and Dushka?
“Ready for breakfast?” I asked Anton with forced cheer as we left the bathhouse and headed toward the center of the settlement.
Anton shrugged. “I’m just ready to be on our way.”
We stopped at the edge of the square that made up the center of the settlement. Again, it was nothing half as grand as Gravlock or Yacovissi, but it was clean and open, everyone who was up early and gathered around the communal fires for breakfast seemed to be in a good mood, and it felt like home for me. I might have been born into a particularly wealthy city family, but I didn’t need frills or finery to be happy.
Dushka had made me so happy with his care, his cock, and his understanding. I smiled at him as Anton and I approached him and Ludvig by one of the fires.