Valka
Past
The branches snap behind and I jolt, disoriented, my hands raised high in a defensive stance.
"Did I startle you?" the man says, but his blue eyes do not seem the least apologetic as they rove across my face, his cheeks reddening. "I apologize. I’m lost, I think. I never knew people lived in these parts. I’ve been walking around in circles for the last hour. Do you think you could help ?"
"If you thought for a single second," I warn, fingers tightening into a fist. "that I would fall for that shit, you are in for a reckoning. I will gut you faster than you can blink if you so much as move."
He follows my pointed stare to the shears sitting by the plants I’d been tending, and after a mont, he raises his hands to make himself appear harmless. "I have no intent on attacking you. Or whatever it is you think I am here to do. I promise. I really am lost."
It’s the oldest trick in the book. But he looks so genuinely bewildered that I straighten anyway, wiping the dirt from my fingers with the rag. "Where are you going?"
He is dressed too finely for these woods. Fine boots, deep-blue tunic stitched so neatly it’s practically smug about it, and a cloak clasped with actual gold. He scratches the back of his head. "I’m in search of the woodmaker. I hear he makes the best seats in the village."
My eyebrows rise. "That would be my father."
His smile grows, revealing perfect white teeth and I am struck by how handso he is. In the back of my mind, silver hair and violet eyes flash, but I shove it down. It’s been years since I left his ho. I developed a terrible habit of going back and running off again. But the last ti, I knew it’d be best if I kept away, when I caught him staring at with sothing delicate in his eyes.
And then, he laughed and I thought it the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was then I knew it wasn’t lust or a stupid crush anymore. And it suddenly beca very real, very scary, I ran away. Because there was no future for us. None that ant I stayed alive, at least.
It’s been many years ever since I made the decision not to return, for both our sakes.
I left without informing him and upon returning, I found my father unwell. I never told him when I was leaving or where I was going, and I didn’t realize being gone for that long would make his heart begin to hurt.
He’d slapped .
He’d never hit before. I still rember what it felt like, feeling my head reel from the sheer force of it. When he said I was never to leave ho again, I understood. In the weeks I’d been gone, there was an outrageous increase in the number of huntings for Lycans. New governnt. If you were so much as suspected, you were burned alive or shot dead on sight.
"Ah," the stranger say with a smooth laugh. "Shall I call this fate, then?"
I roll my eyes and begin the long walk ho. "Don’t push your luck, sir."
"Malachy," he says, catching up to . I don’t miss the way he stares at . The way his eyes keep widening and his cheeks reddening. The way he seems eager to hear what I say next. "You may call Malachy. Or Mal."
I don’t respond.
"How long have you lived here? You seem familiar with the terrain, whereas all the trees look the sa to ," he murmurs after a mont.
My shoulders tense slightly. We’ll have to move again soon. Father often carves his work and takes them to the market himself. No one ever really cos down here. "It’s not so difficult once you understand the markers. I’d take note of it, if I were you. I will not be walking you back."
"And if I get lost again?"
I shrug. "Then I imagine the beasts that roam these woods will have a great feast tonight."
He laughs again. It is a booming sound. He laughs like a soldier--without restraint, and he walks gingerly like one, his eyes scanning every corner, alert.
We round the corner just then. Father is bringing down an axe on a tree trunk, and his eyes flick upwards, taking us both in. He frowns as his gaze fixes on the man and he looks at in silent question.
I just shrug again. It’s not like he wouldn’t have found our ho himself if he had wandered for a little longer.
The male’s stance switches quickly, his chin rising and his spine stiffening. He goes from charming to hard in less than a second, and my lips part in surprise when he retrieves a seal from his waist band, showing it to my father.
"Malachy, Captain of the King’s Guard."
Father and I stiffen. Could it be... I begin considering the distance and how quickly it might take to snap his neck. But he only says, "His Majesty would like for you to fashion him a crib for his newborn who is due to arrive in a fortnight. Can you do that?"
Father looks... dazed. But he catches himself. "Of course. Lyra, get our guest a stool."
***
Father finishes the crib in a week, but Malachy didn’t stop dropping by. He beca fast friends with father, and infuriatingly, I was always made to serve him, make him things, bring him things, show him around, walk him through.
Annoying as it was, he was great company. He was funny. He was kind, which is more than I can say for most n in Silvermoor. When I spoke, he didn’t try to remind that won in our world had no place speaking. No. He seed to like listening to .
I learned, as the days progressed, that he was sothing of a scholar and a knight. It was contradictory but it made for good conversation. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, he would speak so long about things I didn’t know shit about and I knew it was going to be a problem when I soon started to forget why I ever went to Ebonheart in the first place, and found myself watching him more deeply than I had any other man apart from the King.
And one day, on our walks, he walked back into a tree and kissed . I expected he would do more. Try to take advantage of that tiny mont where I’d hesitated before pulling away and deepened the kiss, but he didn’t. He said with conviction that I would be his wife.
I’d thought him silly, but that night, he told my father he wanted to marry . And father had little objection to it.
I t his father and sisters the next week, and a date was fixed.
But sothing didn’t feel right. It wasn’t just about the fact that I knew I had to tell him what I was, eventually. Neither was it him. He was perfect. And he made my heart race faster, made laugh often, and I couldn’t wait till the next mont I saw him, couldn’t wait for the mont his fingers dug into my waist and his weight pressed against my chest. He made feel like a little girl again, hiding in the woods for shy kisses. He made forget I was old, made forget I was a Lycan, made forget Ilya and occasionally, Lucien.
In Malachy’s eyes, I was a flower. Pure, fragile. I decided I liked feeling that way.
But whenever I slept at night, I dread of Lucien. In my dreams, I am a dirty little slut, begging to be touched, fucked, railed within an inch of my life.
I felt horrible whenever I woke, because my spine was always arched, my lips trapped between my teeth, my skin flushed and my inner thighs wet with cum. I felt like I was cheating. On whom, I couldn’t tell. Malachy? Lucien? Who did I want?
I couldn’t tell anymore. But it did occur to that I’d never thought about sex with Malachy in the way it took center stage in my mind when it ca to Lucien. It felt like a destructive force that would eat alive if I didn’t find the first horse and go back to him.
The harder I tried to banish him from my head, the more severe the repercussions beca. The dreams graduated into chills that grew into fevers. Every ti I kissed Malachy, my belly would cramp for the entire night and I would puke until I felt like dying. I knew it was Ilya’s work, her revulsion of anyone that wasn’t her King, but it was driving mad. I--She--We missed him so much, it was wrecking my body.
Father didn’t know how to help , and I wasn’t even willing to share what was happening with .
And one day, she decided for .
On my fixed wedding date, at first light, she dragged across the kingdom and back to Lucien.
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