Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

49. Akrum the Sacrificed

The world swayed. The sunshine, the emerald-green grass, the rustling leaves, and Liam's lust-inducing body melted into the mist.

Naktim's brutal whipping, the chase, and Akrum's dance unfolded before Volya's mind-eyes once again.

Volya forced down his fear of being run down by the galloping horses and focused on the things he had to see. Akrum was important, not the centaurs writhing on the ground. Despite this decision, Volya's primal senses wouldn't let his fingers uncurl. One shiver after another passed through him.

It became easier not to swivel his head towards the riders when Akrum-as-a-wolf fled the scene of carnage. He couldn't tell whose heart—Akrum's or his—pounded on the verge of exploding while Akrum had raced through the night to Naktim.

His heart monitor beeped in the outer layer of his consciousness in the real world, but he resisted waking up. This vision had to be important, if not for Anabelle, then for him.

So Volya clung tighter to Akrum in the dark steppe. The heart monitor's beep dropped off.

Liam could relax now, Volya thought, and an unbid smile curved his lips. Shush, heart. Akrum... What is Akrum doing?

Akrum ran and ran, four long legs pumping furiously, until he reached a low hill. It looked like all other hills, except for a few slabs of bedrock jutting out at its foot. Akrum squeezed behind them and then—into the hidden mouth of a cavern.

Once inside the hill, Akrum paused, calming down his rugged breath. The only source of light in the chamber was a bowl of burning fat. Someone must have stocked the hiding place with supplies beforehand, because Naktim stretched on a felt blanket, lying on her belly, face hidden in her arms. A shaggy pelt covered her legs.

Akrum shifted back to his human shape.

Naktim greeted his transformation with an exhale.

"What did you do? How did you get away?" She patted the pelt, inviting him to sit next to her.

"I did what I was born to do." Akrum squatted by her side. Both of them seemed completely comfortable with his nakedness. "I did what my father had foreseen."

If she was unsatisfied with his cryptic answer, she didn't show it. They sat in silence for a few moments until she asked plaintively, "Is there any water?"

"Yes." Akrum pushed back to his feet and extracted a bulging water-skin from some nook in the cave's wall. While she drank in greedy gulps, Akrum unrolled a few rags from another cranny. Once Naktim returned the skin, he soaked a rag and started cleaning her wounds in easy, familiar motions.

"Tell me what happened, Akrum."

"I cast a spell," Akrum confessed after another long pause. "Nobody had done anything so dark before."

He told her about wielding men to horses, thus creating abominations. His voice seemed too soft for his tidings and his fingers trembled, spilling the shining droplets of water. He finished his tale by saying, "My father warned me that the price of Walkwe's escape would be terrible, and it was."

"It had to be done." Naktim's tone, more than the words, implied compassion, but not for the Yamnaya. She pitied Akrum.

She moved her head into his lap. He brushed tangles from her hair with slow fingers. In the low light, the two looked cozy together.

Volya's experiences with Liam hinted that such intimacy was impossible to achieve in the span of one night, no matter how fraught with peril. He gasped, realizing that Naktim and Akrum must have traveled as far away from their initial dislike of each-other as was humanly possible. He did not know how much time had elapsed in their lost world, but perhaps it was a few months. And in that time period, hidden away from him, Akrum and Naktim had become so close... so close that Naktim accepted his caresses as her due. She even caught his hand to press it to her cheek.