Wolf's Bane (Monstrous Hearts #2)

Chapter Eighteen

Wolf-Alice's jaws frothed with blood and spit as the smell of smoke from the fireplace stoked her frenzied attack, a choking reminder of all that Magdalene had taken. Every flicker from the flames deepened her snarls as she tore at the figure beneath her, this fallen idol of her heart who had once loomed so high above. Eyes as golden as honey flashed at her, but they held none of that knowingness, none of that mystery and lush promise that had once so entranced her. All they showed was fear.

"Alice!" Magdalene's voice was a shred of its former velvet seduction. "Why are you doing this?"

No words could emerge from a mouth so savage, but her answer still passed between them, true and merciless as her bite. Because this is what I am. Something you can no longer control. Something that is no longer yours.

And once more she attacked, unstoppable in her rage. Blood splattered the floorboards as arms that were as substantial and vulnerable as living flesh on this one special night now flailed, stripped of all their grace.

"No! I need you." The words were hoarse, broken things, as feeble as the fingernails clawing at Wolf-Alice's muzzle to fend off her teeth.

She ignored the words like a sprung trap, ignored the hands like a ripped net, all too intent on reaching Magdalene's throat. She wanted to crush the windpipe that had formed all those poisonous words. She wanted to destroy the voice that had promised love but instilled obedience, the voice that had mapped out the most vulnerable parts of her and then reshaped her like clay.

"I love you."

Wolf-Alice paused, her muzzle still wrinkled into a growl. She stared at Magdalene with foaming jaws, daring her to say it again. Daring her to reach out and embrace with strangling arms while whispering tender, deceptive words. Magdalene's appetites always ran to the fragile little things that reminded her of Indigo; could she pretend to cherish a girl now transformed into a beast, sweet face and red-tipped breasts now foaming jaws and coarse pelt?

When Magdalene flinched, Wolf-Alice's growls renewed. She had never been Indigo, that precious girl locked inside Magdalene's ribcage, forever frozen as an image of obsessive love. The girl who had never lived long enough to do wrong, to disappoint. The girl who had long been a silent grave. Hers was the perfection of bones cradled in a mourning shroud, the loveliness of possibilities that could never wither into bitter reality.

And Alice... Ah, she had been that bitter reality trying to shape itself into that perfection, determined yet doomed to fail. Even when her love for Magdalene had been at its most fervent, she had found herself unable to transform into a living Indigo.

Now there was no idea more horrifying. She no longer wished to be the adored muse, the cherished dream. She no longer wished to be so obsessed over that even her name would be taken away and replaced with something better crooned at a pet. She could become something free. Something that didn't have to be perfect.

She wanted to live—and she would.

Wolf-Alice lunged in, throwing all her rage and strength into driving past Magdalene's frantic hands. This time her jaws locked onto a throat, and when she bit down, vertebrae cracked between her teeth. Blood shot from Magdalene's lips as she shrieked, then gushed from her ruined neck as she choked.

When Wolf-Alice let go, she looked at the woman who had once meant everything to her with a face stained red. Such a terrible beauty, bared teeth in a mask of blood, and Magdalene shrank from it.

"Who are you?" she whispered, each word drawing more blood from her gaping throat. "What happened to my sweet Alice?"

Wolf-Alice only snarled and bit at her again. And yet this time, her teeth snapped together as if passing through mere air. Then the desperate grip on her fur slipped away. Amber eyes darkened into cinders, and those sharp, clever lips that had once so entranced her now disintegrated into a faceless shadow. All that remained behind was the uncertain outline of a woman, the ragged darkness of something that had always needed others to define its own shape.