The Wicked Born

Chapter 17

Tabitha watched Dacre in front of her as he absentmindedly stroked the head of the creature laying across his lap while they both slowly made their way down the well-beaten trail on the back of the mare. They had come across the animal in the clearing nearly two days before but it had grown an extra ten pounds within that short span of time; its paws and teeth alike were nearly double the size of what they'd been when they first picked it up. She'd watched it all yesterday and the night before, looking for possible signs that the wolf was a threat to any of them.

After watching it trip and fall over its own two paws more than a few times, she began to realize that it wasn't too much of a menace to her and the others. It took a bit of cajoling from Dacre to get her to eventually stop referring to it as a monster and begin to refer to it with the name that he gave.

"Blue," Dacre said confidently out of nowhere the day before when they stopped to let the horses graze. The wolf was gnawing on a dead bird at his feet that Dacre had convinced Tabitha to catch for it. "Its name is Blue."

"How original," she mocked jokingly as she stared down at the blissfully-unaware creature. "Did you name it after a certain someone's set of eyes?"

Dacre's face turned a ruby-red hue that belied his embarrassment and he mumbled something along the lines of maybe before changing the subject altogether.

She still didn't understand what was so humiliating about naming Blue after its own eye color.

Blue reached out its large but awkward paw and toyed with the horses mane. The stout, towering animal whinnied in annoyance at the disturbance, but Blue paid it no heed. He continued to play with the long, flowing hair of the horse until it was knotted beyond repair. Dacre chuckled quietly at the sight and gave Blue a gentle flick on the nose in reprimand.

Tabitha sighed and drew her eyes away from the scene, pulling lightly on the reins to lessen her own mare's pace slowly so not to draw the attention of Dacre and Laurel who rode in front of her. Tabitha cleared her throat loudly twice, earning a side-eyed glance from Ellias who rode on a horse to her right. She jerked her chin once behind them once they'd made eye contact, indicating that he fall back slowly as well so that they could talk out of hearing distance of the other two. He nodded once in compliance before slightly tightening his own grip on the reins of his mare. They fell back about seven feet behind Dacre and Laurel.

"So, I finally get to meet the Matriarch of the Demetrian coven," Ellias said lowly. A muted smirk played on his handsome features, mischief alight in those impossibly dark eyes. His hair had grown out longer than he'd usually kept it since they'd left his town; Tabitha watched as it brushed against his eyebrow in a very non-Ellias like unkempt fashion. "You only told me bits and pieces of your aunt during our time together."

Tabitha rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner, but she kept her temperament cool and easy going. This was the first time they'd spoken since Dacre had been unconscious. She and Ellias got into a heated argument near Dacre's knocked-out body and hadn't said a word to each other since. She didn't need to go picking fights with him when the next few weeks would depend largely on his cooperation in the rescue. "Only good things, I suppose." She skillfully avoided commenting on his jab at meeting her aunt--she needed to find a way to break it to him softly that he would not, in fact, be meeting the Matriarch of the Demetrian coven.

"I always wanted to ask you about your time at the coven during our time together all of those years before," Ellias admitted in a wistful tone. His eyes were staring at a far off shore in front of them, glazed over as if reminiscing projected an image of his memories in the blue sky ahead. "But I could tell that it was a touchy subject; I didn't want to push you."