Harlowe’s failure had stung at Larkspur like a thorn. After all the time he had spent trying to make something out of the stupid lump of a child he had been rewarded with what? Idiocy. Arrogance. Rebellion. If Harlowe could not kill a stranger he would be useless. Frustrated, he had saddled up his horse and gone riding. When Dahlian soil had fallen away he had slowed to a walk, a dull heat burning in his chest. The voice of the can tah whispered and settled him, but only so much.

His horse snorted and stopped moving. Larkspur smelled why almost as soon as she did. Another wolf was in the area. Another wolf whose scent he recognized almost instantly. Lifting his head and nudging the mare on, the hunter began looking for her. A shadow amongst the forest stood out, drawing his Jack-o-Lantern eyes to it like a moth to flame. “Eris,” he called out, advancing towards her on the back of the palomino beast.

He dismounted with ease, leaving the mare half-tied to a tree behind him. Content with the distance, the horse began grazing on the soft ferns that his large paws crushed as he advanced towards Eris. Something about her made the tension leave his body, a dull and familiar sensation that a wiser man would have recognized. Larkspur, however, was brutish and uneducated. He knew only what he had experienced. It was a simple way to live and suited him fine.

“Yeah, I’ve had ‘er since we got here,” he commented, drawing up to where the she-wolf stood. He turned to survey his mount, nodding smartly. “She’s helped a lot. S’nice having somethin’ that strong to move things.” The burly male looked back at his companion, orange eyes burning. “Yer a bit far from Inferni, ain’t cha?” Though there was friendliness in his voice, the clan’s name sounded like a curse, and he could not control exposing his teeth as he said it. There was no love in him for the coyotes that had led to the destruction of a man who would have given him the world.

Because he was simple, Larkspur did not catch her tone. He nodded agreeably enough, finding that it was nice to have something to keep up with his work. Tak knew Harlowe was no help. He wondered if Misery had intended for this to happen when she left him. Perhaps this was a challenge, a test—if so, he hoped he was doing right by her. It was his goal to turn the boy into a monster. The world was not a place where soft-hearted fools would survive. Haku had been right in his path and Larkspur sought to ensure this continued, with or without the eyes of Dahlia’s new leader on him.

He did not fail to miss her distaste for her family. A grunt broke from his white-marred chest. “Least they ain’t tryin’ to kill ya,” he offered. It was not intended to be cruel, or sarcastic. His family, after all, had done this to him. As far as he was concerned, anything else was spectacular. Even now, when he thought of that day, his eyes went dead and rage boiled through his blood. Yet he remained still and listened to the can tah as it spoke promises and demanded he remain dormant. In time there would be need for his fury, but not yet, and not with her.

There was no need for Larkspur to try and fool himself about his place in the world. Conor did not trust him—he believed this as certainly as he believed the boy was weak. Younger wolves outranked him, wolves who had sworn to die by his side. Larkspur could not. He had not even promised that much to Haku. He had shed blood for him, but he would never have died for him. There was one living being whom he owed his life to, and he would go on living until she called upon him to do so.

The magic she believed she saw—the magic he believed he had—was of a much older god who came from the earth. His power lay in his followers, and they were cast out by those arrogant sister’s Larkspur had come to hate. Now it no longer mattered if he was cleansed, if he ever turned into a prophet. If he was to follow the dark god for the rest of his life he would do so willingly. He had been gifted with life, with strength, and with the power to hear and see things he should not. The prophecy on his arms itched, as if it was eager to be fulfilled.

“Things ain’t like that here,” he offered, knowing only what he had experienced. “That leader of yours might hate us, but he ain’t gonna kill his own.” He had seen that made clear when the fire tore through Dahlia. Larkspur had heard the retreat called. He understood that Gabriel intended to burn the whole of Dahlia to the ground and spare his coyotes the bloodshed. “Where I come from,” he added, a cruelty slipping into his voice. “They’d have burnt you alive.”

Simple connections had broken apart in Larkspur’s emotional conduits. He was not capable of forming lasting relationships, not capable of discerning what was right and what was wrong in the greater scheme of things. He had learned by observation while with Misery, but even now he was incapable of knowing when he had gone too far, when he had said something wrong. He spoke dissident because he knew it to be truth. If he had been wiser, he would have held his tongue and waited for the day King was strong enough to overthrow his brother and return Dahlia to what it needed to be.

For these reasons, he did not notice anything wrong with her bright eyes as they held his own, and he did not think it strange she spoke so openly about such a taboo subject. Hardly; a barking laugh escaped him, turning his face mad. It was the face of a man who had seen death many times before, the face of a man who had been driven mad long before he had ever known compassion. It died as abruptly as it had come. His eyes, fever-bright, held her own as the pupils widened as if they sought to swallow her whole. “Black is sin,” he said bitterly. “Once a year there was a fire.” He fell silent, though his ears twitched and swiveled as if they heard another voice. “I should’ve died last summer.”

Even though he was more than capable of harming her (Larkspur was more than capable of harming many people, due to his size) there was no ill will in him for this dark woman. She reminded him of Misery, in her ways, Misery as she might have been when she was younger, before the gods had touched her. Violence was needed only when it called—by Tak, by the can tah, for Larkspur was not a creature capable of much independent thought. He was not as stupid as the white wolf that had lost his mind when Haku was gone, but this was only because he had other and far more powerful guides to show him the way.

He did not see sympathy because he did not know the emotion. He saw something similar to what his sister had once looked at him with, before she had lost herself in the rights and the ceremonies that the Khalif used to make themselves whole. Larkspur was doomed from the start. He should have died four years ago.

So her expression was, to him, foreign, and he dismissed it. The burly wolf smiled in a peculiar way, finding her thoughts amusing—they were unlike anything he had ever heard before. “Misery told me I was chosen,” his accented voice sounded childish, stupid. “That’s why she put these on me.” He lifted his arms, holy signs scarred and bleached to burn against the black fur to make themselves prominent.

There had always been rejection. There had always been hate and fear. Larkspur might have been a comrade of the coyotes, knowing their plight, but he hated the beasts for what they had done. Without Haku, the chain of command was broken. Without Haku, any and all aspirations of something great went up in smoke. He had the boy, but the boy was not yet ready for anything great. King was a ghost, perhaps smarter than Larkspur in this fact and hiding his true intentions. Misery had warned him to blend in, but he could not stand idly by and wait for things to happen.

He flinched at her touch, finding it an odd sensation. He had only ever been touched when he was hit. Misery alone had been allowed, for she never hurt him. Granted, he would have died for her, but even so she was never cruel. Not like the Khalif. His breathing picked up slightly, nervously, and only then did he notice something peculiar about her scent. It was something he did not recognize, something that made his mind begin to systematically shut down. The can tah whispered furiously of prophecies he was not meant for, and his orange eyes burned. A low and urgent growl rose in his throat, primal in its nature. There was no room within him for anything more.

It felt, truly, as if he was regressing. This was not hard to imagine—the man was all but a child, incapable of deeper feelings because they had not been taught. He knew of pain, and he knew the sensations of hot and cold, but he did not grasp anything deeper then primal things. Fear. Hate. He knew what hate was. He did not know love, though he attributed what he felt to Misery as such. He did not know what it was he felt now, breathing in the scent of a strange woman who felt oddly familiar to him. His heart raced as she pressed her warmth against him, and he felt the firmness of her breast, and he felt a heat down in his groin that was unfamiliar but welcome.

A trigger was flipped on in his brain. It was a chemical reaction to what his mind attributed to the adrenaline, which rushed through his blood and rode alongside building testosterone. He lifted his hands and grabbed her shoulders roughly. He could not think to form words. He could not think and so he did not. It was his body that obeyed, instinctively seeking the source of her heat. Almost as abruptly as he had grabbed her did his traitor hands obey the impulses that came, pushing her down with his weight, pushing her down as his teeth grabbed for her neck, as his body took on a life of its own and sought to bury itself inside of her.

It was unsurprising that to a virgin, she felt like nothing he had ever known. She was perfect—her smell, her warmth, the heat that held onto him as he thrust into her with an almost fanatical speed. He grunted into the mouthful of fur he held, sucking in breaths where only her smell filled his head. There was only pleasure and a building and overwhelming need to take her for everything that she was. He held himself over her and gripped the earth. Larkspur growled and pinned his ears against his head.

Then came the voice of the can tah, the voice of Tak, and it screamed of prophecy and spoke in the tongue of the dead and filled his head with darkness and the single, deep pink source of light that he knew to be the ini. He released the ground and grabbed onto her shoulders, shoving her into the ground, shoving her closer to the place where Tak lay and slept. He made no noise, even as his fingers hooked into cruel talons and pulled down her back, cut into her black fur and sought to drew blood. He needed her, and he needed all of her now.