The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3
Chapter Nineteen

“Esprit, wait,” he called after me.

I’d been glad when Gabrielle prompted the end of lunch. I left the table without a word, flying up the stairs to my room for the promised relief of an hour’s nap. But Maximillian caught me at my bedroom door. I couldn’t stifle the heavy sigh that left me at the sound of his voice. I didn’t want to hear any more of his jibes and prattle.

“Let me apologize,” he said.

“It’s unnecessary, Monsieur.”

“It’s obvious I must,” he returned. “My wife just called me an ignoramus, a word she reserves only for special occasions, so it must be necessary.”

I released another heavy sigh but wouldn’t look at him.

Maximillian walked past me to open my bedroom door to implore that I enter. With another deep breath, I followed him inside, turning back to him at the center of the room.

“I don’t give enough consideration to your struggle,” he said, staring down at me. And so, I drag you forward as if you face none. Stupid vanity on my part. I see it clearly now.

I met his gaze, the only acknowledgment I was capable of at the moment.

“Perhaps it’s because I waited so long for you. And now I’m too eager to fly you through everything I want you to experience, regardless of whether you’re ready.”

I gave a slight shrug to my shoulders but made no other response.

“The truth is, I grew up without a single thought about guarding my privacy,” he continued. “You’ve had to, but I had nothing to hide. And when I came of age, and my lycan brothers, all decades older, probed my mind to familiarize themselves with the hidden facets of my personality… they found nothing. I’d held nothing back from them because nothing has ever compelled me to guard my feelings.”

I stared at him for a while, studying the brilliant green of his adoring eyes, not ready to break the silence until, at last, I let a smirk take my face. “But how boring they must’ve found you.”

Without returning fire, Maximillian reached to pull me into his arms and held me tight, dropping his head into the crook of my neck. Forgive me, he said.

And without the slightest hesitation, I forgave him.

Maximo?

He sniggered silently in my ear without releasing me. That should’ve been my first warning. It’s been a long time since she uttered my birth name.

My nap was restless. Thoughts of Tumas played over in my mind, arousing me. The light in his gaze, the way he’d given the slightest smile from his mouth. The heated memories made true sleep impossible.

When I drifted off for ten minutes, I awoke with a full erection and became desperate to relieve myself. Even thoughts of Maximillian swirled through my mind. He might consider me a son or even a grandchild, but my eyes saw a man only five years my senior. A statuesque man with a dozen features to arouse me. When he touched me, I struggled to close my mind, hoping to hide from him the true degree of my attraction. Even when he’d commented upon my feelings to jibe at me or made fun of my stumble into the arms of Tumas, there was an untenable truth underlying my embarrassment that made it all the more confusing.

But I wouldn’t take my cock in hand to finish the tension. Not here. Not when they both received my every unfiltered thought, like sunlight through a pane of glass. The humiliation would be my death, so I rose from bed with a jolt to escape it and head to my study session.

“He apologized?” They were the first words from Gabrielle as I entered her study on the top floor.

“He did,” I answered with a slight nod that she returned in kind.

“Please, have a seat, then. I want to tell you a story. I don’t know how easy it’ll be for you to hear it in your present mood, but I wish for you to try. The whole subject is likely exhausting to you now, but I don’t want you to misunderstand these matters just because we haven’t taken the proper time to examine them.”

I gave her another nod, sitting across from her large desk.

“Sexuality,” she began.

I let out a cringing sigh I couldn’t hide as I sensed from her thoughts she wished to examine further the matters I’d try to bury with Maximillian’s apology.

“Yes, I agree,” she acknowledged. “But your role in this room is to learn, so we won’t avoid the matter. You’re observing this through the lens of a young man overpowered by his physiology, who can’t comprehend it with the rational faculties available to him. And I don’t flatter myself by thinking my words will all land with you, but I intend to give you as much perspective as I can.”

I didn’t want her to say anything.

“I was married at fifteen,” she began. “He and I met only once, and it was nothing more than a brief introduction during which I said nothing. A month later, he wed me on my father’s farm and took me to bed that night. If I had feelings of sexual desire, my fear of being exposed and my sense of duty clouded them. And with that duty, and on account of my predicament of being a girl, the many instances of abuse done to me by my husband and other vile men all but imprisoned my sexuality. So, I didn’t embrace such desires as a human—I didn’t know how to do such a thing. After all, my only purpose was to comfort my husband in bed and produce his children. It wasn’t until my lycan nature developed that sexuality found me. And even then, it was my wolf who unleashed it from the prison of my abuses.

“You’ve endured painful violence because of your orientation, but you’ve never been raped.”

It wasn’t a question, but an observation. Still, I shook my head.

“So your prison differs from what mine was. Other people’s eyes are the bars of your cage, not their wicked desires. Still, you are imprisoned.”

“Maximillian told me I would never have to hide who I am from him,” I countered. “I’m no longer in a cage, as you put it, when I’m around you both.”

She looked up to meet my eyes, evaluating me for a moment.

“I’m happy to hear you say that, but I don’t think you believe what you say. If it were true, if you didn’t feel caged, you wouldn’t have felt such biting embarrassment at lunch. You wouldn’t feel it now as we speak. I’ve never known other lycan as young as you—I was the baby sister in my last and only lycan pack—but upon reflection, I imagine the change must stifle most new lycan. Particularly those of your orientation. How could anyone come from one world to the next without bringing along all their insecurities with them? So, now as a new lycan, perhaps the door to your cage is open, but you still sit inside of it, untrusting of the world outside the bars.”

I considered her words, trying to prescribe their larger meaning to my avoidance of the matter. For a moment, I saw they might be true.

“Humans hide most of their sexuality from one another,” she continued. “They might express it with banter—usually by men, who hide the gamut of their honest sexual thoughts from one another by highlighting those few aspects considered acceptable among peers. As crudely as possible, of course. But they’re quite uncomfortable with sharing most of their feelings. And it’s easy for us to empathize with them. Stigma riddles human culture, poisoning every inconsequential thing to do with sexuality. And so they live with it in silence, compounding their misunderstandings and cultivating their pointless shame.

“But none of that predicament is true for lycan,” she stressed. “How could it be? It’s quite impossible to hide your sexual attractions from another lycan. And so, your sexuality is, by default, one of the least interesting things about you among other lycan. Your constitution, the actions of your struggle to conquer fear, the choices you make, and how you act upon them—these are the qualities by which other lycan define you. That you’re aroused by another boy is no more captivating to me than the color of your eyes. It was among the first things I noticed about you. It was interesting for only a moment because I knew nothing else about you.”

She peered at me for a moment and gave a wide smile.

“My, but you have striking eyes, don’t you?”

Like a fool, I blushed.

Gabrielle released a schoolgirl’s giggle, her thoughts filled with delight at the irony of my response.

“Perhaps your wolf will tear down your cage walls, just as mine did.”