Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2
Chapter Twenty-Seven

“What if we slip away after they retire for the night?”

Maximo’s eyes lit up as he whispered his diabolical plan to me in the grand salon after dinner.

Blood rushed to my face, and I turned my eyes away from him. He meant to embarrass me—of that I was certain. I’d endured weeks of his advances, each wrapped in the guise of mischievous calls for me to break the rules.

I wasn’t blameless in the situation; his attention invigorated me as much as it upset me. During that one afternoon, when he’d walked me to my room, I’d teased him to deflect my discomfort. It had been nothing more than a defense mechanism in my fragile state. But it resulted in Maximo working even harder to charm me, and I went to bed that night feeling obsessed by his golden beauty.

However, what had begun as subtle advances were now undisguised calls for attention. What Maximo proposed was positively indecent, regardless of how he tried to present it.

“Whatever have I done to mislead you so?” I asked, adopting my regular mocking tone.

Humor remained my only method for overcoming the discomfort of his advances. Worse, I rooted my discomfort in a lie. I’d thought of little else but him in the past weeks. To me, he looked like what a man should want to look like: his firm, aquiline jaw and sensuous masculinity. My attraction to him often overwhelmed me. And his personality was just as intoxicating. More than all the others, Maximo’s mind was of the present time. He was not a sixty-year-old staring out the eyes of a young man. He was roughly Cecco’s age, and I often fantasized about how my life might have blossomed differently if Father had married me off to a man like Maximo instead.

But no matter my attraction or fantasies, any attempt to visualize him as a lover suffered. The pain I still harbored ensured I couldn’t consider my erotic feelings for Maximo. It discolored the very idea of him. No matter the light in his eyes, they could not conquer the shadows of the men who stood behind him, each set upon attacking me again.

Sempronio attempted to counsel me several times about the abuses I’d endured. I never outwardly rejected his guiding introspections, or his assurance that my mind could be healed by facing what held me hostage. But I wasn’t willing to do any such thing. I avoided the insidious memories whenever they arose, choosing instead to fill my days with the wonders of Castello Romeo and the lycanthropy it held—anything to bury the memories away.

I rose from the sofa with a mild start and left Maximo to replace some air. Stepping outside onto a terrace, I saw the distant lake and mountains lit by the rising crescent moon. The cold of early December pushed through my skin, and I held my bare arms against it. The night air had become positively chilled as the days advanced toward winter, but it was exactly what I needed to shake me from my crippling thoughts.

Maximo let his foot fall tap loudly on the terrace stone behind me. What could I do but ask him to stop his advances? I didn’t believe for a second that his pursuit was in the slightest way sinister. Still, that truth did nothing to free me from the choking claustrophobia that seized me now.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, fighting back the tears that would soon come.

Maximo took my arm lightly to turn me to him, and bent to kiss my lips before I could protest. His mouth burned with the warmth of his resolve, and I accepted its delicious heat without resistance. The sublime sensation was everything I’d dreamed of, and my acceptance emboldened Maximo to reach for my face and pull me to him.

But then the poison resurfaced. Their faces filled my mind, and I shuddered with seizing fear.

“No!” I yelled and pulled away.

The violence of my sudden denial stunned Maximo.

I ran from him as quickly as my feet would allow. I tore through the grounds until I was well enough away from the house that none but one of them might sense me. Finding a stone bench, I laid down to weep. I’d failed, as I knew I would, and the embarrassment was just as cutting as the fear.

Minutes passed as I stared at the moon through the haze of my tears, refusing to succumb to the cold. I thought of Sempronio’s counsel, and his insistence that I had the power to heal and overcome the damage done to me. But his words seemed impossible and hollow. He could not understand the power they had over me. I insisted upon this bit of nonsense for as long as I could, but the stupidity of that notion was too heavy to be supported by my denials. Of all people, how could the master not know? The very one who walked through my mind and experienced the same suffering?

“Indeed,” he would’ve answered the question with somber love.

Enough, I thought, and I rose to my feet to escape the crippling self-loathing.

Making my way back to the castle, I soon found that Maximo was not with the others. Pompeia approached me to play a game, but I feigned tiredness and bid her goodnight to retire early. Arriving at the corridor of my room, I turned and headed to Maximo’s room. I wasn’t sure which door it was, but I knew he lived somewhere down the east corridor.

I quietly opened several doors to replace their rooms empty until I opened upon one heavy with his rosewater scent. I closed the door behind me and moved through the suite’s antechamber into his bedroom.

I found Maximo standing at a window, his mind far away, colored in longing frustration and despair. These absorbed him so cruelly that he didn’t hear my advance until I stood but three feet away.

When he turned around, I placed my hand on his lips to stop him from speaking. I took Maximo’s hand and led him through a door that let out onto a small private patio.

Back in the cool night, I walked ten paces to the stone railing that bordered the patio. Unfasten me, I told him silently and pulled his hand to the back of my dress. Without hesitation, Maximo released me from the garment and then watched patiently as I removed the rest.

I didn’t know if I could do what I meant to happen. I looked up to the crescent moon, choosing to see the Goddess in Heaven as I knew Sempronio did. “You have Her strength now,” he told me that first night in the forest. I trusted the master implicitly, and I called upon Her now with my heart.

It started as nothing more but the light sound of a breeze, only growing in pitch and volume once I pulled the sensation to me. The sublime feeling of warm water ran through me and filled my limbs. I felt them grow in length and girth, just like a man’s cock would. What had begun slowly soon raced to its climax, and in an instant I fully realized the transformation. I growled out with profound satisfaction at the change, and I leapt forward over the stone rail onto the hillside beyond it.

Follow me, I told Maximo’s mind, then raced off into the trees ahead. I didn’t need to look back to know he was positively shocked and delighted by my actions. Within moments, I felt him running near me in his wolf form. I would show him the meaning of disobedience if it was the last thing I did tonight.

Up through the hills I flew, determined to replace a thick of trees to bring us under. When just such a host of pines surrounded us, I stopped and turned at him to posture an attack.

Maximo almost tripped at the surprise and roared at me when he regained his footing. I snarled back at him as if I would gladly fight him, growling through razored teeth. And then I slowed, appraising his powerful physique, the hard muscles filling a dangerous outline under his light brown fur, moving in the night breeze. He was magnificent to behold.

Can he tell? I wondered. Can he smell it on me?

I advanced ever so slowly, drawing a rumbling growl from his massive chest to warn of the danger my movement summoned. Step by step I came to him and exhaled deeply so he could feel the warmth of my breath on his face. When I was but an inch away, I extended my tongue to lick slowly at his mouth. Maximo stopped growling and did the same, tasting me with growing urgency.

I ran my talons through his fur, feeling his solid arms with delight. Reaching gently between his legs, I cupped his heavy balls and stroked greedily at his growing cock. I thought to crouch down before him and take him into my mouth, but then something horrible pulled at my mind.

Down the hill somewhere, a voice echoed out to me. Fear shown like a light through the darkened forest. I saw it a mile away, like a candle flame masked in the fog.

I stepped forward around Maximo, and he grabbed at my arm to stop me. With my talons like knives, I slash at his chest to stop him and took off down the hill without looking back.

My mind followed the screams as fast as I could, closing the distance between us in little more than a minute. Arriving at a road, I saw three men upon a woman who they had pulled from her carriage. Both the driver and the woman’s companion laid slain in the dirt by the horse’s hooves. The bandits had the terrified woman on the ground with her hands tied together and pulled back. They were taking turns to enjoy the last of their spoils, smothering the woman’s screams with the fabric of her own dress.

My body moved so fast that I never felt the ground beneath my feet. I flew into the man that smothered the woman’s screams so hard that I felt his spine snap with a sickening crack when we tumbled to the earth. Turning back with the strength of a demon, I screamed at the other men and leapt back at them. I slashed the head clean off from the second, who had fallen on his back with confusion.

I reached for the third man and pulled him by his neck from between her legs. Before he could understand what was happening, I clamped down upon the flesh at his throat and ripped it out with my teeth. I savored the delicious fresh blood that soaked my tongue. The man was dead before I swallowed his fiery flesh whole.

The woman floundered on the ground, attempting to get her bearing. I saw her fear lit before me as if the golden light of dawn had bathed her it its light. Looking around, she stumbled to her feet and made her way back clumsily to the carriage.

She didn’t understand what had just happened to the men who raped her. In the dark, her eyes could see neither their corpses nor I, though I loomed mere feet from her. From the woman’s mind, I heard only terror and the sound of her desperate lungs in her ears. In moments, she made her way to the driver’s seat and pulled at the horse’s reigns. The last light of the carriage’s lantern faded away in the distance as she raced desperately to reach town.

Alone in the dim moonlight, I turned to see Maximo standing at a distance. He advanced slowly, appraising my silent marble posture, studying the bodies strewn around me. My heart was alive, and I looked up to his amber eyes lit with wonder.

I exhaled deeply to let him know he may approach me. When I felt his warmth beside me, I licked again at his mouth, letting him taste the blood on my tongue. The flavor awakened Maximo and he drew me to him with greedy strength, consuming the delicious prize.

I fell to my knees and lapped lovingly at his cock. I hungrily drew it into my mouth to caress it with my throat, delighted as I felt it lengthen and harden.

Crouching down, Maximo pushed me backward and turned me over to savor the smell between my legs. He pulled me back against his chest and drove his cock into me, thrusting insatiably to chase his lust.

In that moment, not a single dark memory sprang from my mind. Not of Cecco Alfonsi, nor of Giovanni Vervio, nor of his men, nor of the savage pain they’d brought me.

Instead, alone among the spoils of my vengeance, taken by the lust writhing within the wolf’s form, I felt nothing but a powerful and hungry pleasure.