Chapter 45 Scared? Just Cold

• “Yes it was. It was right there.” Beatrice remembered. “And I should have dug it into the werewolf's ear all the way to the hilt and watch his blood spill yards away. Only I didn't. I was scared. And feeling waves of pleasure coming from Goddesses know where. I wasn't exactly into men. But that werewolf was a male, and I knew it. Their females don't hunt for some reason. You ever hear a wolf call your name, Nyx? Not with words –never with words. With a howl that crawls right under your skin, burrows down into your bones, and sets every piece of you ringing? That’s how it started. Weeks after that first encounter, after I’d walked out of the woods with Orkoy’s bruises under my collar and his thick saliva dripping down my legs I thought I’d put it all behind me. Another mark on the body, another mission I didn’t die on. I was very ashamed, not by being used like that, but by abandoning my sisters to get laid.”
• Alberta held Beatrice's hand and looked at her, a look that said it that all had already been said and done.
• “I told myself it was over. Huntresses always tell themselves that.” Beatrice continued. “You do a job, you move on. You don’t look back at the things you did in the dark. But the body remembers what the mind pretends to forget. Maybe I convinced myself that my body was a different kind of weapon in the fight against werewolves. I could have used a sword, I used something else. I heard it —a howl, rising up over the rooftops, scraping the city’s nerves raw. You know how wolves call? It’s not just a noise. It’s a question, a dare, a promise. And this one was for me. I felt it in my bones. I felt it in every old bruise he’d left, every scratch under my armor. I felt it in my sex.”