Stone Circle vittorio

Xan's return had brought her some sort of solace but she realised that this was but a false sense of security. She was not safe, she was never truly safe and sooner or later he would take her and he would tear her to shreds, or more likely worse. Paranoia had overtaken Laurel and while she did not trust Xan either, she knew that she needed someone strong to survive, to keep all of the other men out, to make sure that they did not hurt her like [i]he[i] had. Even now he ruled over her head and she hated it, hated every bit of it, but could not stop it from happening.

Indra was all that had kept her safe. Not being a part of a pack. Not tearing him limb from limb. It was always Indra, and now she no longer had her dear sister to guard her body with the ferociousness of a scorned mother.

Now she was alone, truly alone, and she had no one to keep him out. So he was there, every night, time and again. In every dream. In every male.

At the borders, that day, too. She stood erect, worry shimmering in her eyes, panic written upon her face, every muscle in her body tense. But it could not be -- He was dead -- He was gone -- She had tasted his blood and felt his skin tear --

-- And only when she noticed the ruddy paints on his nape did she realise it was not him at all. It was another ghost of her past, but a less unpleasant one than the man who had taken everything from her and brought her nothing. Nothing but bad children that she could not love anymore since her sister's death, no matter how hard she tried. Laurel's tail twitched and for a moment she considered leaving him be at their borders, for she had no desire to speak to Merrick at all.

She wasn't quite sure what made her stay in the end.

Merrick, she said as she approached -- but kept a few wolves' lengths between them -- the voice sounding as if it was not hers, as if it was a word foreign to her tongue. She remembered leaving him there and she remembered returning for him only to find that he was gone. That was how she remembered it, anyway, the truth an unpleasant but, to her, mostly insignificant detail.