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Suddenly, the ardeur rose inside me like a warm wave, spilling along my skin, drawing a gasp from my throat. The last time it had risen because of Richard’s nearness. This time . . . maybe it was just time to feed again. The moment I thought feed I knew Jean-Claude had awakened, and with his rising, down in the depths of the Circus, the ardeur had risen inside me.

Chimera stopped where he was, shaking his great maned head. “What is that?” he growled.

My voice came breathy. “The ardeur.”

“The what?”

“The ardeur, the fire, the need,” I said. With each word the ardeur grew like a weight, and that weight brushed against my beast. It spilled upward from that tight curled place inside me, and the two separate heats rose up inside, spilling along my body, drawing me forward towards Chimera. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, because I could smell his fear. You never had to be afraid of anything that was afraid of you. Part of me knew that wasn’t true, that a scared man with a gun is more likely to shoot you than a brave one, but the parts of me that were able to think were sliding away, leaving behind only instinct. What was left liked the smell of fear. It reminded me of food and sex.

Chimera backed away, and we began a slow walk back the way we’d come, this time with me advancing slowly on him. I stalked him as he’d stalked me, and part of me noticed that I was placing my feet one atop the other, almost stepping in my own footsteps, like a cat. The walk was oddly graceful, swaying my hips. My spine was very straight, shoulders back, arms almost motionless at my sides, but there was a tension running through my upper body, an anticipation of action, of violence. Always before the ardeur had overridden the beast’s hunger, but as I stalked Chimera, watched that huge muscular form back away from me, it was meat I was thinking of. Teeth and claws, flesh to rend, to bite, to tear. I could almost taste his blood—hot, almost scalding in my mouth, down my throat. It wasn’t just my beast’s hunger, but Jean-Claude’s blood thirst and Richard’s craving for flesh. It was all that and the ardeur running through all of it, so that one hunger fed into the next in an endless chain, a snake eating its own tail, an Ouroboros of desires.

Chimera stopped running, pressing himself up against the white curtain. We were almost back to Cherry and Micah. There was solid wall behind Chimera, behind the curtain. “What are you?” he asked in a voice that was strangled, full of the fear that rose off of him in waves. He scented the air, nostrils flaring. “You don’t even smell the same.”

“What do I smell like?” I touched his chest with just my fingertips, not sure what he’d do. But he didn’t pull away. I pressed my palm over his heart and felt that thick, heavy beat rise against my hand, as if I could have caressed it, like running your hand over the head of a drum. I knew in that moment what he wanted most of all. He wanted to die. Whoever was at the core, whatever was left of who Orlando King had been, he wanted to end it. He’d been trying to kill himself since the moment he learned he was going to be a werewolf. He’d never changed his mind. He just couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide, not directly anyway.

I leaned in close to him, pressing our bodies together, lightly, both hands on his chest. “I’ll help you,” I whispered.

“Help me, how?” But his voice was fearful, as if he already knew.

Pain lanced through my chest. My knees collapsed and Chimera caught me, carefully, in those clawed hands. I think it was an automatic gesture. I saw through Richard’s eyes for a moment, saw a werehyena snarling in his face, felt the claws ripping through his chest. The pain was sharp, bones breaking, then numbness, and Richard didn’t fight it. He let the numbness roll over him. I knew in that instant that Richard wanted to die, or rather he didn’t want to live as he was. The pain had made him reach out for me, but his hands were slow, slow to defend himself. He would never admit he’d let himself die, but