by Amy Pennza
And it had cost him.
“You’re a good Alpha.” She slurred her words, but he understood because his gaze sharpened.
“I’m not.” He looked away, his face hard.
You are. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t summon the energy. It was hard enough drawing air into her lungs.
The snow fell more slowly now, fat flakes drifting down from the heavens. She stared up at the sky, where stars dotted a sea of inky black. It’s beautiful here. Why did he want her to leave?
Blackness crept over her vision. She sighed and gave into the fatigue pulling hard at the edges of her consciousness. But as she drifted off, she could almost swear she heard Bard murmur, “I don’t want you to leave, beautiful girl. But I can’t let you stay.”
17
She slammed out the door, her face hot from the tears building up under her skin.
They didn’t want her. Of course they didn’t want her.
“We think it would be best for you to live at the Lodge. The New York Territory is friendly to latents.”
That was how her foster father put it. Her foster mother hadn’t said a thing. She just sat beside him on the leather sofa, her lips compressed in a thin line.
She ran to her car—the one she bought after five summers of shoveling horse shit and helping little kids onto the ponies—and got in, her heart pounding after the “announcement.” In a way, the leather sofa was the perfect place for them to tell her. It predated her arrival at their home, and she was never allowed on it as a child.
She looked up at the house—a white colonial on a green hill. Quaint. Perfect for kids.
Well, the right kind of kids.
“Fuck you,” she muttered. Then she shoved the key in the ignition and started the car.
It wouldn’t start. She tried again, but the engine chugged a few times and went quiet.
Again. Nothing.
Again. Nothing.
On the hill, the house’s side door swung open and her foster father came out. He stared at the car for a second, then charged down the hill.
Panic gripped her. Hand shaking, she turned the key. The engine was silent.
Her foster father picked up speed. As he ran, he leaped into the air and shifted into a wolf—his transformation seamless.
Her heart raced.
He was nearly upon her now, his jaws stretched open, fangs dripping saliva. Somehow, he managed to speak.
“WE TOLD YOU TO LEAVE. YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE.”
She shrank in the seat, throwing an arm up as he crashed through the windshield, his teeth aimed at her neck—
Haley bolted awake, fangs bared and fur standing on end.
Wait. Fur?
For a second, disorientation reigned. Then some of the fog lifted. She’d had a nightmare—or the nightmare. She only ever had the one.
Mind still buzzing, she took inventory of her body. She was in wolf form, but she’d dreamed as a human. The sensation of waking in the opposite shape was unpleasant. Werewolves called it a “pinch.” Personally, she thought “fucking sucks” was a better description.
The fur on her legs was streaked with mud courtesy of her unplanned slide across the forest floor. The rest of her probably looked the same. Even as she thought it, her ruff started to itch.
There was a loud pop, and she jumped. She gathered her legs under her and tried to stand. Dizziness rolled through her like a wave, and she gasped and gave up.
I’ll try that again in a minute. Right now, she had to figure out where the hell she was. And the first order of business was taking stock of her surroundings.
She lay on her side before a . . . roaring fire? She squinted, her vision blurry as full consciousness returned.
No, her vision wasn’t the problem. The lighting was so dim, it took her eyes a minute to adjust.
There was indeed a roaring fire steps away, but that wasn’t the most startling part. The fireplace was as big as Lizette’s entire apartment and looked like something out of a medieval castle. Vines and roses were carved around the outside in a swirling pattern, and the logs inside were as big as tree trunks.
Actually, they were tree trunks. Someone had chopped them into more manageable pieces, but the logs were as big around as her waist.
The heat moved over her like a warm, gentle breath. She stretched her legs, her jaws opening on an involuntary yawn. There was a soft cushion beneath her, like a fancy dog bed rich people bought for their purebreds.
Ha. Irony alert. A former latent with no Gift living the high life.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind her.
Adrenaline replaced the dizziness, and she sprang to her feet and spun around, her hackles raised.
“Easy.” Bard emerged from the darkness, a bundle in his hands. He stopped a few feet away and ran his gaze over her. “You look better.”
Where the hell are we? Dammit, she couldn’t talk to him this way. But another shift was impossible. Frustrated, she snapped her jaws and looked away.
“You want to Turn?”
She swung her gaze back to him.
“I can help.”
Really?
He came to her and knelt, his movements easier and more casual than she’d ever seen them. Power clung to him. It was easier to miss when he was far away, but up close it was unmistakable. Her wolf wanted to brush against it like a cat weaving in and out of its owner’s legs.
Not that he owned her. The thought made heat creep up her neck. At least he couldn’t see her blush.
He placed the bundle on the floor and stretched out a hand, his palm hovering over her. “May I?”
She gave a tentative nod.
He caressed her ear, then swept a hand from the top of her head to her ruff. His face softened and his voice was admiring when he said, “You’re a beautiful wolf.”
She wasn’t, really, but his words warmed her nonetheless. Her fur was the same ordinary gray as most werewolves—and most timberwolves, for that matter—and she was of average size for a female. Nothing special. The only feature that set her apart was the black fur that tipped each of her ears, a trait Remy claimed made it look like she dipped her head in a paint can. “Which you would totally do,” he always said, “especially if someone told you not to.”
Bard brushed his fingertips over the tips now, the hint of a smile in his good eye. “I knew it was you the second I saw you in the forest. There is something delightfully irreverent about these ears.”
She wasn’t sure “delightfully irreverent” was a compliment, but his touch felt so good she decided she didn’t care. If he kept up his petting, she was going to do something shameless like roll over and let him scratch her belly.
“Steady now,” he murmured. Before she could decipher his meaning, he placed both hands on either side of her face and said, “TURN.”
The change gripped her, snatching her breath away in its ferocity. Like blinking or breathing, it was completely involuntary. She could no more hold back the ocean than she could fight his order. Unlike her previous transformations, this one slid over and through her in a smooth wave. There was no sound of ripping flesh in her ears or knifing agony as her tendons tore and reformed. Instead, her body glided from one form to the next, until she lay human and breathless, her head next to Bard’s knee.
He moved like he might touch her cheek. Then he pulled his hand away and cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”
She sat up, tucking her knees at an angle to conceal the dirt that caked her shins. The fire warmed her back. “Good . . . Really good, actually.” Despite the heat in the room, her nipples tightened, reminding her she was totally nude. And filthy. She pulled her hair over her breasts.
“Ah, here.” He grabbed the bundle at his side and shook it out, revealing a dark blue blanket. He settled it around her shoulders.
She grabbed the two ends and held them under her chin. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything else.”
“That’s okay.”<
br />
“You can wear my jacket once it dries. It got soaked on the walk here.”
She snuggled deeper in the blanket. “Okay.”
He gave a curt nod. He stayed in a crouch, firelight playing over his scars. She waited for him to offer details or an explanation of what happened after the forest, but he just watched her, his face unreadable.
She licked her lips. “Um. Where are we?”
“The seat of the Washington Territory.”
She must have hit her head again because that couldn’t be right. Wherever they were, it wasn’t his house. She would have remembered that fireplace.
He spoke again, his voice gruff—almost reluctant. “It’s my parents’ home. No one has lived here for years.”
His parents’ house? She looked around, but the fire made it difficult to see anything beyond the small circle of light that surrounded them. “Why did you bring me here?” His parents were dead. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be Alpha.
“It was closer than my place. The snow is really coming down. The roads are almost impassable, even on foot.”
Fair enough. She bit her lip as she mulled that over, but more questions buzzed in her mind. “Why don’t you live here?”
“It’s a big place. Lots of stairs.”
Her bullshit meter dinged. There were stairs in his other house, too. Still, she swallowed the urge to challenge him. Their uneasy truce was a fragile thing, and she didn’t want to break it. Especially when she didn’t have a stitch of clothing to her name.
His gaze drifted down the blanket, then he seemed to catch himself. He looked up and cleared his throat. “The pantry was pretty bare, but I scrounged up some granola bars and bottled water. You need the calories.”
Her stomach growled.
The ghost of a smile teased at his mouth. “Like I said.” He rose and extended a hand. “There’s no electricity in the house, but the conservatory has plenty of natural light.”
Conservatory? The only time she’d been in a conservatory was on a trip to New York City with Max and Lizette, when they took her to see the Statue of Liberty and the Botanical Gardens.
Bard had one of those in his house?
He waited above her, his hand outstretched. Giving an inward shrug, she put her palm in his and let him help her up. The blanket flapped open, and she quickly pulled it around her.
“This way,” he said, releasing her hand and moving into the darkness. It swallowed him whole, leaving nothing but the sound of his footsteps.
She hurried after him, the blanket clutched in one fist. A few steps in and she could see the faint gray outline of his body. The dim light didn’t seem to bother him, because he moved quickly for someone navigating in the dark. Either that or he knew the layout by heart. Probably it was the latter, especially if he grew up in the house.
As he led her through a series of rooms, her eyes adjusted enough to get a general idea of her surroundings. And it was quickly apparent the “house” wasn’t a house at all.
It was a bona fide mansion.
Cloth-draped furniture was placed here and there. In one room, bookcases stretched from the floor to the ceiling, with one of those fancy ladders that moved on wheels so you could reach the top shelves. She tried not to stare like a country bumpkin, but the place dripped with luxury. However, it was a dusty, neglected luxury. And the air had a strange heaviness to it. As she trailed after Bard, she struggled to identify the mood hanging over the cavernous rooms. It wasn’t sadness. Not quite. It was more like loss—as if happiness once reigned and the walls retained the memory of better times.
Just when she was ready to ask “are we there yet?” he brought her to a stone archway carved with the same vines and roses as the fireplace. He stopped and looked at her over his shoulder, his gaze going to her bare feet.
“Watch your step. Things are a little overgrown.”
She could only nod, because beyond the arch lay a scene unlike anything she ever witnessed in her life.
Roses.
They were everywhere, spilling onto a slate floor and stretching in every direction. Stone tables held rows and rows of them, the blooms seeming to go on forever. The tables were arranged like risers, each row taller than the one in front of it. The effect was a waterfall of roses—a riot of natural beauty that started at the top of her head and swept all the way to the ground. After the gloom of the rest of the house, the bursts of color were almost blinding. Reds, pinks, and yellows assailed her, the furled petals vivid against bright green vines and stems.
Mouth agape, she brushed past Bard and stepped into a wonderland. Immediately, her gaze was drawn upward, where a glass roof soared overhead. That explained why it was so bright. Moonlight filled the space. The walls were glass, too, their sparkling lengths decorated by tall, narrow windows with stained glass panels that made splashes of pale color on the floor.
She went to one and stood before it, her blanket stirring dried rose petals on the ground. The panel showed some kind of animal—maybe a bear—standing on its hind legs. It stared down at a woman in a long gown. She held a rose, her arm extended as if she offered it to him.
“The wolf and the maiden,” Bard said beside her. “It was my mother’s favorite.”
Haley tilted her head, her gaze on the panel. “It doesn’t look like a wolf to me.”
“That was by design. Elder Lake might be a werewolf town, but Mom didn’t want to be too obvious. So she told the artist to depict a beast of some kind. That’s what he came up with.”
“The beast and the maiden,” she murmured. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” he said.
She turned to find him watching her. Heat crept up her neck. With his eye patch and scarred face, he should have looked out of place among the roses. Yet he didn’t. She lowered her head, her gaze falling on a cluster of deep red blooms. She traced her finger down the edge of a velvety petal. Beneath the bloom, thorns marched along the flower’s stem.
“That’s why,” she said to herself.
Bard observed her, his attention on her fingers stroking the rose. “What?”
She looked up. “The roses remind me of you.”
His gaze was steady, but a subtle emotion crossed his face before he checked himself. His mouth tightened, and his voice turned hard. “No one’s ever compared me to a flower before.”
Vulnerability. That was what she glimpsed on his face. He thought she mocked him. Is that why he kept pushing her away? Like a wounded animal, he lashed out at anyone who dared to get too close. His scars ran deep.
Much deeper than his skin.
Her heart squeezed and she spoke in a rush to set the record straight. “Not just any flower. A rose.” Shyness gripped her, and she looked down, her gaze on the rose once more. She curled her fingers under the head, the petals cupped in her hand. “Most people can’t grow roses. They’re temperamental. They have sharp thorns that will cut you if you’re not careful.” She ran a thumb over the curve of a petal. “But anyone who overcomes the challenges will tell you they’re worth the trouble.”
He didn’t reply. A hush settled over them, over the rows of flowers and tangled vines. Through the glass, snow continued to fall, the flakes swirling in a dizzying dance that turned the conservatory into a life-size snow globe.
When Bard spoke at last, it was in a low, quiet voice. “You should eat.”
She froze, her hand still curled around the flower. Then . . . pop. The frail trial balloon of hope she floated burst. It was her birthday party invitations all over again. Her foster parents’ whispers when they thought she was asleep in her room. The other trainees asking for a bathroom break when they were partnered with her for sparring.
“You don’t even have a Gift.” Hadn’t Bard reminded her of that just hours ago?
How silly of her to forget.
But he wasn’t entirely correct. She was a master at handling disappointment. No one managed it better. If she had a Gift, it was making the best of things.
She d
rew on it now, lifting her chin and offering him a tremulous smile. “I was just thinking that.”
18
God, he was so bad at this.
Bard watched as the fledging hope in Haley’s face was snuffed out, replaced with hurt and then a false cheeriness. She was terrible at hiding her emotions. “Wearing your heart on your sleeve” his mother had called it. Haley wore hers like a flag, waving it almost carelessly. Inviting anyone to wound her.
Well, he’d done that.
“You should eat.”
She’d told him flat out he was a challenge worth taking on. She said it poetically. Elegantly. After everything—his rejection following their kiss and his cruel insult about her lack of a Gift—she was willing to give him a chance.
And he responded by mentioning the granola bar feast that awaited her.
There were so many other things he could have said. Should have said. He didn’t deserve her, and he could never have her, but he could have handled her better.
What a stupid, stupid thing.
But it was too late now. An awkward silence stretched between them. She had an iron grip on the blanket under her chin, her knuckles as white as the snow that fell outside.
He cleared his throat. “Right. Granola bars.”
Her smile might have convinced anyone else. But he knew better. Knew her better. Even after such a short time in her presence, he knew just about all there was to know about Haley Michaels. She was a force of nature—unstoppable and persistent. You could trample over her, uproot her, tear her down. And still she got back up, little shoots of spring stubbornly pushing through the ruin.
She was like the spring. No matter how much ice and snow the winter brought, the sun always reappeared. Even when you thought the dark and cold would never end, it always did. Always. You could always depend on the light to return.
But now the light in her eyes was missing. Its absence made him feel like the most loathsome creature to walk the earth.
He couldn’t fix things between them. They were far more broken than she knew. But maybe he could put the sunshine back in her eyes. At least for a little while.