A Pack of Vows and Tears

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “You can talk to me, you know.” August’s voice made me look away from the mason jars filled with desiccated rose petals adorning the stone chimney mantle.

  I wasn’t going to ruin August’s one night with his parents. “You should go.” I started leading the way back toward the door.

  “Ness—”

  “Please, August. I don’t want to talk anymore. I just want to watch TV until my eyes bleed.”

  He exited the bedroom, and I closed the door and pocketed the key. We walked back down the flight of wooden stairs decorated with an evergreen-colored runner.

  At the foot of the stairs, I stood on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss against August’s stubble. “Have a safe trip. And call me from time to time, okay?” I smiled at him before hurrying toward my bedroom, feeling the invisible rope thin out.

  “Ness,” August called out again, but I didn’t stop.

  The tether weakened some more, becoming as insubstantial as a spider web filament.

  I took it August was gone.

  A pang of sadness hit me as I realized I wouldn’t see him again for months. But it was better this way. Better for everyone.

  3

  Liam arrived at one in the morning. I’d been just about to drift off when I heard him knock and call out my name.

  The second I let him in, his arms came around me, his head dipped to the curve of my neck, and he inhaled me. “You smell like him. I hate that you smell like him.”

  I was startled to hear him say this considering I’d soaked in a scalding bubble bath until the water grew cold. I’d even washed my hair. I guessed soap couldn’t remedy the magical mating scent. Come tomorrow, it would no longer be a problem, though. I couldn’t smell like someone who was thousands of miles away.

  Liam licked the spot he was nuzzling and then dragged his tongue up the column of my neck, making me shiver. Was he trying to layer his scent over August’s?

  He backed me into the room, lips crashing down against mine, hard and demanding. Even though I was worn out, I answered with as much fervor as I could muster.

  When my calves hit the side of the bed, I pressed my hands against his chest and unglued my lips from his. “I might smell like August, but you smell like every male in our pack.”

  He glanced down at his bloodied shirt, tore it off, chucked it on the floor by my flannel armchair, kicked off his jeans, and finally dropped his underwear. Naked, he turned and headed toward my bathroom.

  Water gushed, and the rings on my shower curtain clinked against the rod. I didn’t move. Barely dared breathe. Even my heart held perfectly still. Liam was naked—not for the first time—and taking a shower in my bathroom.

  I still hadn’t moved when he came back out, a towel wrapped around his carved waist. He smiled brazenly as he observed my perplexed expression. And then he cradled my face in his hands and kissed me deeply, sweetly, thoroughly.

  His hands left my face and raked up and down my arms that were hanging limply at my sides. I should probably have gripped his waist or clawed his back or done something with my fingers, but I couldn’t get them to move. I’d never been intimate with a man and was feeling a ton of conflicting feelings from edginess to fear to excitement to guilt.

  All of them made sense, except the guilt. August’s face flashed through my mind, and my stomach tightened. I squeezed my lids shut, willing his face to vanish, willing the tension in my gut to recede.

  “I can’t do it, Liam,” I said, breathless.

  “Can’t do what?”

  My cheeks burned. “Have sex. I can’t. Not tonight.” My breaths were coming out in short spurts. I was having a full-fledged anxiety attack.

  “Shh.” He rubbed my arms. Up and down. Up and down. “We don’t have to do anything, Ness. Shh.”

  His arms went around me, and he pulled me against him, where he held me until my chest stopped pumping with fevered breaths.

  “Can I stay the night, or do you want me to leave?”

  I swallowed. “You can stay.” I raked my hair back. “I want you to stay.”

  “Good. Because I want to stay too.” He kissed the tip of my nose.

  I climbed into my bed and scooted over to make room for him. He clicked off the lamp on my nightstand, then molded his body around mine.

  “How did it go . . . with the elders?” I asked him as he played with my hair.

  “I now know everything there is to know about being an Alpha.”

  “I can’t believe you’re Alpha. My Alpha.”

  “I like the sound of that.” He slid his nose down the nape of my neck.

  I shivered. “Do they know where Everest went?”

  “They located his car in Denver.”

  I turned to face Liam. “Denver? What would he be doing in Denver?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Did my cousin know someone in Denver? Maybe Megan, that last girl he’d cozied up with, the one he’d met at the music festival and then kissed at Tracy’s Bar and Grille, maybe she was from Denver? She was a student at UCB—the only thing I knew about her besides that she was a shapely blonde. Maybe there was a way to check the college’s directory?

  Liam’s eyes were smudged with exhaustion. He needed sleep, not a cross-examination, but I couldn’t help but ask about the hateful gender selection tool.

  “Did you destroy the stick, Liam?”

  “The stick?”

  “The fossilized root.”

  His mouth solidified into a straight line. “I’m not going to destroy it.”

  I added space between our bodies. “Why not?”

  “Because it has value, and valuable things are worth holding on to.”

  “Value?” I squeaked. “It’s just vile, smelly, and criminal.”

  “Ness”—there was an edge of exasperation to his tone—“please, let’s not fight about it. Not tonight. I’ll never use it, I promise.” He rolled onto his back and scrubbed both his hands down the length of his face.

  “But someone else might.” I propped myself up.

  “Ness,” he growled.

  “Did you ever stop to consider that if your dad’s generation hadn’t used it, more girls would’ve been born, and maybe one of them would’ve been your mate?”

  Liam’s eyes glowed as bright as a Harvest moon. “Then I’m happy it was used, because I don’t want a mate. I want you. Temper and all, I want you.”

  He pushed on the elbow propping me up until I collapsed back onto the mattress. Then he threw one of his legs over my lower body and settled on top, bracing himself on his forearms. As he dipped his face toward mine, I forgot all about the Boulder relic, all about Everest, all about breathing.

  “I don’t have that much of a temper,” I murmured.

  He smiled as he gazed down at me. “Just like a thunderstorm doesn’t have that much rain.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  He slanted his mouth over mine, but before breaching the distance, he whispered, “From a man who loves storms, it is the greatest compliment.” And then he kissed me until our bodies became as exhausted as our minds.

  4

  When I awoke the following morning, Liam was already gone and the bedsheets were cold. I checked the time on my phone: six-thirty. The meager hours of sleep I’d gotten would have to do. There was an inn to run and an uncle to check up on.

  I ran a brush through my hair, then applied the tiniest bit of concealer to hide the circles beneath my eyes. I had my mother’s eyes—cornflower blue—but where hers had always glittered, mine seemed as dull as smudged glass these days.

  After tying up my hair in a ponytail, donning jeans and a black V-neck, I fluffed my pillows, straightened my sheets with military precision, and tucked my comforter. I hoped no guests had come down for breakfast yet. I was sure we had the basics, but without Evelyn, the offerings would be modest: toast, jam, butter. Evelyn and Mom had taught me how to cook, but I wasn’t especially good at it. I’d mastered the basics though.

 
I quickened my pace toward the kitchen, expecting it to be empty and dark, but light leaked from under the door, and the scent of caramelizing onions clung to the air. Was my uncle making himself a snack? I pushed my shoulder into the swinging door and froze at the sight of Evelyn bent over the stovetop.

  Her merlot-tinted lips arched up. “Morning, querida.”

  The door smacked my back—not hard, but hard enough to make me stumble forward. I caught myself on the steel island. “I thought—”

  “That I would leave you to run this place on your own? I made Frank drop me off an hour ago.” She shook her head, and her bottle-black hair danced over the apron protecting her jeans and red top. She seemed happy. Happier than I’d ever seen her. Blissful. “Can you fetch the warming trays?”

  As I went to retrieve them from the shelving in the back of the kitchen, I checked over my shoulder a few times to make sure Evelyn was real.

  “Liam spent the night?”

  I dropped one of the tray lids, and it clattered loudly against the tiled floor.

  As I crouched to retrieve the fallen lid, she added, “I am not judging. I am simply enquiring.”

  I cleared my throat. “He—but nothing . . . ”

  Evelyn laid the tongs she was flipping the thick slabs of bacon with on the spoon rest and walked over to me. She grabbed both my hands. “Querida, you are almost eighteen. You are allowed to have sleepovers with boys. Just promise me that you will not settle for a man who is anything but kind to you. You deserve kindness and respect.”

  The memory of last night flashed through my mind, and then another memory, an unwelcome one settled over it like tracing paper—the night of the engagement party when I’d stopped by his place and he’d let his bestial nature override his human one. Was I being naïve to place the blame on the wolf inside him? Were our wolf natures so different from our two-legged ones?

  Evelyn’s black gaze tracked over my face. “Ness? You are worrying me.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “I will always worry about you. I love you too much not to worry.”

  The image of her tied to a chair flashed behind my lids. I gritted my teeth, trying to stop my canines from sharpening. I longed to visit Eric’s basement and sink my teeth into Lucy’s fleshy, pale throat.

  My aunt hadn’t hurt Evelyn, or so Evelyn had claimed, but she was the type to bear her pain in silence. She’d never complained about the arthritis that locked up her joints or the old bullet wound in her legs that still made her limp.

  Breakfast went off without a hitch.

  Emmy, one of the women who worked at the inn, arrived shortly after me and insisted on handling the service. She asked where Lucy was, and I mentioned she’d gone after her heartbroken son. Emmy shot me a pained smile. She’d worked long enough at the inn to be up to date on Clark family gossip. What she didn’t know—or at least I didn’t think she knew—was the dual nature of her employers.

  While Emmy took care of the early risers, I prepped a tray of food that I brought up to my uncle. I drew his drapes open and tried to coax him out of bed to eat, but he didn’t move. I checked his pulse to make sure he was alive. He was. After my third failed attempt at getting him up, I let myself out.

  As I went back downstairs, it dawned on me that I’d be in charge of the inn today. The responsibility tightened my stomach so abruptly that I pressed my palm against it.

  It’d be okay.

  I could manage.

  Besides, it was temporary. A day. Maybe two. Right?

  The cramping didn’t ease up. I tried spacing out my breaths, but that didn’t help.

  The revolving doors of the inn spun, and I realized that working on my breaths wouldn’t loosen the knot in my abdomen.

  What I was feeling wasn’t stress; it was August.

  And his mother.

  “Isobel?” I exclaimed.

  She hadn’t changed much—her hair was still a lustrous deep brown, and her complexion pale as ever—but she seemed thinner, slighter. She opened her arms, and I descended the stairs more quickly, walking into her embrace.

  “Oh, sweet girl, I’ve missed you.” She squeezed me tight before pressing me away to look me over. “By God, you are Maggie’s”—her voice caught on my mother’s name—“spitting image.”

  I tried to smile, but Mom’s name had my heart twisting. She’d died in January, yet it felt like she’d left me yesterday. Sometimes, I still reached for my phone to call her.

  “What are you two doing here so early?” I asked, breathing through the ache in my heart.

  Isobel gestured to the bell desk. “I’ve always dreamed of manning one of these.”

  “Um. Really?”

  “I heard the position opened up.” Her gaze swept back over to me, vivid green like the pines hedging the inn’s driveway.

  I blinked.

  “I’ll get myself set up . . . if that’s all right with you?”

  “Are you sure you want—”

  “Yes.”

  As she walked over to the bell desk, I glanced up at August. Had he asked his mother to fill in for Lucy?

  “Anything need fixing?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Lightbulbs? Chipped paint?” He gestured toward the inn. When I frowned, he said, “I imagine Jeb won’t be much help in the coming days, what with everything going on.”

  Oh. Gratitude curled through me.

  “You can’t do this on your own. Well, maybe you can, but you shouldn’t have to.” He pushed up the long sleeves of his thermal top that clung to his torso like a second skin. “I’m good at manual labor, but don’t stick me in the kitchen unless you want to poison the guests.” His lips quirked up.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane or a submarine right now?”

  Gaze roaming over the lobby, he said, “I’ve delayed my departure.”

  Relief warred with worry. “You did?”

  I prayed he hadn’t done this because he was worried for me. I didn’t dare ask.

  “I need to be at a construction site in an hour, so you have me for sixty minutes.”

  I had him for longer than sixty minutes if he wasn’t deploying. “Um, the deck might need some rearranging.”

  He nodded and walked toward the double-storied living room.

  “Hey, sweet girl, can you walk me through a typical day here?” Isobel stood in the doorjamb between the bell desk and the back office.

  Although I’d never manned the bell desk, I’d observed my aunt and uncle enough to have an idea of what they did. I explained what I knew to Isobel, then started for the stairs that led to the laundry room in the basement when Matt walked through the revolving doors arm in arm with a blonde who looked uncannily like him.

  “Hey, Ness. Don’t know if you remember my mom?” He tipped his head toward the woman beside him.

  I didn’t remember her. She must’ve attended the pack gathering though. Then again, Isobel hadn’t been there. Maybe Matt’s mother hadn’t either.

  I doubled back and extended my hand. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

  She latched onto my extended fingers. “Kasie. And the pleasure’s all mine, Ness.”

  After she freed my hand, I slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans. When neither supplied the reason for showing up, I asked, “Did you two want some breakfast?”

  “Oh, we’ve eaten already,” Kasie chirped.

  I glanced at Matt, not really understanding what else they could want. “Coffee? Tea?”

  “We’re here because—”

  Kasie interrupted her son. “Because I love to cook. And I remember from the pack reunion that Evelyn was a fantastic chef, so I’ve come to train with her.”

  Oh.

  “Why don’t I show myself to the kitchen?” She stopped by the bell desk to kiss Isobel’s cheek, before crossing the lobby and vanishing into the dining room.

  I turned back toward Matt. Whatever he’d just told Isobel had her grin
ning wide.

  “Such a smooth talker, that one,” she told me, shaking her head at him.

  The revolving doors spun again, and Lucas walked in, a gym bag slung across his chest. “I need a room,” he announced, strolling up to the bell desk and sticking one forearm on the counter. “Hey, Mrs. W.”

  Isobel smiled. “Hi, Lucas.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why do you need a room?”

  “My place got flooded. Fucking neighbors.”

  My eyebrow came crashing back into place. “Wow. I’m sorry about that.”

  He ran a hand through his shaggy black hair that curled around his ears. “Why are you sorry? Did you make them leave their tap running all night?”

  I let out a small grunt. “You know what, I’m not sorry.”

  Lucas’s light-blue eyes shone with delight. I bet he’d been crowned Boulder’s Most Annoying Person back in high school. “What’s your room number, Ness? 105, right?”

  I crossed my arms. “Why?”

  “Just want to avoid bunking in the same room.” He winked at me. “Liam would have my balls in a vice. Shit. Sorry, Mrs. W.”

  Isobel smiled. “I’ve heard worse, son.”

  Lucas leaned forward to see the computer monitor. “Room 106 free by any chance?”

  “It is. Let me get you the key.” Isobel disappeared into the back office.

  I crossed my arms. “Did your apartment really get flooded?”

  He shot me a cocky grin.

  That answered my question. “You’re here to babysit me, aren’t you?”

  “Babysit you?” Lucas snorted. “What an idea.”

  “Oh my God, you are!”

  He waggled his eyebrows.

  “Did Liam put you up to this?”

  Metal clinked in the office as Isobel sorted through the rows of keys.

  “No one put me up to this. I’m doing it out of the kindness of my heart.”

  “Your heart isn’t kind,” I volleyed back.

  Matt snickered whereas Lucas scowled.

  I wheeled on Matt. “Your mother’s not here for cooking lessons, I suppose?”