by T. S. Joyce
With a fearful sound, Nicole ran as fast as she could through the crunching snow, sure at any moment the wolf would leap onto her back and rip her throat out. She was too scared to look behind her to see her death coming.
She jumped up the porch stairs two at a time, skidded inside, slammed the door behind her, and leaned her full weight against it. Gasping for oxygen, she stared at the snowy wilderness through the window across the cabin as her thoughts raced in circles.
She didn’t know everything yet, but she was sure of one thing.
Lincoln McCall wasn’t a man at all.
He was a monster.
Chapter Seven
Nicole shouldn’t be doing this, but she had to know.
She squinted at the map Hardware Jack had drawn up for her and cursed his name for the billionth time. He’d labeled every damned tree with a nickname and hadn’t used any road names. She was pretty sure this was the turnoff, directly after her own, but somehow, it had taken her half an hour to decipher Hardware Jack’s encrypted map.
There was a set of fresh tire prints on the snowy road, and with a deep inhalation, she pushed on the gas and turned in past an old fence with a No Trespassing sign. The drive was long and winding, and towering pines lined it on both sides. It would’ve struck her as quite beautiful if she wasn’t so angry and scared.
Link’s cabin was small, but perfectly kept with a new roof that looked eerily similar to Buck’s, new cedar logs, a large picture window, and a sturdy looking shed that looked like a miniature of the cabin in the back. She pulled the massive truck around the circle drive to give herself an easy escape and cut the engine.
Link had apparently been expecting her because he sat on the porch stairs, impervious to the falling snow, bare of his sunglasses. He was looking down at the ground, hands clasped under his chin, elbows resting on his knees. This was the first time she’d seen him without a jacket. A maroon sweater clung tightly to his cut physique, and his wide shoulders strained against the thin material. His dark blue jeans fell over the work boots she’d found on her property. The ones he must’ve retrieved sometime last night while she was cowering inside, terrified he would come after her.
Nicole pulled the shotgun from the gun rack in the back window of the truck and slid out. She aimed at him and tried to steady her voice as she approached. It would do no good to look scared right now. She needed answers.
“I know what you are.”
When Link lifted his silver gaze to hers, she gasped and startled violently at the blazing color there. She’d only seen that shade on one other creature. She wasn’t crazy. He and the wolf were the same creature.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I was trying to fix your generator. There is a storm coming, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you not having a backup energy source if you got snowed in.”
“You’re a man, and you’re a wolf, aren’t you?” she asked. “I’ve read loads of paranormal romance books, Link. I’m a reader! I thought you were a myth, or just something writers made up to battle vampires. But you’re not a myth. I thought I would come here and you would prove to me that I was just imagining things, but you have fucking wolf eyes! Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Link asked softly. It wasn’t a denial.
“I want to hear what you are…from your mouth.” Damn, her voice shook so hard now. She inhaled deeply. “I want you to admit it!”
“I’m not allowed to tell people—”
“Link, tell me! Please. Be someone in my life who doesn’t lie. Be that. Right now. Tell me.”
The silence grew thick between them as he stared at her. At last, he dropped his gaze and nodded once. “I’m a werewolf. A shifter.”
And now she needed one more question answered. If she didn’t hear it from his lips, she would never be able to let this go. She would never gain closure. “Did you kill him?”
Link dropped his hands across his knees, then stood with a grace too lithe to be human. He approached slowly.
“Don’t you take another step, or I’ll shoot.”
“I can hear a lie.”
“Link, don’t!” She lowered the barrel toward his belly, but he didn’t stop.
Instead, he pulled the barrel to his forehead and whispered, “If you go after one of my kind, you aim here.” He lowered the barrel to his chest, right over his heart. “Or here. We can take a lot more damage than you’d guess. Do you understand?”
“Answer me,” she choked out as a tear betrayed her and slid down her cheek. “Did you kill Buck? Did you kill my dad?”
Link swallowed hard, but shook his head. “No.”
“Do you know who did?” Her voice came out nothing but a squeak. She’d thought she wanted answers but, suddenly, she was scared to find out the truth.
Link dipped his chin once. “The wolf who killed your father is dead.”
“Who was he?”
“My oldest brother.”
The shotgun sagged in her arms. Her lungs weren’t working. It was as if the air was too cold and freezing her tissue until the organ was unusable. She grew light-headed and dizzy as she backed toward the truck.
Link made a single clicking sound behind his teeth and twitched his head as he took a step toward her. “Don’t run. Not until you hear me out.”
“You kissed me!”
“And I’d do it again.”
“You kissed me knowing your brother killed my dad, Link. Is that why you’ve been bringing me little dead bunnies? Fish? Is that why you fixed my generator and fixed the roof on Buck’s cabin?” She lifted her voice, steadily growing into her anger now. “Is it guilt that drew you to me?”
“Yes. At first.”
She huffed an angry breath in response to his bullshit and spun for her truck.
“Nicole, wait! It’s not like that now. I care—fuck! Nicole just listen for five minutes, and then you can bolt. You can run back to your life in the lower forty-eight, and I’ll never bother you again, but you have to understand what happened. You should! If not to give me a chance to explain how fucked up my family is, then for you, so you can gain closure on your dad’s death. And I didn’t kiss you out of guilt!”
The raw desperation in his voice halted her in her tracks. Slowly, she turned. His eyes were blazing almost white, and he dragged his hand through his dark hair, mussing it as a long, volatile snarl rattled his throat.
“Why then, Link?”
“Because you make me feel so damned good, Nicole.” His words broke on her name. “I don’t have much time left, but you calmed the wolf with a touch, and it meant the world. I kissed you because I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop coming up with ways to take care of you, and I know it’s so fucked up the way I do it. You aren’t Alaskan, and you don’t understand the value of those dead rabbits, the fish, or the fucking generator, but it’s all I have. It’s all Wolf knows how to give. I didn’t kiss you out of guilt, Nicole. I kissed you because you feel like mine.”
His voice sounded so broken and honest, that she hesitated. She’d wanted nothing more than to drive away from him in a cloud of snow and exhaust, but her every instinct screamed he was telling the truth. Sagging against the back of the truck, she shook her head over and over. “You’re wrong, you know?”
“About what?” he asked, leaning against the cold metal beside her.
“Buck was Yupik, and I was born here in Galena. I’m part Alaska Native. I might not know the value of those gifts yet, but I’ll figure it out. Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
“Being what you are?”
“Say it.”
She swallowed down the acidic vitriol of the word monster she’d thought him to be. That wasn’t right at all. Link hadn’t hurt her, and he hadn’t hurt her dad. “Does it hurt being a werewolf?”
He gritted his teeth so hard, a muscle jumped in his jaw. He blinked slowly and dragged his ice-colored gaze to hers. “Yes,” he murmured.
“How?”
“I
t hurts to Change. It hurts to hide. It hurts to lose my mind to an animal.” He shifted his weight and dropped his eyes to the ground. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
Before she could change her mind, she grabbed his hand and squeezed, wishing it was warmer out here so she wouldn’t have to wear her gloves, so she could touch his skin and feel the warmth there. “I’m sorry your brother died.”
“You don’t have to say that. Cole deserved what he got. Wanted it even. He didn’t want to hurt people. You should know what I’ll become, though.” Link stared out over the falling snow with a faraway, troubled look. “I’ll be like him someday. I’ll go crazy, too. I’m already on my way.”
Nicole itched away the tear that had frozen on her cheek and pulled the tailgate of the truck down. Scrambling up onto it, she patted the empty space beside her and waited for Link to sit next to her. “I think you should tell me everything.”
“Everything?” he asked.
“Yeah. I know what you are now, and I’ll keep your secret safe. I understand why you don’t advertise it. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Mr. Nibbles, you’re a friggin’ werewolf.”
A long growl rattled his chest as he scooted closer to her, offering his body warmth. “Wolf doesn’t like that name.”
“So he’s separate from you?”
“Too separate. It’s part of the curse.”
And as the snow fell down around them, Link told her everything. He told her of the McCall curse and how he’d betrayed his pack and gone rogue. He admitted to hunting a woman he was now friends with, but changed his mind and protected her from his murderous family instead. He told her of how the McCalls considered him a traitor and how he was slowly losing his mind. Link hugged her close to his side when he talked about the Silver brothers and their mates and how much he cared about them. Kill orders, claiming marks, shame, losing his brothers, hating and loving them, madness polluting his family tree, fox and bear shifters, little girl babies who couldn’t survive their wolves, a cure that didn’t work on him. Entwined in his heart-wrenching story was such a sense of acute loneliness, it nearly doubled her over.
Nicole understood feeling alone. She had always been an outsider, too. Through his admissions, she could really see him. The man and the animal, and even though her head was worried about his snarly side, her heart didn’t care. He made her feel beautiful, excited, fluttery, and even taken care of. Yeah, she was an independent woman, but Link was a caregiver and she loved that he cared for her in his own, wolfish way. He was a man embroiled in a battle for his sanity, but he was still upright, and still taking the time to hunt for her. The dead bunnies and fish that had seemed so unsavory before felt like an incredible gift now. Here he was, bucking his lineage in an effort to go out a decent man, and she admired him indescribably much for that.
“You’re very strong, Link.”
“I’m not.”
“You haven’t given up yet, have you?”
He didn’t answer, only wiped snow off her thick snow pants, then leaned back on his locked elbows. “I want to show you my den, and then I want to feed you.”
She giggled and denied him. “I don’t have a craving for bunny sandwiches or fish scale casserole at the moment.”
With a playful growl, he lifted her off the end of the truck and strode with her bent over his shoulder like a sack of flour. “I’m making you steak tonight.”
“Cooked?”
“I don’t eat raw meat, Nicole.”
“Just making sure.”
There was a pile of freshly cut lumber on the front porch, along with a saw and toolbox, but inside, no such clutter existed.
Link hovered in the open doorway, bright eyes on her as she scanned his home…er, den. It was so different than she’d imagined a bachelor pad to be. It was clean, and the floorboards were gleaming and swept. Shiny white dishes sat in a drying rack near the sink, and a fire crackled in the wood burning stove in the corner. It was warm in here, so she removed her jacket and scarf slowly and hung them on a coat rack near the door. The living room opened to the kitchen, and to the right, the master bedroom was only separated from the rest of the living area by a step up, where a queen-size bed with a thick blue comforter sat in front of a big picture window. She approached it slowly, in awe of the beautiful scenery outside.
“I like big windows,” he murmured, closing the door behind him.
It made sense that Link would need to see his woods at all times. He was a part of them.
“Your house is that way,” he said, stepping up into the bedroom and pointing out the window. “Two miles separate us.”
“Two miles,” she said on a breath. It had felt like so much farther when she’d been following Hardware Jack’s map. “That’s not a great distance to cover as a wolf?”
Link shook his head, but his silver eyes never left hers. “It’s nothing. I like to make sure you’re okay.”
“Do you go over there even when you don’t bring food?”
“Would it bother you if I did?”
She frowned out the window. It should, but it didn’t. Link was checking on her—making sure she was safe. “No.”
“I like to know what predators move through your area, and if anyone is messing with your land. I found a trap a few days ago, so I pulled it out and talked to the owner of a trap line that had gotten too close. He doesn’t come near you anymore.”
“Have you been inside Buck’s house?”
“No. It was locked until you bought it, and I don’t break in. I fixed what I could on the outside.”
“As an apology for your brother killing him?”
Link nodded once and looked ill in the second before he dragged his attention to the window again. “A man’s cabin is a part of him. Out here, it’s more than a home. It’s survival, warmth, and shelter. It’s family, a lover, something to care for. Something to talk to. It didn’t feel right letting Buck’s cabin suffer after he passed. I wanted his ghost to rest easy.”
Chills blasted up her arms, and she rubbed them to warm up. She didn’t give much thought to ghosts, but each word Link had spoken was punched with confidence, as if phantoms were a fact of life out here.
“Do you see ghosts?”
Link placed his hands behind his back and inhaled deeply. “My entire lineage has died early, and in violence.” He smiled sadly down at her. “All McCalls are haunted. How do you like your steak cooked?”
He turned, but she wrapped her hands around his waist from behind and stopped his escape. “You feel like mine, too.”
Link went rigid in her arms, then slowly relaxed, slid his hand over hers, and squeezed it gently. A soft growl rattled as he turned and faced her, so Nicole slid her hands up his taut stomach and rested her palms on his chest, right over the vibration. The noise tapered off to nothing, and she smiled up at his stunned expression.
“Wolf feels like mine, too,” she admitted quietly.
Link clutched her wrists, held her in place against him as his lips crashed down onto hers. He pushed his tongue past her lips and tasted her, over and over until she was writhing against him. This wasn’t the careful first kiss they’d shared at the diner. It was possessive and needy. It didn’t question if they were taking things too fast, and she didn’t want him to. She wanted this, right here. She wanted to lose herself completely with a man who really saw her. Who cared about her because of her personality and didn’t look at her face like she was repulsive. She wanted a connection with Link that would bind them. He was good, strong, and being around him made her feel more like herself than ever.
Nicole bit his bottom lip and ran her hands up under the hem of his sweater, across the mounds of flexed abs that nearly buckled her knees. Desperate to see them, she pushed his shirt over his head and nipped at his chest before she eased back. “Link,” she whispered, shocked that a man who looked like him, with his defined chest and washboard abs, the sexy crease of muscle over his hipbones, and wide, muscular shoulders, would want anything to do wit
h a displaced, birth-marked city-girl who had lost her crown the day her stepdad had denounced her.
He had tiny silver scars in threes and fours, barely noticeable, and selfishly, she hoped she was the only woman who had ever laid eyes upon them. She kissed them one by one, finishing with the one on his ribcage. When she looked back up into his eyes, they’d gone white as snow, and his chest heaved with every ragged breath he took.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. It was too gravelly to be completely human, but she didn’t mind that his animal was here, too. She wanted them both, all of Link, because his animal side helped to shape who he was, and dammit, she adored everything about him.
Nicole straightened and pulled her hair back in a band she kept around her wrist. Feeling proud of the way she looked for the first time in her life, she lifted her chin and pulled her sweater over her head so he could see the full extent of the mark. Defiant to the niggling insecurity that crept in like morning fog, she gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to jump under his sheets and turn off the lights like with the other two men she’d slept with.
Self-consciousness didn’t belong here in this moment. Not with Link looking at her as though she’d bewildered him. Not with him brushing his finger reverently down the red color on her shoulder and the dotted half-necklace that curved under her neck. Not with him parting his lips just enough to whisper, “Perfect.”
And she was gone, falling. She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t care if it was too soon or too fast. If Link was really going mad, their timeline wouldn’t be like other couples. They would have to live every moment to the fullest and make every second together count. If he was going to be put down someday, she would have to make memories like this one and hope they kept her warm for always.
With shaking fingers, she unsnapped the button of her thick winter pants, but Link shook his head. It looked like it hurt, and he made a pained noise in his throat.