She sighed and looked away. Then she blew out a breath and fell back on the bed. When she spoke again, she addressed the ceiling in a tired voice.
“I don’t think it, Cade. I know it. I remember it, Seth remembers it, and I think Dylan remembers it. Guy Fontenot killed me. Not when he clawed me, but when he knocked me across the living room and I slammed my head on the window ledge. My heart stopped beating. I died.”
“For how long?” He’d read of humans revived after several minutes without a heartbeat.
“Five hours.”
“Five hours,” he repeated.
“Five hours.”
“Five hours.”
“Yes, Cade. I said five hours.”
“You were dead for five hours.”
“No breathing, no heartbeat. I got stiff and cold and everything.”
“Jesus,” he breathed.
“No, Eir.”
His own heart stopped then. A dull roaring sound filled his ears.
She propped herself back up on her arms. “You okay?”
He stared at her, not really seeing her. “I don’t like Eir.”
“Why not? Didn’t your mother—?”
“Yes. And Eir didn’t stop her from killing herself. Or bring her back.”
“Oh.” She sat all the way up to reach out a hand to him. Something made her stop.
He stared past her, remembering. “I grew up hearing about Eir,” he said half to himself. “I knew she was supposed to be able to raise the dead. At least, the Vikings thought so. Sindri said she didn’t save my mother because Mama made a choice.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
His eyes returned to her. “Old Ones aren’t around anymore, though. Not in our world, our plane of existence, whatever. They haven’t messed around with people in a thousand years.”
“I didn’t think they could, either.”
“So why’d she save you?” he asked, more harshly than he intended. But as soon as he thought about it, he knew the reason. “Dylan.”
“Yeah.” She looked down for a minute, her fingers idly plucking at the bedspread. “She said I died in battle, and the Valkyrie gathered fallen warriors, so… Anyway, she said I had a choice. I could be with God and my parents, or I could come back to raise Dylan and protect him. She said she’d give me what I needed to do that. She said she didn’t want to see another of his line die, that his line was precious to her.”
Since he’d claimed her she couldn’t lie to him, but if she were delusional he wouldn’t be able to tell. He didn’t think she was, though. He believed that what she told him had really happened, because it was the only thing to explain her inexplicable abilities. It contradicted everything he knew about the way Old Ones operated, however.
“She didn’t save Mama, or Carson, so she saved you?”
Ally nodded, her eyes welling up with tears. Her chin trembled again. “Cade, could you come over here? Please?”
“I don’t need to be held, Ally,” he snapped.
“I do,” she whispered.
Something in him broke. The icy anger washing through him was for Eir, maybe even for Mama, but not for Ally.
The lies, evasions and panicked retreats made sense now. It didn’t mean she wasn’t moody, or that he knew her any better than he had five minutes ago. But if he could wrap his head around what she’d experienced—what she was—he might be able to woo her, induce her to stay put.
Maybe it was like breaking horses.
“Why are you smiling at me?” she sniffled.
Skittish—that was it, what he hadn’t put his finger on before. She was skittish like a fine, spirited animal that wanted to stand still but didn’t know how.
He shook his head. You couldn’t tell a woman she reminded you of a horse. She wouldn’t understand.
“You’re kind of amazing.” He shifted to the end of the bed and put his good arm around her.
“I’m not.” She sniffled again. “I’m a freak of nature.”
“Yeah, and you’re amazing,” he said into her hair. “Weird and beautiful.”
He lay back and pulled her down with him
She hiccupped and shuddered, then laid her cheek against his heart and tucked a leg between his knees. He stroked her hair and back. When her breathing had slowed and she’d relaxed a bit, he said in his most soothing manner, “Tell me the rest.”
He tried to ignore his blood singing in his veins as she pressed against him, her thigh resting against his hard cock, or how the lavender scent made him want to bury his head in her neck and go to sleep. He focused on her softly shaking voice instead.
She’d found herself in her childhood bedroom, in the home she’d shared with her parents before they died. That was her “happy place”, the place she associated with safety and comfort. A woman was there. Ally couldn’t describe her, couldn’t name the color of her hair or eyes or the expression she wore. There was only an impression, a memory of a feeling, that the woman was beautiful, kind but distant, good but not friendly.
“It wasn’t a warm, snuggly, I’m-with-Jesus feeling. It was more a this very powerful being has taken an interest in me and that might be good or it might be bad feeling. I asked her if she was an angel, and she seemed to find that funny, but I don’t think she laughed or anything. She said no, and I asked her if she knew God, and she said yes, but no better than I did.
“And we talked about my parents, about Seth, and Dylan, and my death, and what I’d done, and why. The choice, to stay dead or go back. I asked if I went back, would I still go to Heaven when I eventually died again and she said yes, she couldn’t do anything God didn’t allow her to do, and my soul was my own.
“None of this is really a memory, you know.” She tilted her head to look up at him. “It’s not even like a dream. It’s like someone stuck someone else’s memories in my mind. I can see it all, and I know it happened to me, but I don’t feel a personal connection to it. Does that make sense?”
“A little,” he mused. “Sometimes that’s how I feel when I remember things that happened to me four-footed. It’s kind of fuzzy, removed.”
“Yeah. Removed is a good word for it.” She lowered her head and snuggled back into him. “I don’t think she even told me her name. I just knew it when I came back, like it was part of a program she’d downloaded in my head. I knew her name but I had to look her up to find out who she was. Once we were in Texas, I met an old lady who was one of her acolytes. I have to think Eir arranged that.”
“What happened to Seth while you were busy being dead with Eir?”
She stretched and wiggled a little in his arm, flexing against him. If he hadn’t been listening to his mate describe her own death, this would’ve been one of the most enjoyable experiences of his life. Ally drawing circles on his chest beat any three-way or model, or three-way with models, he’d ever had.
“Seth freaked out. I was dead. He’d killed a Lake Charles wolf, and that pack is full of nasty trash. He couldn’t call the cops, and he didn’t want to call anyone in his family, because then the pack would find out.”
“Where was Dylan?”
“In my room, screaming for me. Seth told him everything was okay and to just wait there for him. Dylan wanted to know where I was, and Seth yelled at him, and after that Dylan wouldn’t say anything. Then Seth wrapped my body in a comforter and put it in the back of the Cherokee.”
“What the—?”
“He didn’t want someone else taking my body. He’s not sure what he thought he’d do with it. He had some idea about taking me back to my father’s family in Texas.”
“Okay. And then?”
“He went to Guy and Gracie’s place and took all the cash he could find, and he went to his house and got all the money he’d saved.”
“I’m impressed he held it together like that. That kind of trauma would make most betas change.”
“Seth’s a strong beta. And he’s got guts to spare.” She stopped talking. He listened to her ta
king deep, quivering breaths.
“So, now he’s driving around with a little boy and a dead girl…” he prompted.
“Yeah, a dead girl in the back seat and a catatonic little boy up front. He knew he should probably drop Dylan off with someone in Lake Charles, but he hates our family as much as I do. So he kept Dylan and took off for Beaumont, where my cousin TJ and some others lived.” She paused. “He did pretty good, considering.”
She took a deep breath. “And right after he crossed the Sabine River, just outside of Orange, I sat up.”
He jerked. Her head bumped up and down on his chest.
“You what?”
“I just woke up. I was talking to Eir, I made my decision, I opened my eyes and I started to suffocate—I had a hunk of goose down in my mouth. They didn’t hear me thrashing around back there, I guess, because they were kind of surprised when I sat up.”
“You just sat up?” He almost laughed at the image it conjured. This shouldn’t be funny, not even in a gallows humor sort of way.
“Yeah. I don’t think I remembered, just at that moment, that I’d been dead. I sat up, saw them and said, ‘Why is Dylan in the front seat?’”
“First thing back from the dead, you start bitching?”
He heard a small smile in her voice. “Well, you can’t put a five-year-old in the front seat. Then Dylan turned around and said “Ally!” all happy like, and Seth turned around and saw me, and he screamed like a girl and drove the Cherokee into a ditch.”
When she didn’t say anything else right away, he nudged her impatiently. “And?”
“And…there was some screaming and crying, but we had to get the car out of the ditch before the cops saw us, so we did. We stopped to buy me some clean clothes and then we showed up at TJ’s parents’ house a little after midnight. I couldn’t explain why the boys had luggage and I didn’t, or why Dylan was with us. When I opened the door of the backseat, I pulled it off, and that’s when I first realized that something deeply weird had happened to me, and…life went on. We dealt.”
“Who else knows about all this?”
She sighed and shifted. He tightened his arm around her lest she be tempted to get up. She relaxed.
“Just Mrs. Olsen, the Eir acolyte I mentioned. I met her at church right after we got to Sugar Land. Other than her, and Seth and Dylan, only you know.”
“Dec doesn’t know?”
She took a sharp breath, but her voice sounded normal when she answered. “He knows I’m weird. He doesn’t bug me about it.”
She stopped, and this time he didn’t prompt her to go on right away.
They lay together in the quiet darkness. The more he played with her satin honey hair, or ran his thumb up and down the back of her neck, the more she relaxed and nestled against him. Her hand trailed idly up and down his stomach while her warm breath tickled his chest hairs.
He thought about her first night at the ranch and the fight at dinner, when he’d been so certain she and Seth were lying to him and she’d been so scared when Seth admitted to killing Guy Fontenot.
He thought about an eighteen-year-old girl who gave her life for a little boy, then chose to postpone Heaven so she could take care of him, and of the guts and brains and selflessness it took for two teenagers to do what they had done.
He thought of how she’d lived thirteen years with superhuman abilities she was forced to hide, raising someone else’s kid.
Unique, hell. She was awe-inspiring. A badass Army Ranger Pack Alpha might feel inadequate for just a moment.
The moment passed, of course. The awe remained.
He could give her what she’d never had—security, privacy, rest. She wouldn’t have to hide her nature among humans. He could protect her, cherish her. Most wolves said the mate bond felt just like love. He suspected he would’ve felt this way even without the bond.
There was still one thing he needed to know.
“Ally.”
“Hmm?” She sounded sleepy.
He rolled her over onto her back, propping himself up on his good arm. She gazed up at him through half-closed eyes.
“Wait a minute.” She opened her eyes all the way. “Be careful, Cade. Watch your shoulder. Lay back—”
“Shh.” He stopped her mouth with his own, shuddering when, after a moment, she dragged her nails gently down his back. Their tongues met, soft and lazy. He drank until he was dizzy. She sighed contentedly as he broke the kiss. She wanted him, that was obvious.
Which made the question even more important.
“Ally,” he said against her mouth.
“Hmm?” she purred.
“Why’d you try to leave, baby?” He raised his head slightly to look at her eyes, and she closed them again, no longer eager to challenge him.
“Ally, look at me,” he ordered. “I thought the night we had was good, I thought—”
“It was wonderful. The best I’ve ever had.”
“Then why—?”
She spoke in a rush. He realized she was embarrassed and wanted to get it over with. “Cade, you looked straight at me and said you’d never marry unless you met your mate. I thought you were trying to tell me that, you know, I didn’t have a chance with you or anything.” Her eyes flew open. She blushed crimson. He loved her blush. It made him feel tender and horny at the same time. “To hear something like that right after what we did, and—it was just, it just…”
“It hurt your feelings?”
She squeezed her eyes shut and drew a shaky breath. He bent his head to kiss her eyelids. Her lashes were wet.
“I’m sorry, baby.” He stroked his thumb across her cheekbone and down to her mouth. “I make you cry a lot, don’t I? I shouldn’t make you cry so much.”
She smiled shyly, still not meeting his gaze, and pressed her hands into the small of his back, cradling him between her legs.
“You can make it up to me when you’ve got your strength back,” she whispered.
“Yes, ma’am,” he growled. “You’re going to need all your strength yourself.”
He cupped her breast for a moment, flicking his thumb across her nipple, and smiled with satisfaction when she gasped.
Reluctantly he rolled over onto his back once more and closed his eyes. She snuggled up tight, breasts pillowing his arm, and drew her leg up over his hip. They lay there, relaxed and tired and content to listen to each other breathe.
“Cade?”
“Hmm?” Why did females always wait ’til you were almost asleep to start a conversation?
“When are you going to tell me about the dream?”
Pause. “Later.”
She smiled against his skin. “Fine. I’ll bug you about it later.”
Something jabbed her in the back once, then twice. She jerked sleepily to get away from it. Jab. This time in the ribs, hard. What the hell?
She woke with an “umph”, sweaty and disoriented on the edge of the emperor-sized bed. Someone had left the curtains of the upper window wide open and moonlight streamed in. She loved the way it washed over the bed.
As she lay with eyes closed, pretending she could feel the moon’s pull as wolves did, listening to Cade’s deep, regular breathing, a second sound intruded—lighter breathing, more rapid, a little nasal. She had to roll over carefully, lest she tumble off the side of the bed. As she turned, a small fist shot out across her shoulder, just missing her mouth. Becca frequently fought unseen forces in her sleep, yet never cried out as if in a nightmare. She just swung and kicked and punched and wiggled, waking up happy and refreshed.
Ally captured the fist and lowered Becca’s arm to her side. Gently but firmly, she pushed the little girl back to the middle of the bed, sliding over next to her. Becca flexed and mumbled, but she didn’t wake. Cade slept on, his back to them, oblivious to the midnight tussle inches away.
A sleeping child was nature’s sweetest furnace.
Ally pushed the hair out of Becca’s hot little face and gazed at her a while. A warm, sleeping chil
d and a warm, sleeping werewolf in a big, warm bed in a big, safe house. Her werewolf? Her child? Her bed and home? The prospect filled her with fearful hope and uncertain joy. So enormous a change, so abrupt a fork in the road, would take getting used to. She was scared this new life wouldn’t really be hers, scared she couldn’t cope if it was.
She wrapped an arm around Becca and pulled her close, giggling when the curly hair tickled her nose. Cade snorted, rolled onto his back and began to snore softly. Even his snoring seemed sexy—more evidence, if she needed any, that she was completely gone. She stared at his broad chest rising and falling, at his beautiful face mirrored so closely in his daughter’s. Inhaling the sweet scent of baby soap and shampoo, she fell back to sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
She’d been wearing the same T-shirt and lounge pants for she didn’t know how long. Cade had been shot four—or was it five now?—days ago, and she’d left the house only to ride, swim, or play with Becca.
She got out of bed, stretched, and walked into an empty living room. All the action was in the heart of the house—the kitchen—where Sindri, Sarah Jane, Dec, Becca and Seth were talking and laughing. Becca shrieked in Dec’s lap as he tickled her mercilessly.
“Good morning, honey. You get enough sleep?” Sarah Jane put a mug on the table in front of her and poured some coffee.
She yawned. “Too much, I think. What day is it, anyway?”
Sarah Jane smiled. “It’s Friday.”
“Holy crap.”
Sindri fixed her a plate of freshly scrambled eggs and toast. Did he cook breakfast all day?
“Where’s Cade?”
Seth answered. “He’s at the stables. He wanted to get back to work.”
“And y’all just let him go? Is he in any shape to be running around?” She looked first to Dec, then to Sindri, for confirmation.
Dec gave a lazy smile and shrugged. “The Alpha’s a very strong wolf, love, and he’s healed nicely. The poison’s gone. Besides, you’re the only one who could make him go back to bed.”
Everyone laughed. She blushed.
“So you’ve checked him out?” That made her feel better.
Yours, Mine and Howls: Werewolves in Love, Book 2 Page 20