“So we bonded and I was over the moon. I convinced her she’d love me if she just gave me enough time. I can charm the birds out of the trees with me words when I want to and Jaysus, I wanted to charm that woman.” His mouth twisted ruefully. “And I guess I did, for a few years anyway. But she never did fall in love with me. She tried, but it just never happened and one day she came to me and told me it was over. Her birthday was coming up and she was going to sever ties because she knew there had to be somebody out there she could love, only I wouldn’t let her look for him because I was so demanding. Even then I didn’t give up. I just asked her what it would take for her to stay with me. ‘I’ll never love you, Liam,’ she kept telling me. But I didn’t care. As long as she was with me, I didn’t care if she loved me or not. I kept on and on at her, what would it take, what did I have to do and finally she said—”
“She wanted a baby,” I finished for him and he nodded, his dark eyes bleak.
“The Alpha pair had been Alphas for nearly five years, so the time was ripe for another duo or triad to take over. I made damn sure that duo was us. I never lack confidence, Stanzie. I have that much going for me. I never doubted for a second we’d be voted in and I was right. There we were, Alpha pair, and she got pregnant and I thought everything was fixed.”
“Where does he come in? Colin Hunter?” I asked, but thought I knew.
From the look he gave me, it was plain he thought I knew too. “That’s easy. He’s the one she actually did love.”
His cheeks flushed with shame. I knew he was thinking about the fight. I could picture what had happened between Sorcha and Colin. They’d probably fallen in love between one breath and next. Easy. Uncomplicated. Meanwhile Murphy’d been knocking himself out for years trying and failing to attain what Colin Hunter had accomplished without effort.
Murphy took a deep breath and continued the story, his face and voice bitter. “He’d just lost his bond mate. They’d split up amicably enough and his branch of Mac Tire sent him to Dublin to drown his sorrows a bit. Although the bastard wasn’t precisely suffering. Even less after he met Sorcha.”
“Whose baby was it?” I demanded, although it was none of my business.
Murphy shrugged. He seemed to brace himself before answering. “I don’t know for sure. I think it was mine, but I don’t know and I’ll never know now.”
“Why is he in disgrace? That part I don’t really understand,” I confessed. The rules of sexual relationships in packs were fairly lenient. People could and did sleep with anybody they wanted, even the Alphas. An Alpha could have any man’s baby she wanted, it didn’t have to be her bond mate’s but ninety-nine times out of a hundred it was. An Alpha male whose bond mate had someone else’s child was not openly laughed at, but his authority was definitely undermined. We could and did sleep with anyone we liked within our packs, but there were fine lines we took care not to cross and egos we avoided bruising.
I wondered then how carefully Sorcha and Colin had treaded with regard to Murphy. I wondered if he’d become the laughing stock of his pack or the object of their pity.
He hated Colin Hunter and harbored a lot of resentment. I suspected it wasn’t entirely due to the fact that Sorcha had fallen in love with him. No doubt Hunter had rubbed Murphy’s face in the whole situation as well. He didn’t seem the subtle type to me.
I felt a swell of anger on Murphy’s behalf. We never made our Alphas look bad, no matter how much we secretly hated them. It wasn’t easy leading the pack. It was a heavy responsibility and pack mates were supposed to support each other.
Murphy took another deep breath and held it for a moment. His lip was bleeding again and he touched his tongue to the blood, tasting it, as though reminding himself of the fight.
“She wanted to leave me for him but we were Alpha and we still had three and a half years to go. So, the three of us were in negotiations to form a triad when she had the accident. I would have gone through with the bastard thing to keep even one part of her. If I had to share her with fucking Satan himself, I would have made a triad with him too. Colin accused me of murdering her so I didn’t have to share her. And that’s why there was an investigation not only of her death, but of me too. The friggin’ Alpha male of the bloody pack.”
There it was—the reason behind Murphy’s animosity. I didn’t blame him one bit. What a bastard Colin Hunter was. Belatedly, I tumbled to something that ought to have been fucking apparent from day one of knowing Murphy. “Allerton was the Councilor. That’s how you know him. He investigated you too.” I’d figured he’d investigated Sorcha’s death, but it had never even ghosted across my mind that Murphy would have been suspected of her murder.
Murphy nodded. “Allerton no more believed I would’ve harmed Sorcha than the rest of my pack. They were all behind me. They knew how I felt about her. So I was cleared, there was no tribunal, and Colin Hunter was disgraced. I wasn’t exiled by my pack, Stanzie. I left voluntarily. I didn’t want to be around anybody. I just wanted to be left bloody alone. I was never going to come back to the Great Pack, let alone Mac Tire, but Paddy would not let me be. I agreed to go the Great Gathering and now here I am. I’m fucked if I know a damn thing about anything anymore.”
He waited for me to say something, but I could only stare at his lowered head, at the shame and grief all over his face. He’d been afraid to tell me the truth about Sorcha. He’d kept us away from Dublin for as long as he could so I wouldn’t know. I don’t know if he thought I’d be ashamed of him or what.
When he’d first started to speak, my head and heart had reeled in disbelief because everything I thought about how it was with him and Sorcha shifted and was destroyed. I’d thought they’d had what I’d had with Grey and Elena but it couldn’t have been more different. How hard had it been to love when he knew he wasn’t loved back? How had he not gone fucking insane? Had just the thought of her being there with him been enough? Or had he brainwashed himself to believe it was enough?
Murphy deserved to be loved. He was a good man. A kind one. No one had ever taken better care of me than him or looked out for me as he had. Not even Grey. With him, I’d been the caretaker. I made sure the bills were paid and there was food in the cupboard and the laundry was done. Grey was always there to pick me up and whirl me around in a giddy circle and knock me down on the bed to make passionate love to me at two o’clock in the afternoon when I had to be downtown at four for a gig. But I was the one who’d nursed him through sicknesses and made sure he’d eaten vegetables at least twice a week and arranged all his doctor and dental visits, his hair appointments and cashed his paycheck.
I fit together with Murphy and, for the first time since we’d met and I’d heard Sorcha’s name, I allowed myself to think we had a chance to be happy together. As a real couple. To fall in love. Because Murphy deserved to be loved back and I wanted to be the one to show him what it felt like.
I leaned toward him and brushed my lips ever so gently across the abrasion on his cheek. His eyes were closed and he was nearly in tears. I kissed one eyelid and then the other, marveling that he let me touch him first and so intimately. I never even kissed him like this when we were in bed together. I had never dared.
Something inside me soared, a brief, shining moment of hope and a glimpse of the kind of happiness I thought I’d lost forever.
And that’s when he shoved me. I went flying and smashed into the wall so hard all the breath was knocked out of my body and, for a moment, I could see myself lying crumpled on the floor, my head lolling on my neck, eyes glazed and unfocused, while most of me floated near the ceiling looking down in suspended disbelief.
“Fuck you, Constance. Don’t you dare ever feel sorry for me, you hear me?” He was on his feet now, the terrible rage back in his eyes, and I saw myself staring up at him, my face full of shock then fear.
I slammed back down into my body and curled up into a fetal ball to protect myself because I thought he was going to hit me and I wanted to protect my head a
nd make myself as small a target as I could.
I waited, tense and breathless, for him to strike me, but he never did.
Instead I heard him weeping, great, racking sobs, above me.
I cautiously lifted my head and saw him face down on the bed crying like baby, clutching the pillow as if he were drowning.
I had to use the wall for support to get to my feet because my head was swimming from the blow it had absorbed hitting the wall.
It kept replaying.. Me reaching out to him, him shoving me away. I was an idiot. A romantic fool. And the worst part is that I didn’t know who he was anymore. The past two months—what had they meant? What had they been? Two lonely people trying not to be so lonely anymore. But that’s all.
I wondered then, at Murphy’s terrible rage. I wondered if Colin Hunter had maybe had a point after all, no matter what the rest of Mac Tire thought. What must it have been like for him to have to face the fact that the woman he loved, the woman who wouldn’t love him, had likely gotten pregnant with some other man’s baby and, worst of all, rubbed that guy in his face and the fact that she loved him and not Murphy?
I turned my back on him, and walked out into the hall into the bedroom across from the one I was supposed to share with Murphy. I locked the door and fell onto the bed but my head hurt so much I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t cry either. I wished I had the guts to leave the safe house and go back to Boston on my own. Sometimes there was such an edge to life, and tonight I felt as if my balance was so precarious any little thing could knock me off into oblivion.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw Murphy’s face. I waited for the anger to hit me so it wouldn’t hurt so goddamn much. He was going to walk away, I just knew it, and I would be alone again. How could I miss someone who was still there? How could I hate someone and still love him more?
Jesus. I loved him. I really did. Now I’d ruined everything with my clumsy attempt to show him. But what else could I expect? The night the car crashed, all my good luck died with Grey and Elena. I wished I knew how to fix it, but I couldn’t even get up the courage to get out of the goddamn bed.
I clutched at my bond pendant and just when I’d given up hope, the empty void of sleep wiped everything away. At least for a few hours.
Chapter 8
The moon is gone from the sky but the sun is not here yet. I am in the dark but I am not alone. The chase makes me tired. My head hurts but I can’t stop. I am afraid of who is chasing me. I don’t want to know, so I run. But I can’t run much farther. My head hurts, so I shake it, to try to make the hurt fly out and my heart beats so fast. I am wet with sweat and something else. Blood? But it is cold. Wet. I hear it hurting the leaves in the trees. I don’t know the word but if I think, it would come to me. But I have to run, I can’t stop running. My head hurts and I can’t stop. The wet stuff falls down like rain but not rain. My fur protects me but now the leaves are slippery and I can’t think because of the pain in my head. I hear it hurting the leaves—what is it? What is that sound? I want to know the word for the sound. I have to think and then...
* * * *
Sleet striking the windows of the bedroom roused me from my dream. For a hazy moment I didn’t know what form I was in because in my dream I’d thought almost like me in human form, but I’d been wolf. Using a vocabulary and a grasp of cause and effect that was in real life just beyond me.
In dreams, some margins are narrowed, some impossible things are possible, and the senseless makes perfect, horrible sense.
I sat up in bed, stifling a groan when I shifted my head and a wave of pain bounced through my skull. I wondered which had woken me—the sleet against the window or the pain in my head.
I had to pee but I knew the bathroom door to this room was locked. It was Grandfather Tobias’s bathroom and I couldn’t go in there.
I lay in bed, trying not to move, trying not to jar my head or my bladder as the sound of the sleet intensified against the glass of the windows.
I thought about Murphy and wondered if he were awake or asleep. Was he still mad at me? Shouldn’t I be mad at him? A part of me had desperately wanted to feel his arms around me as I had for the past two months, but, of course, I was alone. Again, I reached inside for anger but found only hopelessness.
Ten minutes of torture passed, twelve. At the eighteen-minute mark, I couldn’t stand it any longer and forced myself out of the bed. Maybe if I stood under a hot shower the pain would wash away.
Outside the bedroom window was a sheet of ice where the world used to be. I had to breathe on the window pane and rub at it to melt the frosted condensation and then I could see the telephone and electric wires sagging beneath the weight of a thick accumulation of ice. I looked at the clock on my nightstand, the numbers still glowed red but I wondered for how long. If those wires snapped, goodbye electricity, goodbye heat, hello dark and bitter cold.
As I rushed for the bathroom, I glanced furtively down the hall, hoping I would not run into anyone.
Allerton’s door was open and so was Kathy Manning’s, but they were not walking down the hall so I supposed they were already downstairs.
Grandfather Tobias’s door was shut, of course, and so was Murphy’s. There was a light on, I could tell that much, and I tried the bathroom doorknob wondering if he were in there. It opened under my touch and I was able to lock myself in from both the hall and his room so I could pee in peace.
After peeling off my pajamas, I got into the shower. I washed my hair, but wished I hadn’t when my fingers inadvertently pressed the back of my head and an explosion of sick pain and nausea nearly caused me to puke. There was a lump the size of a robin’s egg right where the back of my skull had slammed into the wall last night.
I couldn’t help the half scream, half groan of pain that escaped me when I touched it, nor the string of obscenities that followed. It was either swear or vomit, and I didn’t want to puke on my bare feet.
The water was a tease. It helped when I was underneath it, but once I was toweled dry and wrapped in one of the waffle knit bathrobes, my head still throbbed.
Teeth gritted, I unlocked the bedroom side door. I could not possibly go downstairs in a bathrobe or even my damn pajamas. I had to get dressed and all my clothes were on Murphy’s side of the door.
He’d known for half an hour that I was in the bathroom. He could hardly have failed to hear the water or my muffled curses, so I wasn’t surprised to find him slumped on the edge of the bed, facing the bathroom door. He was fully dressed, but he looked as if he hadn’t slept at all. His eyes were puffy and dark circles underscored them, giving him an oddly appealing appearance, more fragile and vulnerable than I’d ever seen him.
I’d always considered him strong and confident, even during moments of grief when he thought about Sorcha. This morning he looked beaten down and weak.
His split lip was a little swollen. It would have been fine if he’d thought to put ice on it the night before but he obviously hadn’t. The abrasion on his cheek had spread into a subtle bruise the color of dusk—gray-black and almost invisible. Blood crusted along the cut edges. He should have put peroxide on it last night or at least washed it with antibiotic soap, but he hadn’t done that either.
His dark eyes held a sort of mute apologetic agony as he looked at me. In his hands he held the small red leather photo album. It was open to the page where Grey and I laughed on the beach in Rhode Island.
At last anger swelled inside me and spilled into my veins, igniting a protective fury.
“That’s mine,” I snarled at him. “I want that back.”
He saw where I was looking and without a word, his eyes huge, he held it out to me.
I snatched it away and a photograph fluttered to the floor and landed face up on the Oriental rug.
As I bent to snatch it up, I realized two things—it had not been a good idea to move so quickly, and the photograph was not from my album.
I saw vivid red hair and lots of green grass and it hit me that it was
Sorcha’s picture.
I didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to confront her beauty and perfection and understand graphically why I didn’t now, nor ever would, measure up.
My outstretched hand froze and Murphy said, “Go ahead. You can look at it. It’s only fair. It’s Sorcha.”
Trapped, I picked up the photograph and, bracing myself, looked down at it.
Sorcha’s flame-red hair stood out like cloud around her decidedly plain face. Her chin was too pointy, her hazel eyes too close together and her cheeks were obscured by a battalion of freckles. Not a light dusting, but freckles upon freckles, a freckle free-for-all jostling for space and dominance.
I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even have a nice figure. Too skinny and flat-chested. I honestly could not understand what a gorgeous handsome man like Murphy would see in her. Or why someone so plain wouldn’t go crazy with joy at having a man like him madly in love with her. Not just for his looks either, but for him, for the kind of man he was. It did not make sense, but then nothing did anymore. Nothing had for so long. What was one more inexplicable thing?
Her hair was gorgeous, that much was true. Auburn, the color of autumn leaves, thick and wavy.
Murphy waited for me to say something but I couldn’t find any words. I hoped my expression did not give away my incredulity.
“She wasn’t beautiful like you are, Stanzie, but she had something. Some sort of wild mystery to her. Men went crazy about her. Mad to solve the mystery. I wasn’t the first one, but I had enough to charm to get her to bond with me, I guess. She never got serious about anybody until...Colin Hunter.” Murphy managed to get the name out without hitting something.
I still didn’t say anything. I could not come up with anything.
He waited a moment, watching me stare intently at the photograph of that plain, freckle-faced, flat-chested woman and eventually said, “What are you thinking?”
Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) Page 10