by Penny Alley
Gabe scrubbed his face with both hands. Intolerable. This whole situation was nothing but intolerable, and yet he was going to have to find a way to deal with it. Tomorrow he’d clean out his spare room, make a proper bedroom for them to share, and maybe…just maybe…sometime between now and the day he died, he’d figure out how to coexist with them both.
He had to make it through tonight first, and he already knew that wasn’t going to happen with him in here and them crammed together on his couch.
Beyond tired, Gabe grabbed his pillow and an extra blanket from the closet. He returned to the living room to find Neoma sitting at the far end of the couch, her legs hugged to her chest and her face turned away. He thought she was crying—something that should also have made him happy, and yet…—but when she snapped around, that neutral mask of hers was back in place and her eyes were dry, void of tears and accusation, and gratitude.
She scrambled to stand when he tossed the pillow and blanket on the sofa arm just above Scotty’s head. That mask faltered, becoming uncertainty as she reached to accept them. “Th-thank you.”
“They’re for me,” he said flatly. “You take the bed.”
She recoiled, the mask failing at last and horror rising fast to take its place. “I won’t throw you out of your bed. Really, we don’t mind the couch.”
“Look, I’m tired,” Gabe said with a sigh, at this point wanting nothing more than to lie down and close his burning eyes. “I’m tired. Get your pup and go to bed so I can too. I have work in the morning.”
Stepping back from the couch, he gave her as much room to move around him as the wall at his back would allow. When she hesitated, he executed a grand gesture meant only to wave her on toward the bedroom. Were the mood between them a good one, it might have sparked a smile. But the mood wasn’t good and he knew when she flinched back he must have come across as impatient instead. Either way, it got Neoma moving.
At her first gentle touch smoothing through his hair, Scotty stirred and lifted his head. He looked at her first, then Gabe and, when she picked him up and settled his thin frame against her small shoulder, finally mumbled, “Are we going home now?”
“No, honey. We’re going to bed.”
His eyes already drifting closed, Scotty wrapped sleepy arms around her neck and lay his head on her shoulder. “G’night.” Tiny fingers twitched out what might have been a wave when she edged past Gabe for the bedroom.
“Good night, buddy,” Gabe couldn’t help answering. After so many years talking to pups down at the school, the response came automatically and with a quiet cheerfulness that startled him almost as much as it did Neoma. She glanced back at him from the safety of his open bedroom door.
Not one more word, his eyes told her.
Juggling the weight of her child in her arms, Neoma softly closed the door.
Shaking the spare blanket out over the couch, Gabe kicked out of his shoes and shut off all the lights. He punched his pillow up against the sofa arm and lay down with his head near the front door, but tired as he was, his eyes refused to stay closed. He blamed the couch. He tried three times to fold himself into a comfortable position, but there was no ignoring the fact that the sofa had been built at least eight inches too short and three inches too narrow to accommodate someone his size. Already his neck had begun a dull ache of protest at the base of his skull. By morning, he’d be feeling the consequences in every muscle he owned.
Still, it wasn’t the cramped confines of his temporary bed that kept sleep from coming. No matter how he lay or which way he turned, that tower of cans refused to let him rest. Not because he couldn’t explain it, because explaining it was easy. She was a Scullamy putting down roots in Hollow Hills. By morning, she’d have no shortage of enemies and Gabe could think of at least three who wouldn’t think twice about sneaking up behind her. Those cans had been an early warning device meant to wake her just in case they did, but this was his house. No one, not even Branch McKullen, who’d lost his wife and daughter to midnight raiders some two years back would dare come to his home after Neoma or Scotty. For as long as he was mated to her, she and Scotty would be safe here. Surely she had to know that.
Unless it was someone outside of Hollow Hills that she feared might come sneaking up on her in the night? Wayman, maybe. Gabe rubbed at the back of his neck, already feeling his hackles rising, but almost immediately Deacon replaced Wayman in his thoughts.
I know she’s scared… Karly had said, stabbing at him with a look of pure accusation. You didn’t see her face…
Except Gabe had seen her face. He’d seen it while she’d been crawling through the gravel, blood matting in her hair and seeping down her neck, desperate to get her son off the Scullamy-bound bus. He’d seen it sooner than that too, back when Neoma the wolf had thrown herself under him. Because her Alpha had ordered her planted in the enemy camp, his stubborn suspicions tried to argue, but his common sense was having trouble accepting that. Deacon had no conceivable reason to plant anybody much less Neoma in Hollow Hills. Whether he was planning another invasion or not, everything he needed to know about the territory, its people and its near non-existent defenses would have been discovered over the course of the Hunt. Nothing further would be gained by leaving Neoma or Wayman among them.
Gabe fought it, but his restless thoughts insisted on following that stream of logic to its inevitable conclusion: Neoma had thrown herself under him not because she was obeying her Alpha, but because being captured in a Hunt by her pack’s longstanding enemies had terrified her far less than returning home. Once planted, that idea insisted on germinating, growing, turning what was already destined to be a long night even longer.
And someone kept whimpering.
It was so faint at first, Gabe mistook the sound for an animal skulking around the outside of the house. It wasn’t until he’d managed to keep his eyes closed long enough for the burning to ease that, almost as an afterthought, he realized those whimpers were coming from his back bedroom.
Most likely the boy, then. Tossing onto his side, his nose now touching the back of the couch just to avoid falling backwards off the thing, he hugged his pillow. Were he in their place and as young as Scotty appeared to be, after a day like theirs, he’d probably have nightmares too. Either way, the boy was Neoma’s business, not his.
Barely had that thought skulked through the shadows of his mind when his feet kicked off the blanket and he was tossing again, all the way over onto his other side and off the couch. He took that hall in a matter of seven steps. The cool metal of the doorknob was in his hand before he knew he was going to reach for it. And then the door was opening, almost without his help.
He shouldn’t do this, Gabe thought as he peeked inside. There was little enough to see, though. The window drapes were slightly parted, allowing in just enough tree-filtered moonlight for his volka eyes to pick out twin lumps of shadow in the hills and valleys of the bedding. One half the size of the other, and despite what he’d first thought, it wasn’t the little one doing the whimpering. She barely moved, for all her little noises, but she curled, becoming a fetal ball that twitched and squeaked. Not a volka, but a mouse. The mouse her Alpha had made of her.
He really shouldn’t do this. His feet moved him forward anyway, into the room and around the end of his bed, stopping once he stood over her. The curve of her cheek and the flex of her fingers were all the features that he could make out.
She squeaked again. That little mouse under his care. A Scullamy mouse, his mind reasoned, trying hard to compartmentalize her into something that didn’t tug so at his sympathies. He really must be exhausted.
Her head gave a little jerk, as if she were pulling back from whatever nightmare haunted her dreams. The fingers he could see twitched again, and so did his. Before he could stop himself, he touched her. Just the locks of her hair, washing back over the pillow. Blonde as blonde could be, but like ribbons of midnight swept back over the white of his pillow behind her. It was a touch she couldn’t
possibly have felt, but her little twitched quieted. So did her mews. He almost touched her again, but just as his hand moved so did another. Not Neoma’s. No, this new hand was smaller. Attached by the wrist to an arm made thin by youth.
Turning toward her, Scotty lay his hand upon her cheek. He patted twice without opening his eyes, and the little twitches eased. Neoma grew quiet. Whatever monsters darkened her dreams, that little hand chased away.
He really shouldn’t be here. On odd twisting in his stomach, Gabe backed from the bed. Had either awakened to find him there, no explanation he could think of could have excused his presence. Or the touch of her hair; his fingers still felt the softness of the strands. Forbidden strands, attached to a forbidden Bride. Again, that odd twisting gripped him, moving through his gut, up through his chest and down into his legs. They developed a life of their own, this time moving him back out of the room and once more to his couch.
It had to be a trick of his imagination, but when he lay down, the sofa seemed smaller than before. He stared straight up at the dark, unable to see the ceiling, unable to close his eyes. Unable to string more than two thoughts together.
Unable to sleep. Not all night long.
He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.
CHAPTER NINE
One minute his living room was dark as pitch and in the next, Gabe snapped awake to find light streaming in through the window and a small child staring back at him from the opposite end of the couch. That was one quiet pup. Too quiet, too serious and too small. Especially for a volka child. Too pale, too. It made his eyes look huge, surrounded by dark semi-circles that spoke of either too little sleep, a sickly nature or a lifetime of not enough to eat. As fast as that thought struck him, he wished it hadn’t. Nagging suspicions had haunted him all night long. He wasn’t ready for them to start up again now that it was morning.
Oh, and what a morning it was. Too bright, too early, and too painful.
Holding his neck, Gabe rolled out of his blanket and sat up. He had two day’s growth on his face now instead of one. His entire back ached and his head was killing him from sleeping with his neck crooked. He kept Ibuprofen in the kitchen cupboard, but every muscle in his body promised to make retrieving some the longest walk of his life. And through it all, the little boy at the end of the couch still hadn’t moved or smile, and probably hadn’t blinked.
Letting his hands dangle between his knees, Gabe looked at him. “You hungry?” he finally asked.
Scotty nodded.
Pushing to his feet, his back protesting every crick his stretch discovered, Gabe headed for the kitchen. A whisper of barefoot steps on the hardwood followed at a wary distance and stopped at the edge of the counter closest to the living room.
Ibuprofen first. Pulling it down from the cupboard, Gabe shook two tablets out into his palm and then replaced the bottle on the shelf. Glancing at Scotty, watching silently from the doorway, he moved the bottle two shelves higher up and then closed the cupboard door.
After a quick inspection of his fridge, Gabe popped both tablets into his mouth and swallowed them dry. He was not at all prepared to have a child in the house. He didn’t have any milk or juice, or so much as a can of soda pop. Hell, apart from the steaks and strawberries, he barely had food.
“Steak it is.” He pulled out both the cooked and uncooked meat. It wasn’t until the crumpled ten-dollar bill fell out onto the floor at his feet that he noticed it wedged under one of the plates.
She’d tried to pay for what she’d taken. Bending slowly, Gabe picked the folded money up between his fingers and turned it over.
“You don’t like us, do you?”
Gabe closed the fridge. “Scotty, right?”
The child looked at him, but said nothing.
Refusing to get drawn into another staring contest with someone who might or might not be old enough for kindergarten, Gabe tossed the money on the counter and pulled out his largest frying pan. “How do you like your steak cooked?”
Hooking his fingers over a countertop almost as tall as he was, Scotty rested his chin on his fingers. “Mom says you don’t like us because you don’t know us.”
“Medium?” Gabe persisted. “Medium-well? Cajun? What am I shooting for here?”
Cooking steaks anywhere but on a grill was a crime worthy of the ultimate penalty, but—he checked his watch—with less than an hour before he had to be at work, he was willing to sacrifice flavor for expediency. Especially if it got him out of the house before Neoma woke up.
“We don’t need you to like us, you know,” Scotty said, more matter-of-fact than challenging now.
“You don’t think having at least one friend and ally here might help?” Sprinkling oil in the pan, Gabe adjusted the temperature of the front burner before turning his attention to the coffeemaker. “Everybody needs friends.”
“We don’t. We only need each other.”
Scooping grounds into a fresh filter, Gabe glanced at him again. “I’m sure you’ve got friends back in Scullamy who are going to miss you and who you’ll miss.”
“No,” Scotty said, but then thought about it. “Well, maybe Tobby, but he’s only my friend because his dad wants to know who Mom is having sex with.”
Gabe wouldn’t touch that comment with a ten-meter cattle prod. “What about your Alpha? An alpha likes all his pack. Besides, I saw Deacon and your mom together the other day and they were pretty friendly with one another then.”
Not so friendly yesterday, but the night before that when he’d passed her out like a piece of candy… He couldn’t believe he was calling that “friendly”.
“He doesn’t like me.” Where any other pup might have confessed to such with teary hurt and bewilderment, Scotty said it as if it were a truth so obvious as to be unworthy of argument.
Suspicion and curiosity were a dangerous combination. Both itched at Gabe without mercy. “Why is that?”
“Because traitors deserve to die a traitor’s death.”
Again, said without emotion as if it were an everyday truth.
The oil in the pan was rippling under the stove lights and the coffeemaker was sputtering. Gabe ignored both, as fixed now on Scotty as the somber pup was on him. “How are you a traitor, Scotty?”
“I’m too much like my father for my own good.”
He was the perfect age for repeating things he’d heard without any understanding of what should and should not be kept secret. It spoke volumes of a serious character deficiency that Gabe was not above pumping as much information as he could before Neoma appeared and said something to make the well run dry. “In what way?”
Scotty shrugged one shoulder.
The oil was getting too hot. Turning his attention to the stove, Gabe dropped each steak into the pan to sear. “How did you say you liked your meat?”
“I like it the way Mom makes it.”
“Your mom’s not up yet,” Gabe pointed out. “It’s just you and me, buddy. Unless you want it the way I like it, you might want to give me a hint.”
“I can’t eat until Mom checks it anyway.”
Lowering the fork he was using to flip the meat, Gabe looked at him again. He honestly didn’t know if he ought to be shocked or pissed. “I have done many an unforgiveable thing to food I’ve cooked and I’ll be the first to admit a grill is not always my best friend, but I have yet to kill anyone with a thirty-dollar porterhouse. Did your mom tell you that, that I’m going to poison you?”
Again, Scotty shrugged. Both shoulders this time.
The steaks were about to burn. Fuming, Gabe flipped them again. Adding butter and Worchestershire, he stared directly into the steam, thinking. He thought for so long he almost burned the meat. Nothing was medium-rare when he flipped the steaks out onto the cutting board. Without waiting for them to rest, he cut the smaller into equal halves, deposited each onto a plate and took them to the table.
“Sit your butt down,” he said, setting the plates down side-by-side in front of two
chairs. Returning to the counter, he fished a pair of mugs from the cupboard. “How do you like your coffee, or does your mom have to check that too?”
“She checks everything,” Scotty said, climbing up to sit at the table. “I’m not a baby anymore, but she still checks. Even after I already have.”
What little mollification he gained from knowing Neoma’s poisoning suspicions predated her arrival in Hollow Hills didn’t last longer than the time it took to realize only two types of people taught their children to check for poison: paranoid people, and those who had a damn good reason for that kind of mistrust. He was starting to suspect Neoma of many things, but neither irrational nor crazy were among them.
Doctoring one mug with the last of his creamer and enough sugar to frost a small cake, he took the chair next to Scotty’s. “I’m going to make you a deal: I promise never to give you or your mother anything that will make you sick. Can you make me that same promise?”
Shifting onto his knees, Scotty nodded.
“Good. I am a man of my family. That means when I give my word, it’s absolute. You,” Gabe told him, “are a man of your family. Your word should mean as much to you. Does it?”
The pale lines of Scotty’s eyebrows drew together, but he nodded.
“As men, we have a responsibility to take care of our families in every way we can. Your mom is your family, and you take care of her. That will never change.” Gabe placed Scotty’s coffee cup in front of him. “But you’re in my family now too, and that means it’s my responsibility to take care of both of you. I take my responsibilities very seriously.”
“Even when you’re mad?” Scotty asked.
Gabe’s jaw almost locked on him. “Especially when I’m mad.”
Scotty’s somber expression never wavered, but for just an instant, Gabe thought he saw something flicker in the depths of those piercing blue eyes. It was gone again before he could identify it.