by Moira Rogers
Zack stood inside, bent over a makeshift worktable made from an old door balanced across two sawhorses. A small twin bed tucked in the corner was covered in plastic, sawed boards of various sizes and boxes of nails, with tools spilling onto the floor. A chaotic mess, nothing like the neat work area Zack had kept in Memphis—but at least he was on his feet and doing something.
It beat the hell out of staring at the wall.
She closed the door with more force than necessary. “Colin and I just got back from Memphis. I thought you should know.”
Zack’s knuckles turned white where he gripped the hammer. “They shouldn’t have dragged you there.”
“Someone had to go.”
That made him flinch, but he tried to hide it behind that blank mask. “Are you all right?”
“Me? I’m fine.” She circled the table and jerked the hammer from his hand. “I’ve even got some good news. Jonas is dead.”
Zack stilled, his gaze wildly searching her face. “How?”
God, he couldn’t even work up any relief. “Christian. Everyone who didn’t come with him when he attacked us. He killed them all and put them in one of his freezers.”
A shudder worked through Zack, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “So they were dead all along. Dead since before—” He bit off the word and clenched his jaw.
“That’s right. There’s no one left there, no one trying to hurt us.” She dropped the hammer on the makeshift table and took a deep breath. “So stay away from her.”
Zack’s eyes flew open. “Stay away from who?”
Lorelei barely managed not to grind her teeth. “Don’t give me that, Zack. I saw her climbing out your window yesterday. And I know that was Kaley, not you, but you need to understand.”
He shoved a hand through his hair with a rough growl. “She was shaken up, that’s all. It’s habit. She’ll get over it once she starts to trust Eden and Jay.”
She hadn’t told him the truth before because it had seemed pointless. But now, in the face of his denial, it was all Lorelei could do not to shake him. The truth would hurt, but he needed it. He needed it.
“The night that Christian took you, he didn’t just take you,” she began. “He had his men pick us up, Kaley and me. You didn’t know because you were already unconscious.”
Memories rose up, the smell of blood instead of fresh wood and the sounds of fists and boots on flesh. Lorelei swayed, and she braced both hands on the worktable before continuing. “Kaley put herself between you and Christian, but all I could think was that even if you were dead, you’d never forgive me for not dragging her ass out of there before he killed her too. So I did.”
Zack dropped his hand and stared at her, the tangle of emotions behind his eyes as conflicted as his power—hurt and bleeding. “Jesus Christ, Lorelei, why didn’t you say anything?”
“To what end?” she asked helplessly. “I wouldn’t be telling you now, except you don’t seem to get it.” And how could she make him? “She would have died trying to protect you, even if it was too late. You can’t let her down easy. You have to make it stick, or she’ll be climbing right back in your window.”
“Easy? You think this is easy?” His laugh was torn up too. Jagged. “I’ve already hurt her more than I can stand to and keep on breathing. I don’t have it in me to kick her harder.”
His pain was palpable, rolling through the room like fog, and Lorelei steeled herself against it. “You have to, for her sake. If you can’t be there, all the way, then you need to cut ties—for now. And maybe you’re right. Maybe she’ll get over you.”
“She has to.” He curled his hands into fists and pressed them to the banged up old door. His head fell forward, shaggy hair in need of a cut shielding his eyes. “I swear to God, Lorelei, I haven’t crossed the line with her.”
“I know you better than that.” It was the same assurance he always gave when it came to Kaley, and Lorelei’s response was almost a habit by now. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re right.” He hadn’t moved, and she could trace his tension in his arms and shoulders and feel it in the magic he couldn’t quite choke down. “She needs to turn to Jay and Eden. She needs to accept them as her alphas, and maybe she never will if I’m here.”
“That isn’t what I said,” Lorelei argued. “If you leave, she’ll follow you. That’s my point.”
Zack lifted his head, and his eyes were tired. Maybe broken. “I know. I have to kick her.”
“You could tell her the truth,” Lorelei whispered. “She’s alpha, after all. If you tell her she’s hurting you, she’ll do anything to—”
“I get it,” Zack bit off. “But it’s not the truth.”
How could it not be? She’d watched him struggle, torn between the weight of responsibility and the need to shield Kaley from pain. He’d pushed and pushed, but never enough. But they’d all been through so much. Maybe he couldn’t, literally could not bring himself to harm the girl further, to extinguish her spark, the fire even Christian Peters hadn’t been able to crush out.
Lorelei knew her place. An alpha’s job was to protect. As a beta, it was up to her to manage, in whatever way necessary. She’d cleaned up blood, buried bodies. Traded herself for a few nights’ peace and safety for the others.
Next to that, having Kaley despise her over this seemed almost noble.
“I’ll handle it,” she told him.
Zack ground his teeth together so hard she heard it. “No. I put too much on you. You’ve taken so much…” He looked away again, his voice dropping. “I’m sorry, Lorelei. God, I’m so sorry for all of it. I keep thinking I can put myself back together. All the pieces have to be here, I just can’t make them fit.”
“It’s okay. They’re all there, and you’ll put them together.” She swept up the hammer, held it out to him and eyed the project on the table. “What are you building?”
He blinked, but not at her. Past her, his gaze fixing on the empty spot to her left for a moment too long. His lips parted as if he was about to say something, then flattened as he jerked his attention to her and grabbed the hammer. “Soap molds,” he said, his tone eerily mundane.
Hallucinations. In the first days after his return from captivity at Christian’s hands, Zack had been good at hiding it. No more than momentary lapses then, flashes of misplaced attention that would have been easy for most people to overlook. But she’d seen it before.
She’d lived it before.
Lorelei grasped both of his arms and peered up at him. “You can get better. I did. We still need you, Zack.”
He smiled at her, slow and unsteady, like it hurt. “Soap molds,” he repeated. “I remember Mae saying she wanted some with hinges.” He evaded Lorelei’s gaze, focusing on her forehead. “Soap molds are easier to put together than people. I need to start small.”
His unease made her think of Colin, of the way he’d looked at her in the alley during the festival. He’d said all the right things, made every assurance that broken didn’t mean forever, but he hadn’t meant a damn word of it. He couldn’t, and now, after their altercation in the warehouse, she understood why.
Colin wasn’t far from being broken himself. And neither was she.
Colin was pretty sure his new bedroom had started life as a parlor, though it likely hadn’t been used as one in more years than anyone cared to count. The furniture, shuffled aside to make room for his bed, was delicate and antique, rich woods and faded fabrics that looked more suited to gentle ladies sipping tea than life in a farmhouse overrun by werewolves.
Eden had offered to move the furniture and throw paint over the wallpaper, but it hadn’t seemed like a priority in those first days when so many other things needed fixing. Now, Colin almost wished he’d taken her up on the offer. He felt awkward and brutish enough as it was. Lowering himself to the spindly legged couch facing the fire made him feel downright uncivilized, a violent man intruding upon a delicate world.
It might have been easier if Jay had smacked him
down. Colin had delivered his report as honestly as he could, sparing himself nothing. Well, almost nothing. He’d cowardly sidestepped the issue of kissing Lorelei by telling himself she had the right to decide who knew about her moment of weakness, but had made up for it by eviscerating himself over his lack of control in the warehouse.
“No one ended up bleeding,” Jay had said. “I consider that a win.”
Maybe he wouldn’t have if he’d endured Lorelei’s fear, her tears. The long ride to Clover had been agonizing enough, but Colin thought his heart would shatter when she quietly asked him to pull over at the diner. Escaping his presence as soon as physically possible, and even with the rational part of his human mind well aware of how important the information she had would be to Zack, his gut only felt her walking away.
“Colin.” The whispered word preceded the knock on his door. “Are you in?”
Lorelei’s voice. There was no use pretending he wasn’t here, not when he owed her whatever apologies she’d take. His boots, socks and shirt lay scattered across the room, but he found a clean T-shirt thrown over a chair every bit as fragile and feminine as the couch and hauled it on before opening the door. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She glanced past him at the darkened room, illuminated only by the low fire burning in the hearth. “Is this a bad time?”
He realized he was blocking the doorway and pivoted, opening a path for her. “No, I was just unwinding.”
“I don’t blame you.” She slipped past him and kicked off her shoes. Then she dropped to the sofa and curled up, tucking her feet under her. “This damn day won’t end.”
Still unsettled—and confused, if he admitted it to himself, though he wasn’t anxious to—Colin closed the door and studied her. She sank onto the couch like she belonged there, and if the moonlight silvered her features, the soft play of firelight turned them golden. For a moment he could only stare, struck dumb on all fronts. His body stirred as he let his gaze trace her features, but the wolf was already sinking into hot, feral satisfaction at her presence in the heart of their personal territory.
He had to clear his throat to speak, but nothing could keep his steps from falling into the slow prowl of a predator approaching prey. “It’s been long, all right.”
“I talked to Zack. I thought it would help for him to hear that Jonas isn’t a danger to Kaley anymore, but…I don’t know. I just don’t.” She turned her head and met his gaze. “What if this is all we’ll ever be now, all of us? Always this shaky and worn down?”
Her eyes seemed huge, dark pools that devoured the firelight. Colin slid onto the couch beside her and lifted an arm. An invitation, and it had to be an invitation, because left to his own devices he’d drag her into his lap. “It isn’t like that. I promise.”
She slid into the circle of his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m not even scared anymore, how fucked up is that? Someone died and we don’t know why, and all I can think is, okay, it’s just one more thing.”
Breathing brought her scent deeper into his lungs. She smelled of flowers, some exotic one he couldn’t remember the name of, though he was sure Mae had pointed it out to him when he’d helped her unpack the dozens of glass bottles that held various oils and fragrances.
He settled his chin on the top of Lorelei’s head and closed his eyes, fighting past how good it felt to hold her so he could focus on her words. “It’s one more thing, but you don’t have to handle it alone. There’s a lot of power gathered here. Jay and Eden, Fletcher and Shane. And they have ties to people with more power. We’ll figure this out.”
“But will it matter by then?”
It had to. “I know it seems dark now, but werewolves are tough. We get longer lives, we get more time to heal. You don’t even have to fight, if you’re too tired for that. Just don’t give up.”
“I can’t.” Her soft, mirthless laugh soughed over his collar. “If I knew how, I would have done it a long time ago.”
Colin smoothed a hand over her hair and hated himself for the low hum of arousal thrumming in his veins. He had to find a way to reach past it, to soothe without pressing, but he couldn’t stop stroking her hair or holding her. Having her, soft and trusting, in his arms soothed him.
He closed his eyes and tucked her face more firmly against his neck. “Tell me about Memphis.”
It took her a while to answer. “We had more people. A pack. I miss them.”
“You must.” To go from a pack to just four…three, really, with Zack drifting away. “How many were there?”
“A couple dozen that wandered in and out. Most of them left when Christian started squeezing us, but a handful—” Her voice broke. “Noah’s the one that mattered. The real beta. He tried to step up when Zack was—when we thought he was dead.”
He’d brushed a wound that still bled, and there was nothing to do but pull her closer and wrap her in enough strength to let her know she was safe. So much harder without the link of a Guide bond, but he was dominant enough to have the power to spare. “They killed Noah?”
Her fingers clenched in the front of his shirt. “They set it up like a fair challenge. A clean fight. Christian would have won anyway. But at the end, he just…set his men loose on Noah.”
A dog pile, in an almost literal sense. Cruel, dishonorable. Twisted. “Were all of you there when it happened?”
“Yeah. Mae…” Lorelei swallowed hard. “She and Noah had a thing.”
“Shit.” Not that he’d needed another explanation for the girl’s skittishness—there wasn’t much to choose between being the object of an obsessed wolf’s fascination and being a submissive female in a corrupt pack. Both were brutal, terrifying ways to live, but both gave you a chance at life.
Stronger females always seemed to end up broken—or dead. “That left you in charge?” he asked.
“If you could call it that.” She turned her face to his shoulder. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
Too far. Always too far. He cradled her head and tightened his other arm around her waist. “I can talk, if you want. About something else, anything. Or we can just sit.”
“Can we?” she asked. “I like the quiet.”
That feeling returned, the warmth that had flooded him in the condo’s sad little kitchen when he’d turned his face to her unprotected belly and she’d all but trembled with trusting submission. The feeling of being needed, of being a part of something bigger than the two of them. The reminder that pack was always grander than the sum of its parts.
The only problem was that the damn spindly legged parlor couch hadn’t exactly been made for cuddling.
Moving slowly, he edged his arms around her and rose. A plush, overstuffed recliner sat opposite the proper little couch, the one thing he’d claimed from the furniture Eden’s father had offered. Not wide enough for two, but Colin sank into it with Lorelei tucked against his chest.
It was such heaven to rock with her in his arms that he could ignore the havoc she wreaked on his body. If enduring the discomfort of arousal was the price for her peace of mind, he’d pay it a thousand times over and count himself lucky.
They sat in silence, the crackling of the fire the only noise aside from their breathing. Then, finally, Lorelei shifted in his arms. “I should go.”
“It’s okay,” he murmured in return, careful not to tighten his arms but not loosening them, either. “You can stay a while longer. If you want.”
She didn’t say anything else, only settled her head on his shoulder again. Her heartbeat deepened, slowed, and her body molded to his, sweet and pliable. The first even breaths of sleep tickled his skin, and it seemed unlikely he’d be able to do anything but sit awake, torn between the ache in his body, the ache in his heart and his wolf’s smug satisfaction.
It would be worth it.
Chapter Eight
Lorelei jerked awake, familiar terror jolting through every cell. Something had woken her, something horrible and heartrending—
“She’s not breathin
g! Kaley’s not breathing!”
Mae. The hoarse desperation in her voice was just as ominous as her words, a shriek that shuddered Lorelei’s heart to a halt for one painful second.
Colin grunted in her ear, his arms tightening around her before she shoved free and dove for the door. By the time her foot hit the third stair, he was behind her, and Eden and Jay’s bedroom door slammed open.
Mae and Kaley shared a room in the front corner of the house. Through the doorway, Lorelei saw Mae on the bed next to her roommate, her eyes wild as she pressed down on Kaley’s chest, counting under her breath.
Lorelei stumbled to a halt, and Shane shoved past her with a curse. “Mae? What happened?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t look up, but her voice shook and tears glistened on her face. “I felt something—something, I don’t know. But I woke up, and she just wasn’t breathing, and I can’t—” She choked on a half sob. “God damn it, Kaley, breathe. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to go—”
“Something’s not right,” Jay muttered. “Colin, go get Stella. She said she’d be outside tonight, working. Find her—fast.”
Lorelei took a step into the room, and Jay’s words made sudden, dizzying sense. The room was alive with magic, a throb that tugged sickeningly at her gut with every pulse. A spell.
A hungry one.
She swallowed her nausea and reached for Mae. “Let us help too.”
“No!” Mae lashed out blindly, the back of her hand cracking across Lorelei’s cheek hard enough to bruise. Her eyes held a feverish sort of concentration as she tilted Kaley’s head back and breathed into her mouth twice, but when she resumed chest compressions, her arms were shaking. Her voice was too, growing weaker with each thin plea. “Breathe, Kaley. Breathe.”
Shane stared at Mae for a moment, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flaring. “You have to get out of here,” he said, then snatched her off the bed. She screeched in protest and jammed an elbow hard into his ribs, but he lifted her high against his chest, ignoring the blows and scratches, and carried her out of the room.