by Reine, SM
He shrugged off her question. “Just…visiting some family.”
“Going to run for office while you’re here?”
Tate laughed. “Nah, I’m holding out for president.”
“That’s so weird,” Rylie said, shaking her head in disbelief. Once upon a time, Tate would have responded to the suggestion of running for office by flipping her off and rolling another joint. “You’ve changed. You really have.”
“I’m not the only one,” he said, reaching out to rub her stomach. She gritted her teeth and pretended that she didn’t mind. “This is great. I’m really happy for you. What are you doing back? You moved away so quickly during school. You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I guess I’m visiting family, too,” she said. “I’m staying with my aunt at the Gresham Ranch.”
Tate dropped his hand. “At the ranch?” His tone was so weird that she immediately regretted saying anything.
“Yeah,” she said.
Tate stared at her. “Golden eyes,” he said, so softly that Rylie wasn’t sure that she had heard him correctly.
She frowned and reflexively reached up, like she could conceal her eyes from him, until she realized what a stupid idea that was. “What did you say?”
He blinked and shook his head. “Nothing.” But he was still staring, just not at her eyes anymore. Instead, his gaze had become fixed on her stomach. Rylie backed away from him, covering her bump protectively with both hands.
Did he realize that she was a werewolf?
The bodyguard that Seth had hired stepped around one of the aisles, seeming to appear out of nowhere.
“Hey, Rylie,” he said. “You almost done?”
Even though Brody’s tone was casual, there was something distinctly menacing about the way that he held himself—like he was thinking of violence, even though he carried a grocery bag filled with meat from the butcher shop on the corner. His shoulder-length hair was loose around his shoulders, approximating the appearance of a tattooed caveman.
Brody smelled almost as menacing as he looked. He wasn’t one of the wolves that could change on command, but the scent of fur and fang hung over him like a cloak.
“Rylie?” Brody prompted after a moment. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she said weakly.
“We haven’t been introduced,” Tate said, sizing up all six feet and two hundred pounds of pure muscle that was Brody. Next to him, Tate looked like a child.
“This is my…um, this is my friend, Brody,” Rylie said all in a rush, finally catching up with the conversation. “Brody, this is—”
“Tate Peterson,” Brody said, shifting the bags onto one arm so that he could offer a handshake. “I’ve seen you on the news.” A hint of edge had entered his voice. Brody’s feelings on the OPA were obviously not any better than the rest of the pack’s.
They shook hands. Was Tate staring at Brody’s golden eyes, too? “Nice to meet you,” Tate said, glancing at Rylie. “Guess I should…”
“Yeah,” she said. “I should go, too.”
Tate backed away from them at first. When he reached the door, he stepped onto the sidewalk and pulled out his cell phone.
Brody was watching him like a wolf that had sighted prey. “Should I stop him?”
“No! God, no, Brody,” Rylie said. “He’s an old friend of mine. We were just talking.”
But she could hear Tate on the phone through the glass as he walked away. He was too far for her to make out the specifics, but he sounded tense. And the voice on the other end was just as grim.
Brody spoke, drawing his attention back to her. “Wait here while I check out.”
She was so shocked at running into Tate that she didn’t even think to leave. Once Brody was done with his groceries, he led her out to the pickup and set the groceries behind her seat. He watched the parking lot while Rylie climbed in.
“I’m going to take you home now,” Brody said, getting behind the wheel.
She nodded mutely.
“You know, you’re not the first pregnant woman I would have protected,” Brody said. “There was another one in Alabama. Rich woman. Her family told me that nobody was out to get her, but she was scared anyway. Anxieties, I guess.”
“Was anyone out to get her?”
“Yep. Ex-boyfriend. He would have killed her if I hadn’t broken his neck first.”
He sounded so calm about it. Rylie gaped. “Wow.”
“I’m not proud of it, but I did what I had to do, and I’m glad she’s safe. She’s living in Maine with her son now. They’re happy. I did that for them.” Brody’s eyes slid over to her. “I’d be happy to do that for you, too.”
In truth, having someone that she could trust at her back would be priceless, especially after the massacre at the wedding had revealed several traitors in the pack. Now the entire world was getting scarier, and it seemed like her high school best friend wasn’t trustworthy, either.
“I appreciate the offer,” she said slowly. “And you seem competent. The problem is…”
“Seth.” Brody nodded. “Like I said, my last pregnant client’s family was a problem, too. But you shouldn’t let your problems with him keep you from being safe. That’s all.”
He started the engine.
Rylie’s womb was clenching again in the faint warning of contractions to come. Tate had stressed her out and she couldn’t afford to be so afraid.
“I’d appreciate all the help you can give me, Brody,” she said finally. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”
TWELVE
Haven
Rylie and her new bodyguard had just walked through the front door at the ranch house when Seth jumped on her. “Jesus, where have you been?” he asked, seizing her by the shoulders. “Are you okay? I thought the Union had gotten to you!”
She shook him off. “I’m fine, Seth. I just went for a walk.”
He stared at her, as if he couldn’t believe what she had said. “A walk?”
“Yeah. You know, moving my legs, carrying my body in a forward motion, ambulation—”
“Stop it,” he snapped. The heat of anger in his voice shocked her to silence. “I thought you and our babies might have been killed, and you come back joking about it? What’s your problem?”
Brody was standing a few feet away, unlacing his boots and pretending not to listen. But he would hear everything, of course, and so would everyone else in the house with super hearing.
“Let’s talk about this outside,” she said.
They headed out back. The cellar doors stood open, allowing a plume of blue smoke to swirl toward the clouds. Rylie could hear Brianna in conversation with James and Gwyneth as they passed.
Rylie kept walking until they reached the pond. Then Seth rounded on her.
“You can’t do that to me,” he said.
“Do what? Have a mind of my own?”
“Just run off like that. It’s a safety issue.”
“No, it’s a control issue.”
“Rylie—”
She held up her hands to silence him. “I’m the Alpha, Seth. You can’t control me. It weakens me in front of the pack. Maybe I wouldn’t be having so many problems with Levi if you would just trust me.” Rylie took a deep breath and blew it out. “I think I’m going to start sleeping in Gwyn’s room. She doesn’t use it anymore, and her bed is bigger. I’ll be more comfortable like that.”
Seth paced away from her, tension radiating in his every movement.
“Is this about Abel?”
“This is about you, Seth,” Rylie said. “You and me. I need space. That’s all.”
“You know I’m just looking out for you,” he said, softer than before. “You mean everything to me. If something happened to you, or the babies…”
“I’m not going anywhere. Okay? I just need space.” She sighed. “You’ll be happy to know that I decided to let Brody be my bodyguard after all. I think he’s someone good to have around when things are getting dangerous.”
>
“So you don’t want space from everyone. Just me.”
She rubbed her temples, where a headache was beginning to throb. “Maybe I do.”
Seth opened his mouth. Closed it. Paced a few more steps, and faced her again. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was so quiet that she could barely make it out over the breeze. “I’ll move your belongings into Gwyn’s room.”
He stormed away, leaving Rylie alone with the icy pond and the snow drifting from the sky.
Another moon passed. Yet another night that Rylie spent with the pack—and Abel—instead of Seth.
He felt like he was going insane.
The first hints of spring were starting to appear. Rain and snow mingled, freezing the hills one night and melting them into a muddy mess the next. Seth spent a lot of long hours in bed, awake and alone, and watching lightning illuminate the clouds. He couldn’t seem to sleep with Rylie in another room. He wanted to be able to hold her while she was asleep, and know she was safe. Having Brody guard her door at night wasn’t good enough.
When he wasn’t worrying about Rylie’s new distance, he had plenty of other things to keep him distracted. H.R. 2076 had passed the House. Now it only needed to pass the Senate and get presidential approval—and the president had already made his support clear. Which meant that laws that could destroy the whole pack were just one step away from passing.
He went out for a run the morning after the moon with a radio strapped on his arm and new sneakers laced tightly. But the radio didn’t help his mood, either. Every one of the morning shows was talking about further riots—not just in Greenville now, but in Denver, and Las Vegas, and Boise. It was getting bad everywhere.
Seth turned off his radio and ran in silence.
Once he got moving, he couldn’t seem to stop. He did a lap around the fence and then broke out onto the highway. There was nothing but him and the road beneath his feet, his breath heaving in his chest, and his fists pumping at his side.
He wasn’t sure how long he ran, but when he made it back to the house, everyone else was awake and moving, too. Rylie and Bekah were doing prenatal yoga in the living room. It was turning into a real event: Stephanie and Crystal were there, too, stretching and posing and laughing about the names of the positions.
But when Rylie saw him watching from the doorway, her smile faded.
Seth tossed his radio into the trashcan and went out again.
Levi was talking with the rest of the pack in the back yard. None of that was Seth’s business—let Abel deal with them.
He blew past them without stopping.
How was it possible to be surrounded by people and yet feel so lonely? Seth couldn’t share his thoughts with Rylie or his brother. Gwyn was still too distracted by her crumbling body. And the one person he considered to be a real friend, the guy who had been best man at his wedding, Yasir, wasn’t even responding to calls.
Seth finally stopped running when he reached a hill overlooking the house. He pulled out his phone and called Yasir for what had to be the twentieth time since the wedding.
He only got the answering machine.
“Goddamn, Yasir,” he yelled into his phone. “Where are you?”
He hung up and flung the cell phone into the snow. It didn’t matter if he had it anyway. Yasir hadn’t called him back since the wedding, and he wasn’t going to call back now.
Seth started jogging up the other side of the fence, but he stopped when he saw a girl walking toward him. It was James Faulkner’s apprentice, Brianna.
“Hi,” he said, eyes narrowing. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’m looking for you, actually,” she said. “I’ve been curious to get a closer look at you, but you’re always busy with something.” Brianna tried to step close to him, but Seth stepped away before she could get within arm’s reach. “Why can’t I read you?”
Seth took another step back. “Wait, what?”
“You’re not a witch or a werewolf. I always know.” Brianna pulled her head scarf off and tucked it halfway into a pocket so that it hung near her hip. “I’m not very powerful, but that’s something I’m good at. Reading people. Well, reading creatures. You can’t really call demons people. So what are you?”
“Uh,” he said.
“You’re not an angel,” she went on, fluffing out the flat spot the scarf had left in her hair. “You’re too short anyway.”
Short? Irritation pricked at the back of his neck. “I’m taller than you.”
“Yeah, but angels are tall, like James.” She lifted a hand well over his head. She looked like a pixie from head to toe, like she might flit into the sky at any moment. “I think you must be a kopis. I’ve only ever heard about them.”
“Well, yeah,” Seth said. “I’m a hunter, but I don’t think that’s a creature—”
“So that explains it. Rylie’s babies. One of them is a werewolf, and one of them is a kopis.”
He stared. “What?”
A new voice rose behind him. “Excuse me.”
Seth turned. James Faulkner was walking up the hill to join them, wearing a long woolen pea coat and leather gloves. The contrast of his white hair against the black jacket was striking, especially with all of the new blooms popping up on the hill.
James was preceded by an unsettling feeling of wrongness. Something about him made the back of Seth’s neck itch, almost in a demonic way, but there was also an aching at his crown, a tension down his spine—a mix of sensations that Seth instinctively understood didn’t belong together.
“Hey.” Brianna shrunk into her coat. “What’s up?”
“I think I told you to watch the spell in the cellar,” James said, his voice cool as the breeze.
She shut her mouth, nodded, and hurried away.
Seth would have been grateful that the witch had driven her away, except that it meant he had to deal with James instead. Abel claimed that James wasn’t dangerous to Rylie. And if he could restore Gwyn to life, then all the better. But Seth wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s company. Especially not a total stranger’s.
“Thanks,” Seth said, and he moved to leave.
“Just a moment. I wanted to talk to you,” James said. Seth kept walking, but the witch followed, keeping pace alongside him on the muddy ground. “Am I to understand that you’re the father of Rylie’s twins?”
They hadn’t gotten the paternity test back yet, but Seth said, “Yes, I am. Why?”
“The legislation has me…concerned. Not just the registry, or the possibility of indefinite detention. The likelihood of children being removed from supernatural parents.” James stuck his hands in his pockets, gazed out at the rolling hills of the ranch, and heaved a sigh. “This is a disaster. Thinking of all the families that will be separated, families that may have only committed the crime of existing, is distressing.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“I have a way to hide you, Rylie, your children, and the entire werewolf pack. Permanently. You will all be safe from the Union, the OPA, and any other enemies that you might face.” A smile touched James’s lips. “Are you interested?”
James took Seth driving into the mountains. The witch had warned him that they would be on the road for quite some time, but when they passed the six hour mark and kept going, Seth started to worry. And he only grew tenser as they entered territory that belonged to the Union. They passed a black sign with white lettering that said they were on private property, and continued on the road anyway.
By the time James stopped the car, they were in the midst of dense trees, and night had fallen again. “Here we are,” James said, stepping out of the car. He grabbed a flashlight out of the trunk.
Seth didn’t have to look hard to see the cameras in the tree. The tiny red lights were a giveaway. “And where is ‘here’? This is Union land.”
“It used to be, yes. Don’t worry about the cameras; they have no signal. Follow me.” James led Seth farther from the road and deeper into the forest. Wet p
ine needles crunched under their feet. “Tell me, Seth, what do you know of Heaven and Hell?”
Seth thought back to the Bible his mother kept in their childhood home. They had never been very religious, but the book had been passed down by his great-grandparents anyway. Eleanor had a healthy fear of God, but no time to worship. Yet it had been the only book in the house, so Seth read it front to back more than once. It was how he taught himself to read. There wasn’t much mention of Hell in the Old Testament—his favorite part. It did mention a place called Sheol, which Seth understood was a general way of talking about the grave.
“I don’t think Heaven and Hell exist,” he said honestly. “They’re just metaphor.”
“You believe in werewolves and demons, but not Hell? Do you believe in God?”
“Sure,” Seth said. “I mean, I think so. But some kind of afterlife? Death could never be that simple.”
“You have at least one part of that right.” James peeled off one of his gloves with his teeth and extended his hand toward Seth, palm facing the ground. “Here. I have to walk you through the wall.”
Seth glanced around the dim forest. He saw deer droppings and the shape of an owl in the nearby tree. There weren’t any walls at all. “What are you talking about?”
“Trust me,” James said.
Reluctantly, Seth took James’s hand. The witch stepped forward. There was a soft pop in Seth’s ears, and James immediately released him and put the glove back on.
The forest looked exactly the same as it had before Seth heard that strange, quiet noise. Except now the darkness under the trees was a little bit darker, especially toward the north. “Let’s get inside,” James said, striding toward the shadows.
Inside? Inside where?
Before Seth could ask, James ducked under a tree branch and disappeared into the darkness. It took a moment for Seth to realize that it was a tunnel sloping sharply into the earth.
The tunnel was short, but so steep that Seth struggled to keep from falling. He kept one hand on the wall of dry soil at his side to help maintain his balance. They reached the bottom, and James shone his flashlight on the back of the tunnel to reveal a doorknob.