Still, it was handy she was there, because right about now, he could use a little help getting the door to Laura’s apartment open. He gestured with a jerk of his chin, and Marilee took the hint. She even had her own key.
“Mama gave me the key only yesterday,” Marilee said to Gus as she unlocked the door. Laura had hidden her face in Gus’s neck, apparently not ready to face her child, just yet.
Gus walked past the younger woman and into the apartment once she had the door open. “I’ll take care of her,” he promised Marilee. She looked so worried and so sad, his heart went out to this younger version of Laura. “She is strong. She’ll be okay.”
He could feel Laura shaking in his arms, but she lifted her head to look at her daughter as Gus placed her on the couch. Her eyes were streaming with tears again. Damn. He’d thought that had stopped.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Laura said, looking straight at her daughter. “I thought I was okay, but I’m not. It’s clear, now, that they…did something to me. I’m going to have to leave.”
“No!” Marilee said forcefully, even as Gus shook his head.
“Honey, if you think I’m letting you leave here under these conditions, you don’t know me at all.” Laura turned her attention to him, confusion on her lovely face. “We’ll fix this. I know we can.”
Laura’s eyes narrowed. The crying had stopped again, thank goodness, but now, she regarded him with a bit of suspicion.
“You were watching for this, weren’t you?” She looked so…betrayed. Angry and pale, as if the thought that he hadn’t quite trusted everything about her was so foreign as to be abhorrent.
Gus sighed. “I’ve been honest with you from the beginning, if not completely open. I will admit, now that I am free to do so, that Big John asked me to keep an eye on you for just this kind of thing. He was concerned that the mages who had control over you for so many years might have done something to you. Something that you didn’t know consciously about. So, I’ve been keeping my eyes open. That’s all.” He wiped a frustrated hand through his hair. “I agreed to it because I wanted to look out for you. I wanted to protect you.”
As admissions went, his wasn’t very eloquent, and it wasn’t particularly well received. Drat. She was going to be hurt and angry, just as he’d feared, but at this point, it couldn’t be helped. He had been committed to this path from the moment John had guilted him into agreement with his request. Dammit.
“You were going to attack John, right? Am I right in thinking you were feeling some kind of compulsion?” Gus asked gently. She nodded mutely. Gus shook his head once, looking weary. “John thought so. That’s what he told me it looked like on the phone. He also said it looked like you were fighting it.”
“I was immobilized by it,” she admitted, blowing out a frustrated breath. Now that she was coming down from the terror-filled high, she was getting angry. Scared, still, but angry, too.
“But you told him to leave. You warned him as best you could,” Gus insisted. “That’s what he told me.”
Laura just shook her head. How could she explain it when she didn’t understand it all herself?
Marilee reached out to touch her hand. Laura almost flinched away from the sudden contact, but it was her daughter. She would never hurt her baby by such an action. She couldn’t. Not if every demon in hell tried to force her to do so.
There was that, at least. Marilee…and Gus, too…seemed to be safe from the danger she posed. But was Marilee’s mate? Laura didn’t dare take the chance to find out. And the thing that bothered her most… Was the compulsion going to grow even stronger? It seemed to have taken time to get to this point. Would it get even bigger? Would it consume her?
She didn’t know the answers to any of it. Tears gathered behind her eyes again. She had just regained her life, and now, was she to lose it all over again? This time, forever?
“Go back to King, Lee Lee,” Laura told her daughter. “I need a little time on my own to think this through.” Laura turned her hand over to grasp her daughter’s. Would this be the last time she ever saw her baby? So much was uncertain. “I love you, sweetheart. Never forget that.”
“I love you too, Mama,” Laura replied, a catch in her voice. She bent down to give her mother a hug and kiss on the cheek. She straightened and left the apartment, but not without exchanging a significant look with Gus.
Laura looked at Gus as Marilee left. Her lover. Or her keeper?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I’m going to have to leave,” Laura repeated herself, but Gus was shaking his head.
“No, honey. Not by a long shot,” he told her, taking the seat beside her on the couch. Crowding her. Not letting her run away, either physically or mentally, from the harsh reality that had just revealed itself in full.
“You can’t keep me here. I’m dangerous,” she tried to reason with him.
“What if I said I liked danger?” he asked, a little smile curving one corner of his mouth. Talented mouth. A mouth that made her think of things better left alone considering their circumstances.
“Then, I’d say you’re crazy,” she huffed, getting up from the couch and starting to pace along the wall of windows facing the cove. The view was tremendous, but she didn’t see it. All she saw was a new kind of imprisonment. “Even if I stay in Grizzly Cove, I can’t go out among people. Forget about running the gallery for you. I’d be a virtual prisoner up here, all alone.” She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Never again, Gus. Never.”
All the terror she felt at the mere thought of being unable to come and go as she pleased, now that she had tasted freedom, filled her with dread. How could she stay in this town, knowing that every person she saw might trigger some kind of deadly magical response, over which she had, seemingly, no control.
“All right.” Gus sighed, perfectly serious, once again. Thank goodness. “Let’s take this down a notch. Let’s go back to the beginning.”
He sounded so reasonable. She had no idea what he thought he might accomplish, but she was willing to explore other options, even though she knew there were precious few courses of action open to her. She was going to have to run away. Maybe in the middle of the night when nobody was looking. She was going to have to flee, in order to protect those that she loved. Marilee…and…Gus.
Damn. She really did love him. Only now, when she had to leave him, would she allow herself to think about the inevitable truth. She loved him. More than life itself. She would do anything to protect him.
Including leave him.
Gus didn’t like the look on Laura’s face. She looked as if she was plotting something. Like an escape. He couldn’t allow it for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which was that she was his mate. If she left, he would follow. If she ran, he would chase, even if that wasn’t typically something bears were known for. He’d do just about anything for Laura, but he wouldn’t let her leave in such a state. Not when there was every possibility that he, or members of the extended Grizzly Cove community, could help rid her of whatever those evil bastards had done to her.
He just had to convince her to give him a chance. Time. He needed time to marshal their resources and come up with a plan for how to help her. No way would he let her think for one more moment that anyone here wished her harm or wanted her to go now that her problem had been revealed. But how to convince her when she was already halfway gone somewhere else in her mind?
She didn’t want to stand and fight. That was as clear as day, written all over the stubborn little lift of her chin. It was up to him to find the right words to convince her to give him a chance. To give them a chance.
“Do you feel any violence toward me, right now?” he asked, trying to be serious and take this down to a more analytical, less emotional, level.
“Only if you try to tell me I can’t leave,” she replied, her words a verbal lash.
Gus held up both his hands, palms outward. “Honey, if it comes to that, I’ll go with you. I won’t let you face this
—whatever it is—alone, okay?”
That seemed to set her back a bit. She rocked back on her heels physically, and her expression changed from anger to guardedness. He wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but at least she was listening.
“Come on, Laura,” he cajoled gently. “Let’s try to figure this out. Let’s take the first step of many toward resolving this problem.”
“You really think it can be resolved?” She took a step closer to him. He had remained on the couch, and she came over to stand near it, though she didn’t seem calm enough to sit, yet.
“I can promise you, right now, that I will do everything in my power to straighten this out. I’ll call in every favor ever owed to me. I’ll contact every person I think might be able to help. I’ll beseech the Goddess, Herself, on your behalf,” he said, rising and taking Laura’s hands in both of his. “I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
“Why?” she whispered, unmoving, but a cautious sort of hope shining in her eyes.
“Because that’s what a man does for a woman he cares about,” he answered, surprising himself. He hadn’t expected to make any declarations today, but fate had conspired to make him speak. When he saw the wonder dawning over her face, he knew he’d been right to follow his instincts.
“You…um…care for me?” Laura asked, still whispering, as if a harsh word would break the tender moment.
Gus nodded solemnly. “I do,” he confirmed.
“Oh, Gus.” She looked down and away as his heart broke. She didn’t care for him at all.
Wait. She didn’t? No way. She had to! His bear fairly roared in the confusion of his mind. Then, she looked back up at him.
“I care a lot for you, too, but it’s impossible.”
He placed her hands on his chest, covering them with his own. “Nothing is impossible.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” she told him. “I just don’t see how this can work out.” She shook her head. “I wanted to kill John. Not just attack and hurt, but kill. Dead.”
“That wasn’t you, honey,” he reassured her. “It was something dark placed upon you. We’re going to get it off.” He tugged her in close and hugged her tight.
Gus was such a good man. He held her and comforted her. He made her promises she had no idea how he intended to keep, but he made them, nonetheless. She could hear the conviction in his voice. He really believed he could help her, but she still didn’t see how.
“Now, before we get back to the important stuff,” he told her with a small grin as he let her go, “let’s talk about what happened with John. He’s waiting—impatiently, I’m sure—for me to give him an update.”
The reminder that they had been watching her all this time annoyed her a bit, but she tried to let it go. They’d been right to worry, after all. Even Laura hadn’t known for sure if those evil mages had done something to her that she was unaware of. Sadly, it seemed, they had. And now, everything she had dreamed of having in her life since she had woken up was on the line.
It was already lost, in fact. Gus might think there was a way to salvage this situation, but Laura was more of a realist. So much had been taken from her already. She almost believed it was her destiny to be robbed of everything…even hope.
They had taken her daughter away from her. They’d taken over two decades of her life. They’d taken her liberty. Her freedom. They’d even robbed her of consciousness, itself, when she’d fled halfway into the faerie realm. Now, it seemed, what she had regained in coming back to this mortal realm was to be forfeited, as well.
If she wasn’t so weary of it all, she would fight. But what was the point?
Laura didn’t realize she had been speaking her thoughts aloud until Gus responded.
“Are you sure there isn’t some kind of compulsion on your instincts, to repress your fighting spirit? This isn’t you, Laura,” he told her, the slightest desperation sounding in his tone. It made her sit up and think.
“Damn. I sound like Eeyore. That isn’t like me,” she observed, as if from afar. Something was definitely odd here.
“You can say that again,” Gus rumbled, shaking his head. “Where’s that ferocious wolf spirit? This isn’t you talking, honey. Fight it while you tell me exactly what you felt when you saw John, and what you’re feeling now, okay?”
She tried her best to do as he asked. They talked for what felt like hours, though she had no real sense of how much time had passed. She concentrated on his questions, trying to answer them to the best of her ability. She did her best to look at the situation objectively, though she knew her objectivity wasn’t the greatest. Not when her anger was sparking with each new question—and each new realization—about what had been done to her while she was powerless to resist.
After much questioning, it became apparent that Laura could fight the compulsion where Gus, and Marilee, were concerned, but definitely not John…or, perhaps, anyone else. With Marilee living across the hall, Gus devised a stop-gap solution.
“It’s not ideal, and it’s not permanent, but until we can come up with a solid strategy, I think you should stay up here in the apartment,” Gus told her. “There’s less chance of your seeing anyone else and being triggered, if you hole up here for a bit.”
“How long?” she asked, hating the very idea of being a prisoner, again. Even if it was in a comparatively gilded cage.
“Long enough for me to get help. I want to consult the magic circle and see if any of them can help you,” he told her.
“And if they can’t?” she countered.
“Then, I’ll call some other folks I know and ask for their help. I’m not without resources. There are many avenues we can try before we run out of options.”
She really didn’t like the sound of that, but she let it go. If worse came to worst, she would shift and run. No bear could catch a wolf at full speed. She’d run far and fast and right the hell out of Grizzly Cove.
Her enemies might find her, again. In fact, she was pretty sure they were just waiting on the other side of the ward to pick her up. She almost welcomed the confrontation. She would not be taken alive, this time, and she’d take a few of them with her. The white wolf on a rampage was not something anyone wanted to see, and few would live to tell the tale of it.
That thought firmly in mind, she let Gus make his plans. It couldn’t hurt to humor him for a little while. She would try to make the best of whatever time they had left together before she got fed up with the apartment and made her break.
Gus called his Alpha and made his report while, inwardly, Laura seethed. Even the sound of John’s voice on the other end of the phone was enough to send her off. Magical power gathered in her body, wanting release, but she fought it down. She could not harm Gus. Never in a million years.
The Alpha bear, on the other hand, was fair game.
Laura knew that wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be thinking of the kind Alpha in such violent terms. That wasn’t her. It was the compulsion talking. She had to be strong and fight it. She couldn’t let those bastards win. Not again.
Gus took her to bed that night, and they slept in each other’s arms. They hadn’t talked about the declarations they had made earlier. Everything was too raw, too ragged. They didn’t make love, but she had never felt more strongly loved in all her life as Gus held her through the night, stroking her hair and her back, lending his enormous strength to reassure her as she alternately wept and slept in jagged snatches of time.
He was there for her, throughout. No matter what time it was, he held her, crooning comfort in her ear, rumbling the sounds that reassured her deep in his chest. His bear was very close to the surface. It spoke to her wild wolf spirit, calming the nervous animal inside her.
He was such a good man.
The next morning dawned gray with the threat of rain. The overcast sky matched Laura’s mood. The depression hadn’t left her. She was more aware that it wasn’t a natural byproduct of her personality. Such a defeatist attitude went counter to everythi
ng she had been before captivity. Her personality had always been a strong one. She’d always been very sure of her path. Sometimes, to her detriment.
In fact, she wondered, not for the first time, if her stubborn refusal to listen to any other than her own thoughts had caused her to make grievous mistakes. Had the obviously mistaken certainty she had felt that Roger was her one true mate led her right into the enemy’s hands? Had her stubbornness led to her own downfall?
Laura was very much afraid that it had.
Thinking about the past only added to the weight of her depression. She had the sense that it was not normal, but she still felt it very strongly. It was a burden pressing down on her spirit, her soul. It made her want to give up and just…not move.
That’s when she had a Eureka moment. Perhaps this depression—this immobilizing force—was designed deliberately to keep her here, in Grizzly Cove, well in sight of the people the enemy wanted her to attack. Sweet Mother of All!
Laura got up off the couch and started to pace. The wall of windows, thankfully, faced the cove. There was not much chance she would see any of the people that might trigger a violent response if she looked out those windows. Gus had even gone so far as to arrange for an Off Limits sign to be placed on both ends of the beach she could see from her windows. He wasn’t blacking out her windows and taking away her only view of freedom. Instead, he was trying to restrict everyone else.
Gus had left just after dawn, leaving her to sleep a bit more. Surprisingly, she had fallen back asleep and woke sometime after nine. Of course, the pall that had come over her might be responsible. Depression often resulted in excessive sleeping, at least it did for her. She’d done a lot of sleeping in captivity before she’d discovered she could retreat most of her consciousness into the faerie realm.
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