When she got her bearings, she glanced at him. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t wake me. I have my own nightmares to thank for that.” He hated the tingle that ran through his body. He’d felt it only a few times before, always when he was in physical contact with Killian.
He and Kate had slept for maybe an hour. Rifter hadn’t come out of Rogue’s room, and Stray and Kate returned to his room. He’d given Kate back the grimoire and she’d curled up around it. He’d curled up next to her for protection and she’d snuggled against him, her ass to his cock, and he’d willed himself to sleep, because it was either that or touch her.
And once he started, the way he had in the rain, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Mine’s the same every single time,” she continued.
“Mine too. Had it every night for the past couple of nights.” He didn’t add that this nightmare was twenty-five years in the making.
“I’ve had mine every night for a year,” she admitted.
“Christ, aren’t we a pair,” he muttered, ran his hands through his dark hair. His chest shone, slick with sweat. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
* * *
Kate felt the disappointment stir at Stray’s declaration, assumed he meant alone. She couldn’t blame him—her own nightmares made her feel exposed and raw. Stray was actually the first one she’d ever thought about revealing them to.
Granted, he’d lived them with her, so that took care of the telling him part.
“Coming?” he asked, didn’t wait for her answer before he grabbed her hand and tugged her along, out of the bed and down the stairs.
She noticed he’d also picked up the grimoire and the sketchpad. The grimoire was expected, the sketchpad, far from it. How he knew her so well after such a short time together amazed her. And then he led her through the house toward a door she hadn’t come across before. She walked behind him through a long, dark underground tunnel that would’ve spooked her before she knew what she knew now.
Finally, they ended up outside under the moon, where she and Stray both would find comfort. Actually, rather than being fully outside, they were in a screened-in section of the porch that gave the feeling of being outdoors with the added benefit of alarms. But the ceiling was nothing but the same fine mesh that threaded the rest of the area, and there was grass under her feet that came right up to the tiled section of the sunroom, where there was actual furniture.
“Since the house is spelled, no one but Dires can see it. And Weres we allow. So as long as we stay in here, we’re safe, and we’ve got the moon. Best of both worlds.”
It explained why she hadn’t been able to see the house at all when she’d been attacked by the Were earlier that evening.
He laid out the blanket he’d grabbed from one of the rooms they’d passed and motioned for her to lie down next to him. On their backs, moon shining in their faces, she began to relax. She sat up and took the pencil and paper and began to sketch the moon, the way she’d done countless times before. For many long minutes, there was a comfortable silence between them.
When she’d finished and her hand was tired, she looked over at Stray, half expecting him to be asleep.
He wasn’t, remained staring at the moon, looking as sleek and dangerous as his wolf. “You’re not going to draw me now, are you?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
He glanced at her. “Maybe later, all right?”
She put down the pad and laid it down again next to her. “If I wasn’t here, you’d be out running, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably. But this is nice too.”
“Who’d have thought it so soon after the dreams. Usually, it takes me hours to feel better,” she said. “I’m sure you know what my nightmare’s about.”
“I lived it with you, yes.” He reached out and took her hand in his. Squeezed it.
“I didn’t . . . tell you everything. Sometimes I have other nightmares along with the accident one. I’ve never told anyone about it, either. Do you think maybe sharing them would help?” she asked hesitantly.
“Like they’d cancel each other out and we’d sleep contentedly for the rest of our lives?” He snorted. “Guess it’s worth a shot.”
“I thought you said I’m supposed to believe in magic.”
“That’s not magic, baby; that’s wishful thinking. And it’s mostly a human thing.”
“Guess I’ve got some human habits I won’t be getting rid of anytime soon,” she told him. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told who actually believed me. Even though I technically didn’t tell you.”
“I’ve never told anyone about mine, period.”
“Not even your brothers?”
He stared at her. “It wasn’t time.”
“And now?”
“It is.”
* * *
Stray watched Kate carefully, wondering if they could both do this. Secrets weren’t good for anyone, but sometimes they were completely necessary.
He’d learn soon enough if that was true in this case. “That wasn’t the first time you’ve seen a mare.”
She shook her head, pressed her lips together, like she was reliving some kind of past physical pain.
“I can’t see her, but I made Gwen describe her to me,” he told her.
“Gwen can see mares?”
“Only when she and Rifter dreamwalk,” he explained. “That’s his ability, like mine is mind reading. And she can see it only when they’re together. You’re the only one who’s seen her outright.”
“I’ve seen it once before, on my mother, the night before she was killed. But it left. I had no idea why. I yelled at it, but it laughed at me. I have no clue why it was there in the first place and we never talked about it afterward. And then she was dead and I wondered if there was a connection.” She stared at him. “Do you think I put the mare there?”
“No, Kate, I don’t. You don’t have that kind of evil in you.”
She was struggling to believe him. “I never wished her dead. But there were so many times I wished she was just . . . gone. I loved her, but I really hated her. My dad, too.”
“They hurt you?”
“Not my father. My mom.” She shook her head at the memory, and Stray nearly growled at the thought of anyone touching her in anger. “The physical pain was bad enough—it seemed to piss her off that I healed so quickly. Further proof that I was the devil’s handiwork.” She swallowed hard. “But she was so cold to me. It was like living with ice. It was more lonely than living alone.”
She was holding back the tears—a damned strong woman.
“It all makes sense now, though. If my mother was a witch who refused to practice, who thought witchery was evil, then . . . if I showed any signs of having power, she would do anything to stop it.”
She bit her lower lip gently and Stray caressed her back through her shirt where the brand was. It should be on its way to fading, never to return once her powers were fully hers, according to the lore. But the familiar tingle was still there under his palm. Kate continued. “My mother didn’t want me to be what I was. But I was exactly like her.”
Stray’s gut tightened. “Family’s a bitch.”
That made her smile a little. “I guess I was always a witch. Lila just made me a more powerful one. Kept me hidden until now.”
“You don’t have to hide anything from me,” he prompted when she paused.
“Because I can’t, right?”
“I try to be respectful, but it’s like you’re shouting in my ear.”
She told him then about the fortune teller she’d seen the day of the accident because she’d finally put the pieces together herself—and he got it immediately.
“It was Lila?”
“I didn’t realize I’d met he
r before—not until . . . tonight. How could I not have put that together until just now?”
“Maybe you weren’t meant to.”
“She looked different when she was giving me her power. Wilder. Scarier. She changed my fate.” She hugged her knees tightly to her chest and glanced back at the big wolf lying on his side, the moon worshipping his tawny skin. “She changed everything about me.”
“No, she didn’t. No one can do that, Kate, no matter how hard they try. She just changed what your mother meant to happen for you.”
“And my parents had to die for that to happen.”
“What if it was your mother who tried to change your fate? And Lila just reversed it to the way it was meant to be?”
She didn’t answer, but she looked slightly less upset. “So that’s my big secret. It’s all out on the table now. No happy childhood, no matter how hard I tried to pretend everything was wonderful and normal until the accident. I don’t know what’s worse—that I lied to everyone or that I lied to myself.”
“You did what you needed to do in order to survive. Never apologize for that,” he told her fiercely as he sat up next to her. “I never have.”
She hugged him then, pressed her body to his, twined her arms around him like she’d never let him go. Thing was, he never wanted her to, and that was quite a change from days earlier.
Looked like his life would never be the same again, either.
When she went to pull back, he lowered them back down to the blanket instead. Their legs twined together as if they’d just been intimate.
Hadn’t they?
“You’ve met my brother. Killian.”
“He looks like you.”
“Yeah, he does. He’s older. And it’s the first time I’ve seen him in a long time.”
“Why?”
“It’s better for both of us that way. He came back to help us deal with the battle.”
She turned to him, her face propped on her arm. He continued to watch the moon, not sure he could face her. Still, his hand remained around hers.
“His coming back has been hard for me to deal with. I’ve been . . . on edge.”
“So it’s not all about me?”
Stray laughed a little. “Very little, actually. Last night I bailed him out of jail. He was there on a drunk and disorderly. He just got into town last night and he’s already screwing things up,” he explained. “He’s . . . necessary in this war.”
“Do you two get along?”
He rubbed the long, abraded scar that ran down his chest absently, told her, “The only scars that won’t heal on me were caused by another Dire.”
“Your brother did that?”
“He needed to make sure I was immortal.” He shrugged. “I am.”
And just like that, he was back in Greenland, fifty years earlier. Except this time, he wasn’t alone.
They were killing him.
Alone in the middle of a blizzard, Stray hung by his wrists, with chains wrapped around his ankles and neck to further immobilize him, the deep cuts in his skin healing slowly as they were purposely made from silver blades.
They were killing him, but he merely suffered. He wasn’t dying.
He remained that way for hours as the pelting snow and ice subsided. Bright red blood fell into the white snow below him with a steady drip he could hear as the silence settled in.
The blizzard was over, but the storm was coming. And he was powerless to stop it.
He’d never doubted this day would come, even though a part of him never wanted to believe his family capable of doing this.
He would never again underestimate what fear could make a wolf do.
Younger than his brother, Killian, by twelve years, kept apart from the pack—his family—for most of his twenty years and now he was a ritual sacrifice to the Elders, the day before his twenty-first birthday. Before his first shift.
Kill had left the pack long ago, right before his own first shift. No one had heard from him since. Stray didn’t even know for sure he’d survived his first few shifts, but if the prophecy was to be believed . . . he had.
Whether he’d left to make things better for Stray or for himself, well, Stray didn’t know that either.
Stray didn’t even have the strength to curse him now; he was too close to his first shift, his body turning into something he didn’t recognize, a traitor that threatened him every time his Brother Wolf growled inside his head.
It had become too much to handle. His wolf wanted him to live, howled desperately. The voices mashed together into a painful jumble until he closed his eyes and prayed the predators would come soon.
One was close, but not the one he’d hoped for. His body tingled with power despite the pain and he cursed himself and the prophecy even as his eyes grew hazy and he couldn’t see much happening around him. But his hearing remained strong—the rustling in the snow happening long before the polar bears arrived, their white fur marred by some vanilla, and they were hungry. They were dying, just like he hoped to be.
The blood scent drew them and they were coming at a run. His body would give them enough fuel to last another few weeks at most.
There was no peace to make with anyone—he’d spent twenty-one years as a pariah to his own clan, hearing what they said about him, knowing he could’ve escaped what they planned.
So why didn’t you?
Hell, there was nothing for him to go to. A life on the streets of more alienation, well, he didn’t want to deal with it.
They said he’d live forever, but nothing did. And once the polar bears ripped him to pieces, he’d find out the truth about the rumored immortality that had hung over his head from the moment he’d breathed life.
The bears approached, teeth clacking together. A few roared, and it sounded like there were hundreds of them instead of the five or so Stray counted.
A few began to fight among themselves because they didn’t want to share their prey—they were, by nature, solitary creatures. Stray understood them all too well.
He’d gotten only a few minutes’ reprieve. The largest bear stood on two legs, roared as it claimed victory, then brought a paw down in a slashing motion along Stray’s side, opening him up as effectively as a knife.
It didn’t end there. He couldn’t tell if he was being bitten or flayed, but no matter what, the pain was too intense for him to remain conscious much longer. Wasn’t sure why he was fighting so hard to do so, why he struggled to keep breathing even as his vision went sideways, like someone had twirled him. It hadn’t helped that the polar bears had used him as a piñata.
The tingling of his skin had never retreated, but it was overshadowed by the pain. Suddenly, it reared up full strength and he heard the howl that sent a chill up his spine.
Killian moved like lightning. It was white fur smeared with red blood, silver blade against the night sky. Stray groaned as his body seemed to give way. It was nearly midnight—the change would be upon him and he’d been too weak and hurt to do it.
And if he couldn’t die, as the prophecy claimed, what would become of him? Because the prophecy didn’t say anything about any tolerance to pain.
“Stray, open your eyes,” his brother told him. When Stray did so, he noted that the bears were all dead around them, and if Killian didn’t hurry, more would soon come.
He waited, his arms numb, for his brother to help him down.
Instead, Kill moved forward and ran the sword straight through Stray’s heart.
Her hand caressed the scar as he spoke. Her eyes were wide and wet as though she felt his pain as keenly as he did. “I can’t believe . . .”
“We’re different in the way we do things,” he told her. “I would’ve tried to kill myself if he hadn’t.”
“But the fact that he did hurts you t
he most. Still.”
He couldn’t deny that, so he didn’t bother trying.
“I lived alone for a long time,” he admitted, afraid to say anything more about his childhood at the moment for fear of losing it. “After my pack banished me, I went my own way and my brother went his. Together, our gifts were too powerful and the pack was worried we’d draw unnecessary attention.” Or take them over, he thought. He refused to say that out loud because that was the worst part of the betrayal. “I had a really shitty time on my own, had to pretend I was something I wasn’t. When they found out I was a Dire, I had to prove myself. I worked whatever jobs I could to earn some money. Rifter’s pack always has cash—our pack did too, I guess, but Killian and I were given nothing. So I did whatever I could to survive. It wasn’t always pretty.”
“I understand,” she said quietly. “I was alone . . . lonely, for a long time too.”
“Hard to be different.”
“But you’re not. I mean, your brothers are like you. They accept you.”
“My own family didn’t. Their families wouldn’t have, either. But the Extinction happened before they discovered that.” Except for Vice, who always knew his family thought his gift was too over the top. To the Dires, Vice had equaled sin personified, and even though wolves were all about primal urges, Vice’s ability was feared.
“Sometimes family’s not about blood.”
“I still have to talk to my brother. Try to figure some things out between us. He’s been alone longer than me. I don’t know what he’s like. He could be feral. I don’t know if he’s been using his power for evil purposes.”
She nodded, her brow furrowed, and then asked, “Are your parents still alive?”
“As far as I know.”
“Does your brother ever see them?”
“I’d be shocked to hear him say yes. Could we change the subject?”
She consented easily. “Okay. You’re really seventy-five years old?”
“Rifter and the others are like ten thousand. I’m the teenager in the house who plays his music too loud. Probably why they dealt with young moon-crazed Weres so well.”
Dire Wants_A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan Page 19