“How do you know?” My eyes narrow in the dark. Maybe she was the one who attacked me. She knows a lot about shifters, and witches can disguise themselves…
“I’ve lived here all my life,” she says, as if that explains everything.
“My father never told me that,” I say, then realize how ridiculous that is. That’s not even an argument. My father never told me a million things—that he was married before my mother, that my mother was alive, that she’s a wolf and he’s a mountain lion. That’s what I thought he was. I didn’t know he could be anything. That I could be.
Yet another lie, another thing about my true nature that everyone kept hidden from me. And to be told by a complete stranger makes the deception sting just a little bit more.
Chapter 6
The next morning, I wake with a start. For a second, I fight the fabric over my face, sure I’ve been trapped. But then I remember where I am. I remember Haven telling me to zip my hammock closed to keep my warmth in before she fell asleep. For hours, I lay awake, unable to get comfortable in my human body, trying to shift into something else.
Now I hear a rustling sound in the leaves below our tree. I lie frozen, listening. I’m so helpless in my human form.
Maybe the spell only lasts for a day, I think hopefully. But when I try to shift, nothing happens. My tigress is fast asleep. I can feel her lurking there inside me, the killer instinct, the power and strength. She’s alive, but she’s not answering my call.
Slipping from my hammock, I catch my foot and fall against the wall. This human thing really sucks. I’m cold, I’m clumsy, I’m terrified of every little noise. It’s probably just squirrels chasing each other around in the leaves.
Light filters in through the branches, and I shiver against the morning chill. Haven is gone, and the smell of wood smoke drifts up from somewhere nearby.
It’s just your human side being paranoid, I tell myself. Everything is fine.
“We got another one,” Yorn’s droll voice calls.
Or not.
“Whoo-hoo,” Xela cries. Her sturdy footsteps pound along a branch nearby.
Still wearing Haven’s clothes from yesterday, I struggle up through the opening at the top of her little nest and nearly slide down the side and out of the tree. But just as I’m about to tumble twenty feet to the ground, a branch swings over and catches me. Before I can think, I’m laughing. It caught me. The tree caught me!
Now what?
I wrap my fingers around the branch, gripping it securely. Feeling like a complete idiot, I whisper, “Take me to the platform, please?”
Seconds later, it transfers me to another tree, and then another. At last a branch deposits me, still laughing and breathless with exhilaration, on the platform. I turn to find the others crowded around the net, where a struggling naked figure is trapped. My heart catches in my throat. Though he’s moving too fast, fighting to break free, I instantly know who it is. Coppery tan skin, black hair. A tattoo on one shoulder.
“Let him out,” I cry, my voice coming out high and desperate.
Harmon stops fighting and twists around towards me. I can’t bear to meet his eyes.
“This one follow ya here?” Haven asks in her flat, accented voice. She steps forward, holding out one palm like she’s ready to ward off an attack. With her other hands, she digs into the knot, and with a flick of her wrist, the net falls open.
The others take a step back when Harmon leaps to his feet, but he doesn’t seem to see them. His eyes are fixed on me. For a long moment, no one speaks. Harmon’s breath comes fast from the struggle, and his nostrils flare. But I can’t tell if he’s ready to kill me or kiss me. My eyes drop from his eerie, pale blue eyes to his lips, to his chest with the scars raking across it from where his father struck him when he defended me that night near the juniper.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“Looking for you,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “I didn’t expect you to set traps. I thought you were a tiger.”
“How did you find me?” I ask, ignoring the accusation and hurt in his voice.
“I tracked your scent.”
“Well, it has been like six months since I took a shower…”
He doesn’t respond to my attempt at humor. “I’d know your smell anywhere.”
“Totally not weird,” I mutter.
A glint of something flashes in his eyes, and his cheek twitches just the tiniest bit. “You’re my mate, Stella. Nothing in the world smells better than your scent, even if you’d gone six years without showering.”
“Awww,” Xela says, clasping her hands together in front of her heart.
Harmon glances her way for the first time. She turns pink all the way to the tips of her pointy ears when he catches her ogling his body.
“Maybe we could go somewhere and talk privately?” Harmon asks, turning his attention back to me.
I bite back a laugh when Xela makes her hands into claws and mouths, “Rawr,” behind his back.
“You can grab a skirt out of my nest if you need one,” Haven pipes up. “I don’t think you’d fit in anyone else’s clothes. Unless, you know, you don’t need clothes for this visit.”
“Don’t feel like you have to do it for us,” Xela says. “We don’t mind. Really.”
Uzula slides her glossy black hair over her shoulder and gives Harmon a sultry look. “Yeah, most of us don’t wear a stitch all summer.”
Yorn stomps off grumbling down a branch to his nest, which sets everyone else laughing. He waves his hand dismissively without looking back.
“Aww, don’t worry, you’re still the handsomest man in the Three Valleys,” Haven calls after him. I catch myself smiling with the others until I see Harmon’s confused, wounded expression.
“I’ll get you some clothes,” I say, reaching for him. But I drop my hand before it meets his skin. What if he pulls back? What if he hates me? Worse, what if he did what I told him and met someone else? Maybe he needs me to release him from that mate thing.
We step over to the edge of the platform, and I reach for the vine. “You have to talk to them,” I explain, feeling stupid even as I do it.
“Talk to the trees?” he asks, looking as distrustful as I did yesterday.
“I know,” I say. “But it works. They warm up really quickly once they see you’re not going to chop them down.”
Harmon still looks doubtful, but he steps up beside me when I motion for him to join. I hadn’t thought about how awkward it would be to travel with him this way. If it was awkward with Haven, a stranger, it’s a hundred times worse with the boy who knows me better than anyone.
“So, just hold onto it with me, and we’ll swing across,” I say, trying to make my smile encouraging. If it scared me, and I’m used to being a tiger, it’s going to totally freak out a wolf. But Harmon takes a breath and slides his arms around me. Instead of holding onto the vine together, as I did with Haven, Harmon holds all my weight and hangs onto the vine.
“What now?” he asks, looking down at me.
I try not to notice how warm he feels through the thin layer of my clothes. Try not to notice how naked he is, how tightly we’re pressed together. So of course, that’s all I can think about.
When I whisper to the vine, Harmon looks at me like I’m crazy. But his eyes widen when it swoops us off to another branch, which delivers us up to Haven’s nest. Inside, I throw Harmon a pair of pants and a long, loose skirt with an elastic waist. Though I saw him naked a hundred times when we were in captivity together, I turn my back while he changes.
“How do I look?” he asks after a minute. When I turn to look, he spreads his arms and gestures at the skirt, which stretches across his hips and ends just past his knees. It should be funny, but with his sculpted abs, chest and shoulders, it looks more like a man in a grass skirt or a kilt. A gorgeous man.
I swallow hard. “Hilarious.”
Harmon smiles, though I can’t bring my mouth to twist into that shape just no
w. Looking at him makes me want to weep, and scream, and tear the world apart for its unfairness. I’m a tiger, and he’s a wolf. Shifters hate wolves, because wolves eat shifters. Only on occasion, when they don’t know the animal is sometimes human, but still. It’s happened before.
This feeling between us shouldn’t be possible. It isn’t natural. It’s like that old saying, “they get along like cats and dogs.” We shouldn’t love each other. But I can’t stop the throb of emotion in my heart when our eyes meet. Everything inside me crumbles, and I have to swallow back an ache in my throat.
A minute later, we’re in the empty nest that Kale’s companion left. “I guess this is me,” I say, dropping down inside.
Harmon gives me a long, searching look. Then he steps forward, taking my face between his big hands, and kisses me. His mouth searches mine, pulling at me, hungering for me. It’s the kiss of a dying man, hungry and frantic, full of pain and desire. His tongue slips between my lips, and my arms circle his neck. I crush his lips with mine, a bruising strength taking over my top half even as my legs go weak. Harmon holds me to him so tight I can barely breathe. But after only a minute, a second, not enough time to last me for six more months or even six more days, he breaks away and steps back.
Raking his hand through his thick, glossy hair, he turns away and rubs a hand over his face. When he turns back, his eyes are shiny, as if he’s fighting back tears.
“You left me,” he says, biting off each word as if just speaking them hurts.
“I had to,” I say. “It was best for you. And you know I’m right, or you would have come after me.”
“You told me not to,” he says, throwing his hands up. “You left without even saying goodbye, remember? You told me you were going to be a tiger forever. And now I find you up here in the Enchanted Forest, living with a bunch of nudist elves and talking to trees. You could have told me when you changed your mind. When you decided to be human again.”
“I didn’t decide,” I say. “I was forced to shift, and I’m still trying to shift back. I never wanted to be human again.”
“But you are human, Stella,” he says, sinking onto a twisted bulge in one branch that gives him just enough room to sit. “You’re a shifter. Yes, you’re part animal. Maybe half, maybe more or less. But you’re also human. That’s part of who you are, too.”
“Yeah, well, I spent sixteen years as a human, not even knowing I had another option. Maybe after I spend sixteen as a tiger, I’ll be ready to split my time evenly.”
“Come on, Stella,” he says. “I know you’re mad that no one told you, but you can’t be a tiger wandering free around Arkansas. Someone will see you. A human. Or are you going to go back to Oklahoma as a tiger, spend your life in a zoo?”
“You do it,” I point out.
He looks at me hard. “One night a month.”
I let my eyes slide away from his, over the contours of his strong shoulders. “Did you do the other things I told you to do?”
He makes an incredulous sound and shakes his head. “You really don’t understand how this whole Choosing thing works, do you?”
“You said until we had the ceremony…”
“…It wouldn’t be recognized,” he says. “I’ve still Chosen you. That doesn’t go away. Never. Don’t you get that? I don’t want someone else. I can’t. I never will.”
“Oh.” I look around for a place to sit, wishing I’d brought the hammock back from Haven’s.
“That’s what I came to talk to you about, actually,” Harmon says, raking a hand through his hair again. He’s cut it since I last saw him, when he’d been in a basement with me for months. I twist my fingers together, resisting the urge to reach out and touch that hair I love so much, to run my own fingers through it.
“You want me to come back?” The thought lodges in my throat, and I can barely squeeze the words out. I want to be with him again, to be his. But the werewolf community is full of people who despise and distrust me. And more than that, it’s full of people I despise and distrust. It’s full of memories of the past few years, of being a freak and an outcast and an unbearable burden. Full of betrayals and hurts and dashed hopes.
Which is why I left. I want Harmon, I’ve always wanted Harmon, but I don’t want to go back there. And he belongs there.
“Of course I’d want you there if it was safe,” he says, shaking his head. “But that’s not why I came. I don’t know how to tell you this, Stella. But your mother has gotten a little…crazy.”
I roll my eyes and lean against the curving wall opposite him. “Tell me something new. She’s always been a nightmare. That’s why I left.”
“She’s gotten really strange,” he says. “You know she took over when I was injured, right?”
“So I heard. And yes, I also heard that she wanted me dead.”
Harmon winces. “When you left…I was healed. I should have taken over the next day. But your mother said that it was witchcraft, that you must be part witch.”
I laugh at that. “Who knows? Maybe I am. I mean, I didn’t know I was part tiger until this year. Hell, maybe I’m part troll, too. While we’re at it, why don’t we throw in that I’m a cannibalistic serial killer. My mother hates me, Harmon. She’d say anything.”
“Yeah, well, she has,” he says, not smiling at my joke. “She said that you bewitched me, not just to heal, but to Choose you.”
The fight in me trickles away. “So…what does that mean? She had you Choose someone else? Elidi, right?”
“No, because I refused,” he says, shaking his head and frowning down at his hands. “Which only made her more sure I was bewitched. And she’s got half the pack believing it.”
“But how? You’re the Alpha.”
“I was never confirmed by my father,” he says. “He never passed on the gift to me.”
“What’s the gift?” My stomach knots, and I’m sure I don’t really want an answer.
“To communicate with every pack member through the pack bond.”
We sit in silence for a long minute. I remember my sisters telling me about this. It’s what separates an Alpha from his second-in-command. It’s what keeps wolves from defying their leader. They are compelled to do as he says. My mother may have control of them through her powers of persuasion, but she isn’t their true Alpha.
But neither is Harmon.
“So how do you get the gift?” I ask. “There must be some way. Your father can’t be the first Alpha who was killed before he passed the gift on to his successor.”
“The Alpha is able to communicate because he needs to,” Harmon says. “Which is always for the good of the pack and not himself. Talia is insisting that I’m not fit for Alpha because I’m bewitched. Otherwise, I would do what is good for the pack and marry someone from the pack.”
A painful pressure burns behind my eyes. “Why don’t you?” I whisper.
“I told you,” Harmon explodes. “I want you, Stella. I couldn’t Choose someone else even if I wanted to. And I don’t.” He strides across the small space in one step and sweeps me into his arms, crushing me to his chest. “You are my mate. My destiny.” He strokes my tangled hair back and kisses me hard, desperately.
Right there, I decide that this is worth fighting for, even if it means the death of us both.
Chapter 7
When at last he releases me, I sink back against the wall. “So, what does that mean? Are you leaving the pack?”
“No,” he says, his eyes darkening. “They need me now more than ever. If this is my test, to prove I’m a worthy Alpha, then I’m not walking away from it.”
“Can I help?” I ask. “What if I faked my own death? You could act like you’ll be alone forever, because your mate is dead. Mother couldn’t say you were under my spell. And you wouldn’t have to Choose someone else, if it’s really as impossible as you say.”
Harmon studies me and then shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll convince them. I’ll find some way.”
&n
bsp; “Convince them of what?”
“To get the gift without it passing from the former Alpha, the pack must unanimously pledge loyalty to the new Alpha with a blood sacrifice.”
“What is that?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.
“It means they have to voluntarily submit to my bite,” he growls, his eyebrows drawn low and his eyes thunderous.
“So, you have to convince every member of the pack that you’ll be the best Alpha and put them first, and you have to do that by biting them?”
“Yes.”
“Faking my death would be so much easier.”
“I’d still have to get their loyalty,” he says.
I shudder at the thought of him sinking his wolf fangs into everyone in the community. Yes, I’ve hunted and killed dozens if not hundreds of animals in the woods. But they were prey, not people.
“Yeah, but if my mother has them convinced you’re going against the good of the pack, they won’t voluntarily offer themselves up to be your chew toys,” I point out. “Plus, she’ll never submit. Once I’m dead, she’ll have no reason not to. Everyone will see that she’s just power-hungry, and they’ll turn on her.”
Harmon frowns down at his hands. “I’m worried about her,” he says. “And your sisters, too. One day she’ll be perfectly normal, and the next she’s completely conniving. She wanders around the community at night, knocking on doors and getting people out of bed and having conversations with them like it’s the middle of the afternoon and everything is perfectly normal.”
“Welcome to the crazy-pants world of Talia,” I say with a forced laugh. “If you ever say I’m turning into my mother, I’ll turn into a tiger and literally bite your head off.”
Harmon’s head snaps up, and he gives me a triumphant smile. “So you are going to marry me.”
“What? I never said that.”
He grins and pushes himself up to standing. “I think you did.”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”
He stalks forward, slipping an arm around my waist and pulling me against him. “I’m pretty sure you did,” he growls into my ear, nuzzling his chin into my neck until shivers run all the way down my body and my fingers curl around his biceps. “I’m pretty sure you will.”
Ghostly Snow: A Dark Fairy Tale Adaptation (Girl Among Wolves Book 3) Page 3