“Are you?” I tease, tilting my head to give him access to my throat. “Hmm. Maybe. If you really beg.”
His lips trail up the side of my neck. “Pretty, pretty please?” he whispers when he reaches my ear.
“I’ll think about it.”
He nips my earlobe, holding it gently between his teeth while he growls.
I giggle and push him away, but he pulls me back and smiles down at me. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re not very good at taking orders?”
“I seem to recall it being brought up a time or two.”
“You know you can’t challenge me in front of the others when I’m your Alpha. It’ll make me look weak.”
“Then I guess you better not order me around,” I shoot back. “Because I’m not going to be your obedient little lapdog.”
A hurt look flickers across his face. “I don’t expect you to be.”
“Maybe you don’t mean to,” I say. “But it’s how your people work. Except you keep forgetting I’m not a wolf. Even if somehow they were okay with us being together after what I did to your father, will they be okay with me not being obedient to the Alpha? The exception to a rule everyone else has to follow?”
“I forgave you for my father,” he says, smoothing my hair back. “They will, too. And I don’t want you to be anything less than my equal.” He cracks a smile. “But don’t be offended if I try to order you around. It’s in my nature.”
“And defying you is in mine,” I say, smiling up at him. “So get used to it.”
He kisses me tenderly. “I wish I could,” he says when he pulls away. “But it’s not safe for you back there yet. That’s what I came to tell you. To warn you about your mother. She’s got it out for you.”
“The others told me. She wants me dead.”
Harmon cups my face between his hands and kisses me one more time. “She’s angry, and she’s got some of the others on her side. Saying you are responsible for what happened to their true Alpha. If I took you home, I’d be putting you in danger. I can’t let that happen.”
“I’ll be fine as soon as I can shift back.”
He frowns. “Then we’ll have to make that happen. But you should stay out of our valley for now. I’m sorry. That doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you, missing you. Waiting for you.”
“Harmon…”
“We’re going to make it work,” he says fiercely. “We’ll find a way. We don’t have another choice.”
I don’t remind him that we do. That maybe if he was mated with another wolf, it would be an unbreakable bond. My mother and father walked these footsteps before us. A shifter and a wolf. And they got divorced. My heart squeezes at the thought of leaving Harmon that way, forever fated to be loveless and alone, growing old and cold and bitter because he wasted his one chance at love on a shifty shifter.
I bring my fingers to his face, hold it between my hands the way he’s holding mine. “Okay,” I whisper past the lump in my throat. “We’ll find a way. I promise.”
In this strange way, I suddenly understand my mother. I understand why she hates me. I’m the reason that her one true love, her forever-fated mate, had to leave. I’m the reason she’s old and cold and bitter. And the thought of leaving Harmon that way breaks my heart in two. I could never do that to him. My father did that to my mother, and all I feel for her in this moment is pity. If she wants me dead, I can’t really blame her. I’m the girl who tore her marriage apart, who broke her heart, broke the bond that should never have been broken.
Or maybe it should never have been made.
And here I am, repeating their story. Here I am, my father’s daughter.
But I won’t be the one to break Harmon’s heart. Not again. I won’t be the one to turn him cold, the decision he regrets for the rest of his life. He’s giving me a chance, even after what I did. Leaving him didn’t change his feelings for me at all. He’s here, still protecting me, still warning me, still wanting me. And I still want him. Six months as a tiger didn’t heal my broken heart. It only put it off. It didn’t make me stop loving Harmon. As soon as I shifted back, it returned as strong as ever.
So did all the problems, though. Nothing has changed. Everything keeping us apart is still there. He’s still not Alpha, and his pack still doesn’t accept me. And I still can’t make him choose between me and them.
“Let me help,” I say. “Tell my mother I’m dead. You can work on getting the pack back on your side, trusting you. I’ll stay up here, and she’ll never know I’m alive. And when you’re established as Alpha, I’ll come back.”
A frown darkens his expression. “I’m supposed to get my pack to trust me by lying to them? I’m not sure I like this idea.”
“Well, I don’t really like my mother putting a hit out on me. If she thinks I’m already dead, she’ll call them off. I’ll be safe, and you can take care of things there.”
“Even if I told her, she wouldn’t believe me.”
“Bring her something,” I say, looking around. If he brings my mother something of mine, something she knows I’d rather die than give up… Except I don’t actually own a single thing. I gave Harmon my enchanted necklace, which is the closest thing I had to a meaningful object when I lived with my mother. Since then, well, it’s not like tigers keep mementos. It occurs to me as I look around the little tree nest that I don’t own a single thing on this earth. Even the funky skirt, t-shirt and blazer I’m wearing belong to Haven.
“Bring her an animal heart,” I say. “Tell her it’s mine.”
“Your mother knows I’d never kill you.”
In desperation, I reach up and grab a pinch of hair at my scalp and rip it out. It hurts a lot worse than I was anticipating. Tears spring to my eyes, and I swear under my breath. Harmon looks at me like I’m nuts. “Bring her this,” I say. “Tell her you found my body in the woods, and you had to keep a part of me, so you took a lock of hair.”
Instead of telling me that’s psycho, and kind of disgusting, Harmon takes the hair, as if my argument makes perfect sense. It probably does for someone who mates for life and can find his mate by her smell. Werewolves love the drama. This is probably a perfectly normal and acceptable gesture for them.
“I’ll try,” he says. “If it means you’ll be safe here until I get the pack under control.” He kisses me again, this time passionately.
When he breaks the kiss at last, he smooths my hair back and kisses my forehead. “Promise me you won’t run away again?”
“Promise me you won’t let my mother get away with this. This is your pack, Harmon. You deserve to lead it. That’s your place, not hers.” Squeezing his hipbones, I pull him in for one more kiss.
“I’ll come and get you as soon as I’m pack leader.”
I don’t want to let him go. Now I remember why I left while he was sleeping. How can I watch him leave, not knowing if we’ll ever be together? How did I gather the strength to leave him last time? It’s all I can do to let him out of the nest, now, to swing back through the trees and drop to the ground with him. Every move is a step closer to goodbye.
I have to squeeze my hands into fists to keep them from clutching at him, begging him not to go. He can find a new pack, make a new one with me. He doesn’t have to go back to those jerks. They don’t deserve a leader as good as him, anyway. We could forget all of them, start over somewhere.
But when I look at the white streak in his hair, remember the prophecy that says he will be the leader the pack is waiting for, I swallow back the protests. This is his place. He believes all this. This pack is his home, his destiny, and it has been since long before I came into his life. So I smile and blink back the tears that ache behind my eyes, and I tell him to return to his people.
When he leans in to kiss me again, I push him away. I can’t take a long goodbye. I swallow the painful knot in my throat, laugh, and tell him to go, that I’ll see him soon. After a hesitation, he peels off Haven’s skirt and hands it back, then drops to the ground and tran
sitions into his wolf form. He gives me a long look, his glacial-blue eyes inscrutable, and then turns and lopes down the mountain. I wait until he’s gone to let the tears spill.
This time, he’s the one leaving. If it hurt him even half this much, and he can still love me, then there’s no way in hell I’m giving up on him.
Chapter 8
I spend the next few hours fielding questions about Harmon and learning the ropes of the hive. The little group is welcoming, but I don’t want to mooch off their generosity. During my time at Mother’s I got pretty handy with tools and building, and I’m still strong from the work I did there and from all the exercise I got as a tiger. So I put myself to use as often as I can that day, and over the coming days.
Even though I can’t seem to shift into anything else, the group in the forest isn’t a bad alternative. After a few weeks, I’ve settled in. Though I haven’t stopped trying to shift back into my tiger form, I’m not a prisoner here, either. I hardly remember what to do with myself when I’m free. I’ve never been free before. First I had an overbearing father, and then a psychotic mother. I’ve never had this kind of life, where I can make decisions for myself. Not until I found out who I really was. I can’t help but wonder, if my father had let me know all along, if I could have been more independent.
Now I wait for someone to tell me what to do, but no one does. Haven says they all chip in, but as far as I can tell, there’s not much to be done. They all go off into the woods each day. Apparently faeries are superb hunters, so Kale goes out to get food at least once a day. Yorn sets traps, and Uzula and Xela gather edibles in the woods. One day, I go along with them, confident that all the books I read in Mother’s attic will finally pay off. Maybe I’ll even be able to teach them something.
I’m sadly mistaken. By an hour into the day, even Xela has started to give short answers, sounding weary at my never-ending stream of questions. Turns out that without the book, I barely remember anything. If I had it with me, I could match the pictures to the plants, but I left that at Dad’s with all my other things. Life was a lot easier when pretty much anything smaller than me was dinner.
After that day, I stay back at the camp. I don’t want to risk being seen by a wolf or a wolf-friendly creature. Who knows how many people in the Three Valleys know about me. It’s not like I was hiding, and white tigers aren’t exactly native to the Ozark Mountains. Beyond that, they probably know that my mother is looking for me. After all, if even a band of outcasts knows, the people in the communities probably do, too. And some of them might be more tempted by a reward than Haven’s collective, which doesn’t seem to want anything from anyone.
I’m sitting in the clearing one day, making a wooden spoon with a pocket knife and a rounded stone for sanding, when a noise startles me. I straighten, my heart hammering as I listen for crackling leaves. It could be anything, a squirrel or armadillo, but it sounds bigger. The hairs along my arms stand up, and my tiger stirs inside me. She wants to come out, but she’s trapped. Now that I’m free, she’s stuck.
Carefully, I set down the wooden stick I’ve whittled into a shape that’s almost identifiable. I keep the pocket knife clutched in my hand.
Even though my tiger is trapped, I can sense the nearness of whatever it is, can sense it just beyond Doralice. I’ve started to come here more when the others are gone. At first, I felt silly, but now, I hardly notice that she doesn’t answer. Somehow, just knowing that she was once human makes her more than a juniper tree. I haven’t gone close enough for her to touch me again, though. There are limits to how human I can allow her to be before I question my own sanity. It’s one thing to talk to a tree—back when I thought Dad was nothing but a nerdy botany professor, I heard him talk to plants plenty of times. It’s an entirely different thing to think the trees are talking back. With all the fantastical things that have happened, I feel like I have to maintain a line somewhere.
Now I wait, holding my breath. I can feel the presence of someone there. I open my mouth to call Harmon, but I think better of it. Harmon knows where I am. He wouldn’t sneak up like this.
I rise from fallen-log bench just as a figure steps into view. Sucking in a breath, I freeze. For so many months, I have avoided really thinking about my mother. Even in the past two weeks, when I’ve been human again, I haven’t wanted to do more than make bitter jokes to the other misfits about the evil queen. Seeing her again, in the flesh, brings a wave of fresh hurt that’s so intense it feels like nausea. I want to throw my knife straight into her throat.
But I just stand there, my heart hammering, and do nothing. Just like I did all those days, all those years, when she threw me in her attic and withheld everything from me—my family, the chance at a normal life, and the truth. For a second, I’m that fourteen-year-old girl who arrived here knowing nothing, who wanted her mother’s love and thought if she worked hard enough, she’d get it.
And then I’m not. My mother steps forward, swatting away Doralice’s seeking needles, and the spell is broken. Whatever holds me taut in that moment snaps, and I remember who this is. That this isn’t just the woman who locked me in her attic—chained me in her attic—but the woman who threw her own leader into a basement and told everyone he wasn’t fit to lead because he loved me. After all, I’m so completely unlovable that my own mother hates me. Obviously, anyone who would dare to love me anyway must need his head examined.
“Stella,” she says, her mouth tightening into that so-familiar line. “You are alive. I knew it.”
“I’m dead to you,” I say. “And you’re dead to me. Go away.”
She looks around the dirt clearing with the small firepit, so meager compared to the large cleared space the wolves use for their gatherings, with grassy lawns, pavilions and picnic tables, even a stage for their band to play. To her, our little squared-off stones and logs for sitting must look pathetic.
“I came to warn you,” she says.
“I’ve already been warned,” I say. “Warned about you. How did you even know where to find me?”
“A mother knows when her daughter is dead,” she says. “I knew you weren’t dead. And you weren’t at your father’s.”
“You were never my mother,” I say through clenched teeth.
She looks as if she’ll speak, but then she stops and looks up at Doralice, standing over her. “This is the tree, is it? The ex-wife.” Her lip curls at this word, as if it’s something distasteful. I guess to a wolf, it is.
“What are you doing here?”
She sighs and steps further from Doralice, closer to me. And then, to my dismay, she smooths her long skirt against her bottom and sits down on a stone opposite the fire ring. I should throw the knife. But some part of me has to know why she’s here. Did something happen to Harmon? To one of my sisters?
“I’ll tell you why I’m here,” she says. “And there’s something you can tell me. It will be like before, when we traded information.”
She gives me a smile that, to my horror, I think is supposed to be apologetic. Is she reminiscing about my time as her prisoner, as if we sat around making small talk?
What’s your favorite food?
What’s yours?
“I don’t owe you anything,” I snarl at her.
“No, I suppose you don’t.” She looks at me, her expression resigned, almost sad.
I glare back at her.
“How old are you, Stella?” she asks after a moment.
I glare at her another minute, but when she only regards me coolly, I have to answer.
“I wouldn’t expect you to remember that about me, but surely you know how old your beloved Elidi is, and since she’s my twin, even you can figure out that I’m seventeen.”
“Do you know how old I am?”
“No, and I don’t care.”
“I’m thirty-three.”
I don’t want to care, but I do. I never knew that about my mother. I study her, the lines in her face, the callouses on her hands, the work boots on her feet.
She looks much older, as old as my father or at least forty. She’s younger than she looks, but it’s no surprise I didn’t know. How could I? No one told me anything true my whole life.
“So?”
“When I was your age, I already had twins to take care of,” she says.
“Yeah, well, that was your bad decision,” I say. “And if that’s your excuse for being a shitty mom, it’s not a very good one. I’m the one who paid for that decision, aren’t I?”
She sighs and hooks her hands together around one knee. “I suppose I should have let her have your father,” she says, looking up at Doralice.
“Why are you here?” I ask again.
“Your sister was the one who knew where to find you,” she says. “Twin bond, or so she says. She knew you weren’t dead. That’s how I found you. That’s what you wanted to know. Now it’s your turn to answer.”
“What?”
“That…woman. The mouse. The witch.”
“Mrs. Nguyen.”
She flinches. “Yes. She was just Yvonne when I knew her.”
“What about her?” I ask, irritated that I can’t simply tell her to go fall down a well. I actually want to know this stuff, why she’s here, what led my father to marry her… After living my life in the dark, I’ll take any light I can get, even from a fire that has burned me too many times to count.
“She’s dangerous,” my mother says. “You can’t trust her.”
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m laughing out loud. My mother, a woman who locked me away for over two years, here to warn me that the woman who got me out is dangerous. Mrs. Nguyen may not be everything she pretended to be all those years, but compared to my mother? I’ll take my chances.
“You can’t be serious,” I say when I’ve recovered my senses. “If Mrs. Nguyen wanted to kill me, she’d have done it years ago. She was my babysitter for God’s sake. I don’t think she’s out to get me.”
Ghostly Snow: A Dark Fairy Tale Adaptation (Girl Among Wolves Book 3) Page 4