by Jayne Hawke
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save your clothes. You’re welcome to keep my shirt, though.”
I self-consciously tugged at the hem of the t-shirt. It just about covered my ass. Valentin didn’t seem to notice, though. He kept his eyes above my collar bone, and I appreciated that. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as I put my sneakers back on. He looked to be in his late twenties, but that didn’t mean much for a garou. There was a confidence about him that came with experience. He knew what he was capable of. The slight edge to him, the glint that he couldn’t quite hide suggested that he’d killed in the past.
“Thank you, you’ve been very kind. Am I still in Cole Loxwood’s territory?”
Cole had said that there weren’t other garou in his territory. I’d assumed I’d feel something when I crossed a territory line, but I’d been so wrapped up in the bliss of running I hadn’t even noticed the hunters.
“Yes. I’m a lone wolf granted the pass to wander for a year.”
There was a slight hollowness to his words that set my teeth on edge. He swept that feeling away with a gentle touch of his fingertips against my bare arm.
“I’ll take you home.”
He guided me through his home with his hand on my lower back. It felt natural to lean into him and enjoy the safety and security that he granted me. I fought against that and tried to take in any details that might be important. Everything was neat and tidy. The decor looked to be tasteful and simple, but it was hard to be entirely sure in the darkness. The floors were expensive hardwood, and small landscape paintings were dotted along the pale walls.
We stepped out into the fresh air, and I noticed the slight lavender blush between the trees. The sun would start rising soon. That meant I’d been passed out for longer than I’d realised. Valentin caressed my lower back as he guided me across the gravel towards a flashy sports car.
“Don’t forget to eat lots of protein when you get home. Your body will need a lot of calories over the next twenty-four hours.”
I realised I wasn’t ravenous, as I had been when I healed last time.
“I don’t feel that hungry,” I said with a frown.
He leaned in a little closer as he opened the car door for me.
“Wolfsbane throws off your body. The hunger will come.”
I remembered how the world had spun, and it had felt like fire was coursing through me. If that was what wolfsbane did, I hoped I never experienced it again.
I ducked down into the car and felt the soft leather seat wrap around my bare legs. Valentin got into the car with practised grace.
He turned to me and said, “You were very lucky I found you. Wolfsbane will kill garou if left untreated, especially younger garou like you.”
“Thanks.”
I wanted to ask him what he was doing out in the forest that late at night, but it seemed rude. He was a garou. He was likely running like I was.
He pressed an expensive business card into the palm of my hand.
“If you ever want someone to talk to about garou things, or life in general, call me. Any time. Day or night.”
He was watching me again with a small smile and that intensity that seemed to drip off him.
“Thank you, that’s very kind.”
He turned the engine on and began pulling forward.
“Be careful of Cole Loxwood.”
It was said so casually, but it made a knot form in my stomach. I was stuck with Cole, at least until we found the rogue.
“Why?”
“He can be dangerous. Some have underestimated him in the past.”
I wasn’t all that surprised. There was certainly a lot of fire and aggression barely beneath the surface of the brooding alpha.
“Oh? I didn’t know that.”
“I’d hate to see you hurt again.”
I nodded and looked out the window into the grey light filtering through the mature trees.
“Do you have a pack?” he asked.
“Kind of.”
He nodded and squeezed my hand.
“That’s good. A garou without a pack will often go rogue.”
I swallowed and tried to smile again.
“I thought you were a lone wolf?”
He gave a nonchalant shrug.
“Some of us were just made to wander alone. It’s unusual, but we do exist.”
I had to admit, it sounded freeing to be without a pack. I’d always been an introvert, preferring to spend Friday nights home alone baking. Still, my wolf side pined for a real pack. A group of like-minded people that I could call my own.
21
EXHAUSTION WARRED WITH hunger as I stepped into the apartment. Valentin had walked me to my door and left me with a broad smile that seemed to fill him with a glow. I stumbled into the kitchen and noticed that Jake still wasn’t home.
“At least I don’t have to go to the bakery,” I muttered to myself.
I devoured the remaining Pop-Tarts along with a handful of English muffins and used the rest of the loaf of bread for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It wasn’t protein rich, but it would just have to do. The starvation faded enough that I could crawl into bed and fall into a deep sleep.
My dreams were full of flickering touches from Valentin’s gentle hands and his bright emerald eyes watching me. My wolf side crept closer to him, trying to claim him. I remained away in the shadows, watching him cautiously. There was the odd sensation that the dreams were far more than that, that he was really there. Every touch of his skin against mine sent a spark of electricity through me. It felt far more real than any dream I remembered having in the past. His warm breath caressed my sensitive throat, and my wolf yearned for his lips and teeth to trail after it.
I woke up and stretched, enjoying the warm blankets wrapped around me. The sun shone through my windows, and I winced. It must have been afternoon for the light to flood the entire room like that. As consciousness returned, I realised I was still wearing Valentin’s t-shirt. The wolf side revelled in the way our scents mingled on the fabric. I thought that was a bit creepy and peeled it off, ready to throw in the laundry.
Jake was waiting for me in the kitchen when I wandered in there. I’d changed into a fresh t-shirt and set of shorts. He looked up at me with a small frown and lines around his eyes.
“What happened? It’s not like you to sleep this late.”
He got up and paused as though arguing with himself. I waited for the hug that never came.
I shrugged and walked around him to start a fresh pot of coffee. Normally, I’d have told him everything, but something had been off about him for a few days. Maybe it was my wolf side, but I didn’t feel like sharing with him. It hurt to admit that to myself. We shared everything.
“I just bumped into another garou.”
His hand hovered above my shoulder for a moment while I put the coffee grounds in the machine, but he never touched me. We’d have shared every detail of our nights before, now he was hiding something. And so was I.
“So, I might have found a lead on my unbinding.” He went to the stove. “I’ll make you waffles. You look like you could use some waffles.”
“Find a witch on Grim?”
I sat in my usual seat and pulled my knees up to my chest and waited for the coffee.
“I think so. I’m waiting for her to get back to me.”
He didn’t look at me and spoke as though he was distracted, but I wasn’t sure what by. In the past, he would have been enthusiastic and given me every little detail. Now he was barely giving me the broad strokes, and his tone was so casual and half-hearted. I hated it. Especially given that this was such an important step. Unbinding his magic would change both of our lives.
“This will change everything.”
He sighed.
“I know.”
“You’ll be officially an heir,” I pushed.
He just wasn’t reacting or really letting me. I needed to get something from him, to see a flicker of the old Jake.
&
nbsp; His shoulders rounded some.
“I know,” he said firmly.
That was all I was getting.
When Jake unbound his magic, he would be letting every other fae know he existed. They’d be able to sense his magic in the world. The good trackers would be able to find him via it. He would step up as the heir to his father’s throne and become a prince in his own right. Or at least, he’d become a prince when the current monarch died and Jake’s father became the king. I wasn’t entirely sure how the geography worked on fae. I knew there were territories, which seemed to work like provinces or maybe countries. Each territory had a monarch ruling over them. The elves did things a little differently, but Jake wasn’t an elf. He was sidhe.
We knew that his magic would be weird and not as strong as a full-blooded fae. That would only make him a bigger target for the fae assassins, though. His mom was a half cait-sidhe. They were fae cat shifters that dealt with the dead. They could sense when death was close, and the full-blooded ones guided the dead to the other side. It was said they could steal away someone’s very life essence, too, but Jake’s mom didn’t know for sure. As a half-breed cast away to Earth, she wasn’t allowed to know much.
Jake brought my coffee and waffles to me. We sat in uncomfortable silence while I ate and he brooded. Unbinding his magic was a big decision. It would bring the fae down on both of our heads. It wasn’t something that he could rush into on a whim. I knew he’d been thinking about it for a while, but I hated being shut out like that. It was killing me.
“She has a good reputation?” I asked, trying to get him to really talk to me.
“I don’t know. Couldn’t find much about her. She’s one of Hela’s,” he said with a shrug while keeping his eyes down.
It was as though he was telling me about some tedious lecture that he hadn’t really paid attention to. I wrinkled my nose. Every witch was tied to a deity. That was how their magic worked. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable having Jake dealing with a death witch, especially on something as important as unbinding his magic.
“You’re sure a Hela witch can unbind fae magic?”
“No,” he said sharply.
I looked at him pointedly. We never spoke sharply to each other.
He looked away.
“Look I don’t know, ok, Rosalyn? Her decay side should in theory be able to break through the bindings. I’m working with what I have. You know that.”
I didn’t know much about Hela past her being a death deity. That meant her witches would work with death and whatever else the goddess dealt in. Death witches weren’t very well thought of in the community, people always got a bit twitchy around death. Not that I blamed them.
My jaw clenched, and I left the room to go and get a shower. It was ridiculous, and I was overreacting, but I was finding it difficult to keep my emotions in check. The wolf side was throwing me for a loop and making me more aggressive and high strung. I hated it.
22
JAKE WAS SITTING ON the couch glaring at his laptop when I returned feeling a little calmer. I tucked my legs under me and opened my own laptop.
“What’s her name? I’ll help you dig.”
“I’ll drop you a link to her profile,” he said without looking at me.
I went to the Grim and clicked the link waiting for me in my PMs. That allowed me to ignore all of the posts about me, which were still going on. Something more interesting should have happened by now. It was exhausting and painful being the butt of so many jokes. The vast majority of the people had never met me, but they were gleefully making cruel comments. I was glad I was an introvert, seeing how vicious people could be at the drop of a hat.
The witch’s profile was pretty locked down. She looked to be in her mid to late thirties with cold grey eyes staring at you from her simple profile picture. She lived about an hour away, if her location was to be believed. It wasn’t unusual for people to put in false details for that to try and keep themselves a bit safer.
I copy and pasted her name into the search bar on the Grim and skimmed down mentions of her. There was an interesting post saying how she’d been kicked out of her Bast coven and had become a lone witch. I didn’t know too much about witches, but I thought they were like garou and usually worked in groups. If I remembered correctly, there was a concern that lone or solitary witches would be too easy to control by their deity. That would give the deity the opportunity to ride them and go for a chaos-inducing joy-ride around the Earth plane. I was sure there were other reasons, too, such as control and it being easier to protect a territory as a group.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I continued digging, looking for anything that might help us know if she was worth the asking price. It still didn’t feel right to me. A Hela witch was a risk at the best of times, but a solitary one was an even bigger risk. I had to trust Jake and didn’t want to upset him further by pushing that point. I didn’t know why he’d suddenly decided that he absolutely needed to unbind his magic right then, though, after years of being ok being bound.
“What does she want in return for this?”
I glanced at Jake, who was typing furiously in response to a post I couldn’t see.
“We’ll negotiate in person.”
That sounded like a really bad idea. She must have known that he was desperate. Witches didn’t always ask for money. Sometimes they wanted blood, which could give them control over you. Or other bodily things. Other times they took memories, or worst yet, a favour of their choosing. It was practically suicide to offer them a favour without pinning down very exact terms. They could bind you into doing something that would kill you or bind you to them for the rest of your life.
For Jake to give the witch that much control and power was absolutely ridiculous. Witches were usually business people at heart, which meant they would take as much as they could in return for as little as possible. Given Jake’s status as a sidhe prince, the potential the witch could demand was high. I didn’t know what would happen to a witch with stolen fae magic, but I was ready to bet it wasn’t pretty.
“Come on, Jake, you know better than to give a witch that kind of power.”
He paused his typing for a moment before he looked at me.
“I need to do this,” he said coolly.
“I’m not saying don’t do this. I’m saying don’t rush into it with an unknown witch and an unspecified price.”
There was something he wasn’t telling me. Something big. He was hunched over his laptop and grinding his teeth as he typed. That wasn’t like him at all. He was one of the most laid-back, fun-loving people I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. I didn’t like seeing him like this, and knowing he wouldn’t let me in left me feeling helpless. The wolf side found that very aggravating, and the increasingly familiar anger began to rise.
“She’s close, and I’m sure she can do it.”
“A minute ago, we were digging into her because you weren’t sure,” I said pointedly.
He hit enter and sent the long aggressive comment off in reply to the post.
“And now I’m sure, ok?”
“No. It’s not ok. What the fuck has gotten into you?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Don’t give me that shit. We tell each other everything.”
I was at my last straw. I felt as though he was slipping through my fingers, and I wasn’t ready for that.
“Do we?”
He looked at me pointedly. I frowned, wondering what the hell he was getting at. The only thing I’d held back from him was the hunters, and that was only after he was so clearly hiding something from me.
“Just spit it out, Jake.”
I hated arguing with him. We never argued.
“You agreed to be Cole’s shadow,” he spat.
“And? It’s just a stupid dance.”
“You’re such an idiot sometimes, Rosalyn,” he said as he slammed his laptop closed and stalked off.
He’d never spoken to me like that before. I fel
t as though my chest was being crushed. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I wiped them away furiously. I wasn’t going to allow him to make me cry.
23
JAKE HAD VANISHED NOT long after our argument. I occupied myself cleaning the kitchen before I threw Valentin’s t-shirt in the washing machine along with the rest of my laundry. His card sat on my bedside cabinet waiting for me to add his number into my phone. It was a simple expensive card with thick white card stock, ‘Valentin Devaux’ on the front in metallic gold and his number on the back in blood red.
I rolled the card over and over in my hand while I paced around the kitchen, running the argument with Jake through my mind. He had always been so sweet and thoughtful, but the past few days it was like he was a completely different guy. I had no idea where it had come from, and that made it hurt all the more. Fae and garou didn’t get along, but he’d never been close to the fae. Could it really be that simple?
I put Valentin’s number into my phone and debated texting him so that he’d have my number, too. It seemed like a good idea to have as many allies as I could. My wolf side was eager to see him again, ideally naked. I was far more reserved and couldn’t quite shake the sensation that I was missing something about him. His warning about Cole echoed around my mind.
After an hour of pacing and being stuck in my own head, I texted Valentin so he had my number. I dropped my phone on my bed and set about making a huge batch of muffins for my dad and his work colleagues. He was the fire chief in the local fire department, and it had been a while since I’d delivered baked goods to them. Dad always said I spoiled them, but I saw the grins on their faces, and it made everything that little bit better.
Baking soothed away the pains of the afternoon. I fell into the familiar motions of making the batter and making sure everything was just so. It didn’t matter what Blair thought of my baking, I knew that I was good at what I did. I’d grown up baking with my mom. Most of my happiest memories were in a kitchen surrounded by the warmth of the oven, and the scents of flour, vanilla, and butter. I sighed, feeling the tension slip away.