by Reine, SM
“It was an accident,” she whispered.
“That’s not the issue right now, babe. Go call the hospital. The number is on the wall by the phone.”
Rylie nodded, clambering out to make the call. Her hands shook when she dialed. It turned out that the hospital was in another town, and they only had one ambulance. It took a long time for them to arrive.
Gwyn and Rylie stood back as Raymond was loaded onto a stretcher. He didn’t look good. All the blood had drained from his face, leaving him a ghostly shade of white.
That night, Raymond called them from the hospital. Gwyn set down the phone with a sigh after they spoke and cracked open another beer. That was never a good sign. “Is he going to be okay?” Rylie asked.
“Eventually. He broke a couple of bones and his head almost got knocked off his shoulders, but he’s strong. He’ll recover.” She shook her head. “This is a really bad time of year to lose a man. I’m going to have to hire someone new as soon as possible.”
Maybe the next one won’t be such a jerk.
Rylie quashed the thought.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to make it sound like she meant it. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You need to be more careful, babe. This is a working environment. It’s a dangerous place. You need to pay close attention to what you’re doing, all right?”
“I just don’t think I’m cut out for physical labor,” Rylie said.
“You need more discipline. That’s all.” Gwyn pressed the glass bottle to her forehead and shut her eyes. “I’m too tired for this conversation. I’ve got a lot to think about. Money is too tight for another employee if we help pay Raymond’s bills, but... well, we’ll figure something out.”
The guilt Rylie hadn’t felt earlier crept up on her now. “I’m sorry.” She meant it this time.
She worked hard for the next few days without complaining. Gwyn pulled out the heavy machinery (and admitted that she had only made Rylie dig with a shovel as an exercise in patience), and they finished digging the trenches.
Soon, all that remained was moving the animals to different pastures. “But that’s going to have to wait until I get a new man,” Gwyn said, taking the keys back from Rylie.
“Any responses to your ad yet?”
“A few. There’s always someone looking for a job in this economy. I’ll be interviewing guys tomorrow.”
They didn’t get up early Monday morning to work like they usually did. When Rylie got out of bed, she found her aunt asleep on her desk with a checkbook and receipts scattered around her. There was a lot of red ink.
Rylie wasn’t helping. Not at all.
She cooked breakfast for herself, waiting to wake Gwyn up until she needed to get to school. The driver’s license came creeping up in the back of her mind again. If she could drive, her aunt would have more time. Rylie wouldn’t be bothering her as much.
But she couldn’t do it. How was she supposed to control herself enough to ride a horse if she couldn’t even keep herself from hitting someone with a shovel?
There was a motorcycle Rylie recognized outside the house when they got home from school in the afternoon.
“He’s here!” Gwyn said, looking pleased.
“Who?”
“The new guy I hired. I picked him out this morning. You want to meet him?”
Rylie’s heart skipped a beat. Was the new hire Seth? “Sure.”
A tall figure faced the fields with his back toward them. His hands were stuffed into his pockets. A breeze wafted his scent in her direction, and the hair on the back of her neck lifted.
“This is our replacement ranch hand,” Gwyn said. “His name is—”
“Abel,” Rylie said.
His smile might have been charming if it didn’t split his mouth in half. “Afternoon, ladies. So nice to see you again.” His breath smelled like blood, and he stank of rival wolves. She felt a jolt deep within herself. Did he feel the same thing? Did he realize what it meant?
The werewolf who had bitten Rylie had done it because he wanted a family. Wolves weren’t meant to live alone. The werewolf inside of her saw what he was and longed for it. But Abel wasn’t really a werewolf—and they could never be pack.
“How do you know each other?” Gwyn asked.
Rylie didn’t respond. She was ready for a fight. He was, too—he had his feet spread apart with his arms loose at his sides, and she could see tension coiled in his muscles. Abel was just on edge as she was, even though he smiled with those dark, gleaming eyes.
How much did he know?
“Rylie is friends with my baby brother. In fact, you could say I only knew about this ranch—and this job—because of her.”
He knew.
She tried to keep the shock off her face.
“Well, good.” Gwyn gave a sharp nod. “Then we don’t need to waste time with introductions.” She addressed Rylie. “I’m drawing up a contract for six weeks. He’ll help us get everything ready for winter.”
“Six weeks?” Rylie asked.
“I’ll probably be done in town by then anyway.” His smile was frigid.
“Come inside, Abel. We’ll go over paperwork and get right to work.”
They went into the house. Rylie wanted to shout and stop them. He killed people—even if they were monsters two nights a month. She couldn’t leave her aunt with him.
Rylie watched through the kitchen window as they signed papers. They were talking like everything was normal. Like this wasn’t the worst idea ever.
Abel must have suspected that she was the werewolf, or he wouldn’t be there. Seth once told her that they never killed werewolves while they were in human form. They waited until the transformation. It wasn’t much of a comfort now that he was going to be working for her aunt.
She went into her room and shut the door. After a moment of thought, she leaned her dresser against the door.
Rylie hid for the rest of the day, but she couldn’t stay in her room forever. Even though Abel left that afternoon, he came back the next day, and the next, and Gwyn would only put up with Rylie’s avoidance for so long. There was work to be done.
Which meant that she saw Abel first thing in the morning and after school.
Every single day.
She had to admit that Abel was good to have around. He was at least as strong as Rylie, but the animals weren’t afraid of him, so he could get a lot more done. He seemed like he really knew what he was doing, too. But he didn’t let his work around the ranch distract him from what seemed to be his true purpose: watching Rylie.
Abel wasn’t obvious about it. He was too good for that. He would be standing by the barn when she went to check on the new chicks under the incubator, or he’d be waiting by the compost pile when she took the scraps from dinner out.
If she opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, he walked away as casually as if he hadn’t been watching at all. It was too frustrating.
She even caught him watching her at school a few times when she crossed the buildings between classes. His car, with its darkened windows, would idle in the parking lot for hours. Even though she couldn’t see him inside of it, she could smell him.
It got to the point where Rylie was constantly looking over her shoulder for him. She couldn’t relax. She kept expecting to hear a gunshot and feel a bullet plant itself between her shoulder blades.
“Hey Rylie, are you—”
She jumped and almost fell out of her chair at the library. Kathleen took a quick step back to avoid getting hit.
“What do you want?” she snarled.
Kathleen’s eyes went wide. “We’re supposed to be working on a project together.”
Was she spying for Abel? Was she following Rylie the places he couldn’t go? Was she a hunter, too? The thoughts raced wildly through Rylie’s mind, and she had to struggle to calm down.
“The project, huh?” Rylie asked. “What kind of excuse is that?”
“You could just say you don’t w
ant to work on it!” Kathleen hugged her books to her chest and ran away. Rylie let her forehead thud onto the table.
What was wrong with her? The other students weren’t spying for Abel. Rylie was sure of that... probably. But she watched the people watching her, and she wondered.
Seth was quiet at school, so she never heard rumors about him. The gossip mill soon got bored of him and started focusing on Rylie again, whose erratic behavior was a popular subject. The only thing that came up about Seth was that the track team was trying to enlist him.
The kind of rumors circulating around Rylie, on the other hand, were much juicier. Popular theory was that she was a drug addict. Her association with Tate wasn’t doing anything to discourage it.
“Who cares if you are into drugs anyway? Screw ‘em,” he said, lighting a joint beneath the bleachers during PE. Rylie hid in the shadows next to him with her knees hugged to her chest. She was wondering if she could see Abel’s headlights lurking at the back of the parking lot.
“I don’t want those rumors getting back to my aunt,” Rylie said. “She’ll send me away if she thinks I’m taking something.”
“You’re worrying too much. Sounds like you need a little help relaxing.” He offered the joint to her, but she pushed his hand away.
“No thanks.”
Someone walked past the bleachers, and she almost leaped out of her skin.
But it wasn’t Abel—it was Seth.
He was wearing his gym uniform, which should have looked stupid on his thick muscles, but he managed to make the sweat pants and t-shirt look like armor. He paused to look at Rylie and Tate sitting shoulder to shoulder under the bleachers.
Unhappy pheromones radiated off of him and his dark eyes glowed. Rylie sat up, bumping her head on a metal bar. “Ouch! Seth, what are you—”
He strode away before she could reach him.
“What’s his problem?” Tate asked a moment too late, trying to focus his blurry eyes on Seth’s retreating figure.
Her stomach plummeted. Great. Now Seth was going to think she was a stoner, too. She shouldn’t have cared about his opinion anymore, since he had been the one to say they shouldn’t talk, but she did care. A lot. And she was humiliated.
On their drive home that day, Gwyn spoke animatedly about improvements around the ranch and how helpful Abel was to have around. “He’s like having four ranch hands! I can’t believe how hard this guy works. I might extend his contract after the six weeks have finished.”
Her aunt might as well have announced she was going to sign Rylie up for daily root canals.
“Great,” she muttered. “Fantastic.”
Rylie was writing an essay on the porch when Abel came by for the evening. They were working constantly during daylight now that the nights were getting longer, and he took on the extra hours with enthusiasm.
She tried to ignore him and focus on her paper, which was one of many required for her project with Kathleen, but all of her senses jangled at his presence. He watched her from the bottom of the hill, and the wolf hated it. For once, Rylie couldn’t disagree.
Snapping her book shut, she glared back at Abel.
“Leave me alone!” she yelled. “Stop following me around and staring at me! You’re driving me nuts!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Seems like you have an anger problem,” Abel said, sauntering over to the patio. “Maybe you should get that looked at by a professional.”
Her whole body shook with the effort it took not to jump at him. “Is that scar of yours getting worse, or are you just getting uglier?”
His smile vanished.
“Too bad a nice lady like Gwyneth has such a horrible niece. I bet her life would be much better without someone like you in it.”
Abel walked away from her before she could reply.
He smelled like silver.
Nine
Secrets
Seth was surprised to find his brother at home when he returned from school the next day. Abel had been practically living at Rylie’s ranch for the last week while Eleanor did research, leaving Seth a lot of time alone at home.
“Where’s Mom?” Seth asked, dropping his backpack on a clear patch of floor. Everywhere else was covered in boxes and news articles. They only had one piece of furniture—a table given to them by a family down the street—and even that was plastered with notes.
Abel stretched, reaching his hands for the ceiling. “She’s at the library again. Feel like having a skirmish?”
Seth had a lot of homework to do, but he and his brother hadn’t had a good practice fight since he got the cast off. “Sure.”
They moved to the empty yard outside. With the fence at their backs and the nearest mobile homes empty, they had almost total privacy. Seth stripped off his shirt so it wouldn’t get sweaty.
“You’re home late,” Abel remarked as he put on a pair of gloves with padded knuckles. They usually fought barehanded, but Seth couldn’t show up to school with black eyes, so they started using protection.
“I had a track meet.”
Abel laughed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
His brother swung at him, and Seth dodged easily. It was a slow move meant to start the fight rather than actually hit him. He twisted under it and jabbed his elbow at Abel.
“What’s next? Football and dating some cheerleader?”
“Maybe,” Seth said.
Abel caught his fist and used it to throw him against the tree. “I never thought you’d get into this stupid teenager stuff. You want to be prom king or something?”
“I am a teenager.” His fist sunk into Abel’s gut, but his brother turned at just the right time to send it sliding off his ribs. “What are you doing at home anyway? I thought you were working a hundred hours a week at your new job.”
“The old lady insisted I take a day off. Who am I to argue? I’ve been missing my little brother.”
Abel swung an uppercut that snapped Seth’s head back. The yard flashed with black stars.
He held up a hand to ask for a pause, working his jaw to clear the ringing in his skull. He should have been able to escape that one. His leg was still slowing him down. Abel stood back, fists waiting.
“So now you’re spying on me for Mom? Is that what this is?”
To his credit, Abel looked offended. “I just want to know what you’re up to.” He didn’t need to say that Eleanor didn’t really care what Seth was doing between the new and full moons anyway. They both knew it, and the knowledge stung.
Taking a few deep breaths to center himself, Seth nodded.
They exchanged blows silently except for the occasional grunt and the meaty sound of fist hitting flesh. He gave as good as he got. Even though Abel was almost twice his size, he was fast, and he thought he might have gotten better since his solo hunt over the summer.
But Seth’s calf muscle kept locking up, and Abel knocked him to the dirt more than once.
After getting flattened for the third time, he held up a hand to stop him again. Abel gripped his wrist and hauled him to his feet. “Shake it off, man.”
“Yeah. Right.” All of Seth’s running at school was slowing down his recovery. It was easy to forget that most people would have still been in a cast so soon after the injury. Even someone with his speedy healing should have taken a break occasionally.
But most people weren’t from a family of hunters. Abel and Eleanor weren’t going to give him a break for long.
“How’s school?” Abel asked, giving Seth a little space as he rubbed hard at his calf. He almost made it sound like he cared.
“It’s fine.”
It was torture seeing Rylie hanging out with other guys, though. It made him feel even more beaten than he did after a fight with Abel. But his brother wouldn’t have wanted to hear that.
“Nobody giving you trouble for being new?”
“Nah. What kind of stuff have you been doing at the Gresham ranch?”
Ab
el’s eyes lit up. Now they were talking about something he was actually interested in. “Working.” He didn’t mean he was working a job—he meant he was hunting. “I’m getting close, bro.”
Seth swallowed hard. His fists dropped a little.
“Who?” he asked, voice hoarse.
“At first I thought it was one of the ranch hands. Migrant workers, you know? There’s been that upswing of attacks in Central America. But the guys are clean. The one in the hospital is healing at a normal speed, and the other one is as much a werewolf as I am a fairy.” Abel bounced from foot to foot, shadow boxing with an invisible enemy. “It’s the girl. That kid. I’m almost sure.”
Seth dropped his guard. Abel’s fist connected with the side of his head.
The world exploded into black stars. He went down, hitting the dirt with a thud that jarred his recently healed leg. His elbow banged against a rock.
“Hey!”
“Hey yourself. What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you paying attention?”
He cradled his ringing skull and grimaced at his brother. Abel had dropped all pretense of a fight. “She’s kind of young for a werewolf. Teens almost never survive the attacks.”
“Her aunt said Rylie has been getting into trouble at school. And the way she stares at me...” Abel shook his head. “Her eyes are that gold color in the sunlight. It’s a dead giveaway.”
He offered Seth a hand to pull him up again, but he didn’t take it.
“You can’t tell Mom.”
Abel laughed, but it died off when he saw that Seth wasn’t laughing too. “You’re serious.” His gaze sharpened. “Did you already know?”
“Abel...”
“How did you find out? Why the hell didn’t you tell us?”
Seth dusted off his jeans as he stood. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated? Are you hot for her or something?” The question was half-joking, but when Seth didn’t respond, tension rippled through Abel. He wasn’t smiling at all anymore. “She’s a werewolf.”
“Rylie is different.”
“Different? Different?”
He was starting to get loud. Seth kept an eye on the street, holding his hands out to soothe him. If Eleanor chose that moment to come home, Rylie would be done for. “Quiet down, man. I can explain. I’ve known for awhile, okay? She’s my... friend.”