About Face (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  Murphy had walked out on me four months ago and I’d painted my condo. Jason Allerton dropped me as his Advisor and I’d rushed out, gotten drunk, and fallen into bed with some young Other man.

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  I needed to take a shower so I could rinse the stink off me, and wash away the hangover.

  Breath held, I twitched the grungy shower curtain aside to reveal a mildewed plastic shower stall. It was not exactly the Ritz, but whatever.

  The water pressure was for shit and the temperature fluctuated between icy cold with spurts of stinging hot. I endured it until I’d soaped my entire body and washed my hair with Ron-or-Don’s combination shampoo and body wash. Only men could be so lazy as to combine two such different products. The gel smelled like a guy, too.

  Once I was done, I realized I’d have to wrap one of his used, Obsession-scented towels around me to dry off. The entire point of the shower was undone.

  Curses spilled out of my mouth in a steady stream as I dried off with as little of the damn towel as I could manage and not stay dripping wet.

  When I walked out of the bathroom, Don or Ron was awake and hastily doing dishes as if I gave a shit what his hellhole apartment looked like.

  Last night in the bar, he’d been almost a dead ringer for Liam Murphy, except he was shorter and younger. This morning he didn’t even remotely resemble Murphy, except maybe a little around the eyes. He wasn’t fat, but he was loose in places Murphy was tight. And his hair wasn’t right. It was blond. It had looked darker under the black lights in the bar. Everything about him looked different under the lighting and the influence of those fucking evil Long Island Iced Teas.

  His voice was wrong too. It was deeper, with a Rhode Island accent, not an Irish one.

  “Hey, do you want breakfast? I can make eggs? I don’t have bacon, but I think I have toast?” Everything he said was a question. I remembered bits and pieces from the night before. At one point I’d told him to stop asking me so many questions and he’d said, “Am I asking you lots of questions?” I’d cried, “There’s another one right there!” Then I’d kissed him to shut him the fuck up.

  We’d still been in the bar then, but I guessed after it closed he’d brought me up to his apartment. Empty beer bottles littered the countertop, and I devoutly hoped they weren’t from last night. My stomach rolled again, so I looked away.

  “I need to go.” I was pretty close to panicky as I searched the room for my clothes. Aha. My dress was wadded up on the sofa. It seemed we’d had a very heavy make-out session there. My bra was under the coffee table, and I grimaced at the thought of wearing it after it had spent the night on the grubby, stained carpet.

  One sandal was by the front door and the other was by the kitchen table. My purse was on the table. I had no earthly idea where my panties were, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to stick around to find out.

  “You don’t have to?” Ron-or-Don made the statement into a question. I wanted to scream, but didn’t. “I mean, I’d like it if you stayed, okay? Unless…you have a boyfriend, right? You kept telling me last night you didn’t, but you do, don’t you? Can you stay for ten minutes to eat something? Please?”

  As he spoke, I shimmied into my bra and last night’s cocktail dress. I spied my panties tucked half under one of the sofa cushions. Disgusting. With a grimace, I plucked them free and debated whether I wanted to put them on.

  “Oh, I just wanted to tell you? I used a condom, okay?” He gave me a sheepish smile and then turned back to the eggs on the stove. They smelled gruesome, and I pressed my lips tightly together to keep from gagging.

  The way he looked at me made me think he expected some sort of response. Congratulations, perhaps? Gratitude? A high five for quick thinking even while inebriated?

  “Safe sex, you know?” he added. I didn’t even remember getting laid, let alone whether there was a condom involved.

  “I have to go,” I repeated as I slid on one of my shoes and lurched for the other, one leg magically longer now, thanks to the four-inch heel.

  “It was a mistake, wasn’t it?” Ron-or-Don asked. “You wish you’d never met me, don’t you?”

  My head hurt. I massaged my temples with the fingers of one hand while I braced myself against the door with the other and slid my foot into the second shoe.

  “I was drunk and so were you.” I was aware I wasn’t being kind and the poor bastard hadn’t done anything wrong. He looked at me in the harsh morning sunlight and more than ever did not resemble Murphy. What the fuck had I been thinking?

  “Look, I’m sorry, I can’t stay. You’re a nice guy.”

  That made him wince. I guess Others didn’t like being called nice. I had no time to figure him out. I didn’t want to figure him out. It did seem as if our roles were reversed. Generally, wasn’t it the guy who rushed out the door in the morning and left the girl to feel guilty and used? Or maybe I was being sexist. I didn’t have a clue.

  “You know what? Can you tell me your name? Can you believe I forgot it?” he confessed as I unlocked the door. Perhaps this was his attempt at a cheap parting shot? I flashed him a rueful smile over my shoulder on the way out.

  “That’s okay, I can’t remember yours either.”

  * * * *

  Lauren’s makeup was spread out in a vast confusion across the bathroom vanity when I walked into our motel room just after five PM that afternoon.

  She wore a peach-colored slip, and her hair had obviously been styled at a salon. Her finger and toenails were colored a darker peach than the slip. Summer color.

  As soon as I walked in, a radiant smile lit up her lovely, perfect face, and she was in my arms a second later. She smelled like Chloe and Calvin Klein’s Escape because, of course, she hadn’t been able to choose between them. I’d thought I’d been so clever. I’d gone through her suitcase before we’d left and taken out all but two perfumes—one for day, one for evening. I should have known she’d wear them both.

  “I thought you’d left. When I came back to the room this morning, your bed wasn’t slept in, and I thought you walked out.” She burrowed her soft face into my shoulder and, as I hugged her, I thought how inverse our relationship was. She was more like the child and I, the mother. It had been that way since my teens, and that aspect hadn’t changed in the past two months, even though I’d desperately wanted it.

  Oh, for a mother I could confide in. What would it be like to have one who would listen to my woes and thoughts and hopes and offer advice, comfort, understanding? All Lauren ever did was look to me to fix things, to approve, to give sanctuary. I did those things ungrudgingly, but I wished sometimes our roles were reversed.

  I was also a little weirded out she’d spent the night with Jason Allerton. Thoughts of their naked bodies entwined in passion made me strangely uncomfortable. Lauren having sex didn’t bother me. No, Lauren having sex with Jason Allerton was the issue. What did he look like without his Armani suit and tie? Did he drop his authoritative, commanding personality in bed? Was he strictly a missionary position kind of guy, or did he like to experiment?

  I squeezed my eyes shut and banished that shit straight out of my mind.

  When I opened them, Lauren had tears in her eyes that turned them nearly purple. She looked so goddamn young and vulnerable in her lacy peach slip and bare feet, her hair twisted up into a breezily perfect updo that had taken at least an hour to arrange.

  My heart contracted the way it always did when she looked at me like that.

  “Silly, did you really think I’d miss your bonding ceremony?” When I hugged her, I dropped the three shopping bags in my hands. The first two contained a new dress for tonight and shoes to match. The third bag held my cocktail dress from last night. After I’d left Ron-or-Don’s apartment, I’d gone to the Providence Place mall, straight to Gap for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Then I’d gone to Victoria’s Secret.

  A new pair of Skechers had replaced the silver evening shoes, which were in the bag with th
e shoes that paired with my new dress.

  Shopping, especially for shoes, cleared my head of all the crap that haunted me since the moment I’d opened my eyes in Ron-or-Don’s bed.

  At least until I’d walked into the motel room and had to face everything again. That’s the problem with shopping. The stores eventually closed, and I had to go home.

  Now I needed a shower and time to pull myself together before the ceremony at seven, and Lauren would need me to reassure her and help with her makeup and…

  Breathless, I contemplated the depth and complexity of my selfishness. What did it matter what I looked like tonight? She was going to bond with Jason. They were going to start a new life together. And I ran out on them the night before.

  My cell phone was full of both voice and text messages, mostly from Lauren, although Scott and Faith both left a few. A notable exception was Jason Allerton. He was royally pissed at me, I guessed. Big deal. I was furious with him, so we were even.

  “You don’t want me to bond with him.” Lauren’s voice was subdued, and she walked away from me so she could look out the motel window at the shore beyond. I wanted to remind her she was in her slip, but I bit the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t her mother, no matter how much she looked to me for support. She was fifty-eight years old, even if she didn’t look much past thirty. She could decide for herself if she wanted to stand in front of an open window in her damn underwear.

  “Lauren, are you sure this is what you want to do? You don’t have to, you know.”

  “Oh, but, Stanzie, I do!” She turned away from the window with such exquisite happiness on her face I took an involuntary step back. I had never seen Lauren Newcastle look like this before. “Jason is the kindest, gentlest and most understanding man I’ve ever met. I want to be with him. Every minute I spend with him I just keep thinking how much I like him. How much I want to show him who I am. I feel like I’m eighteen years old and back in Aspenmoon with my family. Happy.

  “Do you ever think about a time in your life when you were so happy you couldn’t even imagine what anything else felt like? When unhappiness was missing your favorite television show because you’d stayed outside in the twilight too long chasing lightning bugs with your twin sister?” She giggled. In that moment, she was heartbreakingly beautiful.

  “I know you don’t have a twin sister, but you know what I mean, don’t you?”

  Murphy’s face flashed before my eyes, damn him, and my eyes burned. I had to nod because I couldn’t speak. Lauren didn’t notice. She was too caught up in her own feelings.

  “I can’t wait to leave Massachusetts and go to Montana. I’ve never been farther than Louisiana, and that was just for a week. Jason says the forests there are deep and dark and the streams are so clear you can see your wolf’s reflection if you stand still. And it tastes sweet and pure, and it’s so cold it freezes your tongue, even in July. Can you imagine, Stanzie?”

  I thought the forests in New England were wild and wonderful places, but I wouldn’t say that to her. I tried to imagine this conversation she’d had with Jason about the forests in Montana. He’d never once even referred to his pack or his home in all the talks we’d had together.

  I’d known he was from Silverlake because it was the premiere pack in America, even if it wasn’t the oldest. He was one of the most influential and powerful Councilors in the United States and among the youngest ever appointed. He’d joined the Great Council when he’d been only forty-seven, which was nearly unheard of in the Pack.

  He’d been an Advisor from the age of twenty-four and Alpha of Silverlake at twenty-six. He’d served on the First Midwestern Regional Council for ten years before joining the Great Council.

  Someday he would head the Great Council, I was confident.

  All the things I knew about Jason Allerton’s life, I’d learned from Murphy or picked up through the Pack grapevine. He’d never shared much about himself with me, and I’d never questioned that. I’d been too busy looking up to him as a father figure to ask him anything about himself.

  I bowed my head. Tonight I’d vowed to suck it up and stand behind Lauren as she joined with Jason. I’d planned to put aside my reservations and fury and be there for her, even if I couldn’t believe she did the right thing.

  Now I was ashamed of myself. For two months she’d been falling in love, and I’d only seen a woman who couldn’t make a decision. A woman I wanted to morph into a responsible, nurturing mother who would make me feel as if I mattered as my life slowly fell to pieces around me.

  So goddamn selfish. I, I, I. Never a thought for her except in terms of how she related to me.

  Maybe Jason did care about her. Sure, he’d been on a search for a new bond mate, but perhaps Lauren had been a real candidate, not someone convenient.

  He’d only known her for two months and already reached her far more deeply than I had after thirty-two years.

  “Wren, I’m going to miss you so much, but I am so glad you’re happy. Of course I want you to bond with Jason. You two are going to be great together.” Tears spilled down my cheeks as I looked at my mother and knew I was once again going to lose her.

  Her smile was incredulous, and she crossed the room to fling herself in my arms.

  “Stanzie, you just wait. Everything will be different now that I’m with Jason. I feel like I’ve got a second chance, and this time I’m going to do it right.”

  Somehow the scent of Chloe combined with Escape worked with Lauren’s chemistry. Either that or my throat was too clogged with tears to really smell.

  “Come on, I’ll help you with your make up, okay?” I took Lauren by the hand and led her to the vanity. I wanted her to look especially beautiful tonight.

  Chapter 2

  The room glowed with candlelight. Golden light shimmered against the soft cream paneling and danced in circles across the ceiling.

  Six people stood in the front of the room before Kathy Manning, who was dressed in her ceremonial Councilor’s robe of dark blue trimmed with white.

  As the highest-ranked Regional Councilor in attendance, she would perform the bonding ceremony.

  Her serene expression gave no clue to her actual feelings. It had to hurt to be the one to preside over her ex-lover’s bonding ceremony to someone else he’d just met two months previously. Someone he couldn’t keep his eyes off.

  Jason Allerton was smitten, there was no escaping that fact. How I hadn’t seen it before tonight, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps he hadn’t allowed himself to look at Lauren the way he did tonight.

  They were the center duo, facing one another hand in hand, and simply drank each other in as the candlelight enveloped them in a soft, amber glow.

  The other duos were younger—first-time bonding for both of them—but Lauren and Jason were the ones who drew our gazes.

  The families and packs of the duos stood behind them as witnesses, and beyond us were several round tables with pristine white tablecloths and summer floral centerpieces. The sweet fragrance of tiger lilies perfumed the room.

  I’d managed to hop in the shower, wash my hair, throw on my new red dress and black spike pumps. My hair had even cooperated with the curling iron, although I was pretty sure all the curl would fall out halfway through dinner. It didn’t matter.

  When I took a deep breath, I must have made a wistful sound because my cousin Faith, who stood beside me, moved closer so her shoulder brushed mine. She took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  I hadn’t seen her in two months, and during that time her pregnancy had started to show. She had a definite baby bump beneath the wine-colored Empire maternity gown draping her body. She placed my hand across her abdomen, and I felt a tiny, fluttering movement. Had that been a kick?

  “My God,” I whispered and turned to her in excited shock.

  “I know.” Her whole face glowed. She was beautiful. “Grandmother Carolyn says it’s twins, Stanzie. Can you believe it?”

  “Twins!” I pressed my forehead to hers and grinn
ed. “You are so lucky, Faith.”

  “Scott wants two boys, but I think one of each would be nice.” The babies, or at least one of them, fluttered beneath my hand again, and Faith went still so I could feel it better.

  “Alpha female, surely the Pack prospers because of you.” The words were traditional, but I’d never said them before. They felt strangely right to say to my cousin who was Alpha of my birth pack.

  “Someday I’ll say the same to you.” She seemed convinced, but I wasn’t. Hard to be Alpha without a bond mate.

  I twined my fingers with hers as Kathy began the ceremony.

  Halfway through I started to cry, thoughts of Murphy and Lauren and Jason tangled together in my head, impossible to sort out and laced with a bittersweet ache that tingled through my whole body.

  Scott Charest—my cousin’s bond mate, Kathy Manning’s Advisor, and my friend—wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close. Faith kept hold of my hand. Alan Perrault, another friend from Mayflower, moved close behind me, his body warm against mine, his breath soft in my ear.

  I remembered us in bed together, the first step of his wolf’s initiation, and leaned back against him as Lauren fastened her new bond pendant around her throat and Jason Allerton did the same with his.

  * * * *

  After the ceremony we feasted on baked stuffed shrimp and Maine lobster. I sat at the table with Jason and Lauren, Faith, Scott, Shane, Samantha and Todd.

  Todd was Faith’s father and Shane and Samantha were his bond mates.

  The rest of Mayflower ate at nearby tables. No one from Silverlake was present, and I wondered if that bothered Jason.

  He and I sat on either side of Lauren, but we didn’t talk. He and my mother were very wrapped up in each other, but he made the effort to chat with Faith, who sat on his other side.

  Lauren had chosen the baked stuffed shrimp for an entrée, as had Jason, but I saw how she cast wistful looks at my lobster.

  I put one of my lobster claws on her plate, took half a baked stuffed shrimp in return, and her face lit up.