by Lynn Red
I took a deep breath and continued. “Anyway, we’ve already done... what we did. You told me we were bonded, that was it, right? We’re two bodies with one soul now or whatever. What can Devin do to break that? If we’re bonded and one, what can that lunatic possibly do?”
He was getting impatient. The little crease in his forehead pinched up. “I can’t control that. Any of that, it’s our way. I went to you in your dreams because you’re my soul mate, but now I realize that’s just one of the things happening all around me that I can’t control.” He looked at the ground. “And... no, it isn’t done. Devin can break the bond. If he transforms first, he’ll be so much stronger than me. He’ll be a real alpha. A true one. All he has to do is,” Damon shook his head. “I can’t say it. But no, he can break our bond.”
“Everything you say is like you have to make sure to keep your precious wall up so you can’t possibly get hurt. Do you think I feel like I’m in control all the time?”
“It’s not only Devin and all that. What if.” He ground his teeth together. “What if something happens like when I cornered you on the mountain? Remember that? I could hardly control myself. What if—”
“You’re in control now,” I said. “That danger has come and gone. It’s almost like you’re reaching for excuses. Like you’re not just scared of duty and your responsibilities, but it’s like you’re scared of having to open up to me.”
He opened his mouth and then clapped it shut.
As soon as I started to speak, Damon put his hands on my shoulders. It felt good to have his heat against my skin but I jerked away, and when he went to grab me again I slapped him away. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t get to make my decisions for me. You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m a grown up woman, Damon,” I said, more to convince myself than him, “and I’m perfectly willing to risk whatever it takes to make sure you stay safe. To make sure you...”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he replied. “I went too far. With you, I mean. I couldn’t keep my hands off you because I don’t have the discipline to not give in to what I want. I know I did, and I know it’s my fault. Just like before. I let myself go, Lily, even though I tried to stop.”
I puffed a breath out of my nostrils. “Didn’t seem much like you wanted to stop the first six times. What is your plan, exactly? You think that somehow, getting rid of me means that Devin will just... what? Quit going after me?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “yeah, I suppose so...” The look on his face told me that he didn’t even believe himself.
“What are you saying, Damon? That I’m just supposed to act like none of this is happening? That my love for you was just some stupid passing phase? This is real, Damon. The way I feel about you is real. And if you think this is going to work, you’re more of a coward than I ever thought.”
That hurt him. Damon swallowed hard and almost visibly shrank at my words.
“Answer me,” I persisted. Tears rolled down my puffy cheeks, the gentle breeze cooling them on my hot skin. “All you have to do is say that I’m wrong, and this is all some kind of plan or something, or—”
“No,” he said. “You’re right. You’re exactly right. I am a coward. I’m a child with no guide. I love you more than anything but I’m not strong enough to let you get yourself killed for me. It’d break me, Lily. It would absolutely break me.”
“At least you decided to talk about your feelings,” I said with a twist in my voice. “That’s something, I guess.”
“Lily, listen,” he said. I’d heard that before, and it always came before something I didn’t want to hear. “It isn’t forever. It’s just until I can deal with Devin and figure out what’s happening with the clans. If the Skarachee lose this war, I don’t know if I’ll live. And I can’t let that hurt you either.”
“I don’t wait around, Damon. I’ve got a life,” I shot back. “If you’re willing to risk what you know is the best thing that either of us has ever had because you’re scared that I’m too much of a burden, then you’re just going to have to live with it. There’s no going back, Damon. I let you do it to me once, but I’m not going to be fooled again by your cute smile and how much I fucking want you to want me as much as,” I sniffed and turned away.
“I do, Lily,” he said. “Can’t you see that? If we hurt a little now, then maybe you won’t hurt so much later.”
Pausing for a moment, I hoped he’d grab me again and spin me back around. “I don’t need protection,” I said. “I need you.”
No hands grabbed my shoulders.
I took a step.
He didn’t follow.
Thirteen
Damon
“I’m sorry, Mr. Belder, I’ve been—”
Damon winced when his boss slapped his shoulder and grinned at him. His ribs, for all the healing they’d done, still ached. Every time one of those pulses screeched through his chest, he briefly imagined how badly he’d hurt when the wounds were fresh, and how kind Lily had been.
And then, of course, his thoughts fell on Lily and her face and those beautiful eyes and her gentle curves, and it was incredibly hard for him to focus on anything else.
Especially with how he’d just thrown it all aside. He couldn’t believe, still, that he’d said the things he did, but at least on the surface, he was at peace. She was in danger if this thing with Devin and the Carak went to war, and he wasn’t going to have her be a part of it.
Even a week after their fight and his watching her leave, every word of their exchange still stung. He’d managed not to call her somehow, managed not to go by and bother her or try to get her back. It hurt. Deep and hard it cut him every time he so much as thought of Lily, but he knew this was better than the alternative.
Immediately he thought back to the sight of her walking away. Every fiber of Damon’s being wanted to chase her, to reach out and grab her hand and make her stay, but he somehow stilled himself.
“You got some painkillers on the brain, boy?” Dan Belder whistled between the gap in his teeth and squeezed Damon’s shoulder.
Damon preemptively scrunched up his face, waiting for a throb of pain that never came.
Squeezing is fine, slapping, not so much.
In a way, he did have painkillers coursing through him. Endorphins, or oxytocin or whichever one it was. He couldn’t remember junior-year biology well enough to recall which the love drug was, but it was one of those.
His round-bellied boss thumped his shoulder again. Damon wished that he actually was on real painkillers.
Poko would have never allowed that. “The alpha suffers through his pain,” the old man had said over and over again, in those long, dark nights after Lily was gone and agony burned through his body.
Damon shook his head, trying to banish the wild fantasies. “No,” he said. “I just... well, I took a spill on my motorcycle, and I had to take some time to get patched up.”
“Well,” Belder said, “next time, at least call, boy. I can’t do with not knowing where my staff is. And besides, we’ve been worried.” He chewed on his chubby little cigar and turned it with his lips. “This ain’t the biggest town. If my best busboy gets smooshed on the road, gonna be hell to try and replace him. Though from the size of you, it’d take one hell of a truck to turn you into goo.”
As brusque as Dan Belder was, he cared deeply for Damon. The worry behind his voice gave that away. A half smile crossed Damon’s face. “Yeah, of course,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“Don’t mention it no more,” Belder said with a grunt. He tossed Damon a towel. “Can ya work today?”
Damon stared at the limp, slightly damp rag for a moment like he wasn’t sure what it was. That week and a half underground had apparently gotten to him a lot more than he thought.
“Ground control to Captain Damon,” Belder said. “Can you wipe a table or are you too spaced out, cowboy?”
Once again, Damon shook off the cobwebs. “Sorry,” he said. “It
’s just that I’ve been in bed for a while, Mr. Belder. Took me a half hour to find the keys to my bike, even though they were right where I left them.” What he didn’t add was that right where I left them was lying beside a straw pallet in a cave.
“Hap’ns to the best of us. Slow today anyhow, take your time getting used to the world again, Damon. There’s a couple of tables need wiping in section four, and a few cops hanging out in a booth drinking their lunch.”
“Yeah,” Damon said. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get it taken care of.”
Damon swept his long, black hair back out of his face and then retied his blue bandana around his head. Just being in the Black Hog made him feel a little better, like reality had returned, or at least some kind of semblance. He collected his dish bucket, grabbed a few towels, some cleaner, and headed back out to the front of the restaurant.
“Can you believe what the hell that kid did?” A voice from across the dining room, a whisper, met Damon’s ears.
He didn’t need to turn to hear, which was immediately strange, because he’d never had particularly great ears, though even so he heard the four police officers conversing with startling clarity.
“I never saw anything like that before,” another of the officers said, wiping the beer off the bottom of his mustache. “It was like he just punched straight through that car door. How in the hell does something like that even happen?”
Damon absently scrubbed at the table, spraying it with whatever the acrid yellow stuff was in his spray bottle. They couldn’t be talking about Devin, could they? No way he’s already up and causing problems again.
“Damndest thing,” a third voice chimed in. “It wasn’t so much like there was a hole punched in that gas station wall, it was more like a cannon blew through it. Concrete was just, I dunno, splattered all over the floor.”
One of them ate a nacho, another one whistled. “Yeah, I saw it. It was—” he paused. Damon’s ears perked up and he froze. “It was like, you know, powder.”
Damon chewed his lip. Only one thing was strong enough to punch a hole through a cinderblock wall and turn it into powder. A gun couldn’t do it unless it was from a tank. He knew it had to be Devin, and he also knew that if his rival managed to undergo his transformation ritual first, then there wasn’t a damn think that could be done about it. The Skarachee would have to convene to handle a wild Carak alpha.
They didn’t control their own people. They thought they shouldn’t have to bother. Poko had brought Damon up to understand that the Skarachee wolves existed to protect, not to run wild and feed their own vicious desires. The Skarachee, he learned, had for thousands of years, been in charge of keeping the Carak in check.
And soon, he knew that it would all be his problem.
“Hell if I know,” one of the police said. “But something sure as shit busted that wall in. Weirdest thing is what was missing from inside. No money, nothing like that. Just food. Lots and lots and lots of food. Must’ve eaten about forty of those crispy burrito things.”
“I’m sure that set well,” another of them said.
The little group laughed. “Well boys,” the biggest-bellied one, with the mustache, said as he pushed away from the table. “I’m thinking it is just about time to kick on outta here. That fella workin’ probably wants to get our dishes for the dinner rush.”
“Huh. Half of four already,” another one said.
Damon’s breath caught in his chest. A cold sweat beaded up on his forehead and he tried to keep calm. Slowly, he forced his lungs full, then empty. Willing his heart to slow, the way Poko showed him, he thought he’d calmed himself enough.
Pop!
A glass that he’d just picked up exploded in his hand. One second, his slashed palm bled a river down his arm, and the next moment, the cut sealed. Damon looked down just in time to see the gout of blood begin soaking into his sleeve before he managed to mop it up with a dishtowel.
“You all right, son?” One of the cops called over. “Hell of a—”
“No, no, it’s nothing,” Damon said. He tied his towel around his hand, play acting like it was necessary. “Hazard of the job, I guess. Hand cuts bleed the worst, even if they’re not that bad.”
He couldn’t help himself. Damon just had to know.
“I’m sorry to have listened in to your talking,” he said to the police officer who asked about his hand as the others gathered their belongings. “But I have a friend who works at Lottie’s.”
“The... oh,” the officer’s voice grew quiet. “Really not supposed to talk about that, bein’ as how it’s an open investigation. Don’t blame you for listening though, crazy story, that one. Nothing ever happens here in Fort Branch, except roadrunners getting hit, I guess.”
Damon grunted in response. “Is there anything you can tell me because,” he paused. “Look, I’m really nervous about my buddy. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days. Could you at least tell me if anyone was hurt?”
“I don’t—”
“Oh come on, Neely,” another of the officers said, coming up beside the one speaking with Damon. “It ain’t gonna hurt anything to keep this kid’s mind at ease. Yes, son, someone was hurt, but I doubt it was your friend.”
“What?” Damon asked. “But who – how do you know?”
The cop lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and relaxed them with a sigh. “It was an older fella working on Tuesday. I can’t remember his name off hand. Peter, something like that. Anyway, yeah, older guy in his sixties. Balding with a ponytail.”
“You said he was hurt?”
“Worse than that, I’m afraid. Real bad situation. Fella didn’t make it.”
Damon gritted his teeth so hard he heard the enamel grating in his ears.
The officer stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “Don’t tell me the old guy was your friend?”
“No,” Damon said. “Just... it’s nothing. I can’t believe someone did that to someone else.”
The police, both of them, nodded. “Real tragedy. But now remember. Like Neely said, it’s still under investigation, so don’t go saying anything to anyone. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” Damon replied. “Of course. Thanks for letting me know.”
Damon watched the cops get their stuff, and drop a couple twenties on the table. From across the room, he could read the print on the bills. That stuck in the back of his mind, but he had other things to consider.
The first of them was that if Devin was on the loose, that meant the Carak alpha was tearing around town, and if he was causing as much carnage as the police said, then his transformation was soon – if it wasn’t already happening.
That was bad. It meant a war if he couldn’t stop Devin. A war the Skarachee probably wouldn’t be able to win with an inexperienced alpha and dwindling numbers scattered to the winds.
“Lily,” he said under his breath, as he put the dish bucket down on the ground. “Oh no, no, no.”
Damon threw the bloody towel on top of a plate, then thought maybe that was a health hazard, grunting as he stuffed it back in his pocket.
Aside from the transformation ritual, there was one other thing that an alpha needed to complete his coming of age.
A mate.
“Lily,” he whispered again, clenching his recently healed fingers into a fist so tight his knuckles went white with rage. “I’m not going to let this happen. Never.”
Damon looked through the kitchen window at his boss, who was passively jabbing a pencil at a ledger while watching a TV judge berate someone for fathering children they couldn’t afford and then pretending he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Dan laughed, maybe a little too hard, as Damon pushed out the back door and into the blistering white of the Arizona sun. The motorcycle between his legs was still warm, either from the sun or from being ridden an hour before. Either way it felt good.
It felt safe.
“You’re not going to hurt Lily,” Damon said under his breath as he stood up and kicked the gas. “I’l
l kill you first.”
Damon hated to think what Poko would have said about his swearing to kill if Lily was threatened.
Somehow, in that moment, he just didn’t care.
*
Damon’s mind flickered, faded, jumped and pulled as he approached Lily’s house.
He had vague memories that browned out, then came into focus, then squiggled out of his vision. Poko warned him about this. Something about the wolf vision blurring the lines between real and dream. The elder told him he’d go through blackouts, wake up in places he didn’t remember, but this was a new sensation.
His bike’s engine slowed to a drawling putter, and when he finally killed it, Damon felt like he was somewhere he didn’t recognize, though it was a place he’d been a thousand times before.
Not a hundred feet away on his left was Lily’s house. His safe place, his comfort, the only person in the world he needed to see, to make sure she was okay.
In the opposite direction lay a small field. Some short desert grass and a couple of rogue daffodils sprang up defiantly from the rocky, orange dirt. When he looked at that little clearing, his mind instantly shut off.
Damon jerked his head back and forth, almost panicked but not quite. He could still remember who he was, or at least who he was supposed to be. Even though he could no longer recall whose house he was at, it was a safe place for him to be. Looking back at the field, more blackness spread out behind his eyes until all he could visualize was the fire in the cave.
The cave. Need to hide, need to sleep, or run, or...
“Damon?” A voice called out. It wasn’t the one he needed to hear, it was a man’s voice. Old, but not Poko old. “Meathead Donnie? Is that you? We’ll I’ll be...”
Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I think? That voice, that nickname, is sounds familiar, but...
“It is you! There’s a face I haven’t seen in a while. Come on in, I just made some tea. Real cold.” The voice had an arm that followed it, and touched Damon’s shoulder.
“You okay? It’s me, Joe – you remember me, don’t you? Lily’s grandfather.”