by Viola Rivard
Shaking his head at Hale, Silas offered Carly some of his own meat. “Try this instead.”
She looked up at him warily. “What is it this time? Pig colon?”
“It’s a rib.”
“Oh, duh,” she said, cringing as she accepted the meat. “Thank you.”
Silas continued to watch her, and after a moment of being under his gaze, Carly brought the meat to her mouth. She glanced at him again, and Taylor noticed her chin wobbling a little just before taking a small bite of the rib.
Carly chewed it exactly once before swallowing, forcing it down like a bitter pill.
“You don’t like it?” Silas asked.
“No, it’s really…”
Carly trailed off, her chin wobbling again. Suddenly, she burst into tears. Everyone was caught off guard, but none more than Silas. He shouldered past Lark to put a hand on Carly’s back.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Carly looked up at him with a pitiful expression. As if making some dark confession she said, “I don’t eat meat.”
Silas’s eyes widened in alarm. “You don’t? Then why did you take it?”
“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “I didn’t want to insult you guys. Plus, I’m really hungry and there isn’t exactly a salad bar here.”
Feather was quick to chime in, “Not yet! But in a few months we’re going to have loads of vegetables. You’ll never have to eat another rib again if you don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry,” Carly said, hanging her head. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I’m being dramatic.”
“No,” said Silas. “There must be something here that she can eat besides meat.”
He was speaking to Hale, who in turn looked to Taylor. Herself a former vegetarian, Taylor had given into her meat cravings during her first pregnancy and never looked back. However, she did still enjoy and need variety in her diet.
“I have plenty that you can eat,” Taylor said. “Spinach, potatoes, canned tomatoes, berries. I even have quail eggs if you aren’t a strict vegetarian. We can make a soup for you.”
Carly’s eyes were shinning with gratitude as Taylor moved to stand. Alder put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“Lark knows where the food is kept. Stay.”
Taylor said, “Lark knows where the food is, but I’m the only one who knows which ingredients to bring. Besides, I’m itching to check on the pups.”
She turned her head to kiss his wrist before brushing him off.
No one paid much attention as Taylor slipped away, their focus already returned to Silas and Carly, who were at last conversing with one another.
“But why don’t you eat meat?” she heard Silas asking for the second time. Apparently Carly’s first answer of ‘because it’s not right’ wasn’t satisfactory for the wolf.
Before stepping into the drafty tunnel, Taylor glanced over her shoulder to get another look at the pair. Lark was no longer between them. Though they weren’t touching one another, their nearness was rather intimate.
Taylor couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so conflicted. Maybe it had been after she’d gotten that first letter from Sarah, mentioning that Carly wanted to be reunited with her son. It had taken her days to formulate her response.
She had never wanted Carly in her life and would be glad to see her gone, but she also wouldn’t delight in seeing her rejected. It was hard to tell if Silas had any real interest in Carly, or if he was just being polite, and Taylor wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Everything will be okay, Alder had told her. She had to believe him. He wouldn’t let anything happen to their family.
Chapter Six
All four pups and their caretakers were sleeping in one of the cool, mossy upper caverns. In her golden wolf form, Bekka dozed with Belle cuddled up against her belly and Henry resting at her feet. Bekka had been up all day, tending to Belle while Taylor had been waiting for Carly and Clover to arrive.
In her brown wolf form, Clover slept opposite to Bekka, her niece and nephew, Fawn and Shadow, sleeping on either side of her. As was typical, only Fawn was in her human form, her naked body splayed out on a fur. Taylor took a moment to cover her up, and then another to stroke her auburn hair.
“I love you,” she said, kissing Fawn’s smooth forehead.
She went around the room, kissing all of the pups, even Shadow, who was larger than his aunt. He was usually a light sleeper, but to her amazement, he didn’t seem to wake when she pet his head.
Taylor debated trying to wake Clover again. She had left her brothers that afternoon to go and meet her nieces for the first time. At some point, exhaustion had overtaken her and when they’d come to tell her that Silas was about to arrive, she’d woken only briefly before growling and returning to slumber.
Deciding to let her rest, Taylor picked up her lantern and headed out. She paused in the entryway, not looking back at the pups, but rather at the two paths before her, one of them leading back down to the central chamber and the other, in a very roundabout way, leading outside and back to her cabin. Without giving it much thought, she headed towards the drafty air.
She’d been walking for several minutes when the hairs on the back of her neck began to prick up. Her suspicions confirmed, Taylor stopped and looked over her shoulder.
“You could have just walked with me.”
The light from the lantern provided just enough illumination to reveal Hale. He somehow managed to look nonchalant, as if he was supposed to be standing behind her in the middle of a dark passageway.
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
Taylor put a hand on her hip. “It’s more bothersome to know that you’ve been following me without saying anything.”
Hale lifted a shoulder. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Taylor stood staring at him and waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, she sighed and set the lantern onto the floor. She took a few steps towards him, but didn’t fully close the distance, instead going to lean against the wall. Hale joined her, his large body slumping beside hers.
“You went through a lot of trouble to make Silas notice her,” Taylor said after a moment.
Only after Silas had taken an interest in Carly had Taylor realized what Hale had done. Alpha wolves were highly competitive and Silas had a particular antipathy towards Hale. By flirting with Carly and hoarding her attention, Hale had sparked Silas’s instincts to compete with him.
“It didn’t take long,” Hale mused. “I thought I’d be doing it for at least a few days, ugly as she is. I guess Silas is really desperate.”
Taylor smacked him hard. “That’s so mean. She’s not ugly.”
If hypocrisy had a flavor, Taylor didn’t taste it.
“I wouldn’t fuck her.”
Taylor rolled her eyes. “Thanks. Good to know.”
There was another brief silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Silences rarely were with Hale, even when he’d just said something stupid or crazy. Taylor always felt at ease with him, and in a way that she didn’t quite feel with Alder. Because Hale was so blunt with his feelings, Taylor often felt free to speak her mind without concern that Hale would judge her. This backfired spectacularly when she ran up against one of Hale’s hard opinions, but it was usually worth the risk.
“She is kind of unattractive,” Taylor whispered. “But that’s just my perspective. Beauty is subjective.”
“There’s nothing subjective about her face,” Hale said. “But Silas will mate with her.”
“Huh? How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’s a wolf,” Hale said. “His human side might not find her appealing, but his wolf doesn’t give a shit about her giant forehead or her small tits. From his perspective, his pack is stable, there’s enough food to go around, and he’s in his prime and ready for a mate. Carly is there and willing. It’ll happen. Once these things start, there’s not much stopping them.”
Taylor scratched the back of her head.
“You’re not speaking from experience, are you?”
Hale shook his head. “Not in the way you’re thinking. There was no part of me that wanted a mate before I met you, but once I did, it was all I could think about. But if you’re asking if I wasn’t attracted to you, then shut up. You know I was.”
“Okay,” she said, biting back a smile. “So why did you do it? Try to make Silas jealous, I mean. I thought you didn’t want her here, yet now you’re playing matchmaker?”
“I never wanted her here,” Hale said. “But she’s here now and she doesn’t have anywhere else to be. And she’s Henry’s mom. They may not look anything alike, but their scents are the same. As far as my wolf is concerned, she’s family and we have to take care of her.”
Taylor was surprised by his logic, and a little shamed. In a sense, she was family, though Taylor had only been viewing her as the competition.
“I guess you have a point,” Taylor said, leaning her head back against the cool stone wall.
“It’s going to be all right,” Hale said, prompting Taylor to look up at him.
“What exactly did Alder say to you? Because last night, you were talking as if Carly coming here was the end of the world.”
Instead of answering her question, Hale said, “I didn’t know that stuff about you. About your mother.”
Taylor frowned. “Alder told you?”
“No, I heard you at the lake.”
“You were following me?”
“Of course,” he said, utterly unrepentant. “You think I was going to leave you alone with a stranger?”
“I thought she was family.”
“She is, but you’re my mate and that’s my pup,” he said, gesturing towards her belly. “So, you told Alder and not me, then?”
Taylor cringed. “It’s never come up.”
Taylor had divulged her background to Alder after he’d found the newspaper article, identifying her as a murderer. She’d had to tell him about her past so that he could understand how she’d done what she had, or at least that had been her thinking at the time. With the rest of her pack, however, she seldom spoke of her life before Halcyon. The pack and her mates represented a new beginning for her; a clean slate.
“All this time, I assumed your parents were dead.”
“What made you think that?” she asked.
“I knew that you were adopted. It was the only thing that made sense at the time.”
“You thought my parents were dead just because I was adopted? You have two pups whose mothers are alive.”
Hale shrugged. “I guess it’s not the sort of thing you think about until you see it for yourself. A mother, abandoning her pups. How does that even happen?”
Taylor reached over to thread her fingers with his. “Shadow asked me something similar, after we adopted Henry. I basically told him that some people aren’t meant to be mothers, but I think it’s more complicated than that. Becoming a parent is really scary.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I know you do,” she said, squeezing his hand. “But it’s a different sort of fear when you become a mother. After you give birth, you’re more vulnerable than you can ever remember being, and then you’re handed this little creature that’s even more vulnerable than you and you’re expected to be able to nurture and protect it.”
Hale said, “Yeah, but it’s not like you had to do it on your own. You had me. You had Alder and the pack.”
Taylor nodded. “And I think that’s it. Maybe the difference between Carly, my mom, and me is having all of you. They didn’t have the support that I had. There were no mates around to protect them, no pack to fall back on when they felt overwhelmed. They were alone and scared, and it was all too much. In their minds, the best thing they could do for their babies was give them away to someone better equipped.
“Sarah told me once that that’s the one thing all moms have in common. They all do the best they know how to do.”
She was quiet for a while, letting her words sink in. After a prolonged silence, she said, “You never talk about your mother either, you know? You and Alder both.”
“We were young when she died. I barely remember her.” He hesitated, and then said, “Fawn smells like her. At least, what we can recall of her.”
“You never told me that. Is that why you both spoil her so much?”
He let out a masculine chuckle. “We spoil her because she’s our daughter.”
Turning unexpectedly, Hale put his arms around her and pulled Taylor into an embrace. Rubbing the side of her belly, he said, “I want another daughter, after him.”
Taylor groaned. “Oh my God. Don’t start that already. And what makes you think it’s a boy?”
“Look how big you are. He’s going to be just like Shadow.”
“Lord, I hope not,” she said, resting her head on his chest.
“You’ll want another,” he said.
His voice had taken on a sultry, rumbling quality that set Taylor’s heart to skipping. She pressed her hands flat to his chest in what she knew would be a vain effort to ward him off.
“You’re delusional,” she told him.
Hale’s head moved to her neck, his breath hot against her skin as he spoke. “You’re enjoying it this time. I can tell.”
He was right. For all of the stress she’d experienced that summer, one of the few bright spots was the baby. It wasn’t giving her nearly as much trouble as the twins had, and in the past week she’d even begun to feel tiny movements in her belly, like little bubbles popping. Every time she felt them, she had to stop whatever she was doing and pause to relish the feeling. This time, she was enjoying being pregnant, but she wouldn’t dare admit it to Hale.
Her head arched back as Hale’s hand slipped between her thighs. He was working his way up her dress when she snapped out of the spell and smacked at his hand. Hale froze, but didn’t move his hand.
Taylor said, “Cut it out. We’re in the middle of the hallway. Someone could walk by.”
He squeeze the inside of her thigh. “Then come to my room with me.”
Tempting.
“And leave Alder alone out there? That would be so shitty.”
If he’d picked her up and hauled her off, Taylor would have gone with minimal protest. After the day she had, she wanted nothing more than the sweet oblivion of climax, fleeting as it was.
“You’re right,” Hale said, pulling back his hand.
Taylor slumped against the wall, her body sagging with disappointment.
“You know the way to my room,” he said. “Get going. I’ll go get Alder and we’ll meet you there.”
Laughing, she flung her arms around his neck. “How about this? I’ll go to your room and curl up in your bed. If you can manage to get Alder down there before I fall asleep, then I’m all yours.”
Chapter Seven
Carly was sitting on a rock in front of a fire pit when Taylor arrived in the central cavern. Afternoon light flooded the space, but there was nothing but empty sitting areas to illuminate. Most of the pack, her mates included, were still sound asleep.
Perking up when she noticed Taylor, Carly flashed a smile and said, “Awh, who’s that?”
Taylor patted the sling in which Belle was sleeping, cuddled up against Taylor’s breast. She’d woken in the middle of the night, wailing for Taylor. Even though she no longer breastfed, she still craved the comfort of being wrapped up against her mama.
“My youngest, Belle,” Taylor said, taking a seat beside her. “How did you sleep?”
“Like crap,” Carly said. “It’s creepy, sleeping in a cave. I don’t know how I’m gonna get used to it.”
Carly looked like she’d had a rough night. There were dark circles under her eyes and a sheen of oil on her skin. Her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, and she wore an odd combination of a t-shirt and a pair of buckskin pants that she must have borrowed from Clover.
“I never have,” Taylor admitted. “That’s why I live in
the cabin.”
Carly was craning her neck to get a view of Belle, so Taylor adjusted the sling, displaying her daughter’s serene face.
“Oh. She’s um, yours?”
Taylor bit back a smile. With her dark skin and curly hair, Belle was clearly biracial. It wasn’t something she thought much about, because such things weren’t significant amongst the pack. The only racial divides there were between shifter and human.
“I took her in a couple weeks after Henry. They’re almost the same age, though you couldn’t tell from looking at them. She’s so much smaller. But, they were practically raised as twins.”
“They’re really close?”
Taylor said, “When they were really small, Belle wouldn’t even sleep unless she was bundled up with Henry. They were two peas in a pod until he started favoring his wolf form. Ever since then he’s always with Shadow, and Belle’s even more of a mama’s girl.”
Carly wet her lips. “Speaking of Henry, have you seen him this morning?”
Taylor hadn’t. She’d stopped in to check on the pups as soon as she’d woken up, only to find Fawn still sleeping and the boys gone. According to Bekka, they’d left shortly before Taylor had arrived.
“He and Shadow are out hunting. They’re not far from here, and there are always sentries keeping an eye on them.”
“Hunting?” Carly repeated, making a face.
Taylor explained to her that it was just practice chasing small critters, nothing dangerous.
“Couldn’t they get bitten, though?”
She found herself in the awkward position of feeling defensive about permitting something that she was also opposed to. Taylor didn’t like the thought of either of the boys off hunting on their own, but her mates had assured her that it was a rite of passage and that male pups needed to be given autonomy.
“Don’t worry, they’re fine. Like I said, there are always people watching out for them, and Shadow takes very good care of Henry. He’s a good big brother.”