by Elena Lawson
“You’re losing me,” I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the analogy. I did, but I wished he would just tell me without beating around the bush.
He ran a hand over his tousled hair. “We aren’t werewolves like the ones you see on TV. Silver does jack shit to us. We aren’t mindless beasts. We weren’t even always shapeshifters.”
My curious self, the one who loved a good story and spent the bulk of her days reading at work and in the hours after dusk came out of her hidey hole. I was sitting up straighter, my mind sharper, readying itself to take in what Jared would tell me without anxiety. If I thought of it like a story—like fiction, maybe I could understand it better. Accept it.
“Go on,” I urged him, worrying a frayed string at the edge of my hand-me-down top.
Jared sighed. “We were once known as Endurans. We were our own race before our people were cursed, and before our homeland was destroyed.”
“Your homeland?”
“Emeris,” he said. “The immortal lands.”
Okay…
“And where is that?”
I may have nearly flunked geography, but I knew Emeris wasn’t on any map I’d ever seen.
He licked his lips. “No one really knows anymore except for the elders. We’ve been here over a thousand years. All I know is that the Immortal lands are and always have been concealed from mortals. They wouldn’t be on any map or known to any human.”
My mouth was dry again and I guzzled the rest of Jared’s water, positioning myself in my seat so I could see him better. “So, you’re telling me that there is a whole other continent out there somewhere? One that people—normal people like me—can’t see?”
I saw him flinch a little and I realized my mistake. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, that’s okay. I’m not normal. It shouldn’t bother me for it to be pointed out.”
Except clearly it did.
“But yes,” he continued. “There are two actually. Emeris and Fae lands of Meloran.”
I gaped at him.
“F-Faeries?” I managed after a heartbeat. “Fucking faeries?”
He snorted. “Yeah. They just call themselves Fae mostly.”
I was still gaping. I didn’t think I would ever be able to pick my jaw up from my lap again. I fucking loved faeries! I mean…the myths about them. Stories about them. The legends and all that. Somewhere deep down inside myself, I’d always thought those kinds of things were real, I realized.
I mean, how could there be so many stories from all sorts of different places all about the same thing if there wasn’t at least some truth to the myths? But I didn’t expect to ever be proven right. It was fantasy. A fairy-tale…no pun intended. It wasn’t supposed to be real.
“You okay?”
I nodded rapidly, making a strangled, “mhmmm” noise that ended up sounding like I was in pain. With my brain on fire, I managed to remember another of the questions I’d wanted an answer to. He’d just answered it in part, but…
“Are there…other things?”
He paused.
“Jared?”
He turned his gaze to me as he pulled the Jeep off the main road and onto the bumpy drive that led to the parking lot where he would leave his Jeep and we would continue on foot to the cabin.
“Jared!” I was dying to know now. Why wasn’t he answering me?
His adams apple bobbed. “I could get in a shit ton of trouble telling you this, Allie, but yes, there are other things.”
“Like?”
He put the Jeep in park and shut it off. He stepped outside and I rushed to unlatch my seatbelt, fumbling in my rush to get out of the car. “Isn’t that enough for one night?” he asked, his expression pained as he hopped out and shut the door.
Oh hell no.
“Hey!” I all but shouted, finally getting myself untangled from the seatbelt and out of the cab. I stomped around the vehicle and grabbed him by the shirt. “You don’t get off that easy. You just told me other—other beings exist. I can’t just let that shit go, Jared.”
Every book about every being I’d ever read about flashed behind my eyes. Oh my god, angels? Were angels real? What about demons?
I shuddered.
“Okay, okay,” Jared said, prying my hand from his shirt, except once he had my claws retracted, he didn’t let go right away, and I shuddered for a completely different reason as he brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “There are also Vocari—what human know as Vampires.”
Shit. I held onto his hand and he brought his other hand up to cup on the other side of mine, leaning down to breathe warm air into my palm to thaw my icy fingers. “Okay. Vampires. Cool.”
He tilted his head. “Not really.”
“Okay. Not cool. Noted.”
“And there are witches.”
My eyes lit up. “Also, not very cool.”
I extinguished the excitement from my expression. “Oh?”
“They’re the ones who did this to us. To the Enduran people and the Vocari a thousand years ago.”
Jared drew my other hand up to join the one he still held and rubbed warmth back into that one, too. Cautiously, I studied his silhouette in the shadows of the night. His warm amber eyes set into that unnaturally symmetrical face. The high cheekbones and pouty lips. The line of his jaw and the subtle bits of gold in his hair. He didn’t even look human—not when you looked this closely.
He seemed almost…ethereal. Too good looking to really fit in with us mere mortals.
And he was holding my hands. Looking into my eyes with a quizzical interest, as though trying to read how I was handling all of what he’d told me. As though I was as equally enthralling to him as he was to me.
“We should get going before you freeze. It’s really cold tonight.”
I nodded, unable to tear my gaze away from him.
“Jared,” I stopped him as he lowered my hands.
His eyes searched mine. “Yeah, Allie?” He stepped back in closer and I tipped my head up to see his expression. Something flipped low and hard in my belly. He was looking at me like he had in the woods outside of Thompson’s party. Hungrily. Like a wolf.
Except, it didn’t scare me. Not anymore.
I blinked and a weight pressed into my chest, bringing me back to earth. I stepped back and gave a half-hearted chuckle. Fuck…what had I even been about to say?
“Never mind,” I said with a forced smile. “You’re right. It’s freezing out here. We should go.”
He held out his elbow to me and I looped my arm through his. Even with the moon, it was hard to see under the canopy of the forest in the dark. I usually ended up tripping at least a dozen times before we made it to the cabin.
“Thanks,” I muttered, matching his pace as we walked arm in arm into the trees. The ominous hooting of an owl in the distance made a shiver run down my spine. A twig snapping several yards away had my mind shooting to images of Dracula and the Wicked Witch of the West. I imagined fanged faces emerging from the dark.
Aw fuck…I just had to know. Now I couldn’t exactly unknow…
Good going, Allie.
Jared patted my arm, pulling me closer to him. “Don’t worry,” he said with a devilish grin as he dipped his head low to whisper in my ear, his breath caressing my cheek. “You’re safe with me.”
14
Jared cursed.
I almost gave myself whiplash snapping my head around to see why he’d suddenly stopped only fifty feet away from the cabin.
I could just see it through the tall pines as close together as the teeth in a comb. The orange glow of light and warmth had me practically aching to get inside after the long walk from the Jeep.
“What?”
He hushed me sharply.
My heart started hammering and all the thoughts of monsters in the night I’d been working so hard to suppress came rushing back. What was it? Why did he look so distressed?
He was positively rigid. His irises had flooded with a fiery amber glow and
his nostrils were flaring.
“Jared?” I croaked, hoping he was messing with me. “If you’re messing with me, I swear—”
“I’m not.”
My throat closed.
I scanned the darkened woods.
“It’s Ryland,” he said after giving the air a good long sniff. “But why is he here?”
“W-Who’s Ryland?”
It was another of the questions I’d neglected to get an answer for, but I still remembered what Clay had said that first morning. If Ryland finds out…
He won’t, Jared had replied.
Why did I get the feeling that this Ryland person being here was a very very bad thing?
His eyes hardened and his lips pressed into a firm line. “He’s pack alpha.”
He’s what?
Jared tugged me away to the east, so we were skirting around to the back of the cabin. I tripped in my haste to keep up with his long strides. “Where are you taking me?”
“To the shop. I can hide you in there.”
Hide me?
“Jared,” I pulled back on his hold around my wrist. “Jared, stop,” I hissed when he didn’t let go.
He turned on me with his teeth bared, and I didn’t miss how his canines seemed to have grown longer and larger in the last two seconds. Or how his pupils had dilated.
I couldn’t help the talon of fear tearing through my chest. I managed to break free of his hold and fell back a step, trying to keep my breaths under control.
“Allie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“You can’t hide me,” I told him, glossing over the fact that the sight of him partially wolfy had just freaked the shit out of me. I didn’t want him to think I was afraid of him, even though a very small part of me was still more than a bit apprehensive about spending the bulk of my time among wolves. “If you could smell Ryland from fifty feet away, don’t you think he’s going to be able to smell me if I’m just around back?”
He blinked, taken aback. “You’re right,” he said, exhaling loudly in frustration. “Fuck. You’re right. What was I thinking?”
Giving myself a little mental pat on the back, I stood up a little taller. “Look, he can’t know that I know about you, right?” I asked, taking a stab in the dark, trying to keep my voice very very low.
Jared nodded.
“Okay, then I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I’m just…a friend. A friend who had a rough night at a party who needed a place to go.”
He didn’t answer right away, staring at me with mild shock.
“Will that work?”
Jared opened his mouth, then closed it, and eventually opened it again as he scratched at a spot at the base of his neck and his brows drew together. “Yeah, actually. It might. But the whole cabin already has your scent. We’ll have to say you’ve been staying a while. You’ll just have to play dumb about any of the…things you shouldn’t know. I’ll deal with Ryland.”
I smiled.
Jared smiled back and reached out his hand to me, sighing as the last bit of glow in his eyes was snuffed out and his body had stopped trembling with what I assumed was his urge to shift. “Come on,” he said as I slid my hand into his. “It’s time for you to meet my uncle.”
The door banging open as we entered shattered any bit of confidence I’d managed to construct on the slow walk up onto the porch and into the cabin. I flinched and immediately regretted my choice, wanting to tuck tail and run back outside.
The feeling was even more intense as two sets of eyes zeroed in on me from the living room.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
If I thought Clay was big, he had nothing on Ryland.
The man sitting opposite Clay in the living room cocked his head at me and I didn’t miss how his jaw ground together and his deep brown eyes flashed with a dangerous glint in the light of the fire crackling in the stone hearth to his left.
He was massive. His shoulder span was nearly as wide as the enormous leather recliner he was sitting in. His posture was rigid as he leaned forward with his elbows resting on his thick knees. Ryland’s face could’ve been called handsome, if it weren’t for the jagged scar running down one side of his face. It split his thick chestnut brow in two and puckered the flesh on his cheek.
He had thin lips and a strong chin—made to look wider and rougher by the week-old scruff coating in varying shades of browns and golds.
“Uncle Ryland,” Jared said by way of greeting, not so much as though he was surprised to see him but edged in a question as though to ask why he was there.
“Jared,” Ryland replied in an equally questioning tone, his voice seemed to carry its own form of breathy echo and I could feel it deep in my chest.
Immediately, I decided I didn’t like him.
I didn’t know why. It wasn’t that he just looked big and scary. There was something else about him that just felt wrong even though I couldn’t place it.
Funny enough, it was the same feeling I got around Devin all those months ago, before he charmed me into dating him and that feeling eventually dulled.
It clicked in mind that it was the feeling of recognizing someone further up the food chain than yourself. Like looking into the eyes of a lion while knowing you’re nothing more than a field mouse.
“And who’s your friend?”
I licked my lips, trying to find my voice and my spine. “I’m Allie,” I said before Jared could speak for me. Gulping down a breath, I moved from Jared’s side into the living room. Clay’s jaw twitched as I passed, but he managed to refrain from looking at me as I planted myself in front of Ryland. I stuck out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Ryland glanced at Jared and then back at me before he folded my hand between the two of his. They were large and warm and calloused and swallowed mine up easily. I suppressed a shudder when he smiled up at me. It wasn’t a kind smile.
Nor was it welcoming.
More of a grimace.
I tugged my hand out from his and turned.
Clay rose from his seat and I held my breath. I wondered what Clay had already said to Ryland about me. Surely, he wouldn’t have told him everything?
“I was just telling Ryland that you’ve been staying with us for a couple days,” he said gruffly, his eyes flashing in warning.
It was like there was a block in my throat. I couldn’t swallow. I coughed instead.
“Right. Yeah. Your—um—nephew said I could crash here until…well, until I move into my new place above where I work.”
My stomach roiled as I realized I didn’t know what Clay had told him. I prayed he hadn’t said anything about why I was there, or at the very least that our stories didn’t conflict. I might have just ruined everything with my big mouth.
The thought of being kicked out of the cabin out into the cold set my teeth on edge and made my chest ache. I didn’t realize how comfortable I’d gotten here. So comfortable, apparently, that the thought of leaving made me physically ache. I realized, even though being here was insane, I didn’t want to leave.
Even if I did, where the hell would I go?
Ryland’s gaze never wavered as he watched me. “Is that so?” he asked with a saccharine sweetness.
Jared had joined us in the living room now and was nonchalantly putting himself between his uncle and me. I didn’t know if I should be worried or not, but I didn’t like the tight set of his jaw, or the way his hands were splayed at his sides as though anticipating an attack.
“Why don’t you go take a shower and get to bed,” Jared said in a monotone voice. “It’s late. I bet you’re tired.”
Even though he was staring at his uncle, I knew the words were meant for me.
I cleared my throat and nodded, doing my best to procure one last innocent smile for Jared’s uncle. “Okay,” I muttered and then added, “I-It was nice to meet you in person, sir. Goodnight,” before I rushed around the furniture and past a silently brooding Clay, up the stairs and down the hall. I paused just shy of going into the
bathroom. I opened the door and then closed it again, but didn’t go in, silently settling myself against the wall, straining to hear.
The moment the door closed, their conversation began again, but now it was in hushed tones and dangerous whispers. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, and I stooped low into a crouch and skirted along the edge of the wall a bit closer to the top of the stairs. I listened with bated breath, not wanting Jared and Clay to get into trouble for helping me.
And he wasn’t just their uncle. Jared had said he was their pack alpha. I would be the first to admit how little I knew about their kind—the Enduran race. But if they were anything like regular wolves, then the pack alpha was sort of like the boss, right?
They had to listen to him. Do what he said, or else…
Or else, what? I wasn’t sure what sort of punishment could be in store for them if he told them I needed to leave, and they didn’t abide by his orders. Which was why I was listening.
If Ryland told them I couldn’t stay, they no matter how much Jared insisted, I would leave. I wouldn’t have them getting into a literal dog fight over me.
Ryland’s voice rose above a whisper, his tone calmly authoritative. “What were you thinking bringing her here?”
I tensed.
“She had no place else to go,” Jared replied.
“That’s not your problem,” Ryland snapped back, his voice raising into a scathing hiss. “You know the rules. No one was to know of this place. This is our place. And now you’ve tainted it with mortal presence.”
There was no response from Clay or Jared for a minute, then a groan as someone sat back down. “She won’t be here forever.” Clay said, surprising me. He wasn’t exactly defending me, but the fact that he spoke up at all was reassuring.
“Has anyone else been here?” Ryland asked.
“No,” Jared replied.
“Good.”
“What are you going to do?”
There came no immediate reply and the floorboard beneath my knee creaked. I held my breath, screaming inside.
Shit. Shit. Shit.