Alpha's Feisty Mate: A BBW Wolf-Shifter Romance (Arcane Affairs Agency)

by Cara Wylde

  ***

  Aiden’s FBI badge got them inside the Misty Falls Psychiatric Asylum in minutes. Skye was introduced as his guide and assistant, and no one asked any questions, although it was clear they would have loved to. They found Harriet McBride in the common room, and the nurse was kind enough to show them to a smaller room, where they could have some privacy. The second she stepped between the four white walls, Skye felt a bit claustrophobic. There were no windows, and the only furniture was a long table and a couple of chairs. Aiden pulled three for them. Skye sat down reluctantly, and folded her hands in her lap. She felt really uncomfortable here, although she couldn’t say why. There was a faint smell of medicine in the stuffy air.

  Harriet McBride was a lovely old woman. At least, that was what the entire town had thought about her before she murdered her husband. She was short, thin, and so frail that a gust of wind could have knocked her down in a second. Her pale blue eyes were filled with sadness, and her gray hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in days.

  “Mrs. McBride, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us,” Aiden began.

  The old woman chuckled, but it sounded so broken and sinister that it sent a cold chill up Skye’s spine.

  “I don’t think I would’ve had a choice,” Harried said.

  The agent smiled.

  The woman turned to Skye and squeezed her eyes as if she was trying to see her better.

  “Say… aren’t you John Watson’s daughter?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Skye.”

  “Skye…” She thought for a moment. “Oh yes, Nina is the redhead.”

  She gave Skye a smile that chilled her to the bone. There was something about this woman that almost made her jump off her chair, run out the door, and never look back. The strange thing, however, was that it hadn’t been there before. She had known Harriet since she was a child, and every time she and Nina had ended up on her street, the woman would invite them inside and give them freshly baked cupcakes.

  “How are your parents, darling?”

  “Oh, they’re well. Thank you.”

  “Still away all the time?”

  “Not as much as they used to.”

  One or two times a year, Anna and John Watson had to go together on some important business trips, and they couldn’t take the girls with them. Skye and Nina were already old enough to take care of themselves, but their mother would ask one of her cousins to move in with them for a couple of days just to make sure everything was okay and the girls had all they needed. Skye and Nina, however, didn’t much like the cousin, and they spent most of their time with their neighbors’ children. Harriet and her husband had never had any children, but the girls still visited them often, mostly for the delicious cupcakes.

  The old woman nodded and settled back in her chair. Her pale blue eyes turned to Aiden for a moment, then moved to the door behind him.

  “Is it locked?” she asked.

  Aiden cocked an eyebrow and took out his notebook.

  “No, it’s not.”

  Harried sighed. “Too bad. Locked doors make me feel better. Safer. Although I know they can’t keep the evil out.”

  “Evil?” asked Skye.

  The way she had fixed her eyes on the door was creepy. Her voice was creepy, too. She didn’t answer Skye’s question.

  Aiden cleared his throat to let the women know he was about to begin his interrogation.

  “Mrs. McBride, you live at the edge of town, is that right?”

  “Not anymore, son.”

  Aiden and Skye exchanged a quick glance.

  “The house is empty now,” the woman continued. “We never had any children… It was my fault. I was the one who couldn’t.” She turned to Skye. “Will you go check on the house now and then, darling? I have no one else to ask. The flowers in the living room are probably dead by now, and it hasn’t rained in a while… Will you water the garden for me? If there’s anything left of my vegetables, you can take it to your mother, all right?”

  “Sure…”

  “There’s no point in letting my onions and tomatoes go to waste.”

  “Mrs. McBride, you and your husband lived very close to the forest,” Aiden tried to get her back on track.

  The old woman sighed. “Yes. He loved the mountains and the woods. Went out there every day, never came home empty handed.”

  Her voice was barely a whisper. Skye wondered if what they were doing was okay, if they had any right to force her to talk about her husband. She seemed willing to cooperate, but it couldn’t be easy for her. Anyone who looked at her right now couldn’t have possibly believed this was a woman who had killed her husband in cold blood. She didn’t seem crazy, either.

  “So, he knew the woods well,” Aiden said.

  “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  “Did he ever…”

  But he didn’t have time to finish his question.

  “Never went out without his rifle, though.” The old woman’s eyes looked lost. She wasn’t there anymore. She was far away from them and the stuffy room. “No matter how well he knew them, he never went out without his rifle… Dangerous things in the mountains… Bears, wolves, God knows what else… But when he arrived home, he always put his rifle away. He was safe at home, with me. The danger was in the woods, not in our house. Until…” Her voice cracked. She was silent for a long moment. “Until the day he wasn’t safe anymore.”

  Another pause. Skye and Aiden had the impression Harriet had said everything she had had to say and now was waiting for them to leave.

  “What happened?” Skye nudged her.

  Harriet’s eyes finally moved from the door to her face. The confusion Skye saw there threw her off guard.

  “How would I know darling?” She shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”

  Aiden straightened his back. “What do you mean you weren’t there?” Maybe this was it: Harriet hadn’t killed her husband, the rogue werewolf had. But why would a wolf-shifter use a rifle, and not his own animal strength? It didn’t make sense.

  The old woman turned to him and shrugged again. “I wasn’t there. My body was there, but I wasn’t.”

  Skye’s heart started beating like mad. She froze in her chair.

  Aiden felt the change in Skye’s posture, threw her a concerned glance, but thought nothing of it. The old woman was creepy, and Skye was sensitive to powerful emotions, especially since she was a witch.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Your body was there, but you weren’t.”

  Harriet nodded. “That’s what I said.”

  “I’m sorry, but… I just don’t see how that is possible.”

  “Me neither. Yet, it was.”

  All three of them were silent for a while. Skye had a bunch of questions, but she couldn’t ask them with Aiden in the room. Aiden, on the other hand, was at a complete loss. How was he supposed to make Harriet talk about what he was really interested in?

  “So… you admit to killing your husband,” Aiden concluded.

  Skye shot him an angry look. How could he be so cruel?

  “Yes,” answered Harriet. “No.” She shook her head and sank her fingers in her tangled gray hair. “No, I didn’t kill him.” She started rocking back and forth, the chair squeaking under her weight. “I remember the cold barrel in my sweaty hands, I remember checking if the rifle was loaded… But I didn’t kill him. I didn’t. My body did.”

  Aiden jumped off the chair and started pacing the small room.

  Skye couldn’t take her eyes off the old woman. Part of her urged her to go to her side and calm her down, but another part of her didn’t want to have anything to do with her, didn’t want to touch her, or even breathe the same air as her.

  “Mrs. McBride, what you’re saying…”

  “… is impossible! I know, young man! Do you think I don’t know that?” She stopped rocking, but she kept pulling at her hair as she fixed him with her pale gaze. “All I c
an remember is the golden glow. My body was mine, then the golden glow took it from me, and I was locked somewhere far away. Deep… so deep… I couldn’t find my way back to the surface. When I did, he was lying on the floor in a pool of blood.”

  Aiden furrowed his brows. What if the woman wasn’t crazy, and there was some truth to her story? But she sounded crazy…

  “The young man saved me,” she continued. “He took the glow from me.”

  “Man? What man?” The agent’s senses went into full alert mode.

  Harriet sighed and finally let go of her hair. She stared at the gray strands she had managed to tear off. She was calmer now, more collected.

  “The man,” she whispered.

  She was tired. Both Skye and Aiden could tell she would soon want to be left alone. She wasn’t looking at them anymore, and she started shifting in her seat, trying to decide if she wanted to sit there, or stand up and leave the room.

  Aiden stepped closer to the table and firmly placed his hands in the middle of it. His tall stature dominated Harriet, who looked small and vulnerable in his shadow.

  “Mrs. McBride, please focus. What man?”

  “The man… The man who lives at the edge of the forest.”

  “What’s his name? What does he look like?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know… Leave me alone… I want to sleep now.” She stood up, her sad eyes once again fixed on the door. “It’s time to sleep.”

  Aiden turned to Skye, who hadn’t moved from her chair. She looked like she was glued to it.

  “Who’s she talking about? Do you know of any man living alone at the edge of the forest?”

  Skye shook her head. “Many people live at the edge of the forest…”

  “Mrs. McBride, please.” Aiden used his most authoritative tone. He didn’t want to scare her, but he didn’t want to lose her, either. Not before he got the information he needed. “Just try to make this one last effort: what man are you talking about?”

  Harriet sighed. “The man. He’s… he’s new. Not from around. Poor soul, he wears rags and lives in a trailer, but I’ve never seen him beg on the streets of Misty Falls. Never seen him beg…”

  Aiden started writing every bit of information in his notebook.

  “And he took the glow away,” he said.

  “Oh yes…” Harriet’s voice was filled with relief. “He took it away. I thought… I thought he would run to the police, but he didn’t. He took the glow away and disappeared into the woods.”

  Aiden closed his notebook and put it back in his pocket.

  “We have everything we need,” he told Skye.

  “What… what about Harriet?”

  She tried moving around a bit. Her brain was sending commands to her muscles, but they were slow to respond. The woman’s story had paralyzed her.

  Aiden stepped closer to the old woman and took her trembling hands in his.

  “Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. McBride. Finally, you gave us a lead.”

  Harriet managed a smile. “What are you investigating, again?”

  “The animal attacks.”

  Her smile fell. “No. No no no.” She shook her head vigorously. “No animal attacks. The glow… you should look for the glow!”

  She was getting agitated and impatient, and Aiden felt like he was losing control of the situation.

  “Skye, will you please call the nurse?”

  Skye took a deep breath and forced herself to get up. Her knees were weak. She felt like she hadn’t used her legs in years, and now she didn’t know how to place her feet one in front of the other. The fact that she was still in the high heels from the night before didn’t help. Eventually, she made it to the door, just as Harriet was starting to struggle and yell “The glow! The glow!”

  Two nurses were enough to calm her down, as it was hard for a frail old woman like Harriet McBride to be dangerous even when she was agitated. Aiden and Skye thanked them, then walked out of the Misty Falls Psychiatric Asylum.

  “Now what?” asked Skye.

  Aiden took in a deep breath of fresh mountain air. This was the first time an interrogation had given him a splitting headache.

  “Now you go home, and I go back to the hotel to file a report and talk to my supervisor.”

  “And when are we going to see the man Harriet told us about?”

  Aiden pursed his lips.

  Skye crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to say something. When she realized he wasn’t even going to look at her, she got angry.

  “Well? When are we going to see him?”

  “There will be no ‘we’ this time, Skye,” he said in a low, serious tone. “I’m going alone.”

  “What? No! You can’t do that! I took you to Harriet McBride, didn’t I? I helped you find the one person who knew something useful about your case. I have a right to come with you.”

  Finally, his intense green eyes fell on her. The tenderness she saw on his face could almost make her melt, but she kept her ground. His big hands rested on her shoulders.

  “It’s too dangerous, Skye. I could never take you with me knowing I might find a rogue werewolf there. Please understand.”

  She shook his hands away.

  “I’m a witch. I can help.”

  “Skye…”

  “I’m a witch, and you’re only human! How will you take him down, huh? Let me help, okay? I can…” She struggled to find her words for a second. “I can think of a spell… a powerful spell… I can immobilize him. Yes, that’s right.”

  What she was doing was complete madness. She wasn’t a witch, and she had no idea if such a spell even existed. All she knew was that she couldn’t let Aiden go alone.

  Aiden smiled.

  “Skye, listen to me.” He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look into his eyes. “I know what I’m doing. Please, let me do my job and keep you safe at the same time. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

  She wanted to protest again, but he captured her lips in the sweetest kiss they had ever shared. For what felt like forever, she couldn’t think, much less say “no” to whatever he asked of her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Skye’s compliance lasted just as long as Aiden’s kiss: around one minute. He left for the hotel, and she went home. She couldn’t wait to tell Nina everything she had found out. The moment she barged into their shared bedroom and started talking, she realized she had never felt more alive. Adrenaline was rushing through her veins, she talked so fast that she lost her breath, and she had to go back and add details when Nina’s confused eyes told her she wasn’t making any sense. Skye was excited, agitated, and… afraid. Afraid for Aiden’s life, and for the lives of everyone in Misty Falls. Now that she was telling her sister about the rogue wolf-shifter, the beast was finally becoming real to her. This man existed, he could turn into a wolf, and he could rip someone apart without as much as breaking a sweat.

  “And now Aiden is going after him,” Skye concluded. “But I can’t let him go alone.”

  Nina jumped off the bed and grabbed Skye by the shoulders.

  “You have to! He’s right, Skye. This is too dangerous.”

  “He needs my help.”

  Nina sighed. “You do know you’re not a witch, right? You’re just pretending, remember?”

  Skye pushed her away and started pacing the room. She knew she had no real way of helping Aiden, and that was killing her. Why couldn’t she have been the witch in the family? She would have used her skills so much better than Nina! She froze when she caught herself thinking this way. No, it was wrong. Nina was the special one, and that was fine. Being a witch was probably more of a burden than anything.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Nina. She saw the change in her sister’s posture and expression, and it worried her. These days, it was hard to tell what was on Skye’s mind.

  “Nothing.” Skye shook her head, then turned back to Nina. “I just… I think there’s more t
o this case.”

  “More than Aiden has already told you?”

  “Yes. I can’t explain it. It’s a gut feeling.” She ran her hand through her long black hair. “He’s so certain that he can take down the werewolf… I know he’s an agent, I know he’s well trained and armed, but still…”

  “Maybe he’s done it before.”

  “Maybe.”

  The thought made both of them shudder. If Aiden has done it before, if the FBI has caught other shifters or paranormal creatures, then how many were there in the world? How dangerous were they? Humans couldn’t possibly be safe in these conditions.

  “I have to find out what he’s been hiding from me,” Skye said in a serious, confident tone. “And you’re going to help me.”

  Nina shook her head and took a couple of steps back.

  “I’m not doing any spells until this is sorted out,” she said.

  “It’s a rogue werewolf, Nina. It’s got nothing to do with what we did two weeks ago. I told you you shouldn’t worry about it. Now we have facts.”

  “And what about Harriet McBride and the… golden glow? If I understood correctly, she thinks she was possessed.”

  “She didn’t say that. Not once.”

  Nina rolled her eyes. “The way she described what she felt is enough, don’t you think? You have to read between the lines.”

  “If her shooting her husband had anything to do with us, with magic and the paranormal, then Aiden would be investigating that. He’s not, though, which means there’s nothing there. She’s just a crazy old woman who snapped for some reason.”

  “I can’t believe you can be so blind,” Nina murmured. “You only see what you want to see.”

  “Hey! I don’t deserve that!”

  Skye crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her sister.

  Nina rubbed her temples.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been on edge lately.”

  They were silent for a while. Nina was going over the whole story in her head, and Skye was thinking of ways to find out what Aiden was really up to. Nina could find out in a heartbeat if she took out that Spell Book of hers, drew a circle in the middle of the room, and focused all her energy on the agent. But she couldn’t force her to use magic when she didn’t want to. Eventually, she uncrossed her arms, straightened her back, and went to her wardrobe. She had made a decision and she needed a more appropriate outfit for her new mission. First things first: the tight dress and the high heels had to be replaced by something more comfortable and… silent.