Wild Wolf Claiming

by Rhyannon Byrd

  Even though he knew Max was going to be pissed, he jerked his chin in agreement. Because Lev was right.

  “I looked over the notes you made for Mason and wrote down the towns where Vivian has family,” Lev was saying, “so we’ll start there. Just don’t warn him until we’ve managed to track him down, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed as he felt for his keys in his pocket, before remembering that he’d left them in the ignition. Looking at Kyle, he said, “Don’t forget to make sure Lindy gets home safe.”

  “Where will you be?” the merc asked, giving him a wary look. Hell, they were all looking at him that way.

  He managed to scrape out one single, throaty word: “Home.”

  “You’re going back to the Alley?” Cian called out.

  But Elliot had already turned his back on the group, and walked away, without ever answering the question.

  Chapter 15

  Two days. Almost two entire freaking days.

  That’s how long Elliot had left Skye down in the Alley, stewing over all that had happened.

  She’d been put under guard that first night, thanks to Mason and the others. They were all afraid she would do something stupid that would result in her getting herself killed...or captured. And she’d been so desperate to find Elliot that she just might have tried it.

  Throughout that long, painful night, she’d been so incredibly heartbroken for him, and for the boy he’d been, unable to get the shattered look that’d ravaged his handsome face out of her head. She’d finally collapsed in exhaustion on his sofa, and when she’d opened her eyes the next morning, her pain had morphed into an even darker, uglier anger. She’d been pissed at everyone and everything. At the bastard responsible for hurting Elliot all those years ago. At Chiswick and his asshole wargs for screwing with her and Vivian’s lives.

  And most of all, at Elliot, for walking away from her and leaving her there. Alone. Without him.

  That seething, made-her-feel-like-she-was-being-flayed-alive mix of fury and pain had ridden her hard the entire day, until she’d finally just burned out. She’d crashed on the sofa again, waking up late in the morning, and three hours later, she was still just lying there. Drained. Broken. So exhausted she could barely move. She’d spent the last hour just watching the dust motes, scarcely aware of the sun’s shadow moving across the wall, as she stared blankly into space.

  Finally, she somehow found the strength to get up and eat a sandwich. Then she caught sight of herself in the stainless-steel surface of the fridge, and realized a shower was something she needed. Badly. Like forever ago.

  An hour later, after she was clean, dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a black sweater, and at least looking halfway human again, she started to head into the kitchen for a drink, when someone knocked on the front door. Skye was tempted to ignore it, since the last thing she wanted was to talk to Elliot’s friends, much less socialize. But for all she knew, they had keys and would just let themselves in.

  Shuffling toward the door, she opened it and found a group of women standing on the porch, with Torrance at the front, a determined expression on her pretty face. Accepting that she wasn’t going to get out of this—whatever this was—Skye stepped aside and let them in. She’d already met all of them her first night there, except for the beautiful strawberry-blonde, and Torrance introduced her as Sayre Hennessey. Then they all gathered together in the kitchen, and Sayre—who she knew was a good friend of Elliot’s—helped her put on some coffee.

  Skye was grateful no one asked her how she was doing, since it had to be fairly obvious. Instead, Elise started things off by saying, “The men are so pissed that Elliot tried to leave them out of the fight.”

  “I’m sure he was just trying to protect them,” she murmured, pulling some mugs down from one of the cupboards.

  “Of course he was,” Carla offered with a delicate snort. “But they don’t need it.”

  Sayre winced. “That’s Elliot’s problem right there. Always thinking he knows what’s best for everyone.”

  She nodded her head in agreement, even though she didn’t really know what he was thinking at the moment. She just missed him like crazy. And was so freaking disappointed that he hadn’t come to talk things out with her.

  When the coffee was ready, they took their steaming mugs over to the table and sat down.

  Carla leaned forward in her chair, crossed her arms on the gleaming wooden surface and locked her dark gaze with Skye’s. “I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I know where he is.”

  Her hands started shaking so badly she had to set her mug down. “Where?”

  Looking around the table, Carla said, “I think he might have gone up to his parents’ old house.”

  Elise’s long red hair slipped over her shoulder as she nodded. “I think Carla’s right. The house sat empty for a while, but Elliot bought it once he became a Runner.”

  “But he’s never lived there,” Sayre added. “I mean, not since he was seventeen.”

  “I told him not to do it,” Torrance said, the concern she felt for Elliot etched onto her pale face. “It’s not healthy, holding on to that place. Not when his parents were so horrible to him.”

  “What did they do?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  Torrance sighed as she shook her head. “I know this is Elliot’s story to tell, but I...I think you need to understand as much about his past as you can, if you’re going to fight for him.” She paused and gave Skye a deep, searching look. “Are you?”

  “Of course I’m going to fight for him.” She sat up straighter in her chair, hoping the other woman could see just how much she meant those words...as well as her next ones. “He’s... I’m in love with him.”

  Carla grinned and smacked her hands against the table. “I knew it!”

  “Please,” she rasped, needing someone to answer her question. “What happened with his parents?”

  “They’re assholes,” Elise muttered with disgust.

  In a gentler voice, Torrance said, “When all those awful things happened to Elliot, he was basically just a boy. He needed their help, their support. Anything. But when Elliot finally went and tried to talk to them, they told him to leave. That was the last thing they ever said to him. I think it’s why he was so terrified of you learning the truth about what had happened.”

  “Oh, God,” she breathed, her gaze skittering around the room, as if she were suddenly going to find him there. “I need to see him. To talk to him. Try to make him understand that I’m not going to do the same thing. That I’m not going to turn my back on him.”

  Carla gave her a small smile. “It won’t be easy, honey. If he’s anything like Eli, he could be getting completely hammered up there. That’s what my boy did when things went to shit.”

  “No,” Torrance murmured, shaking her head again. “Elliot’s too worried about losing control. He won’t be drinking.”

  She frowned, thinking that couldn’t be healthy. To always be so on edge. Always worrying about how tightly he was reining himself in. Is that how he’d always felt with her? Like he always had to be careful?

  If so, then that crap was stopping now. She wasn’t a china doll, and he damn well didn’t need to treat her like one. He just needed to treat her like his.

  Tucking her hair behind her ear, she looked at Carla. “I don’t care what Elliot’s doing. I just need to get to him. But I think he took the keys to my car. And when the guys left me here, they said the Alley was being monitored.” Looking around the table, she asked, “So how the hell am I going to get up there?”

  With a slow smile curling her lips, Sayre said, “You just leave that to us.”

  Elise lifted her brows with interest. “What are you thinking, little witch?”

  “I’m thinking we hide her in the back of my new truck. I’ve been carting around everyone’s Christmas trees and wreaths, so there’s no reason to think I wouldn’t be taking a few more up to Shadow Peak. We’ll just toss a blanket over her, and put
a few lightweight wreaths on top.”

  “Ooh, good idea,” Carla purred, rubbing her hands together. “I love it!”

  Giving them a worried look, Skye said, “Won’t Cian and the others be pissed when they realize what you’ve done?”

  Sayre gave a low, wicked laugh, and waggled her brows. “I hope so. Makeup sex with my Irishman is always fun. We might end up with another broken bed, but it’s worth it.”

  “Mmm, Eli’s the same way,” Carla murmured, flashing a wide grin. “I’ll drive up with you guys, and that way he can get his feathers all ruffled, too.”

  “If we all go, they’ll know something’s up,” Elise said with a disappointed sigh, setting her mug down on the table. “So I’ll stay here with Torrance, and we can ask a bunch of them to help us get things ready for the sled races the kids want to have later. That should keep them distracted for a while.”

  Voice thick with emotion, Skye told them, “Thank you so much for helping me.”

  “I’m just glad he found someone so lovely and sweet,” Torrance said, reaching over and giving her hand an encouraging squeeze. “After everything he’s been through, that boy deserves the very best.”

  Too choked up to respond, Skye got up and threw her arms around the little redhead, giving her the biggest hug she could, which had everyone looking emotional when they finally broke apart, both of them teary-eyed and smiling.

  Less than a half hour later, Skye was getting her first look at Shadow Peak as she sat in the backseat of the truck Sayre used for her gardening business. Once they’d made it out of the Alley, Sayre had pulled over onto the side of the road, and Skye had joined the witch and Carla up in the cab, thankful to no longer be freezing her ass off back in the bed, buried under three Christmas wreaths. The plan to sneak her out of the Alley had worked so well, she didn’t doubt for a moment that the guys were going to be seriously bent out of shape when they realized how easily they’d been tricked. She would have to be sure to ask her new friends for all the juicy details when she came back with Elliot.

  And, yeah, she was definitely returning with him. She wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  It didn’t take them long to drive through the picturesque mountain town, and she knew which house was Elliot’s childhood home the moment they turned onto the quiet residential street, because it was the only one without a single Christmas decoration or twinkling light.

  “He must have parked his Jeep in the garage,” she murmured, when Sayre pulled her truck up to the curb. Skye had thought she’d be nervous as hell, but her hands were steady as she opened the door and climbed out, her voice calm as she turned and thanked the women for their help.

  “Give him hell,” Carla said with an encouraging grin.

  “And remember,” Sayre told her, “you’ve totally got this.”

  She gave them a brief smile, then turned and made her way up to the front door. She didn’t bother knocking, but simply reached for the doorknob. It turned easily, which didn’t surprise her. Elliot didn’t seem like the type to worry about his own safety—just everyone else’s.

  The downstairs was quiet and bleak, without a single piece of furniture, and so she headed up the staircase, figuring she’d find him in one of the rooms on the second floor. And she did. In fact, as she stood in the open doorway of the third room on the left, she knew she was looking into Elliot’s childhood bedroom, and it broke her freaking heart. Because while his asshole parents had cleared the rest of the house, they’d left this room untouched, as if they hadn’t wanted to take a single reminder of their son with them.

  He was sitting in a chair by the window, staring out at the backyard, and she drank in the sight of him as she stepped into the room, thinking he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Even in his wrinkled clothes, and with those dark shadows under his eyes, the sunlight only making them more pronounced when he quickly turned his head in her direction. He’d obviously been buried so deep in his thoughts, he hadn’t even realized she was there until that exact moment.

  “Skye?” he croaked, running an unsteady hand over his face as he pushed to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Seriously?” She shook her head as a soft, humorless laugh fell from her lips. “It kinda pisses me off that you even have to ask me that.”

  His shock was wearing off, and in its place she could see his defenses building. His fear of what this visit meant. He stared back at her like he was gearing up for a confrontation, his hooded gaze dark and measuring...and wary as hell.

  Pulling in a deep breath, she slowly exhaled, and knew she needed to start talking. “At first,” she said, walking a little farther into the room, “I was so angry at you. Pissed that you hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me the truth. But then I realized I was being a hypocrite. I mean, it’s not like I’ve completely trusted you, either.”

  “Skye—” he started, but she cut him off before he could say anything more.

  “I know how guilt can eat you alive. God, do I know.” She swiped at the stupid tears that were suddenly slipping over her cheeks, but forced herself to continue. “And there are so many stories that I could tell you about my childhood—so I will, if you want to hear them. Stories like the one about how my mother named me after her dealer, Matthew Skye, because she thought it was funny, seeing as how she’d been high on some coke he’d given her when she got pregnant with me.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

  “My, um, dad was out of the picture really early on,” she said in a low voice, walking across the room and sitting down on the foot of the double bed. Bringing her gaze back to his, she went on. “And one day, my mom just took off, leaving me and my older sister, Lara, with our grandmother. But when she realized that Lara was also into drugs, she told us to get out.”

  His brows were drawn with concern, and she could tell there were so many questions he wanted to ask her. But he choked them back, giving her this chance to explain.

  “So, long story short, we heard that our mom died from an overdose about a month after she left. By that time, Lara had managed to get us a tiny apartment, and we were trying to get by. But I...I knew she was in danger of ending up on that same path.”

  Holding on to the edge of the bed with a white-knuckled grip, Skye pulled in a quivering breath, then made herself keep talking. “She would work to keep herself clean for a few weeks, but it never lasted, and she was already an addict by the time she was eighteen. When what little money we had ran out, she started bringing men back to our crappy little one-bedroom for sex. She was...hooking in order to feed her addiction, and I... I hated her for it. Hated the things I would come home from school and see. Hated the guys that would try to corner me, thinking I would put out for money, too.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he rasped, taking a jerky step forward, as if he felt the magnetic pull between them just as strongly as she did.

  “And the...the thing about my past that I didn’t want to tell you,” she said, forcing the husky words from her tight throat, “is that there was this guy who had a thing for Lara. He was a big-time drug dealer in the area, but I...I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that he’d always been nice to me whenever I ran into him.”

  She could see the dread that spilled over his face, and knew he was headed down the wrong path, so she rushed to explain.

  “He didn’t hurt me, Elliot. But... I saw him one day in town, and when he said he was worried about Lara and wanted to talk to her—that he had this amazing job opportunity for her—I...I brought him back to our apartment with me.”

  She blinked when Elliot suddenly started pacing with a restless, edgy energy, as if he could no longer just stand there and listen. But he didn’t look away from her, not even once, and she drew strength from the powerful emotion she could see burning in his dark, beautiful eyes, her voice a little stronger as she said, “When we got to the apartment, my sister was with a...a client who was old enough to be our dad, and the dealer lost it.
He and the guy fought, and he ended up getting rid of the creep.” She gave a hard swallow, swiped at the tears on her cheeks, and with her pulse rushing through her ears, she heard herself say, “Like a stupid little twit, I had hoped everything would be okay then, so I left. But it...wasn’t. Once I was gone, the dealer tied my sister up, raped her, and gave her a lethal dose of heroin. Then he crawled into bed with her, and did the same to himself.”

  Stopping in the middle of the floor, Elliot quietly cursed as he shoved both hands back through his hair, his tension like a raw, visceral thing there in the room with them, so thick she felt like she could breathe it into her lungs.

  Clearing her throat, she told him the rest. “When I came back to the apartment hours later, the cops were there. They told me what had happened, and I said that I would go to stay with my grandmother, since she was still my legal guardian.”

  He kept his troubled gaze locked tight with hers. “But you didn’t.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “I got on a bus, and my money ran out in Charity. I lived on the streets there for two days, until I got lucky and someone told me about the shelter. And then I met Viv and her family.” A brief, poignant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, because she knew she’d been saved that day. “When her mom finally got an apartment, Viv and I moved in with her. We said that Viv’s mom was my aunt, and so the school Viv went to didn’t give me any hassle when I registered. We finished high school together, graduated and then moved out on our own to give her mom and brothers some more room.”

  Taking another deep breath, she said, “So that’s my story. And now that I’ve opened my veins and spilled all that ugly shit, I need you to talk to me, Elliot. I need you to trust me enough to know that there’s nothing you can tell me that will make me look at you any differently.”

  He gave her a hard, guarded look. “Lopez already took care of that, Skye. What more is there to tell?”

  “Your story, damn it. Do you think I care what that asshole had to say?”

  She watched a flat, emotionless smile twist the corner of his mouth. “He didn’t lie.”