I didn’t know Bessemer, had never met the man, but his actions had imprinted his pack in such a way I could tell that for the first time in ages, I had room in my heart to hate someone other than myself. He was a bad man. Of that, I had no doubt. His taste in mates didn’t bolster confidence either. Aisha was more of a spitting cobra than a wolf, and her venom corroded all she touched.
Dell, with her big heart, deserved better than to be resigned to a life of skulking behind Graeson in the hopes she could hide in his shadow. She ought to be like that bold and sassy woman who kidnapped me in an SUV every day, not this pale echo of her true self.
“I’m going to Kermit,” I announced, not doubting for an instant Graeson would manage to pick that out of Dell’s head. “Will my family be safe while I’m gone?” They could defend themselves, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to a show of force. “Or would it be better if they moved on?”
“Cord secured guest rights for your family. They’re allowed to remain on the fringe of the pack’s lands as long as they don’t cross over without an escort.” Her forehead scrunched, and I wondered if she wasn’t speaking with Graeson right now. “The punishment for breaking the alpha’s oath is death.”
In that, the fae and earthborn agreed. There were strict rules for hospitality that fae believed must be observed in order to maintain honor while acting as a guest or while entertaining guests in one’s home. Once past the threshold…well…that was another matter.
“Good.” That was one less worry for me. Aunt Dot and Isaac were used to me leaving for extended periods of time. They wouldn’t bat an eye at an overnight trip. “Aunt Dot still hasn’t met Graeson sans fur, and it would be hard on her to relocate so soon. A Gemini is never out of practice when it comes to roaming, but it’s been a peaceful year for us. I would like to spend more time here—another week at least—before uprooting her again.”
“We’ll protect your kin,” she vowed, soft tone laced with steel. “I promise you that.”
“Dell.” The fact I wasn’t included in any of her declarations niggled the back of my mind enough that Imogen’s words drifted back to me. “What is the selection?”
A subtle flush rose up her cheeks. “Cord wants to talk to you about that. Tonight.”
“He does?” Doubt weighted my voice. “Are you sure you’re not exaggerating?”
Snorted laughter crinkled her cheeks until her eyes vanished. “It’s his idea.” She crossed a finger over her heart. “I swear.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Did he have this brilliant idea before or after I told you I was going to Kermit?”
She mimed zipping her lips.
A sigh escaped me. “That’s what I thought.”
Chapter 8
Graeson arrived on my doorstep wearing a faded green button-down shirt, which still managed to complement his eyes, tucked into jeans with a crease in them. Even his scuffed boots had been dusted clean. His hair, always falling forward into his face, was slicked back and neat as a pin.
Either he was trying to impress me—mission accomplished—or Imogen had dressed him like a doll in a nice shirt of his she’d probably hung on to since high school, and pants she’d starched and ironed on his way out of her bed—I mean, house.
One person wasn’t conflicted about his sudden appearance. Aunt Dot was a blur as she streaked past me then tackled him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Her giddy smile made my stomach curl in on itself. Isaac was right. Grandpuppies were dancing in baby pink and blue clouds over her head while she drank in the sight of Graeson.
“You must be Cord.” She patted his cheek. “You’re a pretty thing, I’ll give you that. No wonder you turned my little pumpkin’s head.” She stepped back to admire all six feet plus of him. “You clean up nice too.” Laser eyes swiped over me. “Why didn’t you dress up, hon?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Playing hard to get?”
I slapped a palm over my face, but my neck broiled with a flush. “I didn’t realize this was a dress up kind of occasion.”
Or that it was an occasion at all. I thought we were meeting to discuss my findings and get to the bottom of this selection nonsense.
The fact he was putting so much effort into looking the part of a man calling on a date twisted my heart. I couldn’t help thinking how nice it must be to greet a handsome man who looked forward to spending an evening with you. Maybe, once Charybdis was behind me and Harlow was safe, I could dip my toe back in the Gemini dating pool, the analogy as close to water as I ever wanted to get outside of a shower stall.
“It’s my fault, Aunt Dot,” Graeson rumbled. “Can I call you Aunt Dot, or would you prefer Ms. Cahill?”
“Oh, you.” She swatted his chest playfully. “You can call me anything you want, sweetie. I’m not picky.”
“Aunt Dot it is then,” he said, sounding pleased. “Ellis is right. Tonight is a surprise. I didn’t want to spook her by tipping my hand.” His gaze, when it raked over me, raised chill bumps. “Besides, she’s beautiful. She doesn’t need to dress up for me to see that.”
I squirmed, pinned to the spot by his compliment and the hungry glint in his eyes. Had Dell not told me how he spent his afternoon, I might have been taken in by the pretty package as easily as Aunt Dot appeared to be. But I hesitated, afraid that stepping close to him would bring a possessive tendril of Imogen’s perfume tickling my nose.
“I don’t understand you kids.” She shook her head. “Why not call each other Camille and Cord? It’s so catchy.”
I could have told her first names implied an intimacy lacking between us, a privilege granted to friends or lovers when I wasn’t sure we were or would ever be either, but I played the game I had committed to and smiled. “It keeps the relationship fresh.”
“All right.” She tapped her cheek, and I dutifully bent to kiss it. “I’ll get this laundry put up for you, okay?” She shuffled back to the basket that had brought her visiting. “This is the first time I’ve ever had to wash wolf fur out of your sheets.”
The sting in my neck intensified to noonday-sun proportions. “I can put them up when I get home.”
“Nah. I have time.” She lifted a pair of sheer black panties in a scandalous cut in front of her and began folding them into a tiny square before our eyes. “My shows don’t start for another hour.”
My jaw dropped open in tandem with Graeson’s. His throat worked over a hard lump, and he wiped a hand over his mouth. All I could do was goggle at her while she hummed, pretending not to notice our stares.
Gods help us.
Those weren’t even mine.
Where had they come from? Surely they weren’t…? No. I didn’t want to know. As they say, ignorance is bliss.
“I won’t be long.” I shoved Graeson out into the cool night. “I’ll call when I get home.”
“Take your time,” she called after me. “There’s no need to rush back on my account.”
I scooted down the steps, shut the door behind me and slumped against the trailer with my eyes shut. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
“It’s cute,” came a voice much too close to my ear.
My eyes popped wide open, and I flattened myself against the siding. “You need to step back.”
Breaths coming in short pants, I sucked in the smell of him, but his personal cologne was all his. Not a hint of Imogen lingered on his skin or in his clothes. For that I was grateful, even if I didn’t want to examine why.
“Scared?” He rubbed his cheek against mine.
“Of what I might do to you?” I breathed. “Yes. I don’t want to go to prison for murder.”
A husky chuckle escaped him as he withdrew. “We need to talk.” He extended his hand, but I couldn’t take it. I thought of wargs as being defined by their soul mate culture, but Dell—and now Graeson—had proven the hunt for Mr. or Mrs. Right wasn’t forefront in all their minds. “I thought we could discuss the new developments in the case you mentioned to Dell over dinner. At my house.”
“Your…house.
” Not until Dell mentioned Imogen’s cabin had I wondered where the wargs called home. The entire forest was their domain, no structure capable of containing their wild spirits, but they were half-human. I should have put more than a passing thought into where and how they might live. “I— Sure. Okay.”
His fingers slid down my arm without purchase, accepting I didn’t want to hold his hand but unable to resist stealing a light touch. “Come on.” Hands shoved into his pockets, he strolled toward the dense pines. “Let me show you my home.”
Entering the forest at night brought chills coasting over my skin. The sensation of keen eyes peering from the underbrush had me rubbing my hands up and down my arms. Moonlight cast a silver path through the trees, and Graeson walked it with confidence, his heavy steps managing to land time and time again without so much as snapping a twig. By comparison, I felt like an elephant stamping after him, or like the merry calliope piping at the top of my lungs that the circus was in town. After all, whoever those flickers of gold belonged to had come to watch a show.
“Welcome to Silverback Lane. Not everyone lives here full-time. Most work in human cities during the week and return home for the weekends, celebrations and hunts, but each member is assigned their own cabin.” Graeson distracted me from my thoughts. “The alpha lives there, on the rise.”
Twin floor-to-ceiling windows lit with harsh yellow light glared down at us from a slight elevation in the distance, the symbolism clear. The eyes of the alpha were always watching.
Shaking off that creeping sensation, I picked up my pace. “How many wargs are here at any given time?”
“It’s forbidden to share that information with your kind.” He walked on. “It’s dangerous for fae, for the conclave, to be aware of our numbers.”
Another woman might have called him paranoid, but rivalries between species were cutthroat. Should the fae ever set their sights to procuring pack land, and were they aware of how many—or few—wargs were present at any given time, the coups would be bloody and swift.
“I didn’t mean to pry.” There were more wargs here than I could fight off alone, and that was all that mattered to me. “I was just making small talk.”
“I trust you, Ellis.” He glanced back at me, and his lips quirked. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t tell you if you truly wanted to know.”
I got the unsettling feeling he was challenging me. All I could think of was Imogen.
Did you go home with her?
Home being not what I meant at all.
I didn’t ask. My throat tightened painfully when I tried.
Slowing until I reached him, he brushed his hand down my arm. “I’ve always been honest with you.”
Unable to isolate a particular untruth to hurtle at him, I swatted his hand. “You befriended me under false pretenses.”
“Are we friends?” He caught my hand in his. “Is that all this is?”
“This is a job. We’re hunting a serial killer, remember?” I scraped him off me. “You seem to be forgetting that.”
“This is a job,” he allowed, in a way that made it seem like he was agreeing to something I hadn’t said.
All the years of emotional isolation hadn’t equipped me to deal with the masculine enigma in front of me. The urge to snap off a branch and whack him with it couldn’t be normal, but what was? My parents had an easy love. They laughed and traveled and marveled at the world together. Aunt Dot had never married and never dated after her longtime lover passed more than a year before I was born. Isaac didn’t date so much as plow through available women in a quest to satisfy his drive to discover the limits of his talents in the most pleasurable way possible. His heart wasn’t involved in those transactions. They were calculated and sterile in a way that left him holed up for days after each interlude. Theo, well, his philosophy was much the same as Isaac’s, minus the curiosity and the guilt. So what was normal? The sneaking tendrils of envy that curled into my chest when I thought of Graeson with someone else? With Imogen?
This thing with Graeson wasn’t love or simple lust. It was undefinable, and a thing without definition that technically couldn’t exist without such parameters shouldn’t hurt so much. But it did.
The trees didn’t part to reveal civilization so much as log cabins appeared to emerge from the very pines used to construct them. Despite what I’d said earlier, I was curious and counted as many as I could spot, some homesteads blending with the surrounding elements until they all but disappeared into nature.
“This is us.”
He gestured toward a cabin whose flawless symmetry spoke to me. Built of thick, hand-hewn pine logs, its bright white chinking reflected the faint light. The steps leading onto the porch included a handrail that boasted an antler collage instead of spindles. The squat staircase brushed a massive stone chimney that I ran my hand along as we ascended. Rockers nestled either side of a square table covered by a woven red-and-black quilt. Someone had used one of the oversized checkers that completed the set as a coaster to hold a glass half full of what appeared to be sweet tea.
The front door swung open under his hand. Apparently the residents of Silverback Lane didn’t lock their doors. Expecting the heavy treated ceiling beams to make the house dark and cramped, I was surprised by the use of light wall colors to brighten the space. The open floor plan exposed the cozy living room, the casual dining room and a kitchen boasting state-of-the-art appliances at a glance.
Wide-plank floors shone under my feet, and stepping inside felt a little like entering the Three Bears’ house. Shoes three sizes too small lined one short wall beside boots three sizes too large. The contrast of young girl and grown man was a theme continued through every room I examined.
Marie might be gone from this world, but she was not forgotten in this house.
“It’s beautiful.” Rustic had never appealed to me—I enjoyed the sleek shine of my trailer too much for that—but the sense of permanence about this place warmed me. Welcome home. That was what the cabin whispered when you entered. Love had soaked into these walls, and I was tempted to touch them. See if I could read the magic of it, perhaps glean some understanding of the man standing silently beside me. “Nice kitchen. Do you know how to use it?”
A proud grin stretched his cheeks. “You’ll just have to wait and find out, won’t you?”
“Are you serious?” I laughed, nervous. “You’re not cooking.” His smile kicked up a notch. “Are you?”
“Steaks are marinating in the fridge, and there’s a baked potato with your name on it.”
Nice clothes. Buttering up Aunt Dot. Bringing me home. Cooking for me. “What are you up to?”
“I’m just being neighborly,” he protested on his way to the stainless monstrosity that was his refrigerator. “Would you like a drink, neighbor?”
“Yes.” I could use something to wet my throat for when the arguing started.
“Have a seat.” He pointed to a pair of tall stools tucked under a bar built into the granite-topped island. “We can talk while I work, if that’s okay with you.”
Having never been cooked for by a man, I wasn’t sure what protocol dictated, but I slid onto a stool just the same. “This is fine.”
“You look ready to bolt for the door.” He snagged a tumbler from a glass-fronted cabinet then used the controls set into the fridge’s door to pour ice and filtered water. “Should I lock it, or can I trust you to hang around?” He offered me the drink, our hands brushing as I took it. A smile quirked his mouth, and he snapped his fingers. “Oh. Almost forgot.”
While he dug through the contents of a paper bag on the counter, I accepted my fate. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet. “We need to talk.” I took a sip, wincing where he couldn’t see it. Plain water was just so…plain. “You owe me some answers.”
“There.” He presented six curvy plastic bottles settled across his palm labeled with names like kiwi strawberry and berry medley. “I wasn’t sure what flavor you liked best, and the store here doesn’t carr
y your usual brand, so I grabbed one of everything.”
“My usual brand?” It was like he was speaking in tongues. “How do you know my usual brand?”
“I have eyes.” He dipped a hand into the front pocket of his pants. “I also have this.” He held up an empty bottle and wiggled it. “You never used the same flavor twice, and the cashier had never heard of orange-pineapple flavor enhancer, so I winged it. Is this okay? Will one of these work?”
I accepted the bottles and lined them up on the counter. Several of my favorites were present. “This is perfect.” I tore off the safety seal and squirted a few streams of crimson into my cup. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
He rubbed his cheek with his thumb. “You couldn’t just say thank you?”
“No.” The way he asked made me think he was well aware of that fact.
“Huh.” He strode to the sink and washed his hands then donned an apron. Women want me, cows fear me was written in bold red letters on a black background. “I’d heard fae were funny about thanks, but you’re the first I’ve really spent time around.”
He’d befriended a water sprite as a young man, but she was gone now, and she hadn’t survived so long among wolves by giving away her secrets.
“Oh, it’s very real.” I had collected several and had yet to use any of them. “Thanking the fae is never a good idea. Avoid it at all costs.”
“Thanks for the tip.” He screwed up his face. “Didn’t take long to break that rule.” A curious expression crossed his face. “Does this mean I owe you a favor?”
Laughing at his wariness, I stirred my drink with a finger. “This makes us even.”
He returned to his food prep, back facing me, hauling out steaks and dashing them with spices. Watching him fascinated me. Where my family assaulted the kitchen, Graeson moved through it with practiced ease, comfortable in his space, revealing a new facet of his personality.
“You like to cook.” More than having a fancy preparation area, he knew how to use it.
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