by Dianna Hardy
She turned her head away from the others and looked out the window of the van. She didn't need anyone to see her cry. She hadn't told Beth what that Lawrence guy had said to her, and Holly was in no state to hear it.
“You took my memories?”
“The ones of Taylor, yes.”
Fuck.
“You can see him if you like.”
“Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
If she had really lost the plot – gone into a stupor like he'd said, over the attack on Taylor and herself and his inevitable demise – she must have loved him very much. As much as a part of her wallowed in fury at having her memories of him taken, she wasn't sure she wanted any inkling of how much she loved him, especially not after what else she'd been told.
“There's something you need to know, about the man you've been seeing.”
No.
She pushed the conversation out of her mind. She would deal with it when she got home, to her sanctuary, after Beth had left and a very quiet Holly was back on a plane to her normal life.
Holly had come out of her own stupor. Since she'd shown stability, Lawrence had been reluctant to rip her mind apart, and Sarah had point blank told him if he tried, he'd regret it.
If he was fazed by her anger, he hadn't shown it. He hadn't shown much of anything, actually – maybe he was a robot. A robot werewolf. With no fucking feelings. How could you do that to another human being?
But they weren't human, were they? They were animals, and Amil was…
She blinked harder, damn it. Suppression of emotions wasn't working.
Three signed contracts later (they read more like gag orders) to ensure their silence over everything they'd seen, they had been free to leave.
“Here we go.” Amelia brought the van to a stop.
All four of them jumped out, and Beth took Amelia in a big hug.
Sarah looked away, not feeling the love. She wanted to – it would be nice to, and Amelia was pleasant enough, but … how did you come back from this? How did you come back from…
Don't think about it!
“Thank you for everything,” said Beth, still caught up in the embrace.
Amelia laughed. “It's good that you're all right with … the way things are.”
“You know when something happens, and everything clicks into place, and the first thought you have is, 'I knew it!'?”
Holly turned to Sarah and raised her eyebrows.
Sarah shrugged.
“And … er … Pete?” asked Beth. “He's going to be—”
“He's already healed – mostly. The underbelly's a horrible place to take a wound, but he's going to be just fine.”
“And you're sure it's okay to—”
Amelia laughed again, and Sarah rolled her eyes, because Beth had already asked this a hundred times. “Yes, it's fine to come back and see him. In fact,” Amelia leaned in and dropped her voice. “I think it might be good for him.”
Beth grinned, and finally, Sarah let a small smile pass her lips. Beth's enthusiasm and optimism were positively contagious, and she hoped to god this wouldn't be one of those things, where she gave her all to a man and he fled to the hills. Pete didn't seem like the running away type, though. Typical. Trust Beth to find her guy in a werewolf.
And Sarah had found hers in a…
No, don't think about it!
Her stomach lurched.
“Beth?” Holly thrust her keys at her. She still looked pale from the events of last night. “Are you okay to drive?”
“Yep!” Beth took the keys, they all waved goodbye to Amelia as she pulled away in the van, and then they piled into Holly's car. Beth let out a whistle as she turned on the ignition. “What a night!”
A night for you, a nightmare for me.
Sarah cursed her gloominess. She didn't want to bring Beth down, but it was hard when…
Don't think about it!
But she couldn't not think about it. Not any more.
She put on her seatbelt, and then folded her arms across her abdomen, trying not to see in her mind the way that monster – no, that Trident – had sniffed at her; had looked at her…
“Amil's a Trident, Sarah.”
This time the blinking couldn't stop a tear from escaping.
She watched the trees go by as they turned out of the path and onto a tarmacked road.
“He's a Trident.”
But that wasn't the worst bit.
No.
“We're not sure how it happened, because as far as we know, it's an impossibility, but scent doesn't lie. Your case is unique – The Trident mustn't find out. If you want Hendrickson to monitor you, he will. You'll have our protection whenever you need it.”
“Protection,” she repeated, numb all over.
“Yes. For both you, and the baby.”
~*~
Leaving Lydia's side had been bloody difficult this morning. Insanely difficult.
Taylor smiled as he dried off, and stepped into his clothes, underwear first. He put his jeans on next, and fastened the button. At his core, was a completion he'd never felt before. Since Lydia had shifted, something among the four of them – some dynamic he couldn't name – had also shifted; clicked into place. There was a strength, a solidity, that hadn't been there before and it felt fucking good.
He picked up his T-shirt.
There was a knock on his door.
“Come in.”
The door swung open to reveal Ryan's bulk on the other side. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Can I come in?”
“Already said yes.”
“Right.” He stepped inside, swinging the door half shut. “We haven't really had a proper chance to talk since the shit hit the fan. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I'm … feeling okay. Things are good. I mean, not for everyone. Poor Richard…”
Ryan's face darkened and he took a step closer. “Taylor … did she hurt you?”
Ah … he meant Selena. Inside, something deflated, although he didn't really want Ryan seeing it. “Just my ego.”
He looked up, met Ryan's eyes, then looked away again. “I trusted her, and I shouldn't have.”
“Fuck it, you didn't do anything wrong. If you can't trust your pack, who can you trust?”
“I ignored my instincts; I ignored my wolf. If I had just—”
“Don't stop being human, Taylor.”
Surprised, he looked up again, this time holding his gaze.
“It's hard for wolves to break away from the entrapment of need. And it's important to be reminded it's possible. We live closed lives, always inside our own pack, almost never integrating … it can blind us to the options that are out there for us.”
“Are there many options for unmated, twenty-five year old females?”
Ryan exhaled sharply. “Not many, I'm afraid. Or none. Shit – none of us knew the extent to which Selena was…” He faltered.
“Desperate. She was desperate. I despise her for hurting Lydia, but I can't find it in my heart to hate her. Not after…”
That sentence clung to air, unfinished. No one needed to finish it. The image of the Trident running off with her over his shoulder was bold enough.
“She hurt all of us, not just Lydia.”
“Yeah.”
“What about Sarah?”
“What about her?”
“She was here. She knows everything now, and,” Ryan studied him, carefully, “we all noticed her scent.”
Taylor sighed, and dropped his shirt on the bed. “I hear Lawrence offered her our help if she needs or wants it.”
Ryan nodded. “Yes, he has.”
“Good, because she deserves the best. But she's a strong woman – she'll deal. I loved Sarah. A part of me will always love Sarah, but I'm with Lydia now – I'm with her, one hundred percent. I'm with all three of you. It's like you said: everything's different now.”
The air thickened bet
ween them, the meaning of his words clear, and Taylor had to finally acknowledge it – this thing that was taking place between them; between all four of them: they were all mated. Lydia wasn't the only one he … felt for.
Ryan cleared his throat. “You've come a long way.”
“All four of us have. A bunch of unexpected things happened. I stopped trying to analyse them; stopped trying to get over them, and learned to let go instead.”
Ryan's mouth curved up in a half-smile. “Sounds like good advice.”
“It was. Delivery left a lot to be desired, though.”
“Hey.”
Taylor laughed.
“Right then,” he turned to leave, “as long as you're fine.”
“Hang on a sec.”
Ryan turned back.
“You going to tell us about those werewolves in white?” Much to Taylor's annoyance, he hadn't divulged much, if any, information about those white-robed dudes he'd brought back with him.
“They're my old pack – some of them.”
Taylor nodded, waiting for him to continue.
Ryan paused, giving his chin a rub. “They're … Druids.”
That's … not exactly what he had expected to hear, although he wasn't sure what he had expected. “Druids? You come from a pack of … Druid werewolves?”
“Something like that.”
“You gonna let me in a bit more than that?”
“No.”
Shit. That wounded him more than he'd been prepared for. What happened to 'there are four Alphas in this pack'? “Fine.” He made his way back to the bed, picked up his shirt and put it on.
“Taylor—”
“Everything's fine.”
“I love this pack. There's nothing I wouldn't do to ensure its safety.”
Collecting himself, he turned back to Ryan and smiled in understanding. “I know that.”
Another pause stretched out between them in which Taylor refused to lower his stare.
Ryan broke it first. “Good.” He turned and walked out the room, his words carrying down the hall after him. “'Cause that goes double for my mates.”
Chapter Eighteen
Freshly showered, and having reluctantly prised herself away from Ryan and Taylor, Lydia glanced out of the hallway window, phone to ear, waiting for him to pick up.
Seeing Selena's father in tatters had pressed her button. A big one. What did you have, if you didn't have family? It had been a wake-up call, and while the woman in her screamed in rage for her dad's silence all these years, the child in her just wanted to be his little girl once more.
Answering machine.
Damn.
She held her breath and waited for the beep.
“Dad … hi. It's me, Lydia.” Pause. “Are you still coming over this afternoon?”
Oh. Idiot. He's not there to answer. “I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing you. I … I want to see you. And I wanted to say, I'm sorry about how I was on the phone yesterday. You caught me at a bad time, and … I shouldn't have let stuff get to me.”
It was weird how the silence always sort of echoed back at you on the phone, like putting your ear against a sea shell…
“Okay, so, see you later.”
She hung up and placed her mobile on the sideboard under the window, feeling oddly sad.
Making her way to the bottom of the stairs on the second floor, she looked up towards Lawrence's room. Ryan and Taylor had said Lawrence wanted to see her. She wanted to see him, too.
But his door was open, and it was never open. She didn't know if she ought to be nervous about that.
She climbed the stairs. That scent of his seeped into her, as it always did, driving her need to be with him to new heights, perhaps also pronounced having just spent much required bonding time with Ryan and Taylor. Lawrence had sorely been missed.
Today, his scent was combined with the rather more feminine hint of roses.
Intrigued, she took each step faster until she stood outside the open door and gaped at what she saw: a trail of rose petals leading into his room, and a note on the floor a few steps in. An arrow was boldly drawn on it, along with Lawrence's scrawled writing:
More corny shit this way
>
A laugh erupted from her. With her pulse racing, she went to where the arrow pointed, towards the bed. More petals were scattered across the duvet and here she found the photo frame that she'd dropped. The glass inside had been replaced, but that wasn't all. The photograph of Lawrence and his sister had been swapped for one of Lydia. She recognised it – Taylor had taken it two weeks back when they had been larking about, trying to get her to feel more at home at the mansion.
Tears sprang to her eyes.
She picked it up and spied another note underneath it.
Some things are supposed to break
so you can learn to let them go.
^
Another arrow pointed upwards. Her eyes followed the rose petals until they landed on…
“Oh … Lawrence…”
There was no longer one pillow taking up the top centre of the mattress – there were two, side by side. Yet more petals decorated the one on the right with note number three resting on top of them all.
She swallowed back the lump in her throat, collected herself, and reached for it.
Our home,
our bed,
our pack.
I won't shut the door again.
Look in the wardrobe.
Leaving the photo frame on the bed, she went to the wardrobe and pulled the door open. At her feet on the floor, lay a shoe box with a pink ribbon around it. Like a kid at Christmas, she fell to her knees, cradled the box and tugged at the ribbon as fast as her fingers would allow.
It was padded full of white tissue, and on the very top was a key with a tag attached. She carefully picked it up and read the tag: The Dance Studio, Erika Gunvald Theatre.
“Oh, my god!”
This was the key to the dance studio – the dance studio – at the theatre, and … he was giving it to her?
Her heart hammered in her chest as she looked back down at the box – way too big for just a key. Fingers trembling at the force of her emotion, she pulled out the wads of tissue and there, underneath them all, were…
A small sob tumbled from her lips. She could no longer hold the tears back.
Reaching into the box, she took out the pair of ballet slippers and cradled them to her chest, sobs becoming quiet wails, ten years of loss hammering at her own shut door, demanding it be thrown wide open.
A final note lay at the bottom of the box.
You're not allowed to have legs and not use them.
Dance.
(P.T.O.)
She turned it over.
Run to me.
She had shifted before she even knew it, her wolf and her, one entity, and riding on the urgency in her heart to connect with her mate – he who infuriated her; he who had been cut; who had cut her; the one to whom she'd given all of herself on an act of faith; who had risen to the challenge and given her back much more.
She raced out of the open door, down the stairs, out the house and into the wood towards the lake – that's where he'd be – that was his safe place.
She couldn't get there fast enough.
Left at the oak tree, through the hedge … she could smell the lake, and it smelled like Lawrence. He smelled like home.
The field dropped away at the end of the path and she knew that she'd reached it. Another small path to the left, heading downwards, carried his scent.
She hurried down it, going slower this time as it was so steep, keeping nose to ground so she wouldn't veer away from her destination. It took fucking forever, but eventually, the path petered out onto level ground and widened until she was standing at the foot of what looked like a quarry, pine trees rising up along its steep walls at every angle she looked.
A pair of prosthetic legs lay to her left, high up on the bank. Murky green water stretched o
ut in front of her and … there he was.
Lawrence front-crawled towards a rock, where he finally stopped, using it as support.
Riding that split-second, euphoric pain she was getting used to fast, she shifted back into her human body and jumped into the lake from the shallow bank, using her legs to propel her forward until the lake bed grew deep enough for swimming.
She dove, and swam towards Lawrence.
He greeted her with a small smile, and a slightly pensive look.
Oh, no you don't – no more crappy smiles.
She launched herself into his one free arm, careful not to dislodge the other from its hold on the rock; her lips found his and she wrapped her legs around his hips.
He moaned into her mouth.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I meant it. I meant every word I wrote.”
“I know. Thank you.” Her kisses landed on his cheeks, his chin, his brow… “So, this is your safe place?”
His smile widened. “It's the one thing I can do better as a man than a wolf – even as half a man.”
“Swim?”
“Yeah.”
“Not the only thing…” They both groaned when she squeezed his growing erection between her thighs.
“I need you, Lawrence … I need you inside me.” Simple words, but they carried a truth too deep to articulate. They hadn't joined for days. “I missed you last night.”
“I wanted to be with you – by god, I did – but I had to make sure the pack was all right, as well as our impromptu visitors, and Pete, then the clean-up operation … and I knew you had Ryan and Taylor. Last night's full moon was the last thing I wanted for your first change. I'd already taken down four Tridents after I told you to run, and then I saw the storm and I knew you were in trouble. I wanted nothing more than to spend last night with you – I was—”