“I’m going out for some air,” she announced, having tucked the cigarettes in the pocket of the university hoodie. No one bothered to turn around.
Kiara stuffed her feet into a pair of Deanna’s flats and left. She was glad that Deanna had suggested she use the headset with the phone—no way she’d have held it up to her ear for as long as she’d had to wait. And her hands were free, which was perfect, she thought as she jogged down the stairs and pushed out into the street.
The downpour had stopped. Kiara tapped a cigarette free from the pack and lifted it to her lips before she reached into the hoodie’s pocket and fished around for the—
“Shit.”
“Forget something?” Ryn appeared behind her and held out a lighter. Kiara sighed and took it from her.
“Thank you.” She pulled out one of the earbuds.
“No problem.” Ryn lifted her hands up and stretched, groaning. “It’s good to get out. No offense to your friends—our friends, whatever—and the change of scenery is nice, but I’m sick of being in a room with five other people and a dog for the fourth day in a row.”
Kiara nodded and toyed with the lighter. “Are you okay?”
Ryn shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly.” She bent, touched her toes. “I don’t know what to make of this whole ‘pack’ thing.”
“You don’t have to make anything of it.” Kiara scuffed her shoe against the sidewalk and tried not to let Ryn see how nervous she was. “It doesn’t have to mean anything—not if you don’t want it to.”
Ryn turned her head to look at Kiara. “What if I want it to mean something?” she asked softly.
A flicker of hope replaced the knot that had existed in Kiara’s chest since the moment she’d seen Ryn on that stage. “Do you?”
“Yeah.” Ryn straightened and moved toward Kiara. “You left your pack for me. Your family. That’s gotta mean something, right?”
“Well.” Kiara swallowed, her mouth going dry. “Jamie and Cole came with me, so I didn’t really leave—”
“You did.” Ryn took Kiara’s hand, laced their fingers together. “And this new pack—we can build it ourselves, right? Make it what we want it to be?”
Kiara nodded, unable to take her eyes away from their joined hands. It was ridiculous, really. Hours before—had it only been that?—they’d been as close as two people could be. But somehow that closeness paled in comparison to what she was feeling now. Her chest ached as the love she’d never stopped feeling for Ryn slowly escaped the vault she’d locked it in.
“Then let’s make it a good one. And get it off to a good start.” Ryn lowered her head, and Kiara tilted up her chin, and the kiss when their lips met was so soft that Kiara thought they might just be melting together.
They were slammed apart. The force was enough that Kiara crashed onto the sidewalk with the breath driven from her lungs. She lay there, stunned, and gasped for air. Her forearms stung, their flesh skinned bloody, but she could already feel them healing. It took longer, an eternity, before she was able to draw in a breath, and when it finally hit she rolled over to her side, coughing so hard tears spilled down her cheeks.
Ryn had been thrown to the ground as well, and when Kiara lifted her head she saw Ryn pinned down while a brown werewolf, his fur grizzled white around his muzzle, snapped viciously at her throat. Ryn had her hands around his neck, and her forearms shook as she tried to hold him back.
Kiara didn’t bother to shift. She was on her feet in one fluid motion and dug her hands into the thick ruff on the wolf’s neck. He snarled and twisted his head toward her as she hauled him off of Ryn. He was three times her size, and his weight far exceeded Kiara’s, but she had no trouble throwing him against the side of the building.
He was on his feet again in a second. Ryn struggled to hers, and Kiara placed herself in front of Ryn.
Quit protecting her. His ice-blue eyes gleamed in the darkness.
“She’s mine to protect.” Power coursed through Kiara and the promise of terrifying strength itched in her gums and tingled in the tips of her fingers.
She’s dangerous. The lone ones are going to bring us down. They put us at risk. He wove in front of them, holding them at bay and away from the building’s door.
“You’re putting us at risk right now. Anyone could see you.” Ryn stepped up beside Kiara. She balanced on the balls of her feet and lowered into a crouch.
His hackles rose, and bared teeth gleamed in the streetlight. This is your last chance, girl. Either you let me have her, or you go down with her.
Kiara’s laugh was a knife-edge. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll be the ones going down.”
He let out a furious growl and charged for her. His mouth wide, his breath hot and wet against her face, she swung a clenched fist against the side of his muzzle. Fangs broke with the impact. The skin on her knuckles split as she grabbed for his throat with her other hand. He snarled and twisted out of her grip before he turned on a dime and lunged at Ryn.
Ryn was ready. She spun and kicked him full in the face; her blow landed in the same place as Kiara’s. This time when he fell it was with a high-pitched whine; blood dripped from his mouth and none of it theirs.
“Give it up, old man.” Kiara’s hand had already healed. His teeth probably wouldn’t.
Give her up.
“You missed a memo,” Kiara taunted. The longer this went on, the more certain she was that Davis was acting without GNAAW approval. The organization would never sanction an attack as a werewolf in the middle of the city—not even on a street like Deanna and Jamie’s, which was relatively quiet. “Are they not keeping you in the loop like they used to?”
There obviously hadn’t been time to talk to GNAAW, to let them know about Kiara’s new pack, but Davis didn’t have to know that.
His nose wrinkled, his growl deepened as he flattened his ears against his head and angled toward Ryn again.
“She’s not a lone wolf anymore; she’s pack now, asshole. My pack.”
You don’t have a pack. His disdain was obvious. You need four. I only see two. He gathered himself, his muscles bunched under his thick brown pelt.
“I guess we could go back inside.” Cole stood at the top of the building’s front steps. Jamie was silhouetted in the light from the lobby behind him and had her phone in her hand, filming. “But I think GNAAW is going to be interested in the footage we can show them.”
You’re children. You have no right.
Kiara decided she’d had enough of Davis. “I have every right.” She leapt forward and locked her arms around his throat. He struggled under her, tried to buck her off and then roll. She held fast, tightened her grip until she could feel the frantic beat of his heart slow. It took longer than she would have liked, but eventually his legs gave out and he dropped to the ground. She held on, making sure he was really unconscious, before she released him and stood.
“Dude.” Jamie shook her head. “What the hell?”
The phone, which Kiara had lost when Davis crashed into them, suddenly ceased blaring its tinny hold music from the speakers.
“Thank you for your patience. This is the GNAAW emergency line. Mallory speaking—how may I help you?”
“You wanna grab that?” Kiara asked Cole. He nodded and hurried down the steps.
“Hi, Mallory,” he said, turning away. “This is Cole Lyons here in Vancouver, and we’ve got a bit of a situation with one of your reps…”
“What do we do with him now?” Ryn kicked, none-too-gently, at Davis’ side. He’d slowly reverted to his human form, and lay sprawled naked on the concrete. “We’re sort of… conspicuous.”
Kiara rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t know. I’ve only been the Alpha for three hours. Give me a bit of time to adjust.”
Jamie tucked her phone in her pants and jogged down the stairs. “The boiler room in this building
is in the basement and solid concrete with a steel door. We can stick him in there until GNAAW can come get him, assuming that’s within the next few hours.”
“Somehow I think they’ll want this cleaned up ASAP.”
It took three of them to haul Davis downstairs. Each them could have carried his weight on their own, but none of them were particularly excited about having to drape his naked body over their backs.
“Seriously, though, you get that this is embarrassing.” Nathan had come downstairs and volunteered to hold the doors open. He was still squinty-eyed without his glasses, but seemed to have no qualms about mocking them for what he could see.
“Do you want to help carry?” Ryn asked. She held one of Davis’ legs as far in front of her as she could. Jamie had picked up his other leg, and Kiara held his wrists as they maneuvered him down the staircase.
“You look like you’ve got it.” Nathan pressed against the concrete wall as they passed him. “Do we have an ETA on the actual, official GNAAW folks, or is Deanna going to have an angry, naked man in her basement for the rest of the night?”
“It’s my basement, too.” They made it into the boiler room, and Jamie dropped the rep to the ground with zero regard for his comfort.
“Also, isn’t he going to wake up? That magical healing thing isn’t going to kick in any second?”
Kiara shrugged. “We’ll just knock him out again.” Though Nathan did have a point—she’d been planning to leave Davis there and simply lock the door, but if he did wake up before GNAAW arrived, it was unlikely that he’d just sit quietly and wait to be picked up by the werewolf authorities. And she did not want to have to explain to Jamie and Deanna’s neighbors why a screaming, naked man was locked in their boiler room
Jamie looked at her, and Kiara sighed. “Fine, all right? I’ll stay with him.” GNAAW had better get here soon.
“I’ll stay too.”
Kiara looked at Ryn with surprise.
“What?” Ryn shrugged. “I don’t trust this asshole not to pull some more shit. And yeah, yeah—” she cut off Kiara’s protest before Kiara had fully formed it, “I know you could deal with him yourself. But you don’t have to. So I’ll stay.”
“Great!” Nathan clapped his hands. “Sounds like an A-plus plan. Now that everything here has been sorted out, I’m going to have your handsome brother escort me home. As you may have noticed—” He gestured at his face. “I’m in need of a Seeing Eye dog.”
“Cole’s going to love being called that,” Kiara said dryly. “Maybe pick a better term.”
“Oh, no, I wanna see his face.” Jamie snickered and ushered Nathan out the door.
“So.” Kiara sat with her back against the closed door.
“So,” Ryn agreed. She slid down the wall and tucked her feet under Kiara’s thigh.
Kiara picked at her chipped nail polish. “You don’t have to date me.” The words left a chalky aftertaste. “I mean, to be in my pack or whatever. I don’t want you to feel like that’s part of the deal. Because it isn’t. You can not date me. You can date other people. You don’t have to do anything… you don’t have to earn my protection. I want to be clear about that.” She was pretty sure that Ryn’s kiss outside hadn’t been coerced, or from a sense of obligation, but she needed to be certain.
“Okay.” Ryn nodded. “Thank you for saying that.”
Kiara swallowed and picked off another flake of polish. She’d respect Ryn’s choice.
“But if I want to date you…?” Ryn leaned forward. “What if.” She licked her lips in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness. “What if I wanted to try again?”
Kiara fought against the swell of hope in her chest; every instinct urged her against a display of emotion and vulnerability. Except—that had been the problem the first time around. She’d expected Ryn to be able to read her mind, to know how Kiara felt even when Kiara refused over and over again to demonstrate it. She’d loved Ryn, loved her with her whole heart and soul, but hadn’t been able to say so, not explicitly.
If they were going to try again, really try, Kiara was going to have to get over herself and her hang-ups and make a real effort to communicate. She owed it to Ryn and she owed it to herself.
Her silence must have gone on too long, because Ryn drew her feet back, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arm around them. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “It’s fine if you don’t want that.”
“No.” Kiara gripped Ryn’s hand. “I do, I do want that. I really want it, Ryn. I’ve wanted it since I saw you at Kings of Hearts. Hell,” she broke off into a laugh that was dangerously watery. “I’ve wanted that since I left you in the first place.”
“I thought you’d come back,” Ryn confessed. “I didn’t leave the apartment for three days. I was so sure you’d stomp back in any minute, and I didn’t want to miss you when you did.”
Kiara dropped her forehead on top of their joined hands. “I almost did. I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes out on the front step that second day, trying to get up the nerve to go inside. But I just… I was dumb, it was dumb, but I couldn’t bear to admit to you that I was wrong, that I shouldn’t have left.”
“Well, I mean, I did throw a book at your head. So I can’t really blame you.”
“Yeah. But you missed, at least.” They were both werewolves; if Ryn had wanted to hit Kiara in the face with Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Fate, she would have.
“God, we were fuckups.” Ryn stroked Kiara’s head with her free hand. “I loved you so much I didn’t know what to do about it. I just… was so terrified that it was going to change me. I couldn’t let you know what I felt. I couldn’t allow you that kind of power over me.”
“We were kids. We didn’t know what we were doing and we didn’t know how to do it without hurting each other.”
“We’re not kids now.” Ryn slid her hand down Kiara’s cheek and lifted her chin up. She leaned over, and the kiss was soft and sweet and aching. A slow heat infused her bones and rushed hot to the surface of her skin.
Davis groaned, and they pulled apart like two teenagers caught making out at the movies.
Kiara rubbed a hand over her mouth. Her lips still tingled. “Um, maybe let’s wait until GNAAW gets here.”
Ryn nodded and scooted over so that she sat beside Kiara. Kiara let her head drop to Ryn’s shoulder, and Ryn took her hand in both of hers.
Chapter Twenty-Four |
Kiara rubbed a hand over her tired eyes. “Did you know there’d be this much paperwork?” she asked Cole.
He looked up from the other side of the kitchen table, where he’d been chewing on the tip of his pen and frowning at the stack of paper in front of him. “I didn’t,” he said. “I have to do a lot of paperwork at my job, but this is just… ridiculous.”
“And why does it all have to be actual paper?” Kiara complained. “I mean, why can’t we do it online? Isn’t this the age of the Internet?”
“Information. Information Age,” Cole corrected while writing something on the form he was working on.
“Whatever. And like, headshots? I don’t have a headshot.”
“We can take one, or pull it off Facebook, whatever.”
“And did you know we have to send a fur sample? For each of us!”
Cole pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I think I saw that somewhere. I guess it makes sense.”
“None of this makes sense,” Kiara grumbled.
“Having second thoughts?” He looked up; his eyes showed his concern.
“Maybe. No,” Kiara corrected. “Not really. But—I didn’t expect that it would be so much work to formalize our pack. I mean, the Huntsmen just needed the symbology.” She gestured at her neck.
“The Huntsmen aren’t exactly on the same scale as GNAAW. I don’t think.”
“True,” Kiara allowed. There was silence again as they
focused on the work. Outside, rain pounded against the windows of their tenth-floor apartment and obscured the view of False Creek and Vancouver’s downtown across the water.
Kiara filled out forms, created an outline for the personal essay explaining why, exactly, she wanted to be Alpha of her own pack—she would also need letters from her three supporters explaining their reasons for backing her—and started on another stack of forms.
She and Cole hadn’t been lying when they told Ryn that forming a pack was fairly easy—it was—getting the pack formally recognized by GNAAW was the time suck. And even then, it wasn’t as though GNAAW didn’t already recognize their new pack, but to receive the “full benefits” of the Assembly, they had to do the paperwork.
Kiara was beginning to hate paperwork.
“Do you know Jamie’s blood type?” She leaned across the table and tapped her pen against Cole’s forearm. He was slumped over the page in front of him and blinked groggily at her.
“No?”
“Seriously?” Kiara shook her head. “You’re a paramedic. Shouldn’t you know that kind of thing?”
Cole scowled. “I know stuff. I could set your broken leg or deliver your baby. I just… don’t know Jamie’s blood type.” He shifted the focus from himself. “Does GNAAW really need to know that?”
“Apparently.” Kiara threw down her pen. “Next thing they’re gonna want to know is what six-year-old me wanted to be when I grew up.”
“Well, that’s easy, and I’m sure they won’t judge. I mean, doesn’t every little girl dream about being a fighter jet pilot?”
“Shut up.” Kiara balled up a scrap of lined paper and threw it at him. “It’s not my fault Mom was obsessed with Top Gun for like a year.”
“You wanted your call sign to be ‘Duck-Duck,’” Cole remembered, laughing. “’Cause you thought you and Goose were going to be best friends.”
Kiara scrubbed at an imaginary stain on the table. “Mom always made me stop watching before he died. You should have seen how upset I was when I turned thirteen and finally watched the whole thing. I cried for days.”
Huntsmen (The Better to Kiss You With Book 2) Page 17