Alex’s eyes widened. “You made her a werewolf so they could be together?”
Julian shrugged. “Why not?”
“I insisted,” Rose said. “So did Joe. Without each other eternal life would have been hell.”
“It didn’t bother you that another human being would give their life for your immortality?”
Rose frowned. “Of course it bothered me. But Julian took care of that. He found a very—”
“Bad man,” Alex finished, staring at Julian all the while.
“Yes!” Rose agreed. “I’ll always be grateful to him for assuring that Joe and I would be together forever.” She grasped Julian’s hand and squeezed it. “But we discovered that being soul mates as humans meant we were mates as werewolves.”
“What does that mean?” Alex asked, her voice a little louder than necessary. Neither Joe nor Rose had ever been deaf, and they certainly wouldn’t be anymore.
“Wolves mate for life, child. Some humans do, too. And when you have humans that are soul mates and werewolves that are mates, you have the strongest bond of all.”
“I tried once to leave her,” Joe said. “Just-a to go to wine country and choose a few places to do business with. Before I even reached the cave where we rest, my stomach cramped. I could-a not move. I thought that I would die of the pain.” He gazed at Rose, everything he felt evident on his face. “I have never tried to leave her again.”
“Why would you want to?” Rose murmured, and kissed him.
“This is nuts,” Alex murmured. “I don’t even like you.”
Rose tsked. “That’s not true!”
Alex stood so close to Julian he could touch her, yet his stomach roiled and his head ached. That he wanted to touch her, would apparently always want to, was no doubt the cause.
“How did you know you were soul mates?” he asked.
“From the first moment we met, we knew there was something special between us,” Rose said.
“Love at first sight?” Alex let out a relieved breath. “That definitely wasn’t us.”
“No.” Joe laughed, the sound as joyous as his songs. “Not love at first sight. At first sight we fought like cats in a sack.”
“But the passion,” Rose murmured, staring into Joe’s eyes. “Whenever we touched…”
“Sex happened,” Alex finished.
“That’s amore.” Joe spread his arms wide, and Rose walked into them.
“Faet!” Julian said.
“Got that right,” Alex agreed.
After a brief hug, Rose faced them. “What brought this up?”
Julian glanced at Cade, but his brother still didn’t appear inclined to speak. “Cade did an experiment. Trying to figure out why Alex and I are so—” He searched for a word.
“Fucked,” Alex muttered, and he scowled.
Rose did, too, or at least her face creased into an expression that was the closest she ever came to one. “I don’t understand, child. The mate bond is a gift even greater than the one Julian’s already given you.”
“Given.” She snorted. “Yeah.”
Rose’s frown deepened. “A love like this will never go away.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Alex straightened her shoulders. “And it isn’t love.”
“It will be,” Rose said.
They weren’t getting anywhere, and there were still a few things Julian needed to know. “You’re saying that if Alex and I were human we’d be soul mates?” Rose and Joe both nodded like bobble-headed dolls. “But what if we never met?”
“Soul mates always meet. It’s fate.”
Considering that Julian had been a Viking while human—centuries ago, before Alex had even been born—he had a problem with that theory.
“What if he’d never made her a wolf?” Cade asked.
Everyone glanced in his direction as if they’d forgotten he was there.
“Becoming werewolves allowed the mate connection to be born.” Rose beamed at Julian like he’d done it on purpose.
Julian’s stomach began to burn as if he’d suddenly sprung a very bad ulcer. “So if I’d left her human, there’d have been no connection?”
“Why-a do you think I insisted on making Rose like me?” Joe asked.
Julian could have sworn the ulcer began to bleed.
“With me human,” Rose said, “and Joe a werewolf, the connection began to fade almost immediately.”
“How do you know this stuff?” Alex demanded.
Joe shrugged and looked at Rose. Rose shrugged and looked at Julian. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Julian growled, causing the older woman’s eyes to widen. “Sorry,” he said. “But I’ve never heard of this. And Cade’s never seen a reaction like he saw with us—” He flicked his finger between Alex and himself before setting his hand on his aching gut. “And you two.”
“What reaction?”
Quickly Julian explained what had happened with the blood hopping.
“I’d like-a to see that!” Joe exclaimed.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Alex muttered. “It was creepy.”
“If you think about it,” Rose said, “that makes sense. The mate bond is part of what we are. It’s a connection in the blood.”
“So there’s no way that Cade can cure it?” Alex asked.
Rose and Joe frowned. “Why would he want to?”
Alex opened her mouth to recite a laundry list of reasons, but snapped it shut again when Cade turned from the window, one brow lifted as he waited on her reaction. She decided to save comments of a more personal nature until she had Barlow alone.
“Why didn’t you know this?” she asked instead. “You and Alana—”
Rose and Joe gasped. Cade winced. Julian’s upper lip lifted in a snarl, and he bolted from the room.
Whoops.
“What’d I say?”
“When Alana left,” Cade murmured, “he didn’t know she was gone for days.”
“What? How could that be?”
“They had a fight. He thought she went to her grandmother’s. By the time he checked on her, she was dead.”
Now Alex winced. Luckily the others believed it was in sympathy and not guilt.
Guilt? Since when?
“I don’t understand,” Alex said. “If Alana left the village, why didn’t Julian know it in his gut?”
“Because Alana wasn’t his mate.” Rose stared at the open door through which Barlow had disappeared. “You are.”
“Oh, that’s gonna go over really well,” Alex muttered.
Silence settled over the room. No one seemed to know what to say or do.
“We should get back to the café,” Rose murmured. “If that’s okay?”
It took Alex a moment to realize that Rose had directed the question at her. “I—uh—Sure.” She shrugged and looked at Cade.
He waited until the older couple left before answering. “You’re the alpha’s mate.”
“So I hear. Why are they asking me if they can leave the room?”
“That makes you the second in command.”
“Fantabulous,” she muttered.
Cade’s gaze went distant. “It explains why you could resist his commands. Mates are equals.”
Alex didn’t feel equal. She felt cursed.
“And also why you could touch Julian’s wolves and they could touch you without the inevitable headache.”
“Why?”
Alex wasn’t sure she cared, but listening to Cade was better than listening to the voice in her head, which kept screaming that she was in big trouble.
“The mate bond must have given you the same link to Julian’s wolves that he has. Like Rose said, a connection in the blood. It’s the only explanation.”
“Glad we got that sorted out.” Alex’s stomach was starting to roll. She felt a little dizzy. “Is it hot in here?”
Her forehead had gone clammy. She stepped onto the landing and took several gulps of the chill Arctic wind.
Cade came up
behind her. “Julian must have run pretty far this time.”
“What?” Alex wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Why?”
“You’re getting sick.” He stared at her as if he’d like to open her up and see what lay inside. “Fascinating. We don’t get sick.”
“Speak for yourself,” Alex said, and puked over the railing.
Since she hadn’t eaten since yesterday, she didn’t puke much. Which only made things worse.
“You’d better come back to the lab.” Cade helped her down the stairs. Alex felt so shitty she let him.
She tried to walk as if she weren’t drunk off her ass, but it wasn’t easy. Several of the locals gave her strange looks as she and Cade weaved past.
Ella was just pulling up in front of her house on what appeared to be, considering the dent in the fender, George’s snowmobile. She took one look at Alex and cried out, “What’s the matter?”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’ll take her.” Ella reached for Alex.
Cade didn’t let go. “She can stay with me.”
“She lives with me.” Ella pulled on Alex’s arm.
“Not a wishbone,” Alex murmured, and tugged free. “What are you doing here?”
Ella’s face was a mask of concern and at first she only stared blankly at Alex. Then Alex snapped her fingers in front of Ella’s nose. “I didn’t think you’d come home until tonight.” She’d said as much when they’d left her at Jorund’s yesterday.
“Oh!” Understanding filled Ella’s dark eyes. “There was another murder.”
Alex cursed. “We’re gonna run out of villagers.”
“Not a villager. A deliveryman I expected from Juneau. When he didn’t show this morning, I went searching for him and—” Ella winced. “I found him.”
“A dead deliveryman is going to raise a few questions.”
“You think?” Ella muttered, and Alex would have smiled if she weren’t afraid that would set off another bout of puking. The more Alex was around Ella, the better she liked her.
“We’re going to have to camp out in the Inuit village,” Alex said.
“I can do that,” Ella murmured.
Alex managed to navigate Ella’s porch steps. She used the door to steady herself as she turned. “Thanks, Cade. Maybe you’d better find Julian.”
He didn’t appear happy to let her go, but he nodded. “I’ll drag him back here; then you’ll feel fine.”
Alex didn’t think she’d ever feel fine again, but she did her best to smile before she went inside.
She barely made it to the bathroom before she tossed her cookies again. Too bad she didn’t have any cookies to toss. She’d never been a big fan of the dry heaves.
Ella came in behind her, leaning over and pulling Alex’s hair up and out of the way. Then she turned on the water in the sink. An instant later a cold cloth pressed onto the back of Alex’s neck. Nothing had ever felt so good.
“What’s going on?” Ella asked.
Alex flushed the toilet, stepped past Ella, who shuffled into the hall to give her room, then washed her face and rinsed with mouthwash. When her gaze met Ella’s in the mirror, the Frenchwoman arched a brow, and Alex told her everything.
“Mates,” Ella murmured. “Hmm.”
“That’s all you can say? I’m stuck here forever, unless I want to throw up until my insides are on my outside. Talk about a curse and a prison.”
“Calm yourself, mon amie. Is it so bad to have a man like Julian as your mate?”
In truth, Alex wasn’t that upset. She wondered if being sick until she had no sick left to be had put her in a state of shock—or perhaps just the news had.
“A love like that is not something that comes along every day.”
“It isn’t love,” Alex said, although what love was she couldn’t quite say.
“Are you sure?” Ella asked. “Didn’t you find it odd that you felt ill every time he went too far away? Considering that we don’t get ill?”
“I didn’t,” Alex said. “Until today.”
“Not even when he left you the first time, after he made you?”
It appeared that Ella not only knew the truth about Alex, but the truth about every damn thing.
“He left you when we are like babies, and we should never be left.” From Ella’s expression she wished Julian were there right now so she could kick him. Alex wished he were there right now so she could see it.
“I was busy shape-shifting,” Alex said. “I felt like my skin was going to explode.”
“Then it did,” Ella murmured.
“My stomach was the least of my worries.”
“Come.” Ella beckoned. “You need to lie down.”
Since Alex did need to, she followed the Frenchwoman into the bedroom where she tossed her clothes and crawled beneath the quilt.
“You should sleep now.” Ella sat on the side of the bed and brushed Alex’s hair away from her face with a cool, gentle hand, and Alex felt a flicker of memory. Someone sitting on her bed, touching her face—a cool hand against her fevered brow.
Mama?
The childish voice—hers—made Alex blink. She had few memories of her mother. She’d been so young when Janet died; then Charlie had packed Alex up and taken her away, leaving every memento behind. Once in a while, she got flashes—like now—but in truth they were becoming more rare as time went on. She wondered if the same thing would happen to her memories of Charlie. God, she hoped not. If she lost those, she’d be completely alone.
“You feel any better?” Ella asked.
Alex nodded. Maybe Barlow was back.
And the rush of warmth that followed that thought made her dizzy again. She closed her eyes as Ella slipped out.
She hated this. Alex had rarely been sick in her life, and she wasn’t supposed to be sick at all while a werewolf.
“Call it a perk,” she murmured.
What was she going to do about this bizarre development? How could she ever leave Barlowsville if leaving made her so sick she couldn’t move?
Although…If she could make it to Edward and partake of the Jäger-Sucher cure, wouldn’t that make this all go away?
Or she could man up, stick to her original plan, and kill him, though that option was becoming less and less appealing.
How did you put a bullet into the brain of someone you’d slept with? It couldn’t be that easy.
Hell, it shouldn’t be that easy.
Chapter 24
Despite her roiling mind and equally roiling stomach, Alex fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. The last time she’d slept like that, she’d been in Julian’s arms.
Eventually, the nagging thought that there was something she needed to do, somewhere she needed to be, someone she needed to see, penetrated, and Alex fought her way to the surface. She’d never been so bone-deep tired.
Ebony velvet darkness floated around her. She had no idea what time it was, even what day it was. Her mind was fuzzy; her mouth tasted like dirt, and her stomach was so damn empty. She lifted her head, and the darkness spun.
“Bad idea,” she said, reaching out to touch the bedside lamp.
Light flooded the room, revealing a sliver of gray at the edge of the curtains, which, around here in the land of eternal twilight, did nothing to help her figure out how long she’d been asleep.
She caught the scent of salt and flour, and her stomach rumbled. When she turned her head, she discovered that someone—Ella—had left her a package of saltines and a note.
Eat these BEFORE you get out of bed.
Considering the state of her belly, who was she to argue? Alex devoured the entire package without dropping a single crumb. Amazingly, when she lifted her head this time, the world stayed right where it belonged.
“Ella, you’re a genius,” she muttered, dragging herself to the shower.
Twenty minutes and a cup of tea—the idea of coffee brought the nausea back—later, Alex was dressed and out the door. She’d stop by Juli
an’s house, see if he was there. Though if he was, would she have awoken so dizzy?
“I’m fine now,” she said. If talking to herself was fine.
The clock in Ella’s kitchen had read just after noon, which meant Alex had slept for two hours. Unless she’d slept for twenty-six.
The sky was cloudy. Since the sun made an appearance only a few hours each day, cloudy just wasn’t fair. But the moon would rise in another few, and perhaps by then the clouds would be gone. The thought that she and Julian might run together beneath those silver rays brought a lightness to her heart that Alex didn’t want to examine. She had enough to worry about.
Alex knocked on Barlow’s door. Several minutes later she knocked again. She was deliberating moving on to Cade’s place—maybe his brother had found him and taken him there instead—when she lifted her nose and sniffed.
Snow and trees, his distinctive scent, and it was coming from inside. Too strong to be anything but Barlow. Without a second thought, Alex turned the knob and went in.
She searched the entire house without finding him. But every time she walked past the living room, the smell became sharper. Finally, she just followed her nose.
The scent intensified near the large leather chair. Right next to it stood a squat, glass-topped end table, in the center a picture frame that hadn’t been there before. Alex didn’t need to turn on the lamp to see that the picture in the frame was of Alana. She turned the lamp on anyway. All the gloom was starting to get to her.
“I know you’re here,” she said to the empty room.
The room stayed empty.
“I’ll stay until you have a brain aneurysm from the anger it takes to keep that invisibility bubble up and running.” Nothing. “Come on, Julian,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”
Slowly he materialized. First a mere shadow—there, gone, there again—then more and more solid until he was so close she could reach out and touch. But she didn’t.
His back to her, his gaze remained on Alana’s face. “I didn’t know she left,” he said. “If I’d gone after her right away, I could have stopped her.”
The pain in his voice made Alex’s throat tighten, but she made herself ask. She needed to know. “Why did she leave?”
He reached out and ran a fingertip down the glass, right over the smiling woman’s cheek. “She needed something from me that I couldn’t give her.”
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