by Tasha Black
The car.
No - the SUV.
Draven…
It came crashing back to him like a wave on a beach full of broken glass.
He felt the energy skitter across his skin, unbidden, but he opened his eyes before it went any further.
Oh.
He was lying on his side in the back of his own Jeep, his head wedged awkwardly against the door.
A streetlight sped past in the darkness.
He sat up fast enough to smack his head against the ceiling.
“Morning sunshine,” Darcy’s voice rang back to him from the driver’s seat.
Darcy?
He’d never been happier to hear someone’s voice.
Luke sat belted into the passenger seat. He peered back at Finn worriedly.
Finn tried to blink away the cobwebs and reassure the boy.
He took quick inventory of himself. His head throbbed, and his tongue felt like a wool sock someone had used to clean a chalkboard. Otherwise he felt okay.
“Here,” Darcy said, handing him a large, fast-food drink cup. “We hit a drive through. I thought you’d need this.”
He took a long pull and the sugary-sweetness made his back teeth ache. He coughed, sputtering droplets down his shirt. Smooth move.
But Darcy was right. The drink was melting away the cotton candy stuck in his head.
Finn took another long sip, more carefully this time. Then he dared to open his mouth.
“How long was I out?” he rasped, sounding like his two-packs-a-day granda.
“Couple hours,” Darcy said matter-of-factly.
“Hours?” he asked, peering out the window. It was too dark to see much except trees. A lot of trees. “What happened? Where are we?”
“We’re fine,” she answered. “On our way to a secret little spot I set up.”
A third gulp of soda and his head was on straight enough to pay attention. Details started to come back to him.
Draven.
The ambush.
The dart.
No. The darts.
“You got hit, too,” he blurted. “How come you didn’t go down?”
“Must have missed the vein or whatever,” Darcy shrugged. But she didn’t sound too convincing.
Finn pushed his memory back.
A flash of silver, a dart in his neck, a dart in her arm. He had fallen, she had stepped in front of the boy…
And then there was that growl. That huge shape.
“What the hell was that… thing that took Draven down?” he demanded.
“Oh,” she said lightly. “That was just my old history teacher.”
“What?” he asked, thinking the drugs must not have worn off yet. “I though you said—”
“—It’s kind of a long story. I’ll fill you in on everything when we get there. For now, just rest,” she told him firmly.
“How can I rest at a time like this? I might never rest again,” he groused.
But she was wearing her cooler face, the one that said she couldn’t be bargained with.
Knowing he was beaten, Finn put the cup in the console holder, and leaned back. He might as well try and conserve his strength.
The boy peeked at him again and gave him a tentative smile.
Finn smiled back and winked. The effort exhausted him, so he decided to rest his eyes for a second.
As the world receded, he decided he didn’t mind falling asleep again. He was in good hands.
14
Darcy sliced a fat tomato on the wooden cutting board. Juice and seeds oozed out enticingly. Luke watched every movement of knife on tomato from his perch on the stool across from her.
At first she had pushed bits of what she was preparing to him, thinking he was watching her prepare the food because he was hungry. But he hadn’t shown much interest in snacking.
She was left to conclude that he was following her movements intently because he was afraid she might leave him. Because he had been abandoned and abused before.
Darcy wasn’t much for crying, but the idea of it brought a lump to her throat.
Well, she wasn’t going to let anything else happen to him. And they were certainly in a safe place, at least for now.
She hoped that feeling safe would help him relax enough that he could communicate again.
Soft light filled the A-frame cabin, making the pine floors glow. It smelled like wood fires, which reminded her of home though she’d never been here before. This place was Derek’s, from a time when his success was new and he’d bought vacation homes all over the country. When he realized he was more the indoors-y type he’d handed the keys to the cabin over to a management company who took care of maintenance and had someone in to clean regularly.
Darcy had borrowed the keys, wanting an out of the way place to hole up for her 300th moon. Little had she known how much she would need a hideaway.
Fretting a bit about Draven, Darcy reminded herself they were far enough out that her cell phone was barely working. No way would he figure out they were here.
The creak of the bedroom door told her that Finn was awake.
He wandered in, still pulling a T-shirt over his head and inadvertently showing off tawny skin over rippling muscles. He’d tried to restrain his long hair by tying it back in a messy ponytail.
He looked like he was recovering from a night that was a lot more fun than it actually had been.
“Hey, sleepyhead, we were starting to think you didn’t like our company,” Darcy joked, trying to stop noticing his gorgeous body. The poor guy didn’t feel well - she should not be ogling him.
He grinned, but it quickly turned into a wince.
She hid her smile as he took a seat at the counter next to Luke, who was examining him unabashedly.
“Hey, buddy,” Finn said, clapping the kid on the shoulder. Darcy waited for the kid to shrink away and was happy to see him lean imperceptibly closer to the magician instead.
“Here you go,” she said to Finn, offering him the glass of OJ and bottle of Advil she’d readied for him.
“Thanks,” he croaked, downing a few pills and chugging the juice.
Darcy watched Luke watching Finn. The big guy took down a quart of juice in about three seconds.
He put the glass back on the counter and looked around, seeming to have perked up already just from the sugar rush.
“Nice place,” he observed, as if he had only just noticed he wasn’t in his own kitchen. “Where are we exactly?”
“We’re in the Poconos,” she told him. “My brother bought this house years ago. It was supposed to be a getaway for when he came to visit. Turns out he’s not really a fan of the great outdoors. So it doesn’t get used much.”
His eyebrows went up in surprise.
“You mean we’re actually in the middle of the woods somewhere?” he asked.
“Somewhere, yeah,” she agreed.
Finn’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look like he was in love with the idea. But it wasn’t like either of them had to get back to work or anything. Panchenko would fire them both for sure.
No point crying over spilt milk.
She turned her attention back to the sandwiches, laying the tomato slices on top of the tuna salad she’d made.
The cupboards were certainly well stocked. There were the usual canned goods and emergency provisions, plus, since she’d been planning to spend all month up here, the management company had stocked the place with fresh groceries.
Of course, the plan had changed. She just wasn’t sure to what.
“What do we do now?” Finn asked, as if reading her thoughts.
“Well, we’ll lay low for a couple days at least. Try to get things sorted,” she said noncommittally, not wanting the child to see her uncertainty.
Luke’s eyes were bigger than ever. She smiled down at him.
“Let’s take this outside. Can you hold the door open for me, Luke?” she asked brightly.
He hopped off the stool to comply.
&n
bsp; Darcy carried the tray of sandwiches while Finn grabbed the orange juice and three glasses and they headed out to the deck.
The rich scent of moist soil and greenery filled Darcy with a sensation of rightness.
The simple wooden structure of the deck was overhung with a large trellis that dripped with climbing hydrangea. The picnic table in the center overlooked a fire pit and the abandoned grape arbor behind the cabin. Fat, juicy grapes pulled at the formerly cultivated vines.
They sat in silence, a hungry trio. Luke ate a sandwich and emptied his glass. He shook his head when Darcy offered him more.
She noticed he was looking intently at the arbor.
“Want to pick some grapes?” she asked him?
He turned back to her, his eyes dancing.
“Grab a mixing bowl from the kitchen to put them in, okay?” she wondered if he would willingly go back inside without her.
For a heart wrenching moment she watched him weigh his options.
Then he smiled and hopped up, heading into the kitchen.
Finn smiled at Darcy, his mouth too full to talk. He must have been thinking the same thing. She smiled back.
A moment later, Luke was back with a big metal mixing bowl. He waved and headed out into the arbor. Darcy heard the first grape hit the bowl with a satisfying plunk.
Finn was nearly finished with his second sandwich.
Which meant that he would soon start asking questions, and Darcy would have some explaining to do.
“Okay,” he said softly, leaning forward. “What the hell happened last night?”
There it was.
All kinds of lies flitted through Darcy’s head.
But Finn was in pretty deep. And he’d put himself on the line for them.
No lies. He deserved the truth.
Out in the arbor, the steady sound of grapes hitting the metal bowl sounded so homey.
“Can you keep a secret?” she asked.
“I’m a vault,” he answered.
She studied him. For once his hazel eyes weren’t dancing.
“It’s going to be hard to believe,” she began.
“Try me,” Finn said, leaning back.
“You’ve seen werewolves in movies and books. But what you don’t know is that shifters are real. What you saw last night, the animal that attacked Draven, it was a wolf but also a man - a friend of mine,” she blurted without stopping for breath. She waited for him to laugh.
He studied her solemnly.
“I’m a wolf too,” she ventured.
He nodded slowly.
“I know you don’t believe me. I would offer to shift, but I don’t want to scare Luke,” she said, trying to think of a way to show him.
“No, I believe you. My granda told me stories about real shifters, but I wasn’t so sure. After what I saw last night, I stand corrected.”
Interesting. Darcy made a mental note to find out more about Finn’s grandfather another time. Finn was taking it well, and she was on a roll. Might as well get it all out on the table.
“Most wolves come from families of wolves, and they don’t shift until puberty,” she continued. “My birth parents weren’t expecting me to be a wolf at all, so when I shifted into a wolf pup as a toddler they were terrified.
I was too little to remember, but they brought me to my mom, Kate. She runs a foster home, for kids who shift young. It’s on a farm near Tarker’s Hollow, where we went to the diner. There were a lot of us kids there, and still more are brought there every year or so, but we’re all very close. That’s my family.”
She studied him.
“And I would do anything for my family,” she added.
He nodded. She liked that he didn’t ask a lot of dumb questions or pretend to be sad about her birth parents.
“As you can imagine, little kids who shift into animals whenever they feel excited can be a problem. The secret would be out in no time if we shifted in front of anyone, and our kind would be in danger. Mom had to teach us to control our shifting. And she had a friend who helped her with that.
“Mrs. Cortez would come and sing over each of us when we arrived at the farm, what she sang was a magic spell. We don’t know for sure, but we believe that it repressed our shifter animals, making it easier for us to live as humans. We all trust her implicitly, she’s a good lady. And that trust is a big deal because wolves and magic usually don’t mix,” Darcy explained, in what might be the understatement of the year.
Finn raised an eyebrow.
“Not you. Real magic—oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” she tripped over herself.
“It’s okay,” he smiled. There was that wink again.
Somehow it seemed less infuriating than before.
“Anyway, the spell only lasts for 300 moons,” she explained. “This month is my 300th moon. I was planning to come up here and be alone. Spend some time with my wolf, to be sure I wouldn’t lose her.”
She decided not to mention the shadow creature she’d seen in the parking garage. It was just too crazy. She hadn’t really had time to process it herself.
“Anyway,” she continued. “That explains Mr. MacGregor, who you saw last night in wolf form. He bought us time to get away. But I don’t know what the deal is with Draven or Miss Sharp. Or why they have someone at Child Welfare on the payroll. Or how Luke fits in. He must be important, for them to go to all this effort. And I’m not about to let them get their hands on him.”
Finn considered for a moment. She expected he’d need some time to get his head around all of that.
He didn’t.
“So what do we do next?” he asked, already including himself in the plan.
She’d half-expected him to bail when she laid it all on the line, and was surprised at how much relief she felt when he didn’t even consider it. It was an odd feeling. Darcy usually preferred to work alone.
“That’s a good question.”
“These people are serious,” he said. “And they obviously have connections. They’ll figure out where you went. They’ll come for us.”
“I’ll be ready for them this time.” A protective growl began in the back of her throat.
“I’ve seen this type,” Finn warned. “If you turn them away, they come at you harder. And you’ve come out on top twice now.”
“Then we might have to go on the run until we can find someone to trust,” Darcy said, resolute.
Finn studied her.
“Me and Luke, I mean,” she said quickly. “You’ve already done too much.”
He continued to study her in silence, and Darcy felt a connection between them, a light disturbance in the air, like the sizzle of electricity before lightning strikes.
She was drawn to him suddenly, her wolf scratching at her from the inside, ready to leap over the table to get to him, to pin him down, drink in his heady masculine scent, and sink her claws into those gigantic biceps…
She forced herself to look away, to think of the child instead. This wasn’t a love story, it was a rescue.
The plunking of grapes in the arbor had grown fainter.
“Either way, we’ve got some time. Might as well make the best of it,” she said as lightly as she could, hopping off her seat to head out into the vineyard. She felt the increasing space between them already, as if her heart were a rubber band, stretched taut between the man and the boy.
It was absolutely beautiful out here, rich with the scent of living things. Too bad she couldn’t shift and run off these intense feelings.
As she stepped off the deck and into the grass, she sensed Finn rising to follow her and her heart sang a quiet song only she could hear.
15
Finn was the king of the world. At least that was how he felt.
In spite of the deep shade and the otherworldliness of the trees around them, he found that the cabin and the arbor were beginning to feel like home.
They’d spent the day filling every vessel in the house with ripe grapes, gathering wood for the firepl
ace, and generally acting like a normal family on vacation.
Luke smiled and laughed the whole time, which made Finn feel good down to his bones.
And Darcy was… well, Darcy was amazing.
She was strong and confident, that much he’d known before this adventure. But he would never have suspected her of being relaxed and silly. Darcy had literally let her hair down, and with it, her inhibitions and her seriousness. She’d been hiding and chasing the kid around the arbor all afternoon, cheeks were flushed, eyes dancing like stars.
Finn and the boy had fallen under her spell, and both were half in love with her.
She paused suddenly in the middle of the chase, and Finn realized that she had caught him staring at her in open admiration.
For once, she didn’t give him that admonishing look. Instead she cocked her head slightly, as if listening to an unheard voice, or as if maybe she were checking him out too.
Fervently, he hoped for the latter, but she soon darted off again, fleet as a deer.
No. Swift as a wolf. Darcy would never be the prey.
His granda’s words echoed in his head, fiercely loyal, brave, but very secretive - they stick to their own kind. Darcy Harkness to a tee.
Finn felt a pang.
He could change many things about his rock ’n roll lifestyle, he wanted to.
But he couldn’t become a shifter.
It was agony to come this close to her and yet know he might as well be a million miles away. Darcy would choose a shifter to share her life. Certainly not a guy like Finn.
The shade of the trees grew cooler as the sun disappeared over the leafy horizon, pink as a summer rose.
Luke dashed around the arbor and stood next to Finn, panting lightly.
“It’s getting late,” Darcy remarked as she appeared a moment later. “I’m hungry. And I think there are marshmallows in the kitchen. Who wants s’mores?”
Finn smiled and the boy began bouncing up and down beside him.
When was the poor kid going to talk?
Finn was really enjoying himself, more than he ever would have dreamed possible. But he knew the real reason for the giant dose of normalcy today was to make Luke feel safe.
He and Darcy both hoped that once the boy felt secure, he would open up to them. So far, they hadn’t had much luck, even though the kid seemed about as happy as could be.