“Just came out of nowhere. That’s what kills me. That’s what kills me about all this, is just how out of nowhere it came. Talk about fucking blindsided.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Then use your feelings, man. You’re a soldier; you know what’s at stake with these people. You know why you gotta keep her safe and how to keep her safe.”
I straightened up with a groan, rubbing my hand down my face. “What do I do, man? You saw how I pushed her away like that. I might not get another chance. I gotta have another one, man. I gotta make this right.”
“Nah, Frank, she digs you. That’s clear to everyone. Peter and I can both see it. You just dropped the ball, that’s all.”
“What do I do, though?”
“You ever thought of trying to talk to her?”
“And tell her what? That I’m sorry, I’ve got a tractor trailer full of issues?” I lowered my voice even further. “And what about the whole wolf thing? Hey, Ashley, I lift my leg when I pee. I can smell fear at a hundred paces, and don’t wear any silver jewelry. Let’s have puppies?”
He laughed. “Better than the talk Jessica and I had.”
Wasn’t that the truth? She’d seen him turn into one in the middle of a fight gone wrong. I mean, I could understand why he’d gotten into the fight to begin with. He was trying to protect three women from all sorts of nasty things about to come down the pike, but things had taken a nasty turn after that point, and his opponent pulled a revolver while Richard was unarmed. So he went all White Fang on his ass, and we all jumped in to help.
She’d gone running, though, which had turned into a mess of other problems.
The situation between them was clearly better now.
“Just don’t do what I did,” he said. “She’ll probably respect the honesty, even if she is freaked out by the whole thing.”
“Before I start opening up about my peculiarities, though,” I muttered, “I should probably get back on speaking terms with her. Now I just gotta figure out how to do that.”
He clapped me on the back. “Oh, man, I’ve got a wild idea.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s something you might not wanna try. It’s kind of out there. Definitely not in your wheelhouse…”
I grumbled. “Tell me, Richard. Seriously.”
“It’s this newfangled thing they’ve got. People do it all the time. Normal people, I mean.”
“Uh-huh?”
“It’s called fucking talking to her like an adult, and letting her know what happened to you–”
“Aw, fuck off, Richard.”
“–and that you’re a living, breathing person who has their own pain to deal with.”
Muttering, I turned around and went inside, leaving him giggling like a little fucking schoolgirl on the balcony. I shut the door behind me and glanced at my bedroom door as I stepped into the living room.
The lights were off in my room. She was probably asleep.
I considered stepping a little closer to try and hear if she was asleep. But then I thought again. Maybe I needed to let her cool off. She really needed the rest. No matter how pissed at me she was, she needed to sleep if she was going to be able to get through tomorrow. My feelings didn’t matter. No, what mattered was her safety well-being. If there were any pieces of a budding relationship left over at the end of tomorrow, I could try and weld them back tomorrow after the interview with the sheriff.
That was the right thing to do. Besides, maybe the wound would sting a little less in the warm light of day. I shook my head and went to Matt’s room.
I stifled a yawn. Yeah, that’s what she needed. Sleep. Same thing I damn sure needed right now. I stripped down to my boxer briefs and threw my clothes over the chair tucked beneath Matt’s small writing desk in the corner. I turned out the light and crawled beneath the cool sheets, closing my eyes for what felt like the first time all day.
Sleep came to me like a lurking murderer. First I thought I was fine, and nothing was happening. Then it was on me, pulling me down into its depths before I could even see it coming.
I just hoped tomorrow would be better than today.
Turned out, that hope was in vain.
Chapter Thirty - Ashley
I pulled the pillow over my head and groaned as I heard Richard start laughing on the patio. I guess Frank had told him about how big of an ass I’d made of myself.
The smell of him, of that musk that had surrounded me while I was briefly in his arms, seemed to pervade my senses again and overwhelm me. I sniffled back tears, thanking whatever was good and holy in the universe that my nose suddenly stuffed up, killing the smell of Frank.
Outside, Richard giggled again.
The sour feeling of shame and embarrassment mixed with the salty anger already in my gut.
God, why had I been so freaking stupid? I couldn’t believe I’d thrown myself at the guy like that. And for what? Just so I could be shot down? I should have known I wasn’t good enough for him. Should have known he was just being kind and comforting to me because he was getting paid to do it, because it was his duty.
I lay there, thoughts racing through my head of the multiple different versions of my future. I could be a waitress or a barista. They always seemed to have fun. Maybe I could meet some real, genuine people for once in my life. People like Frank. Or, rather, what I’d imagined Frank to be like before ten minutes ago.
Or I could be a bartender at one of those shitty Coyote Ugly bars?
I shook my head against the pillow. No, that definitely wasn’t my style.
One thing was for sure: I could never go back to dating the guys I’d been dating. They’d never want me now. Even if I had all the money in the world, their families would never allow the stain of my father on their own houses. Even the accusations and the public condemnation would be too much. At least for a few years, until the public’s memory dissolved into a blip in history.
It didn’t matter that I’d had nothing to do with the crimes of money laundering. I was still as unclean as the money my father had been dealing with.
As I sat there nearly crying, Frank came in alone from the balcony. At least I thought it was him. His heavy footfalls echoed through the den, pausing somewhere in the middle of the floor.
What was he doing?
Still nothing.
Oh, what did I care anyways? I pulled the pillow tighter over my face, tears spilling from my eyes, wetting the pillowcase.
He started to move again, his footfalls receding as he crossed over to his roommate’s bedroom and opened the door.
I just didn’t understand. Why was this hurting so much? Why did it feel like an ice-cold butcher’s knife was stabbed right into my heart? I pulled the pillow from my face, curled up on my side with it, and hugged it close against me as I lay in a fetal position.
The door across the living room shut with some sort of horrible finality. Like the guards clanging the prison cell door shut on a woman starting her life sentence.
The tears really started to come now. The last time I’d felt this torn up over a guy was probably back in middle school. Middle school of all times! Of course, it hadn’t been anything but puppy love back then, and I’d hardly batted an eye at the other breakups I had in life. And then there was the fact that, normally, I was the one doing the breaking off of a relationship.
But, still, why? Why did it pain me so much?
I sobbed into my pillow.
And that was when it hit me like the realization that one of your friends has been hiding a drug addiction for years. How had I not seen the signs? Had I been subconsciously ignoring them the whole time? And how did it happen so quickly?
It wasn’t drugs, of course. No, it was worse. Far, far worse.
Even more life-altering. Sometimes even more destructive.
I was in love with the asshole.
Dammit, Ashley. I shook my head as I hugged his pillow closer to my chest like a pathetic stand-in for a stuffed teddy bear. I breat
hed deeply, smelling the residual pine and cedar scent of his body.
I stared into the darkness, tears still trickling down my cheek. I shook my head in the blackness of the room, trying to convince myself I was wrong.
No, it couldn’t be love. I’d just met Frank that morning. It had been so fast. Way too fast. I hardly even knew the man. I only knew that he was good kisser, even when it turned out his feelings weren’t in it. It wasn’t love, it was just the shock of being turned down, of being implicitly told I wasn’t good enough for a man I normally would have thought wasn’t good enough for me.
Why, then, did I feel this way? Why was my stomach fluttering the way it was? Why was my heart racing as if it was on the last stretch of a marathon, hurt and sore, but still pounding away?
This wasn’t just dejection at rejection, was it? Was it?
Crap. No. I wasn’t just imagining it. I was in love with the man who’d just rejected me, pushed me away with a look in his eyes that was so hurt and shocked at the fact that I’d even attempt to do something like that. I suddenly wanted to kick and flail my arms, to throw the world’s biggest, worst tantrum at how stupid my feelings were, how stupid my fucking heart was for letting itself slip into this awful situation. I took a deep, catching breath, and nearly sobbed.
Fuck me.
I loved Frank O’Dwyer.
But he didn’t love me back.
Chapter Thirty-one – Peter Frost
She’d slipped out of her bedroom while he tossed and turned, embroiled in another nightmare.
Most nights, Peter was only able to grab a few hours here and there. Life hadn’t been kind to him. Life hadn’t pulled any punches. Life had stood over him while he was down and tried to choke the life from his form before he could get back up.
In his nightmare, the smell of burnt meat and hair filled his nose, the oily feeling of the incinerated wolfsbane coating the inside of his mouth and nostrils. But he wasn’t home, or at Mary’s home. He was on the streets of some war-torn country. A haze of smoke hung in the air, a man-made fog that burned his eyes, soaked into his BDUs, and infected every inch of his body and spirit.
The rest of his team was with him, the other SEALs in his squad. They moved through the terrain, crouched and lined up, weaving their way through the rubble as the screams of women and children lacerated the world around him.
The anger rose within him. Rose from the bottom of his combat-boot clad feet, up into his stomach. Anger at what men had done. At the destruction they’d wrought with their own hands on innocent civilians, people who just wanted to live their lives, who just wanted to get up each day and provide for their families and their children.
A car bomb went off in the market.
He could feel the change building within him. Could feel the hunger, not for blood, but for justice and revenge, rising up.
In his memory, they’d found the man who detonated the IED. They’d brought him in, found part of his network.
But this wasn’t a memory. This was a dream.
“Frost, you’re on point. Sweep and secure zone one.”
“Yes, sir,” he’d barked as he fell out of line, three SEALs behind him.
They kicked in the door. They secured it, Frost’s gun leaping into his hand as it clack-clack-clacked in tight three-round bursts as they moved from room to room. A shot to the center of mass. A shot to the head. Precision death.
They found the man, his hands already behind his head, a smile on his lips.
Frost’s loathing for the man took over. His revulsion filled his veins, his anger at how this man could target his own countrymen. How this man could target innocent women and children in a market, their only crime just wanting to buy dinner for their families.
In his memory, they took him in alive.
In his memory.
The change tore through him, unbidden. His hands lengthened, his feet grew huge, fur bristled from his body as the pain a thousand times worse than a growth spurt racked his body as his bones reshaped themselves and grew. His jaw lengthened and his teeth extended into sharpened daggers that made his KA-BAR look like a toothpick, as he burst from his BDUs and the belt that strapped his gear to his body.
The three SEALs behind him stumbled back from his hulking form, and opened fire on the man-wolf Peter had become.
He shrugged off the bullets as he fell on the man, tearing into him with his razor sharp claws, his jaws like a pneumatic press as he cracked down into the bomber’s tissue and bone, splitting them so his slathering tongue could lick at the marrow inside.
The bullets continued to sting his backside like wasps or bees, and Peter watched in horror as he turned and fell on his comrades, the names on their badges flashing in front of his lupine eyes. SMITH. KELSEY. MARTINEZ.
They all fell before the uncontrollable, avenging scythe that was Peter Frost, their screams joining his howls on the dusty streets of that faraway city.
He snapped awake, then, gasping, the sheets plastered to his chest and neck glistening with sweat. He threw the sheet back and swung his legs over the edge.
“Just a dream,” he whispered to himself as he held his head in both hands and shook. “Just a dream.”
He’d never lost control as a wolf. Never.
He’d never turned into the hybrid form.
That was all just stories, myths passed down from father to son through the generations. It went all the way back to the old country before the European shifters had come to the new world.
Just a myth. Just a legend. Like it had been just a dream.
And he’d certainly never attacked the soldiers beside him, human or not, while he was overseas.
He wiped a hand down his face and tried to clear the sweat from his brow. As stood to go get some water, he heard it. Or, rather, heard the lack of it.
Nothing. No sound.
Mary wasn’t in her room. He nodded to himself, knowing what he had to do. Like Gen had said. She needed to run with a pack. But maybe she was too scared to meet them for the first time, even with Peter there.
He stripped out of his boxer briefs and tossed them aside before grabbing his robe from the back of the door and sliding it over his still-damp body. Barefoot, he padded out of his room and to the front door. He stepped out into the cool air and shivered as the coldness hit his moist skin. He took a look around, his sharp eyes to adjusting quickly. He imagined he could smell and hear her as she hunted over the property and stalked her prey.
“Not a chance,” he reminded himself quietly. Not in this form, at least. He stripped off the robe and exposed his naked body to the night air just as an invigoratingly cold wind whipped down from the mountains. He yelped as a chill shook him, shriveling his manhood almost up within himself. “Oh shit!”
He rubbed his arms briskly, trying to warm himself as he hung the robe up on one of the hooks.
In the past, before Mary came along, he’d just walk out naked and change. Of course, in the past, he’d lived alone and not with a teenage girl. Even now, without her anywhere in sight or close to the cabin, he felt strange.
He began his transformation, which was more gradual than in his dream. Much more comfortable and slower, giving his body and pain receptors time to adjust to the miraculous shift happening in his organs, hair, and teeth. Soon, he was on all fours, his tail wagging.
He stuck his nose up in the air and picked up the cool line of blue and beige that his mind created from Mary’s scent. It coalesced in front of him in a cloud, then trailed off out onto the property. He lifted his snout to the air and breathed in the smells of distant lands, of the forests around him, of hot-blooded prey filling his nostrils.
There she was. That right there was Mary.
He took off at a trot, his nose leading the way as he left the little yard and stepped out into the wilder areas surrounding the cabin. A few minutes later, out on the far edge of the property, he found her downwind from a rabbit. Not wanting to disturb her ambush, he stayed put, his ears slicked back
as he dropped to his belly on the grass.
Peter knew that, as much as hunting was a game, it was a test of patience. The hunter who jumped the gun or struck at the wrong time would lose his prey. A moment too early? It would hear you coming. A moment too late? It would have time to run away.
He watched as she crept forward through the low brush and high grass, as she stalked the unsuspecting herbivore, her sandy fur shining in the frosty moonlight.
A twig broke.
The rabbit’s ears perked.
She must have seen her chance begin to slip away. Mary leaped from the grass, her paws propelling her through the air like a rock from a catapult. She sailed through the air like a Great Dane-sized eagle swooping down for the kill. She was large for a normal wolf, but small for a shifter.
Before she landed, though, little Cotton Tail scampered away, his comparably powerful hind legs sending him like a rocket across the landscape as he tried for his burrow.
She gave chase, her back half twisting around as her forepaws hit the ground. Her back paws dug into the dirt and pushed her off in the new direction.
Peter sat there, tongue lolling to the side, trying to hold back his wolfy grin. Clearly, she was in need of a pack leader. None of his men would have made as simple a mistake as breaking a twig. But, still, he’d seen the marks of her kills before. So he, at least, knew she’d gotten her animal more than once.
She growled as she bolted after the rabbit, its ears slicked back, the scent of its fear like hot coals in Peter’s nose.
Cotton Tail went left.
She went left.
Cotton Tail went right.
She went right.
Cotton Tail went right again.
This time, though, Mary misjudged and went left.
Cotton Tail took the opportunity and kicked up his sprint. Before Mary could make it back around and snag his fluffy little hindquarters, he’d already darted down into his burrow.
She growled in frustration and began to dig at the burrow.
And that, Peter knew, was his cue. He rose from his belly and trotted over to her, his wolf tongue lolling from his mouth as he gave a yip to let her know he was around.
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