Elizabeth tried to analyze what just took place, but it was several minutes before her brain was functioning much beyond the basic “WOW!” It was several more minutes before her eyes stopped rolling back into her head every time she recalled any of the many ‘suggestions’ Marshall had sent into her mind. Who knew such a straight laced guy could be such a creative lover? And why was she grinning like a fool and getting hotter by the moment just thinking about things that normally would send her into shock?
Her face fell and her skin turned to goosebumps as if someone had doused her with cold water. Some of those thoughts, feelings, images, she didn’t know what to call them, were the same as the impressions she’d felt from Creepy Eyes. Why was she suddenly thrilled and excited by things that two days ago revolted her?
It was more than genetics. That’s what Marshall said. Maybe it had just as much to do with the type of Alpha who wielded the genetics. What was it Charles said? An Alpha’s Mate was a receptacle for the Alpha’s lust. What if he was wrong? He wouldn’t be the first person to think in terms of lust rather than power. It was a misconception many people still harbored concerning rapists. They thought it was a crime of lust when in reality it was a crime of violence, of the brutal exercise of power. Therein lay the difference between Creepy Eyes and Marshall.
With Creepy Eyes, those acts would be perverted applications of his power. His pleasure would come from forcing her to comply and his enjoyment would increase in direct proportion to her revulsion.
She was thrilled and excited by Marshall because it would be part of a roller coaster ride of sexual adventure, an exploration of each other’s needs and fantasies. She would trust him to take her on such a ride because of his honesty and integrity. But was that enough?
She curled onto the pillow and pulled the covers back over her. Was she doing to Marshall what others had done to her; making assumptions without searching for the truth?
Because it wasn’t all smoke and mirrors. Not on her part anyway. There was more to what she felt for Marshall than just a horny itch that needed to be scratched. Yes, she was physically drawn to him from the first moment he touched her, but if she removed sex from the equation and just looked at the man, she liked what she saw.
She hadn’t lied when she told Charles that his brother was a good man. He loved these people and the land they lived on. It was to his credit that he tried to preserve their way of life while incorporating it into the modern world.
He believed what he said about small sacrifices, but he never talked about the big sacrifices he’d made and she suspected it was because he didn’t see them as such. He was a man she could respect and admire and… love.
It was as clear to her now as it was before she knew she was an Alpha’s Mate. Maybe clearer. Sure, she was flattered by the attentions of two handsome men and yes, she’d felt those sexy urges with them both, but now that she knew what she was, she could see beyond it.
She’d never been comfortable with Charles. She’d always resorted to the fictional Cassandra because… well… because he didn’t come with a list of How To Act In The Presence Of Charles. That night on the porch, she’d held herself away from him not only because she found those urges frightening, but because to do anything less would have been a betrayal of what she felt for Marshall.
She’d met Marshall, covered in mud, wearing an ugly cotton bra and granny pants. He’d seen her at her very worst and if what she felt from him was real, it didn’t matter. With him, she’d never needed a list of things to say or how to act and any time she’d tried to be anything but what she was, she’d failed miserably.
How strange that she’d come to Rabbit Creek in a search of just that; who and what she really was. Marshall saw it before she did. He saw it on the night they met. Wet and muddy and wrapped in a scratchy blanket from the back of his car, she hadn’t recognized it then. Literally stripped of the clothes and hair and makeup that proclaimed her status, lacking any of the social props and lists on which she’d always relied, she became Lizzie. And Elizabeth realized, with a silly grin that was becoming all too common on her face, that she liked Lizzie.
Lizzie could stand up for herself without regard for what other people thought. Lizzie was no quitter. Lizzie wouldn’t run. Lizzie would find Marshall and make him tell her what was real. And whatever that turned out to be, Lizzie would handle it.
Chapter 32
Elizabeth dressed quickly, a woman on a mission. The jeans were hers, the ones she’d been wearing the night Marshall was injured. They were clean now as were the green silk bikinis she wore beneath. The shirt, however, was a donation from someone much larger than herself and her bra was missing. Like her tee, it was probably a victim of blood stains no amount of washing could remove. Her shoes were missing as well, though she had no idea if she was wearing them when Charles dropped her off like a sack of potatoes.
Downstairs was eerily silent after the crowd the other night. Elizabeth heard a quiet murmur from the kitchen and after listening for a minute, she determined that Maggie and Roy were alone and enjoying a cup of coffee. While she believed Maggie would help her leave if that was her final decision, she also knew the old woman and her husband were loyal to Marshall and the pack. If they’d been ordered to keep her confined to the house, they would do it. She couldn’t fault them for it, but she wasn’t about to hang around to find out.
She quietly let herself out the front door and said a silent thanks. Whoever fixed the screen door had also oiled the squeaky hinges. She didn’t want to explain to Maggie who she was looking for or why she was looking for him. This was private.
Marshall’s police Explorer was parked out front so he had to be around somewhere and the barn was the logical choice. There was a light in the window and the door was ajar, so wincing at the stones digging into her bare feet, Elizabeth made her way across the yard.
Max was peering over the stall door checking out the mare and her foal. She turned as soon as Elizabeth entered. It was too late to retreat.
“Oh. I was looking for Marshall,” Elizabeth said awkwardly. “I saw the door open and I thought…”
“Oh, um, Marshall went up the mountain. About an hour ago.” Max sounded just as awkward. She started to speak, hesitated, and then said in a rush, “Miz Elizabeth, please don’t stay mad at me. We did what we thought we needed to do. We never meant to hurt you. Maybe we should have told you that very first night when you saw the wolvers, but we were afraid you’d run right back down the mountain…”
“I probably would have,” Elizabeth admitted. She tried to smile, but knew it was more of a grimace because she was trying so hard to keep the tears from spurting from her eyes. “I’m not angry with you,” she said, remembering Maggie’s words. “Well, I was, but I was just as angry with myself for not seeing what was right in front of me, for not knowing if you liked me…”
“But we did, Miz Elizabeth, we do!” Max cried. She took a few steps forward. “Why Mr. Begley put you in the Home Place, I’ll never know and I’ll admit, when we came by to fix it up, it wasn’t because we liked you. Hell, we didn’t even know you. We half expected you to stand around in your fancy clothes giving us orders.”
Elizabeth laughed. “If I recall, I was still wearing your clothes.”
Max laughed, too. “Okay, but you know what I mean. And you didn’t stand around. You got down on your hands and knees and scrubbed with the rest of us.”
“I’d never scrubbed a floor in my life.”
“You see? You even killed your own mice.” She laughed again. “I know, I know. I mocked you some in the telling of it, but I wanted folks to know you weren’t looking down at the way we live. You were willing to learn. And you didn’t mind the funnin’ and the teasing. You laughed at yourself. Oh, Miz Elizabeth, we liked you right off.”
Elizabeth pursed her lips. “Max, are you my friend?”
“I’d surely like to be.”
“I’d surely like to be yours, too, but if we’re going to be frien
ds, you have to drop the Miz.”
“I can do that.” Max grinned widely and then frowned. “Not sure how Marshall might take it, though. He’d want us to show respect for the Mate.” She suddenly looked worried. “You are going to be his mate, aren’t you?”
Elizabeth put her hands on her hips. “Alpha or not, Marshall has no say in what my friends call me. As to being his mate? I don’t know.” She smiled. “He hasn’t asked. And I don’t know yet what I’m going to say if he does ask. That’s part of the reason I have to talk to him. There are things I need to tell him and there are thing I need to know.”
Max looked at the door as if someone might be listening in. “We’re supposed to keep you here where you’re safe.” She raised her hand to forestall Elizabeth’s interruption. “Maggie said that if you was to ask about Marshall, I should tell you that you need to wait here until he comes back from the spring, because that second narrow path to the left is a hard climb and it could take most of an hour to get there. So I’m figuring you wouldn’t dream of going against the Alpha’s orders and when you leave here, you’re going right back to the house to wait.” She looked at Elizabeth’s bare feet and grinned. “And as you don’t seem to have the sense God gave a goose, running around with no shoes when you ain’t used to it, I’m giving you my sneakers so’s you don’t stub your toes. They’re a might big, but they’ll get you where you need to go, seeing that’s just across the yard and back to the house.”
Elizabeth gave her a quick hug. “Thank you, Max. I’ll be careful walking back to the house.”
“You do that.” Max was trying not to laugh. “If you happen to see GW, you tell him I said hey. He and some of the boys are with Henry scouting about. Course, Henry told ‘em he was more concerned with who was coming in than who was going out. Oh! I almost forgot. Henry said to tell you that you and Marshall, both, need to change your ways. That make sense to you?”
It didn’t at first and then she remembered. Stay a fool or change your ways. “It does, indeed.” Elizabeth nodded soberly. That advice could go either way. She’d changed her ways. She’d be a fool to refuse Marshall because of a simple genetic complication, but she’d also be a fool to stay with a man who didn’t love her.
Max wasn’t exaggerating. The path from Main Street was uphill, but the path was wide and in the steepest places, tree roots formed steplike risers where the soil was worn away. This path was narrow, covered with loose soil and pebbles and that was where the ground was bare. The rest was covered with slick grasses that slid her back two steps for every three she took or overgrown vines that tangled around her ankles no matter how she tried to avoid them.
A half hour into her climb, her calves ached and sweat glued her shirt to her back. Her hair was a mess and she wasn’t sure what had done more damage to her neck; the mosquitos biting it or her slapping it to drive them away.
On flat ground, Max’s sneakers wouldn’t have been a problem, but with the constant shifting of her feet back and forth on her uphill trek, she was sure she had blisters that ran from pinkie toe to heel.
And worse, she had no idea how far she’d come or how far she had to go. If these people weren’t wolves, they’d be mountain goats. They were never out of breath or floundering over roots that instantly shot up six inches right before you stepped over them. And they moved at speeds her city legs could never hope to match. So how far was ‘almost an hour’? Was it ‘up a ways’ or a ‘fur piece’?
She needed to take a break. Breath heaving, Elizabeth stopped, braced her foot against a rock to keep from sliding backward and reached out for the nearest tree trunk. She stopped herself just before she grabbed the narrow clinging strand of poison ivy. She bent and rested her hands on her knees instead.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she asked aloud when her breath returned. “You can’t do this.”
“Sure you can. It’s only about fifty yards ahead.”
Elizabeth shrieked and shot upright, her arms flailing. She would have tumbled backwards down the hill if Marshall hadn’t been behind her. He righted her with a soft chuckle.
She whirled to face him and punched his chest with both fists. “Don’t do that!”
“What? Catch you when you fall?”
“I wouldn’t have fallen if you hadn’t scared the shit out of me,” she huffed.
Marshall sniffed dramatically. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Smell what?” She looked around and raised her arms in question.
“The shit I scared out of you,” he chuckled.
“Grrr!” Elizabeth turned away and marched up the hill, mumbling to herself. This wasn’t going as she expected.
“Hey! I’m the one who should be angry. This place is mine. No one comes here without an invitation.” He caught up with her easily, so close she could feel the heat from his body along her back.
“Not even your mate?” she asked and then winced when she realized how that sounded. “I meant the other one,” she said, making it worse. “Uh, I mean the first one, uh, Lisa.”
She felt the chill of air on her sweat soaked back and knew Marshall had stopped.
“Lisa never came here,” he said quietly.
He said something more, but Elizabeth didn’t hear the words.
The trees stopped at the brink of a narrow grassy verge that grew up to the edge four solid stone slabs, each seven or eight feet long, three irregularly overlapping the one in the center as if it was a small stage with seating all around. It almost looked man made, but if it was, those hands had worked a thousand years ago. The moss and lichen growth was thick and untouched. Water lapped at the edge of the stage.
The pool was large and crystal clear and not too deep. She could see the sandy bottom. Water bubbled gently up from the center of the pool sending tiny rippled rings out across the surface. To her left, there was a section about ten feet wide where it looked like the water disappeared into thin air. Elizabeth walked far enough along the bank to see the shelf of rock on the other side. This was the source of the sound. This pool emptied over the shelf into a smaller pool and another, smaller yet, beyond that. The third pool trickled into a rambling trill that disappeared into the woods beyond.
A slight breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees and sent the late afternoon shadows and light dancing across the ground. The sun was still high enough above tops of the tallest trees to shed its light on the sparkly water. The combination of rippling water and sunlight gave some of the pebbles beneath the water the illusion of diamonds.
“This is paradise,” she whispered. No artist could do this place justice. It was too alive, too filled with light and movement that could never be caught on film or canvas.
Marshall stood beside her. “Lisa wouldn’t come here. She said it couldn’t be beautiful enough to be worth the climb.”
Elizabeth didn’t look at him, but reached for his hand. She felt the tingling surge and ignored it. Now was not the time.
“She was wrong,” she said.
“So was I.” He squeezed her hand. “I was never meant to be the Alpha, Lizzie. I wasn’t as strong and bold as my father. I wasn’t as clever and charming as Charles. I wasn’t anywhere near as smart as Michael.
“My father never spoke to me about being the Alpha; never told me about what happens to your body and your mind. I guess he told it all to Charles. He was the expected heir. By the time the Alpha realized Charles and Mikey weren’t coming back, the strokes hadn’t taken his mind, but they’d taken his body and his speech. It was too late to talk. And then the mantle fell to me.”
Marshall emptied his lungs on a whistle of air. Elizabeth wasn’t sure where this was going, but she knew it was important so she stood silently holding his hand and waited.
“When the mantle falls on your shoulders,” he continued, “It’s a physical thing. You can feel its weight. Things you could never do before suddenly become possible. You don’t need the full moon to call up the change. You can always feel her, even when she’s new a
nd you can draw on her magic to call up the change in the others. And when the pack is over the moon, you can call them, talk to them in your head. The pack is always in your mind. You can feel them, each and every one of them. It comes on you all at once, Lizzie, and at first you think you’ll go mad. You have to learn how to force them into a corner of your mind and shut out most of it. You have to train yourself to only let the important things filter through.
“When you’re the Alpha, everyone turns to you for decisions and advice, even the older ones who have lived long enough and are wise enough to do those things on their own. No one, but another Alpha can understand the overwhelming sense of responsibility you feel for the wolvers under your care.”
“I was fortunate, no, the pack was fortunate that my mother lived for two years after the Alpha passed. She sheltered me from them and them from me while I adjusted. When she died, the pack was left without a Mate and it was my duty to provide one.”
“And you found Lisa.” Elizabeth knew it was foolish but something inside her cried, “Why couldn’t you have found me?”
“How did you meet her?” she asked instead. A question of curiosity, no more, she lied to herself.
“In a bar. Me and Henry and a couple of the boys decided to spend a weekend on the town. I asked her to dance and as soon as I touched her, I knew what she was and I thought she was meant for me. She was tall and willowy and blonde and beautiful and built like any young man’s wet dream. She was twenty years old.”
“Everything I’m not,” Elizabeth thought sadly. But this is what she’d come to find out and she would see it through.
“And she was mine,” he went on, “I felt the buzz, that urge to mate. And of course, being what she was, she felt it, too. We went at it hot and heavy. I brought her home and most everyone went out of their way to be good to her. Hell, they all but bowed to her because she was an Alpha’s Mate and my choice. A short time passed and she learned what we were and it didn’t seem to bother her at all. We were married by a Justice of the Peace and mated on the following full moon. Six years later, she died.” There was a sadness in his voice as he looked out over the water.
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