But I wanted Archer to be my first, and I'd known that since the moment he'd become a part of my life and had taken root. There was no letting him go from my heart, the one constant he could call home since we didn't have one to speak of.
"Let’s go," I said, breathless, my whole body vibrating with anticipation.
"Give me five minutes to heat the water. The steps are there to your left." He smiled against my lips and then pulled back, his hands at my waist. “See you soon, Aika."
No one had ever said my name like he had just then, one that curled a promise through me, tight like a corkscrew, and then released it. I shuddered as he left the room, my breaths nothing but ragged spasms.
Slowly, I opened my eyes to peer through Sasha's as she watched him go and then whimpered. "It's fine, sweet girl. I won't take your guardian from you. We're just…"
I didn't even know how to begin to explain, especially to a wolf pup, what we were about to do. I wasn't a shifter, and he wasn't human, but that didn't change anything. Our hearts had entwined, and that was all that mattered.
I felt wanted and so alive, even now while leaving him, still feeling him everywhere like he was still here, touching and stroking and tasting. My smile hurt my cheeks as I angled toward the steps. At the top, one of the baseboards caught my foot, and I tripped out into a narrow hallway like a bumbling, floating fool. Nothing could bring me down though, even though somewhere up here Gabriel was held prisoner by a possible madman. I didn’t feel a bit of sympathy for Faust’s second-in-command.
A sound to my left, and something registered at the back of my mind before the rest of me caught up. I slowed to a stop and repeated the memory of the sound, and it echoed from what seemed like a long time ago. I'd heard that sound before, a wheezing cough that came in threes after a sleepless night. Hack-cough-wheeze. Hack-cough-wheeze.
I whirled and placed my hands on what felt like a door. That sound…a persistent scratchy throat first thing in the morning. It had come from Baba.
Chapter 6
Without thinking, I threw myself at the door and stumbled inside. My eyes and ears burned while my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. It couldn't be Baba…could it? My mind played tricks. He'd been shot by Lager. If I dared think about it, I'd still feel the spray of his warm blood across my face. He was dead. He should’ve been dead, and yet even though he hated me, a sliver of hope slipped through my closed throat.
"Baba?"
A weighted, eternal pause, and then, "Aika?"
Everything left me in a rush—the tears, the breath from my lungs—but no more words. I stumbled forward, needing to feel him to know if this was real or not, but he'd never been one to want to touch me. If anything, he avoided it at all costs.
"You're…you're here?" His voice came from the far side of the room, soft and disbelieving, unlike how I'd ever heard it before.
I nodded lamely. "You're okay?"
He grunted. There was a creak, like the sound from a bed's springs, and then slow, stiff footsteps that hinted at pain. "How did you find me?"
"I… It's a long story," I choked out.
"Close the door behind you.” When I did, he hissed, “You can't stay here. The man who stays downstairs— Surely you saw him. He's dangerous. You must leave now."
The low warning in his voice chased unease down my back. Thomas. He was talking about Thomas. He’d figured out who the poisoner was and had hauled him away when Baba had been at shot. I was sure of it. Thomas had saved him in his pursuit of revenge, but how much longer would Baba's luck last? Thomas had mentioned insurance and bait. Would he use my own father somehow to lure Faust into a trap?
"Tell me about Lager," I said, my voice trembling violently. "You knew he was coming." When he said nothing, I clarified, "The bald man who shot you?"
"He came up from the Far South, I heard, started following me around when I went to Margin for supplies. He asked very specific questions of the townsfolk about what I did for a living, how I had a roof over my head with an almost empty barn. He figured out the truth of it soon enough." He stepped forward even more. "How did you know he was bald?"
I opened my mouth to explain and then snapped it shut again, fearing he wouldn't believe me. Really, though, what did it matter? It was the truth.
"B-because of the poison," I whispered.
He knew. He knew exactly what I was talking about. He had to.
"I tried to make the delivery for you but didn’t make it in time," I said, my voice stronger, "I tried to help Jade and Lee so they'd survive the winter, but…I can't find them. Hellbreath got sick, and I'm here with the wolves' help. The wolves we poisoned."
Another creak sounded, one that seemed to come from his bones even though he hadn't moved. Silence lengthened the space between us, except for the whirring of his mind which was almost as loud as mine.
"Jade and Lee—"
"I'll find them," I vowed.
He swallowed with effort, hiding emotions I didn’t need to see. In his own way, he loved Jade and Lee, had sworn to their parents on their deathbeds that he'd protect them and keep them safe. His own daughter, on the other hand… He didn’t even seem glad I was here.
I turned to leave, the shock of seeing him again colliding too hard with the past.
"Did he hurt you," he asked, monotone.
I paused in front of the door, unsure who he was talking about. Lager? Faust? Thomas? But the fact that he cared enough to sort of ask fractured my heart. My baba, who'd said as many words today as he had in my whole life previously, wondered if I was okay.
"No," I said. "No one hurt me."
More silence fell, taut with a livewire of tension, that made me want to say something. Anything. The kind that made my skin crawl inward. But, despite the feeling, neither of us seemed to know what to say.
I left him then, and silent as fog, a huge figure appeared from the doorway into the hall. Thomas.
"It's curious, isn't it," he rumbled. He wasn't asking me; he was telling me.
"What's curious?" I asked, surprised I hadn’t squeaked.
He stepped toward me. "I know you noticed. You might be blind, but you see what's hidden."
"What might that be?"
"When I said I'd found out more about where the poison had come from, Archer and Grady didn't say a word. Didn't ask me to explain a crucial piece of information. Now…" He stopped in front of me, a tall, imposing wolf shifter who could kill me in the space between breaths. "Why do you suppose that is?"
I stood my ground, a stone pillar that wavered on the inside. "They just got you back. There are no greater questions than where you've been and what you've been up to. The rest will come soon, after they've had time to process."
"You seem so sure."
"My whole family is missing. The where and the what are all that matter to me. The details are secondary for right now."
"You might be right. Or it could be they’re trying to keep something from me."
So he didn’t know about me, then. Didn’t know I’d just come from Baba’s room. Unless he was playing with me.
"Like what?” I asked. “Wolf packs share everything."
"Indeed they do."
Except for him. If anyone was keeping something, it was him.
I turned to leave at the note of danger in his voice, how it raked along my skin, a strange mix of pain and pleasure. But he grabbed my wrist and hauled me back to him. I reached out to stop my momentum, my fingertips brushing an unforgiving expanse of muscle across his chest.
"Packs share everything of value—food, land, a mate. What makes you, a human, so valuable, Aika?"
“Nothing.” I yanked myself out of his grip, my wrist surely springing up bruises. "Absolutely nothing.”
Fighting the urge to rub my sore wrist, I turned and swept down the stairs, leaving him there to stare after me. He was, too, the suspicion in his gaze hard enough to skin through to my backbone.
I wouldn't let him intimidate me though. He likely wou
ldn't accept me as easily as the other two because of who I was, if you could call that easy. I was a poisoner by default, a killer by blood. And deep down, I wanted to be both to take out Faust and Lager and all their men. Even if Thomas and I fought them on the same side, I couldn’t trust him. He was leaving crucial details out of his story and had imprisoned Baba, something I still couldn’t fully process.
Thomas scared me, though I'd never show it. Still, what would he do if he knew I’d been headed upstairs toward Archer and the bath, my heart thudding in time to the pulse between my legs? A human and one of his packmates, together?
Now, though, as I stepped off the stairs, the fire Archer had lit had been siphoned from my body.
“I wasn’t done with you.”
I leaped at the voice directly behind me. I hadn’t heard a thing, and I heard everything.
A rough hand grabbed me by the wrist and swung me around.
“Let me go,” I shouted.
But the hold on me only tightened. “You know that man upstairs. How.”
Dread bolted down my back. He did see through me. He knew everything. So what would he do about it?
"He's my baba," I admitted.
"Your what?"
"My pa," I bit out.
Thomas flung my wrist away from him as if I’d stung him. "And that right there explains everything."
"My mother invented the poison,” I said, “and it became our livelihood to survive the winters. The day Baba got shot by Lager was the day I tried to deliver the poison myself to Faust. Eventually, I made it, and when he refused payment, I went back with Grady and Archer and—"
"Set fire to Old Man's Den. Archer conveniently left out most of your part in all this of what he told me. Now I know why."
"Archer was trying to protect me."
He scoffed. "A human."
"Not just." My voice rang out and bounced against the four walls sharply. "I am everything your pack needs right now. Yes, I may be blind, but I got into the tavern nearly unseen and then got out again—twice—with the map, the poison, a promise to Faust that I had even stronger poison, and one less body part on Lager.”
“The man who shot your pa.”
I nodded. “Most importantly, I got out with the members of your pack that I came into Old Man's Den with. Faust and Lager will keep coming for us. They'll never stop. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that I won't ever stop either. Lager took everything away from me just as Faust took everything away from you. If that doesn't put us on the same side, then I don't know what does. What I do know is this”—I jabbed the air and gritted my teeth—“I care about Sasha, Archer, and Grady, and I would lay down my life for each of them.”
“She already has.” Grady thud-drag-stepped into the room. “She’s an expert at it by now.”
The unexpected compliment warmed my chest and pulled me up short. Maybe he didn’t know he’d done it.
Archer’s low chuckle rumbled from the stairway. "Now you know what we've been dealing with these past few weeks."
"Trouble," Grady muttered.
"Of the best kind." Archer slipped his hands around my waist and brushed a kiss to my temple. A warm current thrummed from the touch and sparked brighter. "It’s best not to underestimate this woman. I know I don’t."
I swallowed roughly, my body trembling from too many intense emotions at once. "You heard us."
"Thin walls,” Grady said. “Even thinner than our old cabin, especially when you and Archer are making plans about what to do with each other. Let that be a lesson."
Oh, for fuck’s sake. What I wouldn’t give for a little privacy every now and again.
"You should’ve told me, Archer," Thomas said.
Archer folded me into him with his strong arm wrapped around my shoulder protectively. "I told you she was human and I cared about her."
"You didn't tell me she was a Song."
Silence pressurized the room, seeming to distance the five of us even in this cramped room, but my mind scratched on what Archer had said. He cared about me. I knew it, but it made all the difference to hear it.
Thomas’s gilded eyes flicked to me. "What's this stronger poison you mentioned."
"I called it five-step poison. It takes you five steps before you fall over and die. Some snakes have nicknames like five-step snakes because of their venom.” I shrugged. “That's where I got the idea."
"But you don't have any of that, do you."
"No."
"Toss that threat around enough, and it might as well be real.” Grady shifted his weight as he rubbed his leg. “She'll come up with a way to make it.”
I smiled toward him, and though I didn't sense a smile back, I didn't need one from him. He believed in me, even when I didn't always believe in myself like while jumping from one roof to another. That was humbling. As I faced him, I faced my feelings for him, too, the ones I knew he'd overheard. I loved him, yes, but in a different way than Archer, molded specifically to the bristled armor Grady wore around his heart. Sure, he pissed me off and pushed me away, but I still needed him. I needed both of them, like a female wolf shifter I definitely wasn't, but it didn't matter. It felt right, sharing my heart like this.
"That's a lot of faith to put in a human.” Thomas crossed toward the stairs. “We still leave tomorrow morning. Hopefully the human can keep up.”
“She will,” Grady assured him.
“She can,” Archer said at the same time.
"Please, keep underestimating me,” I called after him, imagining my glare drilling into his spine. “I hope the shock of what I'm capable of chokes you."
Chapter 7
We'd have to leave Baba behind. I’d overheard Thomas talking to a man downstairs—another wolf shifter from a different pack, I presumed—about looking after the church and those here while he was gone. Funny, I hadn’t even known that’s where we were. It must’ve been abandoned or unused in winter, and it was small with a fireplace in every room. But since he’d asked someone to take care of everything, I had to wonder if Baba was really a captive or not. It kind of seemed like Thomas was only looking after him too. Maybe I was wrong.
Leaving him behind though… I'd just found him, had wanted to show him what kind of person I was now after the past several weeks, which was the same as I always was, but as Timothy's captive, real or not, he was forced to see me. Not just with his eyes, either.
I took him breakfast late the next morning which was something I could never do before because he'd be awake before dawn. He took his coffee hesitantly, the calluses on his fingers scraping over my skin. I sensed he wanted to say something but slurped his drink instead.
Careful not to jostle him, I sat on the edge of his bed and folded my hands in my lap, unsure what else to do with them. After a long, awkward moment of me wondering if I should just get up and leave, I finally spoke, saying the only thing I could think of. "I need to tell you about Jade and Lee."
His attention, which I knew was already on me, sharpened. "What about them?"
“I found Lee in Old Man's Den. He reeked of alcohol and was surrounded by men moving him to a different tavern. He'd just come from The Scratching Post, where he said Jade was."
Baba set his coffee down on the nightstand, slopping some of it onto the tray. "How did they get there?"
"After I left, Lager must've taken them. I heard something about there being a market where"—I swallowed—"where humans are sold. I don't know if that's what happened to them, but when I went back there, they were gone."
He heaved a shaky breath. "I told you to go to them, Aika. You should have never left them alone with that man lurking outside."
"I was trying to save them. To save you. We would've starved without that money."
"What money?” he asked, incredulous. “You said you never made the delivery. You left them, and for what? To shack up with a couple of wolf shifters?"
I shoved to my feet, rage hissing through my clenched teeth. "If I'd stayed, then he might've tak
en me too. Who would get all of us back then, huh? You? You were shot, Baba. I will get them back. Me. Your own daughter who you care less about than the neighbors." I stomped toward the door. "You're goddamn welcome."
"You're not though."
I jerked to a stop, my hand halfway to the doorknob and my heart suspended mid beat. “What?”
The silence stretched thin, close to snapping, and then, "You’re not my daughter.”
My mouth moved to say something, but I found no words.
“You remember that day in the barn. I know you do. You came in while your mother was screaming at me. Don't you remember what she was saying?"
Bitter memories trickled in, clouded by time and punched with holes. No, I didn't remember what she'd been going on about.
"Before that day, she found out something about me. I was in love with Chen, Jade and Lee's mom, your ama’s best friend, and had been for years.”
I half turned to face him, his words biting hard.
“Lost in her rage as your ama was, she let slip her own truth to me that day. She had an affair with Jade and Lee's father and became pregnant with you. 'To call it even,' she said. But she wasn't done. That day, she told me she was going to kill Chen. She was out of her mind with jealousy. She even had a jar of her poison in her pocket, so I—” He swallowed. “I took the shovel you slid across the barn floor toward me, and I—"
"You killed her," I said, my voice empty of all emotion. I knew it then, but I'd never been able to think beyond giving him the shovel, let alone say it out loud. The words had a salty, bitter aftertaste I tried to choke down. I couldn't, though, and the taste coated my tongue until I thought I might gag. My stomach seized, and I pressed my head to the cool wood of the door to get some sense of control.
All this time, I wasn't the person I thought I was. I didn’t belong to Baba and Ama. Instead, I was a dead man's and Ama's. My whole world had floundered too many times to count lately, but this time, it felt like my whole life had been a lie. Why hadn't he bothered to tell me the truth before now? Because it would require talking to me, a human being who lived inside his cabin with him and thought he was hers?
Winter's Bite (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 2) Page 5