“All right, all right. Jeez. Usually rubbin’ one out makes people happier, not snippier,” she mumbled as her footsteps faded down the hall.
I held my breath as I listened closely until I couldn’t hear her anymore. When I was sure she was gone, I flopped back onto my pillow, bringing the sheet up with me to cover my face that I knew had to still be red.
Wyatt laughed softly and tugged on the sheet. “That was an interesting excuse.”
I narrowed my eyes at him but couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “I wouldn’t have had to lie if you weren’t still in here!” I whisper-yelled.
He pouted, sticking his bottom lip out and looking so adorable I just wanted to kiss him. “You want me to go?”
“Yes.” Then I thought about it some more. “Well, no. But you probably should anyway. I don’t want anyone to see you.” His eyes shuttered for a moment before he averted his gaze. I didn’t like the look on his face, so I cupped his chin and turned him back to me. “Hey. What’s going on?”
He met my eyes, his quizzical and guarded. “Why are you hiding me?” he asked softly. “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”
My eyes widened as I shook my head fast. “NO. No. It’s nothing like that.” I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before continuing. “It’s my family that’s the problem. I don’t like them in my business, and if they saw you leaving my room like this, I’d never hear the end of it.”
His eyes were still cautious as he asked, “But shouldn’t they know about me anyway?”
I tried to hide my wince, but with him less than a foot away, there was no way he missed it. “Yes. Of course. Just not now. I need a little time.”
His eyes bounced between mine slowly. “Okay. How much time?”
I shrugged. “Just until things settle down. We have the solstice party coming up in a couple weeks and we’re still not sure who in this pack is killing women in the woods. There’s just so much that everyone needs to focus on, I don’t want to add to that. Can we wait a few weeks? Let it just be us for now?”
He watched me quietly for another few minutes before blowing out a deep breath and nodding. “Okay, love. If that’s what you want.”
I smiled and kissed him, intending for it to be quick and sweet, but his lips lingered on mine and I couldn’t resist.
Honestly, the biggest reason I didn’t want to tell my family was not due to their nosy and opinionated behavior. That I was used to. No, my problem was I still wasn’t sure Wyatt wouldn’t change his mind about us. He’d flip-flopped so many times in the past that I still had whiplash. He’d promised this time would be different, but until I knew that for sure, I didn’t need to involve my family. It was best that we kept things between us for a while. Then we’d tell everyone. Probably.
Chapter 30
Callie
Fated mates.
Even just those two words strung together made me want to brush my teeth and spit them back out.
Fated mates.
I hadn’t really thought about them since I’d lost my parents to that affliction. My mom had been killed in a car accident when I was sixteen and my dad followed soon after.
Some people thought it was a blessing. That they never had to live without the other. But I knew what it really was. A curse. It took two parents away from five children when they needed them most. It wasn’t beautiful, it was awful.
Most wolves would never find their fated mate. The norm in our world was to meet someone you were compatible with and have a mating ceremony with them. Some wolves didn’t even believe fated mates were real. Unfortunately, I had first-hand experience with them. Which was why I’d really rather have been doing just about anything else. But Ellie had just come in here asking me to research them, so here I was.
She’d been living here for about a month, ever since everything that happened after the solstice party.
Everything had been going great that night until Peyton, a member of our pack who had an infatuation with my brother, got Ellie alone and filled her head with nonsense. Her and Abraham had another one of their fights, and it ended with Ellie deciding to run back home to Raleigh. The problem was, she hadn’t had her car here in Asheville. The bigger problem was she’d gotten a ride from my cousin, Calvin.
According to her, everything had been fine at first. He’d driven her home and left her at her doorstep with no issues. It wasn’t until he came back later that night that she knew something was wrong. She’d just figured out he’d been the one who’d killed all those women and attacked her in the woods and when the pretenses were gone, so was Calvin’s civility.
Ellie fought for her life in that little apartment of hers, but Calvin was an enforcer. He had brawn and experience on his side, so it wasn’t a fair fight. Once he’d subdued her, he dragged her back to his father’s pack lands in Charlotte where he apparently had been keeping all the other women he’d killed.
It was there that Abraham found her, barely conscious and at the mercy of Calvin’s insanity. Abraham tried to reason with him, tried to subdue him, but it was no use. Calvin chose death over losing Ellie to Abraham.
It was still so hard to swallow, but I think after almost losing her that night, we were all happy to have her close.
It also meant Abey was happy all the time and not sick from missing her. A side effect of being fated was you couldn’t be without the other person for long. Both Abraham and Ellie suffered a lot while they tried to make a long-distance relationship work. We were all thankful that was behind them.
Most importantly, it meant Wyatt didn’t have to guard Ellie anymore and he got to stay in Asheville with me. Even thinking about those weeks I’d had to spend without him made me sad, so I stopped that train of thought.
It had been great having Ellie around lately and it seemed she fit in here at the lodge seamlessly. She’d also been a huge help for me and the environmental agency I was trying to get off the ground. I’d been getting her help for months, but with her living out here, I’d begun to wonder if I could persuade her to join my organization in a more permanent way. We desperately needed a good lawyer, and Ellie was a great one. She’d be a terrific asset.
But Ellie wasn’t the only new resident of the lodge.
Will, the original werewolf, had been staying here since the night of the solstice party. I don’t think anyone really knew what he was doing here. I’m not sure he knew what he was doing here, but he was.
He’d showed up in the middle of the solstice party unexpected and unannounced. With him came this unexplainable electric current that affected every wolf in that clearing. He’d said it was the magic flowing in his veins we were feeling. Magic that had come from a witch at his request.
Thousands of years ago, he’d lost his wife to an influential warrior in his village. Being just a simple shepherd, he’d begged this witch to make him powerful enough to get her back. That’s when the witch infused the magic into his body, making him into a giant, formidable wolf.
He’d been able to get his wife back, but not without consequences. She’d been bitten in the fight with the warrior and neither of them knew the ramifications of that until a few weeks later. She was compelled, like we all were, to shift with the full moon, but something went wrong. Her body wasn’t strong enough to make it through the change and she died.
Legends say that he went crazy with grief. That he’d shifted back into a wolf and bitten any villager he came across before he disappeared into the woods. They say he spent centuries as a wolf without shifting back to his human form.
All of this was legend though. No one I’ve ever known could confirm where werewolves came from or how we came to be. Having Will, the original werewolf, show up at our doorstep was as incredible as it was unbelievable. I knew there had to be so much we could learn from him and I’d planned to pick his brain the first chance I got.
Maybe I should ask him about fated mates. If there was anyone who knew about werewolves, it would be him, the first one out of all of us, b
ut maybe that would be insensitive. The legends surrounding fated mates said they were created because of him. Because he’d lost his wife to the shift and he’d never been the same since.
Yeah, maybe asking him was a bad idea.
“Callie?”
I turned to find Bea at my door and gave her a warm smile. I hadn’t seen much of her in the past month and it’d been on my list to find out why, but I’d been too busy.
My environmental practice was so close to getting off the ground, I could taste it. Even now, Abey had men renovating an office space for us downtown. It was hard to believe it was really almost here, but years of hard work were finally beginning to pay off.
“Callie?”
I shook my head and looked back up at Bea, realizing I’d gotten lost in my thoughts again. That seemed to happen a lot lately.
“Hey, Bea. What’s up?”
She shrugged and stepped into my room. Cautiously, of course, because of the mess all over my floor. In a few weeks, all this crap could be moved to an office and out of my bedroom for good.
“I just wanted to come talk.”
I spun around in my office chair and frowned in her direction. “Yeah, I feel like I’ve barely seen you since the solstice party and everything that happened after.”
We both knew what I was talking about without me having to say it. But maybe that was the problem. We weren’t really talking about it. Maybe that’s what would help us get past it.
She sat down on my bed with a huff and shook her head. “I know. Having Will here has been strange. He never really talks, you know that? He kind of just lurks in the shadows. Like a giant fly on the wall. And have you ever noticed his eyes? How they seem to look right through you?”
Or I thought we both knew what I was talking about.
My brows rose higher the longer she talked. When she finally paused for a breath, I had a chance to cut in.
“I wasn’t talking about Will.”
The apples of her cheeks darkened with a blush as she flicked her icy blue eyes away from me. “Oh. Yeah. Neither was I.”
What?
I shook my head and decided to give her a pass on this one. But just this one. “I was talking about Calvin and the whole murdering women in the woods and kidnapping Ellie thing.”
My sister winced as she met my eyes again. “Oh yeah. That thing.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back in my desk chair. “I don’t know about you, but I’m still having trouble believing it. I mean Calvin of all people. The guy who cried when we were kids because he accidentally sat on a butterfly. That Calvin was the one who killed all those women, attacked Ellie, and then kidnapped her. What the heck?”
My sister shook her head, her face paler than before. “You didn’t see him that night, Callie. He wasn’t himself. That wasn’t the cousin we grew up with. Something happened. Something changed him and there was no coming back from that.”
I’d heard much of the same from Abraham, but it was still so hard to grasp. We’d grown up alongside Calvin. He’d been a part of this pack from the very beginning. How he’d managed to abduct and kill eight women and attack Ellie without any of us knowing was still a mystery. The more we learned about his depravity, the more I realized I really didn’t know the man he’d become.
I bit my lip as I studied my linked fingers. It was still so hard to swallow. “Have you talked to Clyde?”
She blew out a deep breath, her shoulders slumping. “I’ve tried a few times, but I know he’s not hearing me. If you think we feel betrayed, imagine how he’s feeling right now. Abraham had him leading the investigation of the murders, and all along, it had been his own brother, killing all these women right under his nose. I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same,” she said, her voice softer than I was used to hearing it.
We sat quietly for a while after that, both of us lost in our own thoughts that I was willing to bet were running along the same line. Finally, she let out a deep breath and gave herself a shake.
“Anyway, what are you up to in here? You’ve been hiding in your bat cave more than usual lately.”
I shrugged and let the truth fall from my lips without thinking it through first. “Doing some research on fated mates.”
My sister paused, and in that silent moment, I realized I shouldn’t have let that slip. Dang it.
“Why?” she asked slowly, suspiciously.
I opened my mouth to tell her it was at Ellie’s request, but closed my mouth before I could tell her secret like that. “Just doing some light reading,” I lied, my voice high-pitched and instantly giving me away.
Bea’s blue eyes narrowed on me. “Callista.”
“Beatrice.”
She pursed her lips, her penetrative stare never leaving me. “Is this about Wyatt?”
My eyes bulged out of my head as my heart shot to the back of my throat. “NO.” I cleared my throat and tried again, this time with a little less fear in my voice. “Um. No. Why would you ask that?”
She raised a dark brow and leaned back in her chair, her eyes perusing me in a way that made my skin itch. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten our conversation. I know how you feel about him, and I’ve been watching the two of you. It’s obvious something’s going on.”
My gaze darted to the plush rug at my feet. “It is?” I asked, my voice small.
“It’s obvious to me because I know what I’m looking for. Is it obvious to everyone else? Maybe not.”
I blew out a small, relieved breath, but she wasn’t done.
“So, if this research isn’t for you, then who’s it for?”
I looked away again before she could read the answer in my eyes, but it was unnecessary. Beatrice was smart as a whip and it took her no time to put the puzzle pieces together.
“Let’s see. The only other fated mates around are Abraham and Ellie. Since Abraham is so smitten he’s basically a high school girl doodling Ellie’s name on his binder, it’s obviously not him questioning things. And since Ellie is new to this werewolf stuff and just stubborn enough to not believe what’s right in front of her, I’m guessing she’s the one who requested the information. Am I getting warmer?”
I let my shoulders fall and met her gaze. “You’re basically on fire.”
She smirked. “That’s what I thought. So, Ellie’s not sure about Abey, huh? That’s not good.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s him she’s not sure about, it’s this fated stuff. You have to admit, it’s a pretty hard pill to swallow. Even if you did grow up knowing about it.”
It was Bea’s turn to look away, and I wondered at her reaction for a second before she met my eyes again. “Yeah. It is.”
I frowned at her response for a moment, but knowing Bea, if she wasn’t ready to talk about it, you wouldn’t get anything out of her.
“Did you know that children of fated mates are more likely to find their fated mates?”
Bea met my gaze then, something undefinable in her eyes. “Oh yeah?”
I shrugged, no happier about the information than she was. “That’s what I’ve read. I was thinking about asking Will what he knew, but–”
“NO.” I frowned at my sister as her cheeks bloomed with another blush. “I mean, no. Don’t ask him about that. You know what the legends say.”
I did, and I wasn’t, but what the heck was with her reaction?
Before I had the chance to ask any follow-up questions, Bea stood from the bed and walked toward my door, her shoulders stiff and her steps quick. “I just remembered there’s something I need to take care of. I’ll catch you later, Callie.”
Before I had the chance to say a word, she was gone. I watched the place she’d disappeared from carefully, wondering what the heck had gotten into my sister. She was always the steady one. The unflappable one. Nothing ever got to her, but it seemed this time something had. I just wondered what it was.
I turned back to my laptop and continued my research. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedl
y, there was very little real information about werewolves, but even so, my stomach sank with every line I read. I was so engrossed in my research and the mounting dread pooling in my belly that I didn’t notice the mountain of a man behind me until he tapped me on the shoulder.
I spun around quickly, my hand on my stuttering heart. “Abraham! Don’t scare me like that!”
My older brother smirked before plopping into the empty seat near my desk. “I called your name three times, Callista. S’not my fault you tune out when your brain gets goin’.”
I shot him another glare before turning back to my laptop. “What’s up, Abey?”
He leaned forward to peer at my computer screen, so I slapped it closed and turned to him with a closed-mouth smile. “Anything I can help you with?”
His narrowed eyes roved across my face and I had a bad feeling I wasn’t going to like what came out of his mouth next. “Why are you reading about fated mates?”
My stomach fell to the soles of my feet as my brain powered into overdrive. “Oh. Uh. That had nothing to do with you.”
He sat back in his seat and folded his massive arms across his chest, blue eyes still assessing me. “Everything in my pack has to do with me.”
I rolled my eyes, but he wasn’t done.
“And you’re my little sister, so it’s doubly my business.”
I scoffed. “By like an hour.”
He shrugged. “That still makes me the big brother. Which means I get to ask again, why are you reading about fated mates?”
Crap.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. Not only would he be devastated, it would betray Ellie’s trust and make her super upset with me. It would also probably cause a fight between them, and I’d witnessed enough of those already to last me a lifetime. In fact, the last time they had a big fight, she got herself kidnapped. None of us were ready to make that mistake again.
But if I told him the information was for myself, he’d start sniffing around my business and that was the last place I wanted my brother to be.
I could tell Abey was getting impatient and about to start throwing his weight around, so I said the first thing I could think of. “I just wanted to know more about them.”
Chasing Callie (Southern Werewolf Sisters Book 1) Page 25