“I am,” I said aloud. “And Luke won’t even be there. He’ll be laying a curvy, difficult trail to Wolf Camp. One that gives our pack the advantage while seeming to tilt the odds in the opposite direction.”
Something primal flowed from Luke to me then. Disappointment that I’d sided with his sister. Knowledge that I was pushing him away, not just for the sake of the pack and Carly but to give myself breathing room.
His only verbal answer, though, was aimed at me and Ruth alike. “Done,” he told us. “Sister, please watch my sword maiden’s back.”
Chapter 20
I sent Carl away to gather his men and drop off his gun before rejoining us. Surprisingly, he made no further complaints, not even when Ruth offered herself up as his guide.
Which left me alone with a dead elk, a dead werewolf, and most of the living members of Luke’s pack. I wasn’t so sure my authority would hold without either Luke or his sister there to add weight to my words. But there was no better time than the present to test the issue.
“We have a feast to prepare,” I informed the waiting shifters. “If you made a kill last night, bring whatever’s left back to camp. Tidy up. Prepare to host.”
I held my breath, waiting. And it worked. Wolves left in slow handfuls.
Well, some did. Others sidled close to me, as if measuring token-removal possibilities.
“These clothes,” I added, loudly enough for everyone still present to hear, “are borrowed. The only item I own at the present moment is a sword. I’d be glad to discuss its ownership the same way Carl and I discussed his gun.”
They exhaled. A few more stepped back. Melted into the undergrowth.
Only Michael remained in place, staring at my belly. The spot where I’d stashed my pelt.
Seemed I was dealing with this issue sooner rather than later. I grabbed the boy’s arm as he sidled past me. “Can I borrow you for a minute?”
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong!”
Around us, I could almost hear ears pricking up. The token hunters hadn’t left yet. Just backed off a little.
“Under the arch,” I suggested. There, with stone to our backs, we could be moderately certain we wouldn’t be overheard.
Michael nodded and followed me under cover, but his steps were stiff. If he’d been lupine, his ruff would have been standing straight up.
With a woelfin, I would have been gentler. But Michael was a skinless, so I went straight for the jugular. “Luke doesn’t trust you.”
“You don’t think I know that?” His eyes flashed, but at least they met mine. His fists were waist-high, tightly clenched. “Ever since I refused to become alpha....”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I promised. “Luke has his own issues to sort out, but he respects your decision. Respects you. And so do I.”
I let the truth of my statement settle between us for a moment before I turned to the topic I’d brought Michael here to address. “Are you going to betray that respect, though? What you saw in the car? It’s girl stuff. Private. You won’t talk about it.”
“I—no.” Michael’s brow was furrowed. This wasn’t the topic he’d expected. I got the distinct impression he’d been curious about my pelt then but hadn’t recognized it. Now I’d made the item much more interesting.
Well, that plan backfired. Perhaps, though, I could still stir up a batch of metaphorical lemonade out of my failure. “If you want Luke to trust you the way I do...” I started.
“Yes!” Michael’s interruption was loud enough to echo off the arch above us. “I’ll prove he can trust me. I’ll—”
“Watch over Carly? Stick to her side so Carl can’t get close to her? She is your niece, after all.”
There, that would kill two birds with one stone. Provide a male buffer between Carly and her betrothed while also, perhaps, helping Michael forget what he’d seen and what I’d so inexpertly drawn his attention to.
Michael was willing. “That’ll drive her crazy.” His lips quirked, the gesture so much like his brother’s I lost my breath for a moment. “I used to order her around when we were kids, telling her she had to do what I said because I was her uncle.”
As if they weren’t kids any longer. The realization that I was acting just like Ruth—using a child as a pawn—chilled me.
Still...it was the right move. Or at least, the only move I could think of.
“Thanks,” I told Michael, allowing my hand to rest on his shoulder for as long as I figured he’d let me. Then, striding back among the few pack mates who still lingered: “Who wants to help carry Easton home?”
I SET EYES ON LUKE’S campsite for the first time with a haunch of elk dripping blood down my back. Perhaps that’s why the sad little cluster of camouflage tents beside a muddy stream bank made me wince.
This was nothing like the tidy cabins of Wolf Camp. The temporary settlement certainly wasn’t going to make us look good in front of Carl.
“What’s the problem?” Victor stumbled to a halt beside me. Easton’s furry body weighed down his steps, but Luke’s cousin had still kept up with me. For that reason, among others, I answered him honestly.
“This. All of it.” I waved my arm to encompass the lack of amenities and the cold ashes in the fire circle. The only color came from a brilliant red sourwood leaning across the campsite. If you took away that splash of crimson, we might as well have walked into a refugee camp.
Victor’s posture, already defensive, turned combative. “The alpha told us to stay out of sight.”
“Yes, but we didn’t, did we?” I raised my eyebrows. “Carl will be here any minute. He’ll think we’re hiding, scared to be found.”
“We are hiding.” This was Carly, who’d crept up beside me as I lingered at the edge of the clearing. I started to answer her, then paused as Luke joined the conversation from inside my head.
“I hadn’t realized it looked so bad.” He was out of breath, and I realized why when a flash of blood-streaked fur whipped across my vision.
“Are you talking to me in the middle of a battle? That’s worse than texting while driving.”
And yet, I was so glad to hear from him. Glad that we could banter despite external and internal threats.
Whether or not Luke caught the emotion as well as the words, he huffed as he twisted sideways. As a result, enemy teeth only barely grazed his shoulder rather than cutting deep into his jugular. “They’re lone wolves. I can handle them. But”—he pressed himself flat against the leaves as paws flew over him—“I might be a bit delayed.”
There weren’t just a couple of wolves there. From this vantage point I could see more sets of eyes than one wolf could handle. “We’ll come to you,” I offered. Maybe it was time to hash this out between us. Unlike the wound on my neck, our disagreement threatened to fester.
“No.” He leapt back up, words syncopated to match his paw steps. “You were right. Carl should think he’s walking into an intentional camping trip. Not a—what did you call it—a refugee camp? Entertain him. Delay him. Don’t promise anything about Carly.”
Commands again. Before I could respond, bared teeth filled Luke’s vision and the connection between us dissipated. Sighing, I turned my attention back to the skinless actually present by my side.
“What would you do on a camping trip when you’re not out hunting?” I asked. “In the evening?”
Carly shrugged. “I wasn’t invited. It...it wasn’t a proper place for a pack princess.”
The words weren’t hers, I could tell. Carly had been put in her place many times too often. No wonder she spoke at the volume of a laryngitis-challenged mouse.
Victor, on the other hand, was far too sure of himself. “We drank beer. Told dirty jokes. Indulged in games of chance.” He shrugged. “What do you think we did?”
“Well, that’s not appropriate.” I racked my brain, trying to channel my sister. She was a pro at keeping up appearances.
But our connection had been severed and I found I wasn’t even
able to think like Grace any longer. On the other hand, Bastion’s gamine grin popped into my mind unbidden. Bastion, who succumbed to dark moods from time to time but knew exactly how to shake them off in favor of sunshine.
“How about this?” I asked my two-shifter council. “After the feast, we’ll send Easton into the afterlife with a rousing dance.”
Chapter 21
Aunt May, it turned out, owned a fiddle. From deep within one of the tents, Carly rooted out a pile of semi-presentable clothes.
Michael slipped away to brush his hair, making me smile at the evidence that teenage boys were just as vain as the female of the species. Then he attached himself to his niece with the intense focus of someone given the first important task of incipient adulthood.
The rest of us gathered materials to build up a bonfire. And while it should have felt strange to work alongside skinless, they seemed to understand what I wanted before I even asked for it. Dry branches appeared at my feet along with a handful of crumpled-up newspaper. The stone fire circle expanded itself while my back was turned. And when Victor lit a match, the mood of the campsite transitioned from dismal to merely dreary in an eye blink.
And...that would have to do. Because Ruth was leading Carl and his men into the clearing already. “Sword maiden,” the young man called toward me. “I’d like to speak with you.”
His gaze slid past me toward Carly, and Ruth’s eyebrows lowered. As if she needed to warn me. As if I’d be so easily drawn into that trap.
“Soon!” I answered with a vague wave in the direction of the roasting elk parts.
Between pretending I knew how to cook over an open fire (ha!) and disappearing into a tent in search of nonexistent hair ties, I managed to evade Carl’s attempts at conversation for over an hour. Then Aunt May pulled out her fiddle, someone began pounding on a hollow tree trunk, and the festivities fully began.
Dancing with my cousin had been a matter of loud music and colored lights, all flash and no substance. The skinless were different. They needed no trappings to turn the forest into a stage. Just joined hands in a circle, weaving in and out with fancy footwork that tripped me up at first.
Then...I got it. Or perhaps they changed the dance to suit me. It was almost as if the pack and I breathed in unison, our feet flashing as soles kicked up toward the flames.
One moment I was holding Carly’s hand while Michael, on her other side, nodded a promise to stick to her like super glue. The next moment, the line had split, reformed, and now one of Carl’s men was swinging me around the fire separate from both of our packs.
My partner was Luke’s age. Broader than Carl but lighter on his feet than I would have expected. I had a sinking suspicion he knew how to handle the sword belted at his hip better than Carl had as well.
He parried with words rather than weapons however. “You and your mate are hard wolves to pin down.”
“Are we?” I spun away from him, letting the single hand that connected us grow taut before I rolled back up close. “I hadn’t noticed.”
The male’s lips quirked ever so slightly. “Good thing our pack enjoys hunting.”
“What exactly are you hunting for?”
His answer wasn’t at all what I’d expected. “Young love,” he said gruffly but with an entirely straight face. He either believed what he was saying or was a skilled actor. Either way, when I remained silent, he elaborated on his point. “Carl dotes on Luke’s niece. Living so far from his betrothed is painful.”
So Carl had sent one of his men to do his dirty work. It would have been helpful if Luke had provided a bit more information on betrothal customs before our connection went dark.
Barring actual knowledge, I went for easy evasions. Broadening the distance between me and my dance partner, I prepared to slip my hand free....
But Carl’s henchman didn’t release me. Instead, he clenched my hand tighter, his words polite yet adamant.
“Not quite yet, if you don’t mind, sword maiden.”
And...I tripped. Or, rather, someone tripped me. I was 99% sure that was a foot not a rock that twisted up my legs.
Either way, my hand yanked itself out of my partner’s grasp as I plummeted toward the ground. Then a wrinkled shoulder was beneath my armpit.
“If you’ll excuse us,” the witch-hazel-scented elder told Carl’s lackey, “she’s exhausted.”
This time, he had no alternative to letting me leave.
PAST THE GLOW OF THE bonfire, I realized I was exhausted. Even counting my drugged sleep while being kidnapped, it had been nearly a day since I’d rested. I tried not to lean on Witch-hazel—after all, she seemed far too frail to hold me. But my head was spinning, so it was either accept her support or fall flat on my face.
“Hold on a minute,” I said, closing my eyes as I tried to regain my equilibrium. Plus, I wasn’t sure where my companion was taking me....
It was almost as if she’d heard my uncertainty. “You need to sleep.”
I opened my eyes and was steadied by her smile. I’d never caught Witch-Hazel’s name, but it didn’t matter. What did matter was: “The pack....”
“Will be perfectly fine without your attention for a few hours. Unless you want to be here when Easton goes onto the fire?”
I shivered. I should want that, but I didn’t.
“Will they miss me?”
“Have they missed Luke?”
I glanced back at the skinless circling around the bonfire. They didn’t appear to be missing their alpha, and his absence made it easy to delay dealing with Carl until tomorrow.
In fact, going to bed would serve the same purpose. No one could pin me down to a promise if I was sound asleep.
Luke and I couldn’t hash out our differences if he returned while I was sleeping either. I told myself it was my spinning head rather than the errant thought deciding the issue.
“Come along, child.” Witch-Hazel pushed up the flap of a miniature tent barely large enough for one person. Inside was a sleeping bag and a pillow—it looked like heaven. “Wipe off your feet before you get in.”
She sounded like a mother, so I obeyed her. Took the towel she offered and scrubbed the worst of the mud out from between my toes. Then I crawled into the fluffy warmth without even bothering to unbuckle my sword belt.
The music was softer here, my exhaustion deeper. I blinked...and forgot to draw my eyes back open. Half-woke when the first mournful howls heralded Easton’s descent into the flames of the bonfire. Then sleep pulled me under so hard I lost track of everything for what must have been several hours.
I would have slept longer, too, if warm breath hadn’t feathered across my cheekbone. It was pitch dark, no music in evidence. The party was over...and someone was inside my tent.
I GRABBED MY SWORD’S hilt, trying to figure out how to draw the blade out of the sleeping bag without slitting my own throat in the process. Then my pelt slithered up my back until it could sharpen my senses.
Cinnamon enfolded me. Black turned into a silhouetted gray in the shape of broad shoulders. I smiled and let my eyes drift back shut as I greeted my mate.
“Luke.”
Strong arms cupped me close, only the sleeping bag between us. Somehow Luke had made it all the way into the tent before waking me. Now, my body molded to his.
“Honor.” Luke’s breath feathered over the cinnamon-scented scar on my neck.
The spiciness of him—of us—rose to surround me. Awareness quaked through my belly. Luke’s skin was a millimeter from my skin.
My pelt pressed up against my back, begging me to close that gap. And yet...I didn’t. Instead, I threw metaphorical ice water on both of us. “We didn’t finish our conversation.”
He sighed and released me. “No. We didn’t.”
And there it was. Woelfin and werewolf. The differences between our worlds yawned ocean-wide between us.
I wouldn’t have thought there was room for two people to lie in such a tiny tent without touching, but Luke and I managed.
I could no longer smell his scent.
Words were the only thing I could think of to draw us closer. So I tried them. Tentatively. Almost too quietly to hear myself speak.
“I always imagined Grace and I would find matched partners,” I murmured. “It’s what twin woelfin do. Choose another set of twins as mates, wait a few years, then get pregnant the same year.”
Luke hummed. He was listening, not interrupting. My words, so quiet to me, were probably a normal conversational level for a skinless.
Brushing aside the flicker of unease that thought prompted, I closed my eyes and let the dark more fully encompass me. “Our children,” I continued, “would be as close to each other as Grace and I are to Justice and Bastion. We’d build a family around four young woelfin who tore in and out of neighboring houses barely realizing the difference between mother and aunt.”
I was glad of the dark. I’d never dreamed aloud before. It felt more intimate than kissing. More intimate than even what we were talking about in this roundabout way.
More intimate yet when Luke spoke the truth I hadn’t even admitted to myself before now. “You don’t want to have pups—kids—until you and Grace patch things up.”
“And you need an heir immediately. Not a cautiously created, loving family.” The hole in my stomach felt large enough to fall through. “You were right and I was wrong. I should have stayed away. Or left yesterday. I’m making things worse.”
“No. You never make things worse.”
The space between us disappeared. Luke’s palms settled around my cheeks as if he was about to kiss me.
He didn’t, but his words were even sweeter. “I’m glad you came back. I’m glad you’re here, Honor. What the pack needs and what you need are both valid.”
I opened my eyes, wishing I could see in the dark like he could. Instead, I inhaled cinnamon. Focused on the whisper of breath on my forehead as he pulled me in closer.
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