Winter's Edge (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 1)

by Lindsey R. Loucks

So I sat back with my eyes closed, twirled my wet hair over my shoulder—from a looong, hot bath—and listened. Archer's loving voice as he praised Sasha. Grady's patience with the pup when she got twisted up in his legs as he moved from the table to the pot over the fire. The three of them were a family, easy with each other and close like I supposed a wolf pack would really be. Maybe even closer than Jade, Lee, and me. Certainly closer than I was to Baba.

  How was he? Had Jade gotten the bullet out of him? Was he worried about me? It had been almost two weeks since I'd left to make the delivery myself. A lifetime, it felt like. Meanwhile, the days ticked ever closer to winter.

  The weather eased into winter, which was why we already had snow, but on the official first day, it was as close to a frozen hellscape as I could imagine. Whiteout conditions, zero visibility. Making my way to the outhouse using the rope attached to our cabin required serious preparation. The first day of winter had always been like this, as far back as anyone could remember. And then it continued for five months straight. It was brutal and could easily kill. Jade and Lee’s parents accidentally let the fire go out while they were sleeping and nearly froze to death. A few days later they were sick. Doctors didn’t visit Margin’s Row, especially in winter, so a few weeks later, their parents were dead.

  Which was why I took winter so seriously.

  "What's next?" Grady asked, stirring some mountain chicory in a pot above the fire.

  It smelled too sweet to be wolfsbane, but mixed with the moonshine, no one would be able to tell. Grady had had to make the moonshine outside since they didn’t have a cellar like Baba did.

  "The only thing left is to add all the ingredients to the glass jar, but we can do that right before I leave since the moonshine has a horribly offensive odor.” My nerves stretched thin at the thought. What if this didn’t work? No. No, it had to work.

  "Ah. Just like Grady’s odor, then.” Archer said from next to me. He sat upright now, the bite in his side healing quickly. Maybe a result of being a wolf shifter. Lucky man.

  Grady grunted. "When you're this pretty, you just don't need to bathe as often. Besides, I'm cleaner than you, or at least I was until a certain someone arrived."

  My cheeks warmed, but I tried not to show any reaction. It was obvious Grady was referring to me and that I'd inspired Archer to bathe more regularly. A good thing, though I was flattered.

  "There's a pot there in the fire," Archer gritted out. "Why don't you stick your head in it for a closer look."

  Grady stood and limped across the living room to the table where he kept all the flowers and herbs he’d added to the mix. "Funny guy."

  "Mm, I thought so," Archer said after him, his voice icy and sharp.

  Grady threw something down on the table—always so loud—and then limped toward the hallway. "When are you doing this, Aika?"

  "As soon as possible. Tomorrow.” My heartbeat spiked at how close that sounded, but it had to be done. I ran my fingers through Sasha’s fur, who lay curled in a ball on my left. “Hellbreath will get me there."

  "So soon?" Archer touched my hand, gentle so I wouldn't startle, and a bolt of heat shot up my arm. "Are you healed enough to ride?"

  "I have to be. I've already been here nearly two weeks, and winter won't wait."

  “Still…” He moved closer across the couch and wound his fingers through mine, settling our clasped hands on my thigh.

  He wasn’t wearing a shirt since he sat right by the fire, a fact I’d been very aware of every time Sasha had jumped up on him or he brushed his arm against mine. Like now. His bicep curved right up against the side of my breast, pulling the flannel tight against my nipple. He rubbed little circles into the back of my hand. The heat inside me stirred low, skittering across my lap like licking flames. His leg thumped against my knee, and there was barely any part of us that wasn't touching. My breaths grew shallow, and I tried to slow them, deepen them so he couldn't hear me panting. What was it about him that did this to me? And why did I like it so much? I wanted to press into him more. Have him touch me everywhere.

  "We'll follow as far as we can and stay until you come out," he promised. "But I don't like that you'll be going in there alone." His breath sighed against my cheek like the kiss of a spring breeze, and I tilted my face up to meet it.

  "I know. But it's the only way."

  "I don't like that you'll be going, period. I like having you here. Believe it or not, you're much better company than Grady." He laughed, such a light, effortless sound.

  "That ray of sunshine? I don't believe it." I grinned but it didn’t stick for long. "I have to go, though, Archer. But I hope that this won't be the last time I see you."

  "Me too." He leaned in and grazed his lips across mine, hardly a touch at all, but enough to charge my heart into double-time.

  My first kiss with a wolf shifter. My first kiss period. It had both scattered my thoughts and sharpened them around this moment in time.

  Despite my inexperience, I knew how the basics worked from some of the books Jade had charmed the librarian in Margin into checking out, the books hidden behind the library desk and not on the shelves.

  I leaned in for more. Mercifully, Archer obliged. He swept his lips over mine again, harder this time but still soft, and the heat of him melted into me. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it didn’t seem to matter. Not to him. His tongue parted my mouth open, and I held my breath as my whole body opened up too. He touched the inner part of my knee and slowly trailed his fingers higher up the thigh of my loose-fitting pants.

  Energy sparked all over my skin, but especially where his hand was headed as he spread my leg wider. Now it wasn’t just his fingers but his whole palm gliding up my thigh. The size of his hand alone pulsed my blood faster. I gasped, suddenly realizing I hadn’t taken a breath, and reached upward hesitantly for his face. My fingers met the strength of his jaw moving sensuously as he kissed the lingering doubts about tomorrow right out of me.

  Then limping footsteps thudded up the hallway, and we broke apart.

  Damn Grady and his ridiculous timing.

  I covered my mouth to hide my heavy pants, my whole body buzzing and my face heating to the tips of my ears.

  Archer cleared his throat.

  “Uh-huh,” Grady said.

  That night, I lay awake thinking about tomorrow. And about Archer. About what I would do if this rickety plan of mine didn't work and I didn't get paid. And Archer. I needed to focus so my family and I could survive the winter, but the man, the wolf shifter, had invaded my thoughts with his heat, and his heart.

  I touched my lips, imagining how his had felt there. So soft and full of promise. I pictured his hand sliding over my inner thigh, his fingertips so close to my center, as he pulled my leg open wider. I didn't know that he'd been aware that he'd done it, but I sure did. In fact, I felt it even now, his fingertips tingling every nerve and making them come alive.

  Breathless at just the thought, I floated my hand underneath the fur blanket, then over my thigh like he had. It wasn't the same, but it didn't feel terrible, so I kept going. Grazing higher, the same direction that ached and warmed whenever he touched me, right toward my center. I'd never done this, never touched myself like this, never had any reason to. But now…

  At the first glide of my fingers, I gasped at how wet and hot I felt. My body twitched and convulsed a little, as if separate from my hand now, feeling all of this as brand new and foreign…and nice. I pressed a little harder and moaned at the sensations sparking wherever I touched. Would this be how Archer touched me while he kissed me and pried my legs farther apart? While he covered me with his naked body and lost himself with me?

  My hips writhed against my fingers, seeking more of what I was doing to myself. So I obliged, pushing in deeper, my breaths louder than the crackling flames in the fireplace. I felt like my body was lifting toward something, the edge of a great cliff I couldn't see but that I wasn't afraid of.

  Because I imagined I was with him.<
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  A quick knock sounded at my door.

  I flew my hands out from beneath the covers, my breaths coming in short bursts, my skin fiery, my heart making a permanent home in my throat.

  "Yes?" I squeaked. Embarrassment swamped my body, and I tried again. "Yes?"

  The door opened. "Aika." It was Archer. Oh god, could he tell what I'd been doing? What I'd been thinking?

  But then the tone of his voice barreled through everything else. Tense, enough to seal my lungs together with worry.

  "What is it?"

  And then he said two words that just about killed me: "It's Hellbreath."

  Chapter 9

  The walk out to the barn was the longest I'd ever had to take. I had questions, but I couldn't voice them through the knot of emotion twisted in my throat.

  First, the package was taken, the sole source of money. And now maybe my horse, the only means I had to deliver the package, even a fake one? The universe played cruel jokes. Even if I was successful tomorrow getting money we needed, it wouldn't matter if I didn't have Hellbreath to go into town for food. We wouldn't survive the winter.

  But even more important than that was I couldn't lose my girl. We’d found each other while I’d been teaching myself to shoot with a bow and arrow on the side of the house when I was about eleven. She’d wandered up from the direction of Margin, and we just stood there, sensing each other. I’d known right away she was a horse from her telltale sounds, but I couldn’t see her scars. Horrid, Baba had said, like she’d been abused. Since our other horse was on his last leg and no one came to claim Hellbreath, we became fast friends, seeing a kinship in the other, one abused girl to another.

  Now, Grady and Archer came with me out to the barn, their boots crackling over the snow. The night was still and cold like a mirror of frosted glass before it shattered. I pressed the lapels of my wool coat to my mouth to keep any broken sounds inside me as Grady pulled open the barnyard door and limped out of the way. He followed Archer and me inside.

  I immediately smelled something wrong. Sour and sick like an infection.

  "This way," Archer said, his voice somber, and he lightly touched my elbow to lead me forward.

  She grunted, not her usual greeting at all.

  I slipped off my glove and reached my hand out to her, expecting her to find it with a nudge. But she didn't.

  Archer redirected my hand and brought it to her nose. When I touched my fingertips down her silky fur to the tip, they came away sticky and wet. Nasal discharge, which could mean a number of things, not all of them terrible.

  "Please," I choked out. "What do you see?"

  Grady took a deep breath and let it out slowly as if this pained him too. "She's leaning against the wall of the stable. Her head is tilted like she can't control it. I think it might be some kind of virus because of the discharge coming out her nose."

  My eyes filled with tears as I tried to picture all of these things, but I just couldn't. She was tough and stubborn and fierce. She was my girl.

  "Is she… Is she in pain?"

  A pause, then, "I don't know," Grady said, his voice low.

  "What can I do for her?" The words faltered at the end, but Archer seemed to understand them anyway.

  "You don't ride her, Aika." He smoothed his hand over my back. "She's not up for it. We'll do all we can for her in the meantime."

  But the delivery. It didn't have to be tomorrow, but if not, when? Winter was almost upon us, less than a week away. I had to make this delivery, and I had to do it soon.

  The immediacy of the situation, the stress at seeing Hellbreath, the toll just coming out here had on my healing body—all of it loosened my knees. I slumped, but Archer was there to keep me upright with his big, warm hands.

  “Hey, whoa. I got you.”

  He did, but I had to have myself too. There were too many lives depending on me.

  I had to still try to make the delivery, with or without Hellbreath.

  My mind spun on possible solutions until I pinpointed one that just might work. "What if… What if there was another way for me to get there, like if you two pulled me there on a sleigh or something? You could stop before they scented you, or before you scented them rather, and then aim me in the right direction." I blurted it all so fast that I wasn't even sure I understood it.

  "No." Grady paced away, his bum leg dragging over the loose hay on the ground, and then back again. "Terrible idea."

  "What? Why?" I demanded.

  "Because you barely made it out here," he growled. “You’re not even healed yet.”

  Archer slipped his arm tighter around my shoulders, enveloping me in his warmth and comfort. "Even if we did it that way, you'd have to walk at least a mile, maybe more, depending on the wind and how far our scents carry, with nothing to guide you."

  "Wrong,” I said, my voice hard. “I'd have myself, my hearing, and my sense of smell. I'll even bring a walking stick to help me."

  "The terrain is rough,” Grady said. “Steep valleys slick with snow and frozen streams. If you fall—"

  "I won't."

  "Then we would come and help her. Fuck the risks, Grady," Archer snapped.

  "And if your girlfriend can't cry out for help because she slipped and split her head open on a rock?” Grady asked. “What then, lover boy? I'm not sticking my neck out for someone like her."

  Archer released a warning growl as he released me and took a step toward him. "Leave. Now."

  Someone like me. Human? Blind? Useless?

  I crushed my back teeth together while fury sizzled up right underneath my skin. "Part of why I'm going there is for you, to find your alpha. To find Thomas."

  "Bull. Shit,” Grady said through gritted teeth. “It's all for you. As soon as you get your money, you'll forget all about us. Next spring, your pa will continue to make the poison that helped slaughter most of my pack and keep others away, and you'll help and not even think twice about it."

  "Don't you say that,” I shouted. “Don't even pretend to think you know me."

  With a furious snarl, Archer drove Grady into the barnyard wall to my left hard enough to shake through the foundation. "Grady. Go."

  "With pleasure," Grady hissed and stomp-limped to the doors. He must’ve forgotten his walking stick. "Have fun with your plaything."

  "Your alpha's probably already dead," I called after him, the words bitter and sharp, and I knew he heard me because he stood in the doorway for a long moment before leaving, just as silent and cold as his heart.

  I'd hurt him, and that filled me with a dark sort of glee.

  The next morning, I woke early and dressed in as many clothes as were in the small chest of drawers in my room. Not my room, even though I'd come to call it that these last several days. Soon, I was ready to go to Old Man’s Den, ready to get this charade over with so I could get paid and leave here for good. Leave Grady and the horrible way he made me feel. Leave Sasha. Leave Hellbreath. And leave Archer.

  Those last two would be the hardest. Archer’s warmth and easy nature had slipped underneath my skin and heated through all the way to my soul. He felt perfect there, like that was where he'd always been. So to go someplace else where he hadn't saturated the place with his smell and laughter and stories… I might only see him a few more brief times before the long winter—if that—and it scratched deep claws down my heart even more painful than the real, healing ones on my flesh.

  And Hellbreath… She wouldn’t be able to travel back home if she was so sick. As hard as it was to fathom life without her, she’d be well taken care of here. If she survived the winter, I would come back for her. No question.

  With the mission to go find a walking stick first, I stepped into the hallway and then paused outside Sasha's door. I had to say a quick goodbye. I hoped I could see her again, in the special way that I could, because I wanted to watch her grow and shift when the time came. She, too, had wriggled her way into my life, and I'd miss her.

  I knocked softly and then e
ntered, and immediately knew two things. One: she was asleep. Two: Grady was here. His angry, volatile emotions stiffened the air and made it hard to breathe. His glare burned through my skull from the far corner of the room where the faint creak of a rocking chair had stopped the second I'd opened the door.

  Doing my best to ignore him, I shuffled across the room with my arms out. He didn't bother to offer direction, a good thing since I didn't want to hear his stupid voice. My fingers grazed a thin wooden bar and then another one, like those on a crib, and I reached over and sifted my hand through the softest fur imaginable. I smiled despite my dark company.

  "Be well, Sasha," I whispered. "I hope I get to see you again."

  Without a word to Grady, I left and shut the door behind me. Making sure my coat was bundled tightly to the cold, I silently said my goodbyes to the cabin and walked out into a blustery day.

  "Morning," Archer said in that deep, easy way of his that never made me jump.

  "Good…morning…" I stopped on the porch as his footsteps thudded about ten feet away, not over snow, but wood. A short banging sounded from that direction, swift and confident like a hammer driving a nail home. "What are you doing?"

  "Just finishing up with your sleigh. There's your quiver of more freshly carved arrows just to your left there, and the fake poison is right next to Grady's walking stick."

  My jaw dropped. I bent to retrieve the items and rubbed my fingers over the arrows’ smooth wood. "You did this…for me? Already?"

  "I did." I could hear the grin in his voice but imagined it fading much too fast. He crossed toward me and stopped, standing so close I could feel his breath feathering my lips as he towered over me. "But also for me. I don't like this idea and I don't like you leaving here, but I understand that you have to do this."

  "Thank you. Thank you for all of this." No one had ever bent over backward before for me, not ever, and certainly not by making me a sleigh and arrows by hand. Then again, I'd never been this desperate to survive. It showed that he cared—really cared—and it stole my next several breaths at just how much. I shook my head, feeling tears rise and overflow, but with my hands full, I couldn't wipe them away.