It won’t be the first time she retreated from my predatory side, I reminded myself. I was older now. The rejection wouldn’t hurt as much.
But, instead of fleeing, the one-body just met my gaze with her own clear blue eyes. “Are you in trouble, Fen?” she asked.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. There was a lump in my throat approximately the size of a grapefruit and my mouth felt so dry I was tempted to open the car door and tilt my head skyward to ease my parched esophagus beneath the deluge of falling water.
I wasn’t sure whether I was elated or terrified that Celia hadn’t run away from my show of inhumanity. Because if she was going to be the brave one, what role did that leave for me to fill?
But at last I swallowed and answered. “No more than you are,” I forced out of my scratchy human throat.
Okay, so, yes. My mate had left me. I was currently trying to track down an erratic bloodling all on my lonesome. And Robert appeared to be stalking me and possibly threatening my mother as well.
For a shifter, though, those problems were all par for the course. Especially when an estranged parent chose to accept me into her life despite my rough edges and rocky past.
“Well, I guess we’d better head home then,” Celia decided, reaching over her shoulder to tuck the sword into the wheel well of the back seat before fastening her safety belt. “When you get to the bottom of the driveway, take a left....”
Chapter 10
WE DIDN’T SPEAK MUCH during the ride back to Celia’s house. There was simply too much to say, too many questions to ask and to answer. I had no clue where to start, and apparently my mother didn’t either.
So instead, I focused on a road that was barely visible between fast-moving wiper blades. And when we pulled up in front of what appeared to be a nice but not-too-flashy home on the outskirts of town, my mother accepted my request that she stay in the car with doors locked while I checked out the house and yard.
After all, Celia had been threatened twice that day and the cops had questioned us long enough that it was now nearly dark. I couldn’t stomach the thought of my one-body mother walking into danger with neither blade nor fangs to protect her.
“Do you want to take your sword?” she asked as I opened my door a crack. The rain had finally slacked off, but rivulets were still running from overwhelmed gutters to paved drive. I was going to get wet.
That wasn’t why I hesitated though. I’d planned to call upon my wolf so we could check the place over thoroughly, but now I remembered how even the hint of predator in her daughter’s eyes had sent Celia scurrying for cover twelve years earlier. This was just the kind of dicey decision I didn’t want to have to make. Bow to Celia’s one-body sensibilities or protect her weak human skin?
I waited too long and understanding sparked in my mother’s eyes. “Oh.” It was more emotion-turned-sound than word and I winced.
“I’ll take the sword,” I said hastily, reaching toward the sheathed katana that had been my chosen protection for the first month I’d spent outside established pack boundaries. I’d considered my wolf too weak to call upon then and had figured the sword was a suitable substitute. How ironic was it that I’d finally come to terms with my animal half just in time to scare away my long-lost mother with my newfound lack of humanity?
“No, shift. It’s safer.”
I glanced across the center console to take in the one-body’s rigid spine and her pinched lips. Celia was just as uncomfortable with the idea that I was a werewolf as she had been years earlier, but she wasn’t rejecting me this time around. Instead, my mother was doing her best to embrace the woman I’d become.
Still, I had to give the human an out now that she’d had time to remember why she left me in the first place. “I don’t have to stay here overnight. I can check the place over and make sure it’s safe then find a hotel. We’ll have lunch one day over the weekend, see if we even want to get to know one another better....”
“Fen Hallowell, you will sleep under my roof at least one time before making any decisions we’ll both regret.” Celia’s eyes flashed and, despite myself, I smiled. She sounded like an actual—if irate—mother.
Her voice in that moment of anger also reminded me a bit of my own.
“It’s actually Fen Young now,” I muttered, ashamed to tell her that I’d changed my last name in a spate of anger when I was twelve years old. Something about pre-teen hormones and budding breasts meant I was more pissed about being abandoned than I had been three years earlier when Harbor and Celia had actually done the deed. So I’d opted to take my alpha’s surname as a replacement for the one my estranged parents had left behind.
Of course, I can admit now that my decision had also been influenced by the overwhelming, girlhood crush I’d nurtured on said alpha at that moment in time. Taking Wolfie’s last name felt like the first step toward becoming his mate.
My lips quirked upward into a self-deprecating smile as I remembered the dumb teenager I’d been in the not-so-distant past and the much more fitting life partner I’d discovered after growing into my own skin. So maybe all of those stumbles were for the best after all.
“It seems we have a lot to talk about,” Celia replied calmly, as if I hadn’t just slapped her in the face with my juvenile rejection to her abandonment. The smile that went with her words was tentative but real. And when her hand reached out to cover mine, contact with her cool flesh seemed to warm my damp body from the inside out. “Be careful out there.”
“Lock the doors behind me,” I answered. Then I dashed for the porch so I could shed clothes somewhere other than beneath my mother’s astute eyes before calling upon my wolf for the second time that day.
RECENT RAIN HAD WASHED away the intruder’s scent trail, but the dead critter wasn’t all that difficult to hunt down. The stench of putrefying meat pulled me to a bank on the far side of the property where a lazy gardener had tossed what turned out to be a raccoon carcass rather than burying it the way he ought.
I’ll come back with a shovel later, I promised myself. My mother wouldn’t be able to smell the rot from inside her home, but I could. And it appeared I planned to stay for a while to ensure small woodland critters were the only beings who ended up dead on my mother’s doorstep in the near future.
An extended lap around the perimeter turned up no recent signs of life (or death), though. So I returned to the rental car relieved and ready to rest. My head was throbbing, my feet were sore, and the last sixteen hours felt less like a day and more like an eternity. I could hardly wait to collect Celia and fall into a dry bed for ten hours straight.
But my mother was absent. My car was empty. The windows were no longer steamed up and there was no sign of life inside.
“Shit!” I emerged from my shift barefoot and naked, spikes of agony pushing through my skull. I’d hastened the transformation due to fear over Celia’s absence, and now I realized I should have stayed wolf a little longer to sniff out the scene of the crime. Because Occam’s razor said that if my mother was threatened morning and afternoon then disappeared in the evening, the cause had to be foul play.
Footprints, my wolf murmured. She didn’t seem nearly as terrified as I’d expected, especially in light of her strange urges to call Celia “Mommy” and to crawl into the one-body’s lap. Which suggested the wolf had noticed something I’d missed.
Not hard to accomplish given my current state of mind.
Taking a deep breath, I forcibly calmed my erratic thoughts. Then, gazing down past my own mud-splattered calves, I carefully parsed the indentations in the soft earth at the edge of the driveway. There were a series of lupine footprints—mine. A couple of human footprints—small, high-heeled, almost certainly Celia’s. And no one else’s.
Raising my head, I saw now that the house looked far more welcoming than it had when we first arrived. The porch light glowed warmly from its ornate sconce and a fluffy pink towel was draped across the chair where I’d disrobed half an hour earlier.
&
nbsp; I distinctly remembered dropping my clothing into a heap on the floorboards in my haste to scope out potential dangers, only taking the time to kick discarded jeans atop throwing knives that I didn’t particularly want to catch Celia’s eye. But now each piece of worn fabric was carefully folded and set up off the ground with the weapons lying atop the heap.
Kidnappers, as far as I could tell, didn’t fold undies or leave behind tools of destruction. Which meant Celia was safe...and my mother had been going through my things.
Picking my way across sharp gravel that jabbed at my rain-softened soles, I silently slipped up onto the porch. I was truly in human territory now, and I felt more awkward than I had when scoping out the shotgun-wielding drug dealer earlier that day. Should I wipe down with the brand new towel that would never be the same after it touched my muddy skin? Or should I enter what was bound to be a perfectly scrubbed house with filthy shifter feet?
The real question was—which option would thrust my lupine nature into my mother’s face the least?
Rain barrel, my wolf offered. She was a helpful one tonight, and I gave the animal a mental pat on the head in thanks. Yep, sure enough, my mother had installed a big wooden tub beneath one gutter, the spout on the bottom of said barrel offering clean water to erase evidence of my four-legged jaunt around the property boundaries. There was even a bar of soap in a covered ceramic dish off to one side, as if Celia preferred washing up outside after sinking her fingers into the dirt of the flower garden that lined the entire front side of the house.
Sunflowers, zinnias, nasturtiums. The petals were rain-soaked but cheerful, and something about their bright colors eased my aching head.
Or maybe the relief came from simply knowing—as I carefully pulled out the lightly scented bar of soap that still showed indentations in the shape of my mother’s fingers—that I’d finally made the right choice. The human choice.
Still, I cleansed my skin far more slowly than was really necessary as the last rays of light faded from the cloudy sky. I don’t really have to go inside, I mused as I washed. I could protect my mother just as well, maybe better, by lurking in lupine form around her property’s boundaries. There was no need to dredge up the past when I could maintain my secrets and still keep Celia safe from a distance.
Coward, my wolf challenged. She was right and I was willing to own the personality flaw...as long as the self-flagellation prevented me from looking into Celia’s face while her eyes slid down my body in search of those wicked-bladed throwing knives. After her seeming acceptance of my shifter nature earlier, I knew it would hurt twice as badly if my mother asked me to leave now.
And, as I dilly dallied and delayed, the hairs on the back of my neck abruptly rose once again. Something was out there in the descending darkness. Something watched me as I crouched naked beside my mother’s flower garden.
A human would have run for her clothes, or at least for the supposed safety of the house. But, instead, I lifted my nose to the air and sniffed.
Nothing. Still, I could sense the danger watching, waiting.
Despite my exhaustion, I was invigorated, ready to hunt down this enemy that had dared to set my mother within its sights. I growled out lupine excitement between human lips.
And then Celia was leaning against the porch railing, craning her neck to look out through the gloom with simple human eyes. “Fen?” she called hesitantly.
Darn it. There went that last pretense of humanity. Straightening, I turned away from Celia in what I hoped looked like a display of human modesty. My true purpose, of course, was to scan the yard for signs of predators...and to evade my mother’s eyes.
Flee now, I told my legs. But they rebelled. Whether from inner lupine pressure to stay with Celia, from unwillingness to leave behind Hunter’s gifted knives, or from pure exhaustion, it made no difference. I wasn’t going anywhere tonight.
Instead, I swiveled back around to face the music. My one-body mother had padded halfway down the steps as I scanned the yard, and she now stood holding a fluffy towel outstretched, eyes slightly averted in an effort to appease my nonexistent modesty. “Please don’t go,” she said quietly.
“How did you know...?” I began before snapping my mouth shut. Too much too soon. Celia wasn’t reading my mind and realizing I’d planned to flee. She was just....
My thoughts trailed off into the muddy lassitude of fatigue. I was unable to find another realistic explanation for my mother’s request, and my limited brainpower figured analyzing her words was far less important than getting us both out of danger as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
Except, my first guess appeared to be correct after all. Because Celia stepped onto the wet grass with socked feet that I was sure were instantly saturated by leftover rainwater. Ignoring the damp, the one-body approached me just as slowly as I’d eased toward her an hour earlier.
Eyes still averted, she reached up to wrap the towel snugly around my torso. Our height difference made the motherly gesture more awkward than it really needed to be, but the brush of her fingers against my skin still kindled a spark of something unnameable within my belly.
“I know because you’re half me,” Celia answered quietly, stepping away and keeping her gaze on the ground. The gesture would have looked like submission...if she were a werewolf. “And my first impulse is always to run away.”
Chapter 11
I CLOSED MY EYES FOR a moment to hide the tears that threatened to fall. I was a mess, and suddenly all I wanted was for Hunter to get over his snit and come swoop me up into his warm arms, to tell me everything was going to be alright. I’d never felt as accepted as when burrowing into his broad chest. Too bad I hadn’t realized the value of what I possessed until it was too late.
Still, I had to admit that Celia’s tentative fingers pulling wet strands of hair away from my face gave me a strangely similar feeling of safety.
Safety that was currently an illusion, if the sensation of eyes on the back of my neck was any indication. So I brushed aside the mushy feelings, granted my mother what I hoped was a grateful smile, and shepherded her toward the door at a near trot.
Swooping up clothes and knives with one hand while clutching my towel closed with the other, I followed Celia inside, closed the heavy wooden door behind us, then slotted shut both lock and deadbolt. I didn’t want to worry my mother unduly, but I knew I was too exhausted to stand guard all night against whatever was out in the yard.
So I didn’t even attempt subtlety as I punched the “on” button of the alarm system mounted on the wall beside the door. Chilled, conditioned air spoke to an operating heat pump, which meant the house was probably closed up tight. Still, I asked, “Are the windows shut? Locked?”
Celia took my curt demands in stride better than I would have imagined. “You get dressed and I’ll check,” she answered. Then after a short hesitation, she added, “Did you find anything out in the yard?”
“It was just a raccoon. Road kill.” I didn’t know whether to tell her about the eyes on the back of my neck. The warning felt lupine, hard to explain to a one-body.
Yet another indication that I wasn’t the human daughter Celia had hoped for.
But I didn’t want my mother naively stepping out into the dark alone either, so I tried to keep my recommendation simple yet clear. “I think you should stay inside tonight,” I said, mitigating my words from the alpha command they wanted to become.
Hitting the unfamiliar note took an effort, my lips used to keeping younger shifters in line with the force of pure personality alone. And at first, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d hit the mark.
Then, to my surprise, a hint of a smile softened Celia’s face. “I was planning on sleeping, not hiking,” she murmured. Raising her voice to a normal speaking tone, she continued: “I’m not as young as I used to be and I have to go in to work in the morning. So I’ll make sure the windows and back door are locked, then there are some things I need to show you. After that, we can both go to bed.”
/> Things she needs to show me. Protectiveness for Celia gave way to self-defense as my stomach twisted in alarm. I was pretty sure I couldn’t take any more emotional upheaval tonight.
“Maybe we could wait on the show and tell?”
Celia eyed me as I stood dripping onto the hardwood floor of what I was pretty sure posh humans called a foyer—fancy French pronunciation and all. Realizing how obviously I was poised to flee, I softened my stiff spine with an effort. The endeavor was harder than usual, but I eventually managed to open up my posture, to dip my head deferentially, to ease into feigned relaxation.
Most humans responded instantly to such friendly body language. But Celia appeared more amused than anything. “And you’re half your father too,” she murmured too softly for another one-body to hear.
Whether or not she meant for my lupine ears to pick up on the phrase was a question I was too tired to unravel.
The one-body eyed me for another long moment and I knew I looked pitiful, more like a drowned cat than like a mighty wolf. But I was willing to play up that weakness if it got me into bed faster.
“Show and tell can wait,” Celia agreed at last. But even as I sighed with relief, she tacked on a caveat: “As long as you’re going to be here again tomorrow night, that is.”
The one-body’s gaze was now an almost lupine challenge and I felt my hackles rising and my chin lifting without conscious volition. My nostrils flared as I scented the air, seeking who knew what.
All I smelled, though, was human cleaning products and pheromones. And among the latter, Celia’s emotions were too complex for me to tease apart while my head told me it was being hit repeatedly with a monster sledgehammer.
Faces flashed in front of my eyes in quick succession. Hunter, the dog walker. Hunter, the buffet-loving lady. Hunter, the rifle-wielding meth-lab owner. Hunter, the intriguing human who’d touched my hand in the diner.
Alpha Underground Trilogy Page 26