by Chant, Zoe
“How. How did you find out?” Lila wished Elizabeth hadn’t said any of those details, because now she had a full-color movie playing out in her brain—Michael surprised, dismayed, and finally terrified—Michael being stalked by the two biggest enforcers in the pack—Michael dying afraid and alone—
“I overheard some things, put the pieces together, and then I got Nevin drunk and got him to admit it,” Elizabeth said, sounding detached and clinical. Lila wondered how she could do that, suck all the emotion out of her voice when she was talking about—about—
“What are you going to do? What can I do?”
“That part I’m still trying to figure out,” Elizabeth said. “But I want to know if you have any information about what might’ve made Michael want to leave. Like what made you leave—Victor’s been really hush-hush about where you are with anyone but the enforcers. Nevin told me he’s been watching you, though.”
“Oh, I know he’s been watching.” Lila’s shock was starting to solidify into something like rage. Her hands were shaking. “I can’t—Elizabeth, I need to take a minute—”
“Of course.” Elizabeth’s voice softened the barest amount. “Call me back when you’ve thought it over.”
As though her husband’s murder was a decision about whether to go to a party or not. But that was just what Elizabeth was like; Lila didn’t think she could’ve been Victor’s lawyer if she didn’t have the capability of just turning her emotions off sometimes.
“I will,” Lila managed.
“I have to go. Think about what information might be useful. I mean it.” The phone went silent.
Lila pulled it away from her ear and stared down at it.
“Lila?”
She started, almost dropping her phone, and turned to see Flynn standing in the doorway to the front room.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I couldn’t help hearing the conversation. Shifter ears. Is there anything I can do?”
“I—I don’t—” Lila stared down at the phone, and then up at him. She felt her eyes filling up with tears. She couldn’t tell if they were tears of grief or rage.
She wanted to throw her phone across the room. She wanted to run out into the woods and scream. She wanted to travel back in time so that she could strangle Michael for being such a stupid idiot.
“I can’t be around the kids like this,” she whispered. “I can’t let them see me—” See her do what? She didn’t even know, but she knew that she felt like a cup filled to the brim with terrible, awful feelings, and she couldn’t let them spill over where her children would see.
Flynn nodded once. “No problem. Hold on.” He pulled out his phone.
“Lachlan?” he said. “Are you working this afternoon? Great. Could Sophia and Grant go over to your place for a bit? Lila has to spend some time alone and we need to make sure they’re safe.”
A pause. “Great. Can you come pick them up? Fantastic. See you soon.”
He hung up. “Okay, he’ll be here in a few minutes, and he’s bringing our mom so they can take your car with the car seat and everything in it.”
Lila nodded, overwhelmed. “Good. Yes, that’s—that’s perfect. Thanks.”
“You want to go upstairs until they get here, take some time for yourself?”
“I have to talk to Sophia, tell her what’s going to happen.” Lila wasn’t just going to let her daughter get taken away without talking to her, even if it was by friends.
Steeling herself, she blinked away her tears and breathed. She needed to be strong for her child, just for a few minutes. She could have all of her feelings later.
She walked into the living room, where Sophia was building a structure out of Legos. “Look, Mommy,” she said when Lila walked in. “It’s a castle!”
“Wow, what a great castle,” Lila said. “Listen, honey, how do you feel about a playdate with Aidan today?”
“Yeah!” Sophia loved playing with Aidan, even if he sometimes wanted to play scientist instead of superpowered fighters. And she loved Lachlan—she hadn’t had any kind adult men in her life since Michael had died.
Been murdered.
“Great,” Lila said. “Lachlan and Diana are going to come pick you and Grant up, okay? And you’ll see Aidan when he gets home from school.”
“Can Flynn come?”
Lila hesitated.
“I have to stay here with your mom, kiddo,” Flynn said from behind her. “But you’ll see me tonight, okay?”
Sophia thought that over. “Okay.”
Lila went over to her daughter for a hug. Sophia wrapped her arms around her and squeezed hard. Lila felt the tears rising again—why couldn’t Michael be here for his daughter? It wasn’t fair.
She let Sophia go with an effort and went over to the playpen. “Bye, honey. Have a good day with Lachlan and Diana, okay?” she whispered, picking him up to squeeze him too. He grabbed her ear and giggled.
“I love you,” she told him, and gently detached him and set him down again.
“I’ll take care of them until Lachlan and my mother get here,” Flynn said in her ear. “And no one’s better with kids than the two of them. They’ll be safe and happy all day.”
How had he known exactly what she needed to hear? Lila nodded, feeling a little less shaky. She wasn’t abandoning her kids to the unknown. They’d be taken care of, and she could take some time to let her feelings out so that she could still be a good mom to them when she saw them later.
Slowly, she left the room, climbing the stairs, her heart feeling heavier and more leaden with every step. Upstairs, she went into the bedroom she’d been using as hers, over to the unfamiliar bed with the familiar duvet on it. The duvet she’d slept under with Michael.
Until he’d been killed.
Until Victor had killed him.
Lila let her knees give out and fell down on the mattress, already crying. She shoved her face into a pillow and let it smother the noise as she cried and cried.
How could this all have happened?
***
Eventually, the tears stopped coming. Downstairs, she heard the door open, heard Lachlan’s pleasant tenor echoing up the stairs, Sophia’s excited chatter, Diana’s calm response. Flynn’s deep rumbling voice, a soothing bass underneath it all.
Then the door opened again, and the house was quiet. The cars pulled away.
Lila sat up, rubbing her eyes. Slowly, she got out of bed, went into the bathroom and washed her face. Her whole body felt heavy and strange. The water didn’t do anything to hide the fact that her nose was red, her eyes puffy.
Oh, well. It wasn’t like Flynn could’ve missed her sobbing up here, not with shifter hearing. And she didn’t have any reason to try to look pretty for him or any nonsense like that.
On the landing, she hesitated. There was nothing stopping her from just going back into her room, shutting the door, and not speaking to another person until the kids got back home.
But she didn’t want that. To be alone, with her thoughts about Michael spiraling around and around and around? She’d mourned him already, for impossibly hard months when Grant was tiny, cried and cried when Sophia was in bed, wished hopelessly for things to be different. Alone, always alone.
She wasn’t alone right now, and she didn’t want to pretend that she was. She turned towards the stairs.
Flynn was picking up the living room. He stilled when he saw her on the stairs, hands full of Legos.
“You don’t have to do that,” Lila said. Her voice sounded old and raspy.
“I get all up in my head if I don’t have something to do.” He looked down at the Legos, then went over to the plastic bin where they lived and dumped them in. Then winced at the clatter, as though he hadn’t wanted to disturb her.
“I know that feeling,” Lila said, coming down into the room. “After Michael—I was glad for the kids. I mean, it was hard, don’t get me wrong. Harder than anything I’d ever thought I’d have to do. But if I hadn’t had them to take car
e of, I sometimes felt like I would’ve just sat down and started crying and then never gotten up again.”
“You got up today,” Flynn pointed out.
Lila nodded, mustering up a tiny smile. “It’s been a year since he died. I miss him, but I’m not...grieving like that any longer.”
“I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that,” Flynn said, sounding truly unhappy. “I can’t imagine how terrible it must have been.”
Lila let out her breath. “Pretty terrible,” she said, with a ghost of a laugh. “But—”
Flynn raised his eyebrows. “But?”
“I don’t know what to put after the ‘but,’” she admitted. “But at least now we’ve had to flee our home and depend on the kindness of strangers for a roof over our head? But now I get to be furious at him for taking a risk that got him killed? But Victor’s trying to kidnap my children?” She raised her hands in a parody of helplessness.
Flynn bit his lip, looking almost pained. And then, in one swift motion, he crossed the room to her and pulled her into his arms.
Lila thought she should’ve been surprised, maybe even upset. They’d just met and she hadn’t said anything about wanting to be comforted.
But instead, it was as though she’d been waiting for him to do this ever since she’d hung up the phone with Elizabeth. She melted into his embrace, soaking up the strength in his arms, the warmth of his body. God, he was so big and broad. It felt like if she leaned in far enough, she might be able to just disappear into him.
She closed her eyes, and tried.
Chapter 6: Flynn
Flynn held Lila close, feeling her tremble in his arms.
God, he wanted to keep her like this forever. She’d washed up, but the faint salt-scent of her tears still lingered in the air, and it made his griffin rise in his chest, furious at the man who’d hurt her so badly.
We’ll make him pay, Flynn assured it. We will.
And under that was the ache of wanting that he was almost starting to get used to. The feeling that he needed this woman.
Even though she was crying about her late husband. Even though he didn’t deserve her at all.
If she only knew—
Looking down at the top of Lila’s head, Flynn could feel the self-loathing rise in him until it was overflowing, impossible to ignore.
It reached his mouth with, “I have a confession to make.”
Lila looked up at him, eyebrows coming together in a delicate frown. Flynn let go of her, even though it made his hands hurt with the desire to have her back.
“What sort of confession?” she asked. Curious, not suspicious. She was too kind to suspect that anyone would be as mean-spirited as he’d been.
“When you first came here, I was suspicious of you.” That didn’t sound harsh enough. “I thought you might be spying for Victor. I was almost sure of it, actually, because the whole situation seemed too convenient. I didn’t want to give you the house—I argued with my mother and brother about it.”
She was still frowning, but not with anger or contempt. She just looked—quizzical. She must not have understood.
“I wanted to keep you out of the town entirely,” he said, trying to clarify, make her see. “You would’ve been totally without any help, anywhere to stay, if I’d had my way.”
Now there was a flash of anger. Good. Flynn braced himself for the just condemnation that was surely coming his way.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk about yourself like that,” she said.
He blinked. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
She stepped forward until they were close again, almost touching. Flynn had to check the reflex to take her into his arms again. “That’s not much of a confession,” she continued. “Because if I were a different woman, maybe I would have been spying for Victor. You only had Cam’s word that I was really in trouble, right? You didn’t know her, either.”
She leaned in further, sliding her arms around him. Feeling like she’d hit him over the head with a two-by-four, Flynn slowly returned the embrace.
“You’re a widow with two kids,” he argued. “I should’ve wanted to help you. Not turn you out on the street.”
Lila turned her head, leaned forward a little more until her ear was against Flynn’s chest. She must be able to hear his heartbeat going a million miles a minute.
“It’s your job to keep this town safe,” she said softly. “You’re the sheriff’s deputy, right? You’ve been working to protect Oak Ridge against Victor. I think Cam said you were in the military, too.”
“Marine Corps,” Flynn confirmed, clearing his throat. “Two tours. Thought I might be career, but I missed home too much.”
“So your whole life, you’ve had to worry about what might happen. Try to keep people safe, when other people were trying to hurt them. Try to think about who might want to hurt them.”
Flynn wasn’t stupid; he could see what she was getting at. Still. “You don’t need to make excuses for me.”
“I’m not making excuses,” Lila said impatiently. “Are you really telling me that you were supposed to just turn that off? When the stakes were that high?”
Intellectually, he understood the point she was making. But it was hard to reconcile the suspicion of the unknown woman, coming from the camp of the enemy, with Lila the woman standing in front of him, telling him off.
“You know what, I’m glad you were suspicious,” she kept on. “Because it means you’re on alert. You’re ready for whatever Victor might try next. I admit I might not be quite so happy if you were still suspicious of me now—”
“I’m not, I promise,” he said quickly.
“—but you were just having a natural reaction to someone strange invading your home in a time of war,” she finished. “At least, I imagine that’s what it was. I’ve never been at war before.”
His arms tightened around her at the thought of her in a war. “Thank you,” he said roughly. “You don’t have to be that generous.”
“It’s not generosity,” she murmured, pressing her face to his shoulder.
Why had he interrupted her being so upset about her husband to make her deal with his own issues, again? Oh, yes, that was right. “I just wanted to make sure that you’re all right with me being here.”
Lila pulled back again so she could look him in the eye. “I want you here.”
Even said in so many words, it seemed somehow impossible.
“All right.” His voice caught. “I’m not going anywhere.” Because if she really did want him here, he was going to be whatever she needed. “What will help you?”
Lila knocked her head against Flynn’s sternum. “I don’t know. At first I was just upset, but now I’m starting to get mad, which isn’t helpful.”
“Mad at Victor?”
“No,” she said, pulling back from the embrace. Flynn let her go immediately, and she paced around in a circle, fists clenched. “I’m mad at Michael. Which is stupid, he didn’t ask to get murdered. But he was going to leave the pack and take us with him, that’s why Victor had him killed. But he didn’t talk to me about it!” Her voice rose in pitch. “Why didn’t he talk to me?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to put you in danger, too,” Flynn offered. He was restraining himself out of respect for the dead: really, he was furious at Lila’s late husband. Why hadn’t he thought about who he was leaving behind? Why hadn’t he stuck around to protect her?
“Well, he did a really great job of that, didn’t he.” There was a sarcastic edge to her voice, but after a second, she softened, shaking her head. “He just—Michael was a sweet, lovely man, but he didn’t think things through very well. He asked me to marry him before he told me he was a shifter. He was fantastic with numbers and math, but he couldn’t cook to save his life, because he never thought about what ingredients he’d need and how long everything would take.”
Now she sounded fondly exasperated. Flynn tried to picture her with a man who was coalescing in his head as
an absent-minded professor type. It was hard to picture. Was that her type?
Lord, he hoped not.
Lila sighed. “I guess I just—why did he have to always have the best intentions and the worst follow-through? Why did he have to get killed because he wanted to save us, but he couldn’t trust me to help him do it?”
She turned to look at Flynn, as though he might have the answers. He thought carefully about what to say.
“I didn’t know your husband,” he said finally. “But anyone can see that you’re smart. You’re practical. You can take care of things. If I—” No, no, abort, abort! “—anyone who was your partner should’ve known to come to you for help.”
Lila sighed. “Thank you.” She shook her head. “God, I’m so mad. He was such a sweet idiot. Why did—why did Victor have to kill him?”
She shook her head, her jaw setting.
“That asshole killed my husband.” Now she sounded truly angry. Flynn approved. “He murdered Michael behind my back, and came to me afterwards to tell me he’d been killed in an accident while driving at work. He made me tea in my own kitchen and touched my shoulder like he was sympathizing.” Flynn could picture it, and it made his fists clench. “But he had him killed.”
“And he’s not getting away with it.”
Lila turned to look at him. Flynn met her eyes, letting her see that he was serious. More serious than he’d ever been about anything in his life.
“Good,” Lila said. She took a long breath. “Good.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. “God, I’m exhausted. I wish there was something I could do to get away from all of this for a little while.”
Flynn ached with the desire to give her that. To sweep her away from the pain she was feeling, the suffering, the fear.
Then it occurred to him that he could. Sort of.
“Would you like to go flying?” he offered.
Lila turned and stared at him.
“I could take you,” he explained. “On my back, shifted. We could go up over the forest, see the mountains—”
“Yes.”
