“I don’t give a fuck. I’ve reached my limit.” I leaned forward on my chair where I thought he sat facing us. “Speak! I know you have a tongue unless you’ve cut it out in the past ten minutes.”
Joshua sighed. “I still prefer Faith over all of you.”
He was right in front of me where I thought he was.
I bared my teeth. “From what I heard, you tossed Faith overboard into a raging sea. If you like her the best, now I know why we’re having such fun with you.”
Joshua sighed again, long and loud this time. “Good heavens, will you please shut up. If I make you quiet, you won’t return from it. Would you like that, Ms. Harvey?”
“I’ll shut up if you tell me where we’re going.”
“To your new home. Now that I am positive you can’t shut up today, you two won’t be riding along with me on my real work. So, I’m going to drop you both off at the wolf aberration’s house. Spoiler alert: Tonight, he was going to invite you to stay there indefinitely since you no longer have a permanent address. AKA: You literally burned it down. In this future time period, you said yes to his invitation. Blah, blah, sex, blah, fucking blah. And I’ve just saved you another night in that dreadfully small hotel room. Ta da!”
Poppy gripped my hand hard. “She’ll be quiet. I only have a few questions for you.”
His toe was tapping hard against the floor, his annoyance blatantly clear. “I’ll answer all of your questions with one simple response. Yes, you are human again because of the spell that I gave you that you used on Cassander.”
“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath.
The train was silent once more.
One minute passed.
Two minutes passed.
I started tapping my foot like the seer had done.
Immediately from Joshua, “I will slit you open and feed your intestines to Mr. Cooper if you don’t stop. Right. Fucking. Now.”
My lips twitched. I stopped tapping my foot.
I’d annoyed him as he had me. Done.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Poppy and I stood in the middle of a forest, the tree limbs high above interconnecting with one another to create a canopy that blocked the sun. It would have been great if it was summer during a heat wave, but it was closing in on winter now, and the simple white t-shirt I wore wasn’t cutting it against the freezing wind.
The devil had kicked us—literally—off the train.
In the middle of Wolfe’s land. His land had a lot of trees.
I shivered and crossed my arms. “Are you sure you’re not turned around? I think we’ve already gone this way before.”
Poppy scowled at the way she wanted to go, indicating clearly that she had no fucking idea where we were. “I know directions. Wolfe just has a big estate.”
“It’s not the only thing he has that’s big.”
“Congratulations to you. You have a shifter with a big ass cock that’ll rock your world for eternity.” She started glancing all around the dead leaves, searching everywhere with her gaze.
“What are you looking for?”
Poppy straightened and smirked at me. “A trashcan so I can vomit in it.”
“Ha ha.” I sighed through another shiver, the chill biting at my exposed flesh. “I’m just happy. He makes me happy.”
“I knew that feeling once.” She marched in a completely different direction than what she had indicated before. “Hold tight to that happiness. Don’t ever let it slip away.”
I hurried after her. “I don’t plan to. Somehow, that man flipped me upside down.”
A flicked glare. “Is that another sexual reference?”
I laughed full out, little puffs of white showing my breath. “Not at all. I’ll stop with those, by the way. I just meant the world seems to rotate in the opposite direction when I’m with him, like the world that I thought was going the right way was suddenly clear it was actually the wrong way.”
“Sounds like the start of love,” Poppy murmured.
“I feared as much. I haven’t known him very long, though. Is it too soon?”
“Everyone falls in love in different ways. Don’t judge yourself by what others do. That leads to a path of destruction.”
“Good advice.” I pumped my shoulder against hers. “Are you sure you’re not older than me?”
“Sorry to disappoint, but you are the oldest out of the two of us.”
We kept walking. And walking.
My teeth chattered when I asked delicately, “How do you feel about being a human again?”
“Other than the blister that has now formed on the back of my right heel?”
“Ouch.” I grimaced. “Yeah, other than that.”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Her red brows snapped together. “I need to let it settle a while in my mind. The frailty of the human body? It’s something that I’ll need to come to terms with and accept, and then move forward.”
“I think that’s incredibly wise of you. You’ll get through all the changes that come with it. You’re a fighter.”
We shoved through thick shrubbery and stopped.
Poppy’s face lit up in a grin. “See? I told you I knew the way.”
My jaw was hanging open. I whispered, “That’s Wolfe’s house?” It was a mansion, like all the rest of his ilk lived in, but it was a mixture of a log home and a rock castle, all beautifully stitched together.
“Indeed, it is. And it looks like he’s back from the office by now. From what I’ve heard, he normally leaves after lunch and comes home to work the remainder of the day.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
* * *
Poppy knocked—pounded—on Wolfe’s front door, yelling, “It’s Poppy and Noelle! Open up. It’s freezing out here.”
I snorted. “You could have just rung the doorbell.”
“Shouting was more soothing to my soul.” Poppy hitched a shoulder in a casual shrug. “Every once in a while you just have to let out some frustration.” The woman did have a lot to be frustrated about.
“Yell again, I guess. He’s not answering for some—”
The door flew open, almost coming off its hinges if the screeching was anything to go by. Wolfe stood in a pair of soft, black pajama pants and a black T-shirt with his company logo on it. The tops of his bare toes peeked from under the edges of the long pants. His wide golden eyes pointed directly at me as he stammered, “What in the hell? How did you get here? Your lips are blue! How long have you been outside? Get your ass inside now!”
My head whipped back as he grabbed my shoulders and hauled me inside, his golden eyes roaming over every piece of exposed flesh he could see. “Are you hurt? You look awful! Why aren’t you speaking?”
He kicked the door closed.
I blinked like an owl. “Poppy’s still outside.”
“Wait, what? Poppy’s here?” The wolf-man shook his head. He paused to sniff the air and froze. “Dammit. I only smelled you.”
Apparently, he only saw me too.
If my teeth weren’t chattering, I would have laughed.
Knock. KNOCK.
Wolfe quickly opened the door, his eyes still on me, while he rumbled absently, “Apologies, Poppy.”
Poppy stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. She shook her head in amused disbelief. “I can’t believe you didn’t see me. I was standing right Next. To. Her. That has to be the most focused I’ve seen a shifter on a mate in a long time.” The redhead patted my back once. “He’s definitely a keeper.”
“Yeah, I’m figuring that out.” I winked her way and then peered up at the wolf-man still scouring my body for injuries. “I’m okay, Wolfe. I’m just cold. We’ve been out in the woods for a while trying to find your house.”
Wolfe rubbed my arms hard, attempting to warm them. His golden gaze didn’t leave me even for a second. “Poppy, grab a blanket from the living room behind me? She’s as cold as ice.”
My head jittered back and forth from his fast caresses.
Poppy snickered under her breath as she went in search of the living room. “I’ll grab her one. And myself one. I’m fine, too, Wolfe. Thanks for asking.”
He didn’t even hear her. “Your lips are still blue, Noelle.”
“Because I’m still cold. I’ve only been inside for a minute.”
“What were you doing out there? You could have contacted me, and I would have picked you up from the hotel!” He shook his head, his soft, gray hair brushing over his shoulders. “There was no need for you to wander around and get lost. I have over ten thousand acres. That’s a lot of ground to get lost in.”
My teeth finally stopped chattering. I sighed and let my head fall back to stare at the wooden, domed ceiling of the entryway, knowing the wolf-man would not like what I was about to say. “We were with Joshua Striker. He dumped us off somewhere here on your land.”
“You were what?” Wolfe bellowed. “What the fuck!”
Out of the corner of my eye, Poppy did a quick pivot on her feet, with two blankets in hand, and tried to head back into the living room.
“Poppy!” I barked. “Don’t you dare run away.”
She stopped in her tracks. Her shoulders lifted and sagged back down with a heavy breath before she turned around to face us. Poppy had finally garnered Wolfe’s attention, and it wasn’t the pleasant kind.
His lips pulled back from his teeth with a full-on snarl. “What did you manage to rope her into?”
Poppy blinked. “Speaking of rope, and before I forget to tell you because you’re going to be yelling at me a lot, Joshua Striker stole five ropes from a hardware store. I doubt it’s for anything good.”
“Poppy…” Wolfe warned, grabbing one of the blankets dangling from her fingertips. He shook it out, spread it over my shoulders, and started to rub my arms again over the enormous blanket. “Get to the point before I lose it.”
Her expression fell in the next instant.
She nibbled on her bottom lip and looked at him.
Her brown eyes unfocused as she thought of what to say.
Then it hit me. Poppy didn’t want Cassander to know she was human again. She wasn’t ready to tell the fox.
Shit. Fuck. Damn.
I sighed heavily and lifted my eyes to my shifter. I had to be the one to ask. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise me, your mate, that you won’t tell anyone until Poppy is ready to tell her truth?”
His golden eyes narrowed to thin slits. “It’s that bad?”
“It’s not bad, but it’s not ours to tell anyone else.”
Ever so gradually, Wolfe nodded his head. “Yes, I’ll keep the secret you tell me.”
I flicked my gaze to the redhead. “Is that okay?”
Poppy growled under her breath but nodded. “I don’t want you to have secrets between each other. Especially because of me.”
My regard raised to the man pulling me closer and gifting me his warmth. “The spell that Joshua Striker gave Poppy had another effect other than bringing Cassander back to life. It turned Poppy back into a mortal. She’s human now.”
“What?” Wolfe’s voice lowered an octave.
I nodded slowly. “Poppy didn’t know what was happening. She got a paper cut this morning, and it didn’t heal, so she went directly to the source to ask. Joshua. He confirmed that she’s human again. She’ll have to be more careful at work, and all that.”
Wolfe hadn’t blinked yet, his thoughts racing.
I added pointedly, “It’s quite the shock to her.”
There was a blink. He grumbled, “Yes, I imagine that’s quite shocking.” Wolfe swiveled his head to her. “Are you okay, Poppy?”
“I think so,” she murmured honestly, wrapping her blanket around herself and tugging the ends together against her chest. “Has this ever happened before in the history of shifters?”
The wolf-man shook his head, his mouth pinched thin from the gravity of the revelation. “No, not even rumors of it happening. Some shifters and mates have spent their entire lives trying to figure out how to become mortal, for some ungodly reason, and it’s never been found.”
Poppy shivered where she stood. I didn’t think it was from the cold, either. She mumbled, “Joshua made an immortal human.” Her red brows puckered together. “I bet it’s something Cassander can do, too, but he’ll never tell. Not if some shifters and mates are fanatical about it. He would be hunted if they knew and, possibly, tortured forever until he broke. Everyone breaks at some point.”
Wolfe held me close in his arms, now rubbing my back instead of my arms. “It would turn him dark.” Wolfe was the one to shiver this time, staring over my head at nothing. “No one would live if he turned dark.”
I poked him in the chest through my blanket, gaining his attention. “What is his special power?”
Wolfe shook his head slowly. “Just as Poppy has her secret, he has his own secrets to tell. That’s not for me to divulge.”
I repeated his words from earlier back at him, “It’s that bad?”
His answer was different—and I wish it weren’t. “Yes.”
Poppy nibbled on her bottom lip, studying the boots on her feet. She kept her head down as she asked timidly, “Wolfe, how do you think Cassander would take the news that I’m human again?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure, Poppy.”
“We’re such good friends.” Her sigh was heavy in the air. “I can’t imagine he would take the news well. I wouldn’t if it happened to any of you. I’d have to watch you grow old and die.”
Wolfe grunted.
I rested my forehead on Wolfe’s chest. “Let’s discuss something else. Something more cheerful, perhaps? It’ll make everyone happier.”
Wolfe fisted a handful of my hair in his right hand and gently pulled my head back so he could look into my eyes. “What would you like to talk about? I could give you a tour of my home. I think there are a few rooms here that you would love.”
My cheeks pinched into an excited smile. “I bet there are, but I want to discuss something different.”
“What would that be?” He lifted an eyebrow, even as he grinned. “Maybe how Poppy will need to cover up that paper cut? And not use any antibiotic cream that smells because shifters can scent just about any chemical? Especially if she wants to hide it from the two most powerful shifters on the planet?”
The birds flying to warmer weather squawked outside, loud and clear in the heavy silence that had filled the foyer.
Poppy moaned, “Dammit! I hadn’t even thought of that, Wolfe. Do you have any pointers for what I can use?”
“I do.” Wolfe nodded his head. “I’ll show you after Noelle tells me what she was actually going to say.”
I chuckled quietly. “That was not a cheerful topic.”
“It needed to be said, nonetheless.” Wolfe’s rock solid arms squeezed me with gentleness. “Now tell me. What did you want to discuss?”
“Food.” I nodded my head up and down grandly. “I’m starving! I’m sure you have some grub in here to fill my belly.”
“Mine too, if you don’t mind,” Poppy chimed in. “We can look at what you wanted to show me and eat, then I’ll get out of your hair so you can be alone.”
“I think I have some food around here somewhere…” Wolfe teased, an ornery gleam entering his eyes. “Or I can hunt for all of us. I’ll bring back a nice rabbit within a half hour.”
I stared. That was the grossest thing I had ever heard.
Poppy cleared her throat, and fake-whispered, “I think he’s serious, Noelle. Just, you know, in case you didn’t know.”
My eyes widened in horror. “Oh, my God! Are you serious?” I snapped my mouth shut realizing how rude that sounded. “Uh, I mean, maybe some other time when…um…we’ve got more time? You’re supposed to give me a tour after we eat, after all, and I’m sure Poppy needs to get back shortly—”
Wolfe tipped his head back and laughed so hard my body shook with his, trapped in his arms like I was. “Poppy, tha
t was excellent.”
“I hate to brag, but I think so, too.” The redhead snickered.
My eyes narrowed on them, flicking back and forth. “That was horrible. You two should be ashamed.”
Wolfe winked. It was adorable. “Just a little shifter humor for newbie mates.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I can’t believe you went off with him willingly,” Wolfe griped, his hands still fiddling with the blanket he’d tossed over my shoulders. The wolf-man was a smidge overprotective. His golden eyes roamed my features as I smiled at his decorating. “Do you want another tour of the house?”
“No, I’m content here.” His master bedroom was spacious with a marble fireplace I currently sat in front of—per the wolf’s request—the fire warming the side of my face closest to it. “The view outside your windows is absolutely breathtaking.” Here on the highest level of his home.
His attention honed directly on me. “Do you really like it here?”
I knew what was coming, but I wasn’t going to spoil his surprise because the devil had told me the future.
“I really do. It is so much better than Rune’s house.”
Wolfe’s chest puffed with pride. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”
“Just when I’m not around.” I winked.
“Actually…uh…” Wolfe ran his fingers through his hair, yanking the beautiful, silky mess back from his face. Tugging. And tugging at it. His forehead scrunched up, and he damn near yelled—okay, he actually did yell—in my ear, “Do you want to move in with me?”
I hid my laughter behind the fall of my dark hair, pretending to look around again. When I had control of myself, I turned back to the man who was literally holding his breath waiting for my answer. I put him out of his misery. “I’d like that.”
Air flew past his parted lips. “Is that a yes? I know it’s probably too soon, but you don’t have a permanent place anymore. You can work from here—and I won’t even bitch that most of your work is illegal.” He took in another large breath of air. “And I’d like you to be here with me.”
“It’s a yes, Wolfe.”
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