by T. S. Joyce
A hundred times they’d slept like this when they were kids when he would slip through her window late at night, or she would sneak out to the tree house they used to play in. He was a sleep cuddler. How could she have forgotten something so huge? Now the memories were so bright. She frowned. He needed affection, and so did his bear, so the reasons for him being rogue made even less sense now. He should’ve found a crew immediately after leaving Saratoga, but here he was, ten years later, still alone.
Wyatt let off a little sleep sound and rolled his hips against her back as he pulled her closer. But friends didn’t let friends rub their boners on each other, so Harper wiggled out from under his grasp.
“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” he murmured in a hoarse voice. Wyatt sat straight up in bed as she rifled through her duffle bag. He scrubbed his hands down his facial scruff. “Look, I told you not to sleep in my bed. This is why I don’t let women stay over.”
Something green and ugly slithered around in her gut at the mention of other women, but she hid her face carefully and feigned an epic search for the pair of jeans at the bottom of her bag. Wyatt let off a muttered curse, and when she gave him her attention again, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to her, running his hand through his hair slowly like he used to do when he was lost in thought. “This wasn’t how I wanted to see you again.”
“You said that last night.”
“And I meant it. I had these plans. I wasn’t supposed to be like this when you came here.”
With a sigh, Harper sat on the bed, nice and far away from Sex Pot Wyatt.
His back muscles flexed with the movement of his hand over his hair, but something else caught her attention. He had bruising that stretched from his scarred neck all the way down his shoulder blade.
“Geez,” she murmured, crawling over to him. She touched the purple discoloring softly, and Wyatt tensed.
She flinched away, but determined, she pressed her palm against his warm, bruised skin again. Wyatt blew out a long breath, and his tension seemed to disappear with it. He relaxed little by little under her hand. Slowly, Harper wrapped her arms around his middle and rested her cheek against the strong planes of his back. “Promise me you won’t let her do this to you again.”
Wyatt huffed a breath and shook his head. His hand slipped over hers, as if he wanted her to stay. “If it happens again, it won’t be my choice.”
She didn’t miss that he’d denied her his promise, though.
He slipped out of her grasp and headed into the bathroom, then shut the door behind him, leaving Harper’s arms tingling with a chill where he’d taken his warmth.
The Unrest took her so fast, she didn’t have time to get away from the edge of the bed. The buzzing in her blood doubled her over and pain shot through her middle. She hit the ground beside the bed hard. She tucked her knees to her chest and stared at the blue bed skirt, desperate to stay awake. Sometimes it was bad like this.
“Harper!” Wyatt was holding her now, but his voice sounded so far away.
She felt like her hand was frozen around an electric fence. Everything hurt. Every cell was exploding, every vein bursting, every muscle burning. Can’t breathe!
Wyatt hugged her close and rested his cheek against hers. Lips against her ear, he said, “It’s okay. I’m here.” I’m here. A tear streamed from the corner of her eye as her body relaxed from the seizure.
Warmth trickled down her lip, and when she looked up, Wyatt didn’t seem scared like she’d expected. He was calm. His eyes were subdued as though he’d been through a hundred of these with her.
He lifted her onto the bed and wrapped her up in the blanket, then strode into the bathroom. He came back with a damp rag and held it against her bleeding nose. Cradling her head in his lap, he rocked her gently. There was no call for an ambulance, no question, ‘What’s wrong?’
Suspicious, she whispered, “You know what this is?”
Wyatt wouldn’t meet her gaze now. Instead, his attention stayed glued to the washcloth against her nose.
“Wyatt?” she gritted out.
“It’s The Unrest.” Heartbreak slashed through his eyes. “Your dragon didn’t find her treasure. She never settled.”
“How do you know that?”
Wyatt shook his head and didn’t answer.
“How!”
“Because your grandfather told me.”
No. This was her burden to bear. Her sickness. Pop-Pop hadn’t gone through The Unrest. He’d been immortal most of his life and found his treasure a dozen times over in his eons on this earth. Her mother, Diem, hadn’t gone through The Unrest because she had found her mate early. She’d found her treasure. This…this was Harper’s shame, and her grandfather’s betrayal felt like a slap against cold skin. “Why would he do that?”
Wyatt looked sick, and now his eyes were that blazing blue again. “Because Damon wanted to let me know it’s my fault.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” The faint smell of rage wafted from Wyatt. “Beaston told me I would be the death of you, and now look. I failed to kill you the first time, and now you have The Unrest.”
“Wyatt—”
“That’s our fate, right?” His voice shook with fury. “Some people are born to hurt others, Harper. It’s the way of things. It’s how the world finds balance. There are good people and there are bad. From the moment I was born, I was meant to hurt you. And here you are, showing me kindness, despite the part I’m playing in your death.”
Harper pushed off him. “You can’t really believe that. You can’t. We’re all dying, Wyatt. From the day we’re born, we’re dying. That’s the beauty of mortality. Every moment means something big because they are numbered. You got scared of what you could mean to me, so yeah, I guess in a way, this is your fault. Even if my destiny was to fall to The Unrest, I would’ve rather been happy while I had life left to live.”
“I was trying to protect you—”
“You left to protect yourself! You left because shit got hard, Wyatt. You listened to Beaston’s prophecy, you listened to my grandfather, and you listened to everyone but me. Me! I was right there saying you were mine, and you left.”
She couldn’t do this. Friendship wasn’t going to work—she still felt too deeply for him. Stupid dragon, killing herself for love.
Harper’s breath hitched and her face crumpled. She would have to leave because she couldn’t stay here and hurt this badly. But she should say how she felt in case she never got another chance because she and Wyatt were both headed to hell fast. “When I lost her—”
“I can’t do this.” Wyatt stood in a rush and paced the other side of the bed, pulled on a gray T-shirt like he needed something to do other than look at Harper. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“You have to.”
“I don’t. Can’t.” The room was heavy with dominance and smelled of fur.
“I wanted her—”
“I fucked up, Harper! I fucked up. Beaston told me to be careful with you, and I wasn’t. I should’ve used a condom every time, but I would lose my head around you. I couldn’t afford to do that. Not when every damned female dragon dies to bear young! My young.” Wyatt’s face fell, and his eyes rimmed with moisture. “She was mine, and she was going to kill you. Janey was mine, and she was the reason you were going to die.”
Harper ran the collar of her shirt over her wet cheeks and let off a pitiful sob. “She was beautiful.”
“Stop.”
“You should’ve looked at her! You should’ve been in Saratoga, visiting her grave with me, but you left me alone with all that hurt. I wanted her, Wyatt. I wanted her more than anything.”
“You were eighteen, and you were going to die for a baby.”
“Not just a baby. Our baby. Janey was ours.” Harper rested her back against the closet door and sighed. “I might have lived. Damon picked my birth grandmother carefully, and my mom had a twenty-five-percent chance of surviving. She said my
chances were better. Fifty-percent maybe.”
Wyatt hooked his hands on his hips and shook his head, stared out the window. His jaw clenched so hard his muscles jumped there. “Fifty percent chance that I would lose you forever.”
Harper wiped her eyes again. “No, Wyatt. A fifty percent chance that I could’ve given you everything. I keep thinking what if I’d been able to keep her. I imagine us sometimes. Up in Saratoga with Janey, happy, a family. You would be logging with one of the crews, and I would have my law practice in town, and Janey would be growing up with the other kids in Damon’s mountains. The Unrest isn’t your fault, Wyatt. It’s mine for not being able to get her to air. You gave me my treasure when I was eighteen, and I couldn’t take care of it. Couldn’t protect it. I failed us. You reacted. I forgive you for everything. I just wanted to say that before I go. I forgive you.”
Wyatt was to her in an instant, hugging her so tight it was hard to breathe, and she didn’t even care about the discomfort. This right here, this moment, was the first thing that had felt real since the day he’d left.
“It wasn’t your fault. You did everything right. She just wasn’t meant to be ours, Harper. God needed her more.”
A pained keening sound wrenched up her throat as she clutched onto his shirt and dampened the fabric with her tears. “That’s all I needed to hear. That’s all. This whole time, that’s all I needed to hear from you.”
Hugging her tighter, Wyatt’s shoulders shook, and his breath hitched. His unshaven jaw rasped roughly against her cheek as he gave her the affection she’d pined for. The affection bear shifters gave better than any other shifter. He switched sides and ran his cheek across her other one.
Wyatt gripped the back of her head and pulled her face against his strong chest. And when he lowered his lips to her ear, he whispered salvation. “We’ve both punished ourselves for long enough. It’s through.”
It’s through. Harper wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed him to pull her up off the ground. His words had blasted apart the big red ball of ache in her middle. She huffed a thick laugh at how relieved she felt. This…this was like flying. It was like cinder blocks being cut from her ankles and breaking the surface of the water. It was breathing again.
She closed her eyes tightly and stroked the back of his head as her dragon let off a long, relieved rattle. One day with him, and she was practically purring. Did her forgiveness make her weak? She didn’t know. All she knew is that she’d bonded with Wyatt when she was young, and the tension of that bond had never gone away. She used to hate her dragon for holding onto him so tightly, but now Harper had to trust her. She had to. For whatever time she had left, she wanted to be happy.
And no person on the planet had ever, or would ever, make her happier than Wyatt.
Chapter Six
Wyatt slammed the ax down on another log and shoved the split pieces into the pile next to the chopping block.
He was smiling like a dope, but that couldn’t be helped. Harper was back in his life.
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t his, never would be again and not like he wished, but at least they would get through the grit from the past. At least they could forgive each other and themselves, and right about now, it felt like a billion pounds of dead weight had lifted off his shoulders. Damn. He sucked in an easy drag of air. He couldn’t even remember feeling this free.
Chop.
So now the real work would begin. She’d scared him with that seizure, and from what Damon said, it would only get worse if she didn’t connect with something big. He had to push hard and find her dragon something to tether her to this world.
Chop.
Too bad he was about a hundred thousand dollars short. He squinted up at the mountains in the distance. His plan wouldn’t have ever worked. Not at the pace he was earning money. He had shifts up at the gem mine, excavating dirt for tourists. It paid pretty well, and he’d been saving like mad for the past three years. From the second Damon had called him about Harper’s first bout of sickness, he’d gone to work, but he hadn’t realized she was this deep into The Unrest already.
Harper’s bloody nose meant she was nearing her end and Wyatt’s timeline had just been blown to hell.
Chop.
His funds from the coven had been cut off completely with the stunt he’d pulled last night. Arabella had tried for a more intimate approach to bleeding him, and he’d lost his mind and tried his damndest to put the leg of the kitchen chair through her chest cavity. He’d been making a thousand dollars a blood donation, but now he was back to only paychecks from the mine. It wasn’t enough.
He lifted the ax to slam it back down onto the log he’d balanced on the block, but he paused as the throaty rumble of an engine rattled to him on the breeze.
Harper’s silver rental car sat in his yard. It was broad daylight so the vamps were down in their dark basements. The only other person who’d ever come visit him here was Kane, but only once. They weren’t the sitting-on-the-porch-drinking-lemonade type of friends. More like two predators living in the same territory who respected each other’s boundaries. So who the fuck was driving the beefed-up, glossy black motorcycle up his gravel drive right now?
A tall man pulled the bike into Wyatt’s yard and cut the engine, hit the kickstand with his giant black boot, and pulled his helmet and sunglasses off.
“Holy shit. Aaron?” He hadn’t seen Aaron Keller in years.
Aaron gave him a toothy grin and nodded like hell-yeah. He got off the bike and caught Wyatt’s hug. Aaron clapped him on the back hard enough to shake his lungs loose, and Wyatt got overwhelmed with emotion. God, his bear had been falling apart since Harper had barreled back into his life last night. He gripped Aaron’s navy sweater and opened his mouth to apologize for the scent of sadness he was putting off right now. But Aaron rested his forehead on top of Wyatt’s shoulder and gripped the back of his head. He just stood there like that, embracing him like they used to when they were boys and hadn’t seen each other in too damn long.
Wyatt inhaled sharply, trying to keep his shit together, but truth be told, his bear needed this. He needed touch, and Wyatt had been stupid to deprive his animal side of comradery for all this time. Wyatt leaned his cheek against Aaron’s head and just was.
“I missed you, man,” Aaron murmured. “You didn’t just leave her. You left me, too.”
Shit, shit, shit. Wyatt swallowed hard, over and over, and clenched Aaron’s shirt harder. “I’m sorry.”
Aaron gripped the back of his neck painfully hard, then released him and slung his arm over his shoulder. This was so strange. The Aaron of his memories was a lanky boy who looked downright emaciated next to the other men in the Breck Crew. He’d hit his grizzly growth spurts and now was a dominant bruin with at least seventy extra pounds of muscle on his frame. Tattoos peeked out from under the edge of his sleeves, and he had blond facial hair, only a couple shades darker than the hair on his head. He had piercings and ink and was built like a tank, and Wyatt was having a damn hard time meshing the way Aaron looked now with the memory he had of him.
Aaron beamed. “You should see your face right now. You look like you’re seein’ a ghost.”
Wyatt laughed. “I am. I’m looking at the ghost of the kid I used to know. I’m gonna call you Roid Rage from here on.”
Aaron shoved him hard and shadow boxed with him for a minute. “Yeah, well, you don’t look the same either. You been hittin’ the weights?”
“No,” they both said at the same time and laughed. Bear shifters didn’t have to spend time in the gym. They just had to feed their bodies plenty of red meat.
“Other than that, though, you look like shit,” Aaron said, blond brows arched high. He jerked his chin toward Wyatt’s neck. “You been feedin’ vamps?”
“Long story.”
“Which you will tell me because I’m gonna be here for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you’re fighting vamps…I want in. I’m
bored out of my mind in Breckenridge. It’s like an ice cream social every other day, and I know all the girls there.”
“Oh, yeah? And they aren’t putting up with your shit anymore?”
“Exactly.” Cupping his hand around his mouth, Aaron greeted his cousin with a bellowing, “Harper!”
Harper stood on the broken porch, leaning against the post with a mushy smile on her face as though she’d seen their entire exchange.
Aaron pointed to the soggy pile of ash in the distinct shape of a man on the broken stairs “Gross.” He hopped over and lifted his cousin into the air, squeezing until she giggled.
To Harper, Wyatt mouthed, Did you do this?
Those sexy lips of hers curved up even higher as she nodded. Huh.
More rumbling sounded from down the road, and son of a gun, what now? Wyatt was already damn near weeping like a twelve-year-old girl at a boyband concert.
Two jacked-up Chevy’s raced up the driveway toward them, zigzagging through the woods when the road got too thin for both. Someone was laughing like a psycho out their open window, and Wyatt squinted at the heavy tint to try and figure out who was driving.
The gunmetal gray truck skidded into the yard first, rooster-tailing mud until it rocked to a stop in front of the other one.
“You cheated, you mother fucker!” That voice was sort of familiar, but deeper.
Two slamming doors echoed through the clearing, and two more ghosts from Wyatt’s past strode up to him, both of them looking like a pair of body builders jacked up on protein.
Ryder’s hair was redder and his freckles darker than Wyatt remembered from the last time he saw him. And when the strutting giant grinned right before he pulled Wyatt into a hug that nearly killed him, he looked nothing shy of feral. He picked Wyatt up off the ground and drove him backward, whacking him on the back hard enough to sound like the snaps of a whip.
