Haunted Wolves: Green Pines, Book 2

by Moira Rogers

  Jay slid Kaley off the bed and stretched her out on the floor. While he started CPR again, Eden positioned herself for rescue breathing. They moved in concert, without speaking, entirely focused on Kaley.

  The sick feeling in the room pressed in on Lorelei, a pressure shot through with tiny shocks, like an invisible hand plucking at the part of her that was wolf. And all she could do was watch the scene unfold before her, shivering and yet oddly numb.

  Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and Stella ground out a curse as she crossed the threshold. “Holy shit.” She dropped to her knees, already reaching blindly for the bag hanging from her waist. “Out of the way!” she snapped.

  Jay’s jaw clenched, but he lifted both hands. “Stella—”

  “Shh.” She pulled a polished green stone and a purple crystal from her bag and cupped them in her hands. A few whispered words, and she blew on them. “There’s a link. It’s drawing on the energy in the room, on Kaley. I have to break it.”

  Lorelei’s throat ached from swallowing sobs, but she managed to keep quiet as Stella lowered her cupped hands to hover over Kaley’s unmoving chest. Nothing, even when the witch’s words began to rise in a rhythmic chant that filled the room. Nothing, and every passing second thrust home the reality of the situation.

  Kaley wasn’t breathing. Her heart wasn’t beating, and her lips were already turning blue.

  That was what unraveled the last of Lorelei’s self-control, the still, parted lips fading from pink to purple to blue.

  Colin’s arms went around her waist, grounding her in his physical strength as a rush of magic washed over her. “If you need power, take it from us,” he ground out.

  “Just—” Stella froze, her hands trembling. “Fuck. Fuck. That’s what this is.”

  “What?” Jay growled.

  “I have been taking it from you.” She crawled half over Kaley and pressed her hand to the spot over Eden’s heart. “This could sting.”

  Eden squared her shoulders. “I don’t care. Do what you have to.”

  The chanting began again, different words this time, a different tone—commanding, angry. The entire room sucked inward toward the center, like a giant indrawn breath, and then blew out in a rush of heat and energy that sizzled along Lorelei’s nerve endings.

  Kaley gasped.

  Colin exhaled sharply. “Jay?”

  He barely looked up. “Get her out of here.”

  Without giving Lorelei a chance to protest, Colin swept her up and hauled her out the door and down the stairs.

  “She needs me.” The words came out thick, slurred, and Lorelei realized she was crying. “I have to help her. You don’t understand.”

  “Jay and Eden have her.” Colin lowered her to the couch in the living room and crouched in front of her, his hands curling around hers. “It’s okay. She’s okay, we got to her in time.”

  “Stop.” The constant reassurances were starting to rankle. “You don’t know that. She’s breathing, but she—she—”

  “She’s what, Lorelei?”

  She scrambled off the couch. “She’s damn near the only thing holding Mae together, that’s what. And Zack—” The words died in her throat, choked out by a hysterical laugh. “Oh God, someone has to tell Zack.”

  Colin watched her, his eyes worried. “Maybe Eden should. Or we could call Austin, so Zack has someone with him.”

  “Austin.” He’d know how to handle the situation. Lorelei looked around for the cordless phone before shuddering to a halt, her hands shaking. “What if it was a long time, Colin? How does that work with werewolves?”

  He covered her hands with his own, warm fingers closing tight. “We can last a lot longer. And if they got her breathing again, got her heart beating—she’ll heal, probably. Especially if Stella was right, and it was a spell draining her power. Eden and Jay have magic to burn, if Stella needs to take more of it.”

  One deep breath after another, and Lorelei felt the ground beneath her begin to right itself. “If.” Too many ifs.

  “Hey.” Warmth followed his hands as he smoothed them up to her shoulders. “She is breathing. I can go upstairs and check on her, and then we’ll have something to tell Zack when we call.”

  “Okay.” She spotted the phone on an end table and picked it up, deliberately relaxing her grip when the plastic creaked in her hand. “Okay.”

  “Okay to which, honey? Going upstairs or…” He trailed off with a frown, his head cocked. Listening.

  Lorelei tensed against the unmistakable sounds of tires skidding on gravel, of screeching brakes. The phone casing cracked, and she dropped the handset on the couch before hurrying down the hallway toward the foyer.

  The waning moon was still bright enough to illuminate Zack as he spilled from his truck wearing nothing but sweatpants. His feet were bare, but he seemed oblivious to the rough gravel and cold air alike as he loped toward the porch. “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs,” Lorelei mumbled. Colin shouted for her to move, but she stayed where she was, relieved and horrified in turn. Mae must have called him. It made perfect sense, clinging to the prospect of something normal, of making a simple phone call, when the world was exploding around you. “Zack, wait—”

  Colin grabbed her shoulders and hauled her aside, out of Zack’s path. “Jay and Eden are with her” was all he said, but by the time Zack’s foot hit the bottom porch step, he’d edged Lorelei behind him. “Go.”

  Zack barely looked at them as he tore up the steps and slammed through the front door, leaving it trembling on one loose hinge.

  Lorelei sagged into one of the rocking chairs on the porch. “I don’t know whether to go up there or stay here or what.”

  “Stay here,” Colin said without hesitation. Worry etched lines into his face. “The timing’s not right. He knew before we did.”

  The words chilled her. “No, someone called him. Mae.”

  “Would Mae have called him ten minutes before shouting for help?”

  The cold feeling grew, settled in the pit of Lorelei’s stomach. “You’re not making any sense.”

  Colin curled a hand around the back of the rocking chair. “He knew, Lorelei. Maybe it’s part of the spell, or they have some sort of bond—I don’t know much about magic. But he couldn’t have gotten here this fast unless he knew.”

  They’d never had any magic in Memphis. No witches. They’d had only themselves, and they’d struggled to help one another without the benefit of true Guides, or the bond that Jay and Eden seemed so happy to have. If bonding was something they could have done on their own—

  I swear to God, Lorelei, I haven’t crossed the line with her.

  He was always so insistent about that, about how he hadn’t taken Kaley even though she’d offered. Lorelei had always assumed it was to assuage his guilt, that he had to keep telling her he hadn’t crossed the line because he wanted to so badly.

  But maybe it had been more, an admission, and he’d been talking about another line altogether.

  Lorelei shot up and reached for the ravaged door. Every step pounded denial in time with her racing pulse, because Zack wouldn’t do that. He just wouldn’t. The truth pushed back harder, a sick realization that twisted in her gut.

  He wouldn’t do it on purpose.

  Stella was smudging the room with a smoking bundle of sage. They’d returned Kaley to the bed—breathing, but unmoving. Eden sat next to her, pale and ragged around the edges, as if ten years of vitality had been sucked out of her in ten minutes. She held Kaley’s hand, but her attention was all for Zack.

  He was on his knees next to the bed, his forehead pressed to Kaley’s opposite hand. “Come back,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m here now, Kaley. Come back.”

  Watching felt voyeuristic, intrusive. Lorelei spun around out of instinct, her gaze locking with Colin’s.

  Jay spoke behind her, soft but firm. “Eden, go downstairs.”

  “If Stella needs more power—”

  “She’ll get it from Co
lin. You have to check on Mae.”

  Colin reached out to touch Lorelei’s cheek as Eden muttered something else. “I’ll give them anything they need,” he promised in a whisper so soft, no one else could have possibly heard it. Then he stepped aside, and Eden slid an arm around Lorelei’s waist in a brief, silent hug.

  If more power could do it, Stella wouldn’t be wasting her time with sage. Jay confirmed it a moment later. “We just have to wait it out, Zack.” His voice lowered, gentled. “Tell me what happened.”

  Zack’s voice rumbled behind her, but Lorelei couldn’t make out the words as Eden urged her toward the stairs. The numbness resurfaced, a low buzz that blocked out everything else.

  Kaley would be okay. She would be, because she had to be.

  Shane looked like he’d taken a beating.

  Werewolves healed quickly, but that just meant the bruises rose faster. Shane had plenty that Colin could see, and probably twice as many that he couldn’t. While Colin had been struggling against uselessness, Shane had given Mae what she needed—someone to fight against without ending up crushed.

  That fight had dissolved not long after Zack’s arrival. Lorelei had also given in to exhaustion and fear. She and Mae were curled up on the sofa in the dark living room, along with Eden, who’d fallen asleep stroking Mae’s hair. The alpha’s color had returned—her bond with Jay restoring what Stella’s magic had taken, no doubt—but none of them had been willing to move to the comfort of their own beds. Not until Kaley woke up.

  Until. The only word he’d let himself use, but now as he stood on the back porch next to Shane, his own doubts kept trying to bubble up. “Have you ever heard of anything like this?”

  “Spells that drain a werewolf’s power? Of course I have.” Shane squinted up at the lightening sky and sighed. “Makes sense that this could be what killed that refugee from Memphis. The question is…who?”

  “Stella said something after you got Mae out of the room.” Colin slanted a sideways look at Shane, uncertain how to continue. Tact was usually wasted on him…but Stella was his friend. “Eden told her to take the power she needed, and she said she thought she already had been.”

  “It comes from the land, that’s what she keeps saying.” Shane frowned. “Shit, but it could be a funnel instead of a source. She wouldn’t have any idea until something like this happened.”

  Colin thought of all the wards. The magical protections that discouraged people from roaming the woods, the perimeter spells that warned Stella of an attack, even the soundproofing on their individual bedrooms that let noise in but kept it from spilling out. The farm was covered in magic, it seemed, more than one witch could produce on her own.

  And she hadn’t. “Kaley’s stronger than most of the wolves here. Anything that drained her close to death would have killed someone else.”

  “Too many variables to say for sure. Stella can probably figure it out, given time, but her first priority will be making sure it can’t happen again.”

  Colin half-turned toward the window. With the living room lights off, the three women were only vague shapes in the darkness, two blonde heads and one spill of bright pink hair tucked close together. “Yeah. That needs to be the first priority.”

  Shane followed his gaze curiously. “What happened with you two?”

  “I don’t know.” Colin shoved his hands into his pockets. “I thought I scared the shit out of her in Memphis, but tonight…” She’d come to him. Trusted him. Needed him.

  “Will she be okay?”

  “If Kaley is, I think so.” Colin glanced at the pink scratches raking across Shane’s cheek. “Will Mae?”

  “If Kaley is,” Shane agreed.

  Colin looked away. “How do you always know what she needs? I can never tell if I’m making things better or worse. Sometimes I think Lorelei’s humoring me.”

  “Maybe she is.” Shane eyed him, his brow furrowed. “You try so hard, all the time. Too hard, maybe. What scares you about just letting things happen?”

  “I don’t know.” The lie came effortlessly, but it rang false. Colin closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. “I know. I thought everyone knew.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I can’t find the fucking lines anymore. Like in Memphis. I could have backed those wolves down with words and power, but he took a step toward Lorelei. One fucking step, and my gut instinct was to tear his throat out. How does that make me trustworthy?”

  “It might not,” Shane admitted, “all other things being equal. But are they?”

  “Are they what? Equal?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned against the porch railing and rubbed his face. “Meaning, if it had been anyone but Lorelei with you, would you have reacted the same way?”

  It was hard to be sure, though he suspected he would have been able to hold on to his temper better with Kaley or Eden at his back. “I don’t know. Maybe if it was Mae, if she seemed scared.” But he hadn’t waited for Lorelei’s fear. The driving need to protect had come first, the rationalizations in the painful aftermath.

  “You’re lying to yourself again.” Shane made the observation the way he always did—with casual aplomb. As if the words couldn’t possibly cut. “You do that more than you ever lie to other people.”

  “Is that so?” It was hard to bite out the words past his irritation. “And you know everything about what’s going on in my head?”

  Shane was oblivious to his anger. “I see enough. You keep looking at her, but not to look. Like you have to make sure she’s still there. And you don’t like Zack because you’re jealous of how much Lorelei cares about him.”

  “Fuck you, man.” Colin clenched his fists. “Someday you’re going to say this shit to someone who’ll punch your fucking lights out.”

  “Yeah, I know. People don’t like it. But you asked me how I know what Mae needs. It’s not hard, and it’s not magic. It’s about facing the truth.”

  “Yeah? What truth did you have to face?”

  “That there are things I can’t change, no matter how damn bad I want to.” Shane gestured through the window. “Kaley’s been Mae’s best friend since before they were turned, and she might not make it to sunrise. And Mae…” He trailed off. “She can’t lose her. Doesn’t mean she won’t.”

  Hard truths, but not as ugly as the jealousy in Colin’s gut. “It’s not that they—that she cares about Zack. It’s that he’s the alpha in their hearts, but he hasn’t been able to take care of them in too long. Sometimes I think I hate him for what he’s putting them through.”

  “Okay, but hating him won’t change anything. Helping him might.”

  To help Zack, Colin would have to stare crazy straight in the eyes and find out just how much of it resonated with that slowly expanding darkness inside him. Not a pleasant prospect. “Do you think he can be helped?”

  “There you go again.” Shane shrugged. “I think he can. If you asked him, he’d probably say no. And none of that changes anything.”

  This time Colin couldn’t stop his exasperated growl. “Sometimes talking to you gives me a headache.”

  “But here we are, still talking.”

  “Because half the time I can’t figure out what you’re saying, but you’re doing something right.” By the time he and Eden had made it to the backyard, they’d found Mae clutching at Shane and sobbing out what must have been a year’s worth of hurt. No one had been able to coax her out of his arms until she was wrung dry and limp with emotional exhaustion.

  A spontaneous moment of catharsis, and Colin doubted Shane had planned it or encouraged it. It had happened, and he’d been there, ready to give what he could. If Colin wanted the same for Lorelei, he’d have to stop pushing, stop trying, and trust her to come to him if she needed him.

  And trust himself to do the right thing.

  “Come on.” Shane nodded upwards. “Time to go relieve Jay so he can get some rest, maybe.”

  Jay would rest better once he’d checked on Eden, and they all needed the
ir alphas on their feet and ready to deal with trouble tomorrow. After one last look at Lorelei, Colin followed Shane through the door to the kitchen and up the stairs.

  Zack was where he’d left him hours ago, kneeling beside Kaley’s bed with his forehead pressed to her hand. Jay was in quiet conversation with Stella, but he waved them over.

  “Need anything besides a few hours’ sleep?” Shane asked him.

  Their alpha shook his head. “I’ll grab a nap later. Listen, I put in a call to Gavin up in Red Rock. I may need someone to head out to the airport for a pickup sometime over the next few days.”

  That had its own chilling sense of urgency. Most werewolves avoided airplanes as much as possible, since spinning to a panic in an enclosed space surrounded by humans could be deadly. “For how many?”

  “No more than—”

  “Kaley?” Zack’s voice was rusty, and Colin turned to find the man halfway to his feet, hope and terror pouring off him in equal measure. “Kaley, can you hear me?”

  For a terrifying moment, she didn’t move. Then she shook her head and shoved at his hands, silent tears seeping out of her eyes and down to dampen the hair at her temples.

  A noise rattled out of Zack, a rasping groan that sounded like the pained protest of a wounded animal. He wiped away her tears with hands that shook. “Just open your eyes. Please, honey.”

  “No.” But she did anyway, blinking up at him for the span of a heartbeat before rolling to her side. She curled into a ball and began to cry in earnest, big, wracking sobs that shook her whole body.

  Everyone in the room stood frozen. Jay looked to Stella, who gave him an exasperated shrug that screamed, I’m not a doctor. Shane was rooted in place, leaving Colin to watch awkwardly as Zack reached for Kaley and then stopped, his hand hovering over her shoulder, his face full of such raw pain that Colin pitied the poor bastard.

  Zack finally curled his fingers toward his palm. “Someone should get the girls. She needs them.”

  “I’ll go.” Shane ducked out of the room.