by Rose, Callie
“Right.” Trystan nods, a grin touching his lips. “We’re using something that belongs to them—that they believe should only belong to them. So in their minds, we’re something wrong or worthless that shouldn’t exist.”
His words hit me harder than I was prepared for, and I freeze, playing them over in my head.
We’re something wrong or worthless that shouldn’t exist.
I realize with heart-wrenching clarity that this kind of belief—viewing someone as inherently worthless—was exactly what my uncle did to me.
My heart clutches, and it feels like my whole chest has seized up. I can’t breathe. I can’t speak.
As if a cold hand has reached out from my past and dragged me back, I feel myself falling away from the small, comfortable kitchen, hurtling into dark memories of a place I know all too well.
Clint’s house.
My childhood house.
The house of my nightmares.
Uncle Clint stands over me, a cigarette in his hand and a sneer on his ugly, twisted face. I’m cowering against the wall, a glass of water spilled on the floor at my feet. He kicked me in the back as I passed him. I was carrying a glass of water, and I spilled it, and he backhanded me into the wall.
Clint puts his cigarette to his lips and sucks in a lungful of smoke that won’t kill him nearly fast enough to save my life. Then his hand darts out and he puts the butt out on my neck. Hot, searing pain lashes over my nerve-endings, and I think I smell burning flesh. On top of the throbbing in my back and head.
“You’re a waste of fucking space. A waste of the goddamn food I feed you,” he growls, tossing the spent cigarette in my face. “Stupid, worthless girl.”
I flinch backward, and as I do, I fall into another memory.
Uncle Clint slips his pocketknife from his jeans and flicks the blade open in a practiced snick. He’s holding a short glass of straight whiskey in his other hand, and his eyes have the shiny, distanced look I recognize as the early stages of drunkenness.
I came into the living room to fill his glass because he told me to. Now I’m standing here beside his recliner, staring at the glint of steel in the flickering blue light of the television.
He slashes out at me, the blade cutting into my arm. I recoil, my heart hammering against my rib cage as blood wells on my skin.
“Fucking waste of oxygen,” he mutters. “You’ll never amount to shit.”
The memories keep coming like a bad movie playing in my head, an overwhelming, never-ending horror story that I lived day in and day out for far too long. If my uncle hated me this much, and the witches hate shifters enough to systematically annihilate their kind… what other kinds of hate exist in the world?
Is there anything good at all?
Is anything worth saving?
Warm hands gently press against mine, and I fall out of the panic-induced flashbacks. Suddenly, I’m back in the cabin, only I’m on the floor now. I must have slipped from the chair during my attack.
Archer kneels in front of me, concern touching his green eyes and his face smooth with kindness. “Sable? Can you hear me?”
I nod, but I keep nodding. Nodding like a crazy person. I can’t stop the damn nodding, like the bones holding my head in place have given up.
Archer’s hands move from my fists to my face. His fingers are strong but gentle as he slows the frantic nodding. Reaching up, I cling to his wrists, my weight resting almost entirely against his hold on my head. He grounds me, an anchor in the storm.
Our eyes lock together as he says, “Breathe with me.” He makes an exaggerated O with his lips, pulling in air loudly.
I mimic his movements, exaggerated and all. Keeping my eyes on his face, I follow his deep breaths in and out while the warmth in his hands soothes the ice flooding through my veins. It’s only me and Archer, and there’s no room left for the panic. A soothing calm rolls over me, grounding me.
I feel like I could fall into the depths of his eyes.
Like I could fall and keep falling.
And I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
18
Sable
For the next week, the four of us spend nearly every waking moment together, falling into a comfortable routine. After that first evening when Archer had to pull me out of my panic-fueled flashback, all three men treat me with gentle compassion—even Trystan, who I doubt such empathy comes easy to.
And thanks to their awareness, I don’t have another panic attack.
Plus, exactly as Ridge promised me, they leave me alone at night to sleep in the one bed by myself, while they curl up in wolf form on the living room floor. I’m so thankful for their attentiveness to my feelings, but I can’t help the guilt that twinges my chest. The floor isn’t nearly as comfortable and warm as the bed, and to be honest, when we say good night, I feel an emptiness that carries me through the night and isn’t filled until I wake up to the sounds and smells of them making breakfast every morning.
Something inside me feels like it’s trapped. Locked away and desperate to reach out and touch these three men.
My body just won’t obey.
It’s like I’m broken—like maybe that part of me will never work again. Never had a chance to work in the first place, even. My uncle beat the capacity to love someone, to truly connect with someone, right out of me.
Maybe that was his plan from the start.
On our eighth day in the cabin, I lounge on the front steps, watching as my three companions split firewood in the yard. They’re passing an axe around between them, and they’ve stripped off their shirts. Despite the brisk chill in the air, their torsos are shiny with exertion as they take turns chopping logs on a sawed-off tree stump.
I’m having a hard time not staring, and an even harder time not drooling. It’s clear they’re showing off for me.
The cabin is fairly rustic—we’re cooking our meals over the fire in the fireplace, and much of our dinners have come from the men shifting and hunting. The running water for the shower comes from a rain basin, while the electricity comes from a generator that’s typically off all day and only used for a small portion of the evening. Regardless, there’s already a giant pile of cut firewood against the side of the cabin, yet here we are.
Trystan shoves Ridge out of the way with his elbow and raises the axe, casting a glance my way as if to make sure I’m watching before he brings it down on the log. Then Ridge steps around Trystan, giving me another telling look before he sets up a log and does the same.
Biting my lip to hide an amused smile, I dig my toe into the dirt by the front steps.
Truthfully, I can’t help but like the way they’re showing off for me.
The attention is a balm to my broken heart, and it balances out all the years I lay alone in my bed in my uncle’s house, wondering if I’d ever have a friend or a reason to even live.
But beyond the friendly competition, I can sense real tension between the men—all of them, even Archer, the sweetest and most level-headed of the three.
I hate that tension. Things they’ve said, jabs they’ve taken at each other, all of it adds up to my impression that despite their treaty, their three packs are at odds with each other and have been for some time. Adding me to the mix as a potential mate for all three of them has only fueled the already smoldering fire.
“Sable,” Archer calls, jarring me from my thoughts.
“Hm?” I look at him, standing in a patch of sunlight that spills through the trees. His tanned skin shines like it's illuminated from within, and the way he’s resting the axe handle on his shoulder displays the muscles in his chest.
“You’re up. Come give it a try,” he says, holding up another—smaller—axe with a smile. “You might feel better if you take some of your anger out on firewood.”
I can’t exactly argue that point. I broke a few things in my time living with Clint when everything got to be too much, although I usually paid for it later or took great pains to clean up and
hide the mess.
Still…
“I don’t know,” I say, eyeing the weapon. “It looks hard. And dangerous.”
Ridge stretches out his shoulders, grinning at me as he jerks his chin in invitation. “We’ll teach you.”
His voice warms my insides and chases away the lingering misgivings I have. I hop to my feet and join them in the patchy sunlight, taking the offered axe from Archer. It’s lighter than I expected but still has heft to it. A few swings will probably work out muscles I didn’t even know I had.
Ridge steps up behind me, reaching around to place my hands in position. “You’ll have better control if you keep your hands separate,” he advises, his breath tickling my ear. A tingle starts low in my body, and I have to fight the urge to sink back against his bare chest, to nuzzle into his skin and breathe deeply of his familiar pine scent.
Archer places a round log atop the stump and then backs away, well out of range of the crazy girl with the axe.
Smart man.
“Ready?” Ridge asks, and I nod. “Place the axe on the log as a starting point. It’ll help with muscle memory.”
I do what he says, resting the blade in the center of the log. He disappears from my back, and when I’m sure he’s at a safe distance, I heave the axe up and let it fly.
I miss the log completely, metal sinking into the tree stump.
“Good form.” Archer steps in and yanks the axe from the wood, whirling it around to hand it to me, handle first. “The first try is always a swing and a miss. Let’s do it again.”
They take turns showing me their methods, giving me advice while giving each other shit. After a few more misses, I finally hit the log, and a few more swings after that, I’ve really got the hang of it.
But cutting the firewood isn’t the true stress reliever, I realize. Yeah, sure, it’s really nice to imagine the log is my uncle’s face. And I do that a few times.
As tension evaporates from my body and the knot in my stomach starts to unwind, I finally realize what it really is.
It’s these men.
Their attention. Their friendly, easy-going banter. The way they look out for me and take care of me.
I’ve never had anything like that in my life, and try as I might to resist, I feel myself being drawn toward them like a flower toward sunlight.
* * *
That night, I slip into an easy sleep, though my arm muscles do their best to protest.
At first my dreams are benign and nonsensical.
I’m racing through the forest with the cold mountain wind ruffling my hair. I see wolves around me and the moon high overhead, and my body feels lighter than air, as if I’m flying rather than running. I reach the edge of a ravine, and rocks shift and fall beneath my feet.
Then Ridge is beside me in human form—naked and magnificent, even in my dreams. He takes my hand and we jump right over the edge of the canyon. Instead of falling, we soar.
But then it isn’t Ridge beside me anymore.
His hand becomes a vise grip, and I’m lying on my uncle’s work bench with my hand in an actual vise grip. Both hands are pinned between unforgiving metal planks on either side of my body. I can’t struggle. It only makes the pain worse to try.
Uncle Clint towers over me, smoke curling up over his balding head from the cigarette perched between his lips. He lifts a hand, and I see he’s holding a cutting knife—a small one from our kitchen set, meant for chopping vegetables, not for slicing up your niece.
But that’s what he uses it for.
This is one of his calculated torture sessions, I realize in horror. Not his drunken rages or his power-hungry man tantrums that cause him to push me down stairs or punch me in soft places on my body.
This is war.
This is tactical.
His knife slices up the front of my shirt, and he uses the sharp tip to throw the edges of my shirt out of his way. He eyes my stomach like a painter planning his next move, before he sets the blade to my skin and starts to carve.
Even in my dream, the ghost of the pain feels almost as horrible as it did in real life. He carves so lightly, not deep enough that it won’t properly heal. In his calculated attacks, my uncle scratches some kind of itch I’ve never understood. He wants me to feel maximum pain. He wants to cause me excruciating agony. And he knows how to cover his tracks well enough to get away with it.
Blood runs down my sides in warm little rivulets, soaking through the crumpled fabric of my destroyed t-shirt. The cuts keep going until I’m screaming, screaming for anybody to help me. Screaming for something to take me away from this pain.
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding like a jackhammer against my ribcage. The blankets are heavy on my body, more confining than they should be, and I frantically shove them off me with all four limbs until they slip off the bed to pool on the floor.
My breaths come faster as I glance around the dark room. I can hear that the generator is off beyond the cabin wall, so I can’t even turn on a light to dispel the gloom.
The small bedroom feels like a tomb, and all logic flees in the face of my panic.
I’m trapped.
I can’t be here anymore.
So I slip out of bed and rush out of the back door of the cabin, where the moon shines brightly on the forest and I don’t have to be in the dark with my nightmares.
19
Dare
It’s the kind of night made for stealth.
The kind of night made for tracking down witches and destroying each and every one of them before they can find a way to penetrate pack lands.
The landscape flashes by at warp speed, and my paws thunder against the ground. I live for this shit—this freedom, the wild air, the heady scent of dirt.
The chase.
I skid to a stop in a small clearing just beyond the barrier line and lift my nose to the air. I can smell her—the witch that’s been testing the boundaries of our sigils. She has a cold scent, calculating and authoritarian, like she’s an alpha in her own right.
The good news is, alphas are born to be tested.
And beaten.
I duck between the trees and put my nose to the ground just beyond the barrier. A tentative scent pattern tells me the witch was here, and recently. She zig-zagged just outside the boundary, getting closer and closer with every fucking step. I’ve been tracking this bitch for weeks, and as always, it seems I’m still one step behind her.
No matter. She can’t evade me forever.
As I pass back through the boundary, I catch a hint of something different. Not the witch’s scent, but something sweeter and more alluring.
I follow the marker to a nearby tree and jump up onto my hind legs to sniff at the tree. A female. Not any pack member that I know, but still somehow familiar.
I consider following it, but I haven’t finished my patrols. The East, West, and North Packs aren’t handling the witch threat as aggressively as they should, which leaves me to pick up the slack and do their dirty work.
Without a pack of my own to protect, I figure what else is there to do but protect the rest of the packs from their own inadequacies?
Heading west, I follow the narrow corridor of empty land between the West and North Packs, focusing on the witch’s scent. I run for several miles before I’m satisfied by the fact she hasn’t yet come this way. The boundaries are still strong, humming with power and untouched by her magic.
That’s good—it means she’s sticking to the farthest boundaries, closest to the more populated human lands. Whether that’s because she hasn’t found the empty lands between the pack territories, or because she hasn’t tried, I don’t know.
I’m not going to give her a chance to try.
Every night, I complete my patrol. I start on the farthest western boundaries and make the circuit all the way around, then through the empty lands between each of the three packs’ territories. Without fail, I spend my nights protecting the dumbasses who can’t protect themselves.
What the fuck are they even doing all day?
I slow my pace and veer off the path to take a break and get some water, letting that thought mull in my head and stoke the anger that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my chest.
They could be planning and prepping to add more protections, to do more for the shifters. Instead, I caught wind recently that they’d had more executions. More wolves dead. They let the witches get close enough to kill their people.
Fucking idiots.
I sink to my haunches on the bank of my usual stream and drink. This deep in the mountains, the water tastes wild and untamed, so crisp it sends shivers through me.
Then I scent something that doesn’t belong here.
Raising my nose to the breeze, I sniff the wind. It’s that same stranger’s smell—the female, something not quite shifter, but familiar. I stand and turn into the oncoming wind, realizing it’s bringing that intoxicating smell from farther upstream.
I can’t help myself. I follow it.
A half-moon shines down through the trees as I take my time walking the banks of the stream. It’s the darkest depths of night, when the sky is full of stars and the moon transforms the land into something unearthly. I feel most myself during these hours, as if my wolf is so fully connected to the land that I’ve lost track of the human inside me.
I’m a decent distance from any of the three packs’ settlements. I never see anyone out this way except wildlife.
So I’m shocked as hell to come across a woman.
She’s sitting on the edge of the stream with her feet in the water, watching with the hint of a smile on her face as the current races over her skin. The moonlight turns her hair almost white and her pale skin nearly translucent, as if she’s glowing from the inside.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Another light breeze races past me, and that strange scent hits my nose again.
Mine.
The thought comes from nowhere and everywhere, and a force inside me rises up so strongly I stagger on my paws. This woman is mine, I realize, instantly shifting back to human form. There’s nothing in the world right now that could stop me from having her.
