by Jayla Kane
“So… There are lots of werewolves?”
“No,” Hunter said quietly. We were walking through the snowy silence back towards the house, the sun creeping below the treeline. We’d wandered out to a clearing where horses basked in the sun every summer, then moved through the trees, creeping over roots and stomping through drifts. I was bundled up so tight I could hardly move; Hunter bought me a bunch of winter gear, too, because apparently he thought of everything. “The pack here has about forty wolves, from what I can tell.” He was frowning, thinking hard. “I don’t think there are any women. I don’t know if they can turn or not.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, there are women here, but no single women. None. They’re all wives, daughters, sisters. At least, all the ones I’ve met, which isn’t much.” He hesitated, then sighed and continued. “And they smell human, kind of. They don’t smell like wolves—well,” he said, raising an eyebrow meaningfully as he turned back to offer me a hand as I stumbled over another hidden root, “they smell like their wolves. Whoever it is they’re married to, kin to. But…” He shook his head.
“Do they know about you?”
“’Course,” Hunter said. The cabin appeared over the rise, and I found I was happy to see it. It was painted a deep forest green, the roof and trim bright red. Not at all what I would’ve imagined Tristan picking out, for some reason, and I wondered if Hunter had painted it.
“How?”
“Same way I know about them,” he said, still holding my hand as we towed through the snow. “They can smell me.” He paused in a way that made me stop and turn to look up at his face. “They… They think there’s a little bit of wolf in me.”
“You mean the spell?”
“I’m not sure,” he said quietly. His eyes were hard to read; they were in shadow, the light disappearing around us, but I saw them glint as he looked down at me. “I don’t know much about what I am, truth be told.”
“Tristan said you had a First Circle power,” I said, squeezing his hand. “But that the book we signed—the Ashwood Coven made the Council to perform certain roles, to protect itself. So, the page you signed—”
“The Wolf,” he said quietly, and I shrugged.
“It twisted your powers to serve itself,” I explained. “The Wolf is a member of the Third Circle, like Tristan,” I told him. Death, I remembered; death was the power inherent in a member of the Third Circle, a circle Tristan was born to and Hunter had been forced to join. I didn’t repeat that to Hunter. It’s not like he didn’t know, anyway. “But you also… You and I aren’t supposed to exist. Did he tell you that?”
“Said something like it,” Hunter said softly, looking down at our hands. I glanced up at the sky, and he caught the movement and began to plow towards the cabin again.
“I could’ve told him they broke the mold when they made you,” I said, and was relieved to hear the light, teasing tone I’d been aiming for. Hunter snorted.
“You’re one to talk, Artemis Keller.”
“I’ll have you know I am considered a very ordinary girl, back at Michonne High, thank you very much.” And I was rewarded that time by the low chuckle I’d only heard a couple of times before, a delicious sound, so warm and deep it reverberated down to my bones. Hunter tugged me along to the house, and when we shook off our gear in the mud room he was still smiling when we went through the door.
“So what kinds of delicious treats have you prepared for this evening?” I flopped down on the couch, then sat up and curled my feet under my body as I watched Hunter meander over to the kitchen. He’d shucked off his heavy coat, and now I was enjoying the shape of him: those broad shoulders, so layered with muscle that they looked almost too heavy to be real; biceps so thick they strained his shirt sleeves; narrow waist, solid thighs… I realized I was staring just in time to stop looking at his ass when he turned towards me.
“How about spaghetti?” He raised an eyebrow, and I smiled. I loved that, the little light that turned on behind his eyes when I smiled at him. It made my whole body tingle, and I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, curling up into a ball.
But I wasn’t afraid this time. Not like before. Just… A wave of uncertainty, then warmth. Quiet and true, like Hunter himself. “Sounds amazing,” I reassured him, and he gave me one of his small smiles. The warmth multiplied, digging down into my bones, and I abruptly stood up. “Can I shower while you’re cooking?”
“Sure,” he said. “You remember where the towels are?”
I nodded and walked over to the bedroom, picking up the small stack he made for me: an unopened bar of soap, washcloth, and downy towel. I went into the bathroom and stripped off my damp clothing, now worn for far too long anyway, and luxuriated in the hot water; those solar panels seemed to do a pretty damn good job out here in the middle of nowhere. I used Hunter’s shampoo, and after a second’s hesitation I used his soap, lathering it onto my washcloth and then my body, teasing myself with the stolen intimacy. It had touched him, been in his hand; the thought made my cheeks heat. But I rinsed off and wrapped a towel around myself, placing it carefully back on the shelf so it wouldn’t raise too much suspicion.
I padded out of the shower on bare feet; the cool air hit my bare shoulders and the floor felt like ice under my soles. Maybe he really was cold, earlier, when I thought he’d just been warning me—no, I told myself, glancing around for my bag, he hadn’t made any noise until after he was dressed.
And he was being kind to me, and that was okay. It wasn’t pity.
I walked out of the bedroom, holding my towel up with one hand, and looked for my overnight bag. I saw it on the floor by the couch just as Hunter turned away from the stove—and froze.
He just stopped moving. Completely. As if he’d been struck by lightning.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words coming out too fast. “I didn’t mean to startle you—I was just looking for my bag.” My cheeks heated again, making me blurt out more than was necessary. “I used your soap, too. Didn’t see the need to open a fresh one.”
“Okay,” he said, and his voice was strange too. We were staring at each other, his chest rising and falling for another second before he shook his head like he was shaking off a daydream. “Okay,” he said again, and turned back around to face the stove.
Fuck.
I forgot that too.
I forgot that we… We spent all day together, and most of the night—all of the night together, really, if you looked at the fact that the bedroom door didn’t exist. We held hands, several times. We made confessions, we absolved one another and made each other laugh and shared thoughts and observations and ideas…
And once upon a time, in another life, Hunter made me cum so hard I forgot my own name. I remembered his—I remembered wailing it as he clutched my hand, as his tongue stroked my body so sweetly I saw stars… But I’d forgotten that, today, somehow.
I’d forgotten about sex.
That wasn’t a bad thing. I needed to; I needed to forget what sex had become to me. I hadn’t gone a day without thinking of the physical reality of someone plundering my body in the most intimate, sacred way, of someone taking that beautiful thing and ripping it to shreds, ruining a part of me I hadn’t understood yet.
But maybe they hadn’t.
Maybe Tanglewood didn’t get to do that.
Because when I realized I was standing there in a towel—utterly naked beneath it, completely visible from the middle of my thighs down to my feet, shoulders bare and hair tossed back—that’s why Hunter stopped moving. Because he remembered me. He remembered us.
And it didn’t feel bad.
“Hunter,” I said, “we… Can you look at me?”
He turned back around, wiping his hands on a dishrag, and when his eyes met mine they held steadfast, never dipping lower. Just like the day we met. He nodded.
“We need to talk about sex. At least once. Don’t we?”
“Right now?” He sighed heavily, and I realize
d how tightly he was holding that rag.
“Well, during dinner?”
“Whatever you want, sugar,” he said, and for some reason when he said that—a phrase that should’ve sounded dismissive, or even sarcastic, maybe patronizing—it was so sweet. So incredibly sweet. Because he actually meant it, every syllable.
I got dressed in the bathroom and cleaned up after myself just in time to sit down in front of a steaming plate piled high with noodles, sauce, cheese and meatballs. It was simple, but every bit of it was home-made. He really was a good cook. All those years of looking after Molly, I guess. When I took a bite and almost moaned out loud, my eyes fluttered open to find him watching me, and I smiled with my lips closed. He smiled back, and we tucked in. Traipsing through the snow for a couple hours will make you hungry.
It was either a late lunch or an early dinner, but it didn’t matter; I was starving, making up for two weeks of absent appetite, and looking forward to more time on the couch… Cuddling. I put my fork down and squinted over at him. “So. Sex.”
“What about it?” I hadn’t caught him off-guard this time; he didn’t even glance up at me, and took another big bite of spaghetti, cool as a cucumber.
“Do you… Did you…” He put his fork down and focused on me, swallowing hard.
“No. Whatever the end of that question is, the answer is no.”
“You don’t know what—”
“Yes I do,” he said softly. “And I’m just grateful you can look me in the eye, Baby, after everything that’s happened, let alone agree to… To this. To visit me.”
“This is a pretty nice prison you’ve got,” I said, and he raised an eyebrow and shook his head at me. “And so far it’s been a very nice conjugal visit too.”
“Tonight I plan on making you marathon that show you don’t like, though, so we’ll see how you feel after that.”
“Don’t distract me,” I said, and he sighed and took another bite of spaghetti. “Hunter, is it really…” What was I asking him? What did I want to hear?
He was quiet for a long time, and I realized he was watching me while I sorted through my thoughts. He put down his fork and bit his lip. “Baby… I don’t have a lot of things that I… I haven’t had a very happy life, in some ways,” he told me, and I realized once again how impossible it was that he’d ever said these things to someone out loud before. There was a raw undercurrent to every word; he felt like he owed me the truth. Hunter took a very deep breath. “When I’m here at night, by myself… I think about…” His eyes met mine, boring into me, and I felt my whole body tighten. It was almost like… “I remember the time we got to… To be together. I guess. If that’s what you want to call—”
“I want that,” I heard myself say, and we stared at one another for a long moment. “I want to be together,” I whispered, and he swallowed so hard I could hear it, then reached across the table for my hand. His long fingers wrapped around my wrist.
“That was even better,” he said softly, “than spending those hours with you. Best time of my life, but… Hearing you say that sentence is better than anything in the world.”
And I remembered something else, too, while we gazed into one another’s eyes from across the table: I remembered that I could love him.
I might love him already, Hunter Black.
We finished our dinner in silence, and I made my way over to the couch. Tomorrow, I would cook; I’d help clean up; I’d be more than a mush on his sofa, staring out at the falling snow. Tomorrow. Today, I was just this pile of girl, finally, after being a ragged, terrified bundle of raw nerves day after day; today I got to be a girl again, a girl who liked a boy, a girl who ate dinner and showered and talked and was listened to. Tomorrow, I could be something else.
He found me some movies with werewolves and we watched them, back to back to back, our bodies entangled so tightly that I didn’t notice, when I fell asleep, where I was or where he was.
I just knew I was safe.
Chapter Nine
Baby
I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult to say goodbye to him; maybe I should have. Sunday came and went exactly the same way. I woke in the big bed, alone, tucked in and rested, then we ate and went for a long, winding walk around the woods and the property, and then we ate again and cuddled and murmured jokes to each other and teased one another and threw popcorn at one another and… I didn’t really want to leave.
But it was time. He held out his hand to me, and I recognized the movement, the quietness in him; he knew where he was jumping, and it didn’t seem hard for him at all now. But I wouldn’t touch him, and eventually, he dropped his palm and let it rest against his thigh. “Baby?” I only realized I was worrying him when I looked up and saw the way he was gritting his teeth. He thought I was about to do something that would hurt him, something to erase the gentle weekend we had.
It was so fragile, that space we made.
“I’m not sure I want to wait two weeks to see you,” I said softly, and relief flashed in his eyes as he realized I wasn’t about to tell him something very different—something along the lines of never wanting to see him again. I wondered how long he would worry about that. As far as I was concerned, Hunter was absolved as soon as he asked to take me out of there. Completely. What came after was just… Bad luck.
“You don’t want to miss the game next weekend,” he said quietly, and we looked at one another for a long moment. The house was silent, the hush of the snow sucking all noise out into the darkened windows, and after a long day of laughter it made things seem so… Grim.
“I don’t really care.” It was the truth. I’d missed half of my cheer practices since the rape. Oh well. Kinda not as important as becoming a useless heap of magic that couldn’t stop sniping at everybody.
“Not now,” he told me, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not this week. Maybe not next month. But maybe… Maybe you owe it to the girl who cared for four years, Baby.”
“Don’t tell me what I owe myself.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” I waited for him to be mad, but he was disgustingly reasonable, as usual. He shrugged. “You don’t understand,” I said, biting my lip. I hated how whiny I sounded. “I can’t… I just don’t…”
“I know,” he said, and when he reached out for me I let him tow me into that embrace, the effect of it instantaneous as waves of comfort filled my body. “You don’t have to—you know damn well nobody on earth, including me, could make you. But I… I know what it’s like to look back and wonder.” He leaned away from me, his big hands gently cradling my face as he turned it up towards his own. “Don’t wonder, Baby, if you can help it. It’s just a game. And it’s just two weeks. You also know nobody on earth could keep me away from you.” Hunter’s eyes gazed into mine. “Except you.”
“It’s only two weeks, right?” I smiled, but it took him a second to smile back, and I felt a wash of shame at how much I enjoyed his hesitation; he didn’t like being away from me, either.
“Right,” he said.
Two weeks. Ugh. Gross.
He looked down at me one more time, then held me close… I felt his body tense… And then we were standing in the middle of my bedroom back at the Warfield plantation, as if I’d never even left. “That’s gotten so smooth it’s unreal,” I said, grinning up at him. “You’re a pro. Can you take me to the Caribbean in two weeks?”
He laughed his low laugh, then hesitated.
We hadn’t kissed yet. I waited, my feet flat, my bag suddenly heavy in my hands…
“I’ll text you tonight,” he said quietly, and then—he was gone. Just like that.
“Goddamnit,” I muttered, dropping the bag so I could go over and throw myself down on the bed with the right amount of dramatic flair. I wasn’t pissed at Hunter; I was pissed at myself.
I’d been someone else, before—I’d been a bitchy cheerleader, Regina George in a goth phase with some extra sparkles on top, floating through a life that was painted in s
tark black and white. I’d never, ever doubted myself before; confidence was my stock in trade.
But I was someone else now. Someone I didn’t entirely know, or understand.
I marched out of the room and turned towards the servant’s staircase, hoping I could grab a hot chocolate from the kitchen before I called it a night. It was harder for me to remember where everything was in this place, or even where all of the rooms were; for all the hours I spent here I was so young, the years in between so formative, that my memories felt faint and distant. But I found the right staircase—I hated calling it the servant’s staircase, that was so damn creepy—and made my way to the kitchen. It was dim, and I halted in the doorway, trying to guess where the pantry would be so I could get out of there quickly.
“Miss?” Anna’s voice was so soft I thought I imagined it at first. I jumped when she took a step out of the shadows, waving at me like she knew I hadn’t seen her. “Can I get you something?”
“Anna, I… Can I have a hot cocoa?”
“Of course, darling, of course,” she said, padding over immediately to the stove and the cupboards above it, making a clatter as the room gradually grew brighter. The lights must be on some kind of motion activated system; it was spooky. I took another step inside and she turned and gave me a warm smile. Anna could melt anybody’s heart, so I took a deep breath and sat down at the long table, taking the seat Jake usually did and relishing the passive act of rebellion. When we were kids he would be such a dick about always getting this seat. Ha.
Anna wordlessly brought me a cup of cocoa—better than Zelle’s by a hair, and that was saying something because Zelle is the best in the business—and a couple of cookies. She watched me hesitate and leaned on the sink, propping a plump hand on her hip. “You haven’t been eating very much lately, miss,” she said, and the last word immediately made me think of Hunter. I tried not to let it make me sad.
“Just stress,” I said. I knew Raven and Jake had several theories on who Anna and Sarah were; I didn’t want to imagine what gruesome magic might hold them here against their will, feeding descendants of the monsters that created our coven for generations. Raven was researching constantly now, the library always littered with texts and maps, and she and Jake were bringing more of the other kids who signed the Rose’s book around. I flattened my hands on the table, unable to take a sip after that thought.
