by Lynn Graeme
Chapter Eight
“They want me to return.”
Isobel was sitting on Liam’s bed. He’d paused from rifling through his dresser, his back to her.
“To visit?” she asked carefully.
He turned around, a fresh shirt clenched in his fist. “They want me back. For good.”
“You’re not in line for alpha.” If he were, then that would be a logical reason to want a pack member back.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m a Whelan, from the Whelan clan. Nobody ever leaves the pack. It’s not … it’s not something they understand.”
“How long has it been?”
“Three years. I’d hoped that after a while, they’d get the message and just let it go. Give up looking.”
Isobel shook her head. “You know that’s not how family works. When one of yours goes missing, you never stop looking. You never stop wondering.”
Liam canted his head, his turn to study her. “Like Naley’s mother?”
She was momentarily startled, then shrugged. “I suppose. Kaya takes off on a regular basis. She used to not tell us a word about where she was going. She needed—still needs—her space. She knows the way my father and I think, so she knows what steps to take and which to avoid to evade our notice. Back then it would sometimes take us a few days to get a hit on her location.”
She shook her head, remembering those early days. The confusion. The frustration. The fights. A wayward curl of hair fell down to brush her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear impatiently.
“She stopped pulling that mysterious shit after she had Naley. Granted, she still takes off abruptly, whether it’s for ‘work’ or a last-minute get-together with friends, but at least I get a head’s up before it happens because she’ll drop Naley off with me before she disappears. Except for this most recent stunt, though.” Isobel glowered.
Liam pursed his lips. She thought about softening it with her own, then berated herself for the distraction.
“It doesn’t matter how often you leave, Liam. The ones who care for you, they may give you space, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stop looking.”
He shook his head. “That may be true for some families, but we’re not talking about family here. We’re talking about … pack.”
“I’ve been around wolf packs before, Liam.”
“This is the Whelan clan. We’re very—they’re very insular.”
“From what I hear, they run their town. They are the town.”
He nodded. “That’s the sum total of it. You’re born of pack, you die of pack. Everybody else can burn.”
She snorted. “Sounds like a few families I know.”
“It’s not just something you say. It’s … it’s something you live. You have to… . The code. You do as ordered. You follow the elders, follow your peers. Don’t show weaknesses.”
Isobel could tell Liam was growing upset. He’d been getting better with words since the first time she’d met him out in the woods, but he was stumbling now. He was struggling. His chest rose and fell unsteadily as he shoved a frustrated hand through sun-streaked hair.
“It sounds … cultish.”
He nodded curtly. “It’s not religion-based. It’s just… . It’s steeped in pack hierarchy, in history and tradition. That’s a stupid way to put it. The only way to put it. Things are … things are done a certain way. They’ll always be done a certain way. Change it at your own cost.”
“What did it cost you, Liam?”
He clenched his jaw.
“Liam?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Words came hard for her wolf, Isobel knew.
Her wolf.
She pushed the frisson of unease away.
“What made you leave, Liam?”
“You’ve never pressed me on this before.”
“I’m asking you now. I’m asking you, and I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”
“Because we fucked?” he bit out.
Isobel was only able to maintain her composure by dint of sheer training. And because she knew how hard this was for him.
He looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll make it up to me tonight.”
He glanced at her sharply. A blaze of molten heat flared in his eyes.
“What made you leave, Liam?”
“You’re relentless,” he murmured, but without acrimony. He walked over and settled down next to her on the bed. It reminded Isobel of the night he’d sat beside her on her front steps, when she’d been the one in need of company and had been struggling with her own numbness.
He rested his elbows on his knees, thumbing through the linen of the shirt in his hands.
“My uncle’s family raised me,” he said softly. “Angus Whelan. He’s the alpha. His sons—my cousins—are the ones you met today. Most of the clan are related, and those who aren’t related by blood get absorbed into the pack by mate or intimidation.”
“And your parents… ?”
“My mother died at childbirth. My father died of drink. I was eight when my uncle took me into his household, told me the pack would take care of me now.” He was quiet for a moment. “They never abused me. Let me just say that now. My uncle nurtured my woodworking hobby. The minute I graduated high school, he gave me enough capital to start my own business.”
Isobel raised an eyebrow. “That’s pretty young. You had no interest in college?”
He studied her from the corner of his eye. “College would mean moving out of town. Leaving the pack. Nobody leaves the pack.”
Isobel stared. Giving him the capital, she thought with a sneaking suspicion, was a generous move, but it was also one way to guarantee he wouldn’t stray. Liam would’ve felt indebted to his uncle.
“Business flourished. Not just because fellow pack members were customers. They also took care of supply and demand to outside parties. Other towns. Any merchants or retailers in the region interested in my products, they’d have to go through pack in order to get approved. Even then, the designated members of the pack would handle it. My role wasn’t in distribution.”
Isobel was beginning to see how this clan operated, and she didn’t like it. “You eventually got out, though.”
He nodded. “By the time I was twenty-two, and they were telling me which mate they’d chosen for me, I realized… . I didn’t… . I couldn’t take to that kind of life. I could see my future before me. My skin crawled. I couldn’t … couldn’t… .”
He struggled for a moment. His nostrils flared as he dragged in labored breaths. Grooves deepened on the sides of his mouth.
Isobel took his hand and clasped it in hers, just like he’d done with her on a night not so very long ago. The shirt fell to the floor. A lungful of air escaped him, not a gentle release but a hurtling explosion that she knew had to hurt.
“I enlisted. Just to get out of there. The pack was furious. Confused. My uncle threatened to lock me in the basement until I came to my senses. He didn’t,” he added when Isobel growled. “There was only so much outside world that the pack could shut out. I joined the war, left the fold, and I paid the price for it.”
He stopped speaking then. He turned his face away, pressed it into his shoulder. Isobel slipped her arm around Liam’s waist and felt his body shake.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“Don’t,” he snarled.
“You didn’t ask for any of it.”
“I never stopped it either,” he retorted. “All my life I did as I was told. Obeyed pack law. The one time I didn’t, the one time I strayed, I led my team to enemy detachments and watched in horror as they tore the humans apart. I didn’t… . I was a fool… . I didn’t think… .”
Isobel didn’t say anything. What could she say? There were no words of solace that could possibly lessen the horrors of war.
The poison had to be lanced out, and all she could do was hold him while he did it.
“And I kept doing it, over and
over again, because there was nothing else to do but keep going. People died because of me. People died. On both sides. And then… .” He swallowed. “My unit was captured, and I watched my team get torn apart. I watched them be tortured… . We had things implanted in us, just to see if we’d heal or … or expel them from our system. We were experimented on, so that they could find out how our abilities worked… .”
Isobel squeezed his hand, lacing his fingers through hers. His nails bit into her skin. She didn’t think he noticed.
“Sometimes, for fun, our captors threw two of us into the same cell. To fight. The victor got to escape the operating table, live another day. We had to … had to turn on each other, rip each other to the bone, just to survive. I had to fight members of my own unit, the very soldiers I’d fought alongside with… .”
The claw marks on his body, Isobel realized. He had scars not only from human-wielded surgical tools, but from animalistic fights with shifters of his own kind. He’d been pitted against his fellow team members, and had lived with the knowledge since.
“The only reason I still have my eyes and limbs is because three others went on the table first. One of those soldiers was just eighteen. A boy.” He gritted his teeth, furrows of distant memories making themselves known on his face. “By the time they got to me, our captors had satisfied their curiosity that … that not everything heals.”
Isobel rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Liam.”
“They gave me a medal, after I was rescued.” The words were harsh, fired like gunshots, as if he needed to repel all sympathy. “You know why? Because I’d fought the guards who tried to take another kid to be their fourth. So they took me in her stead. They gave me a medal because they thought my sacrifice courageous.” His laugh was a bitter rasp in the air. “There was nothing courageous about it. I was a wild, angry animal, and I needed to take it out on someone. I needed to take it out on someone who wasn’t a fellow shifter I was forced to fight. There was nothing heroic about it. Nothing heroic about being out of your head with grief and fury and madness that you’ll do anything to make it stop.”
Liam seemed to realize how hard he was gripping Isobel’s hand, because he abruptly relinquished his hold on her. He stared at the crescent-shaped marks on her skin, his obvious distress etched in his expression.
She lifted her palm to cup his stubbled cheek, urging his attention away from the marks. “You did your best to survive, Liam. The only way. And you made it out. That’s what counts.”
“Is it?” He stared at her, a wretched darkness in his eyes that she couldn’t bear. She, who had seen so much blood and pain and evil, couldn’t bear that he’d gone through the same. “Who has the right to say what counts? Does that mean the others, they don’t count? The soldiers in my unit who died? Or the enemy who died from our own hands?”
His fingers curved inward. His gaze lowered to the dark, rippled scars around his wrists.
“I’ve seen how our side ripped the humans to shreds, Isobel. I can scream and rail all I want at the lack of mercy in our captors, but that doesn’t … that doesn’t negate what we did either. We were just as cruel. I dream just as much—more, even—of the blood we exacted than the blood we shed.”
Isobel’s heart broke for him. She’d never felt so helpless in her life. She could physically take down an opponent or five without a hitch in her breath, but what use was that when she couldn’t take away this man’s pain?
She felt so lost, so adrift at sea. Why was there no course, no training, nothing to teach her to … to be of use here? To help him?
For long, endless minutes, Liam’s gaze roamed her face, memorizing her every feature. Isobel couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His voice, when he finally spoke, raked as rough as sandpaper over exposed skin.
“I went home after sixteen months of physical therapy. Went back to the clan with my tail between my legs. I was … graciously … accepted back into the pack.”
Isobel could see it now. His packmates would’ve surely drummed it into him that he wouldn’t have suffered if only he’d stayed. She had no doubt they’d be that merciless. Not to mention their excessive interference would’ve immediately ramped up tenfold. Her thumb brushed back and forth over his cheekbone.
“They tried to go … easy … on me. They tried but… . I was a different man after the war. It’s not something they can … understand.”
“Sounds like they couldn’t understand even before.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They tried to fix me. In their own way. I was supposed to … get better. Get over it. Be Liam again.” He sucked in his breath. “I tried to hack it for a few years. They tried to help, but… . Their idea of help was to push me where they thought I should go. They wanted me to pick up my tools again. To accept the mate they’d arranged for me. Some girl who was far too young and far too stoic and determined to do what’s right for the pack.” His hands fisted. “The itching feeling came back. The voices… . I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t breathe… .”
He closed his eyes. “I left. Like a coward, I left.”
“Liam—”
“I shoved what I could into a bag one night and left a note behind. Just kept moving. For two years, that was all I did. Just kept moving. Did odd jobs wherever I could, until that itching feeling came back, and then I’d hit the road again.”
He opened his eyes, and this time when he looked at her, they were clear and sharp. His gaze didn’t waver.
“And then I came here,” he said, the words a low rumble. “I came here and I saw you, and I could breathe again.”
Isobel stared at him, her heart beating at an all-too-rapid pace.
He rested his forehead on hers, closing his eyes. “I could breathe again, Isobel.”
A large hand slid over the back of her neck to cup her nape. She made no move to deny him when he tilted her head back.
The kiss, when it came, was tender and tentative, full of questions neither of them dared ask aloud. It lacked the angry, challenging rush of the previous night. Instead, soft, questing lips melded, laced with yearning and unspoken promises.
She couldn’t stop herself from touching him. His face, his silky hair, his hot skin. She moaned when he pulled her neckline down to suck at the upper flesh of her breast.
Something swelled inside her, shifted like tectonic plates in a space deep inside that she’d always thought impenetrably hollow. It was a bright, wretched realization as Isobel forced herself to fight the truth.
No, not fight it. Face it. There was no battling this one. He had crawled underneath all her defenses and taken root in the last place she’d wanted him. Her heart.
Struggling to regain control, she pushed his head back from the kisses he was planting along her collarbone. She buried her face in the crook of his neck.
“Liam. Wait. Not now… . Naley’s waiting for us.”
She could hear his heavy breathing. His chest rose and fell as he snaked an arm around her waist. He kissed the inner shell of her ear.
“I want you. So much.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Tonight. We can… . Tonight.” A not-quite-steady laugh escaped her. “My bed’s much bigger than yours.”
He sucked on her earlobe, making her squirm against him. “Naley… ?”
“Bedrooms are soundproofed. I constructed it that way so she wouldn’t be disturbed whenever I got in or left at odd hours of the night.”
A shuddering breath as his hold tightened around her. “Tonight,” he echoed, his dark tone making it a promise.
Isobel listened as Liam’s heart rate finally began to calm. She was only too grateful that he couldn’t see inside her head. Couldn’t see the desperate panic already quivering inside her as she recalled the terrible realization that had dawned on her only a few moments ago.
She’d known it would come down to this. She’d known if she opened that door, if she let him in, she would get involved.
She hadn’t wanted to get involved.
There was a reason she didn’t do relationships. Relationships rarely ever worked out for a Council agent, often leading to sometimes acrimonious, but always inevitable, partings. Getting involved meant an inevitable separation in future, when the relationship had run its course. When the trials and tribulations of trying to maintain a relationship in the face of a high-pressure job would finally cause one or the other to break and leave.
She’d known from the start that Liam would matter too much if she let him. He would take too much from her, things she wasn’t prepared to give. Now she had a feeling it was too late, that no matter what she did, she couldn’t pretend that all she wanted from him was purely physical.
She had fallen in love with the damn wolf, and it was all his fault.
It was only a matter of time before this thing they had between them, hot and sweet and intensely beautiful, came to an end. And she had only herself to blame for letting it begin in the first place.
*
“I don’t want you to go,” said Naley.
Isobel saw Liam halt mid-chew. He swiftly swallowed his pizza before replying, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Those men said they want you to come home. Their home.”
Isobel reached out and stroked her niece’s back, trying to soothe away the tension bunched along her spine. They were curled up next to each other on the sofa, while Liam had appropriated the armchair. He’d cast an odd look at the rocking chair situated across from them when he’d first stepped into the living room, but other than that he hadn’t commented on it.
Naley quivered under her touch, but didn’t lift her challenging stare away from Liam. Despite—or, rather, because of—her determinedly cheerful demeanor throughout dinner, it was evident the girl had been worried ever since their encounter with the two wolf-shifters earlier in the day. She’d chattered on, a verbal runaway train as the three of them layered toppings in the kitchen and ate in the living room. She’d only trailed off into silence five minutes ago before adamantly making her pronouncement.
Liam met Naley’s gaze head-on. Isobel marveled, still remembering a time not too long ago when he could barely maintain eye contact.
