by SM Reine
His eyes sharpened. “Don’t lie to me. Why do you want the money, Summer? What do you plan to buy?”
She swallowed hard. She couldn’t lie when he was looking at her like that. “A bus ticket.”
His surprise quickly turned to anger. “You want to leave,” he said in a low growl, his hand closing over her hip. His fingers dug into her side.
“I want to explore. I’ve never been beyond the forest outside my cottage, or Hazel Cove, or Lake Ast. Your house is the furthest south I’ve ever seen. Gran said…well, she always told us that our parents were traveling. Exploring the world, doing good deeds, saving people. I just thought…”
“You hoped to travel so that you could find them.”
It sounded a lot stupider to say it aloud than when she had originally thought it. Summer blushed, but she lifted her chin high, stubborn and defiant. “Yeah. I want to travel around and find them. Is that so crazy?”
“There are no other cities,” Nash said.
“What are you talking about? I saw names on the computer. Denver, Chicago—”
“They’re not here,” he interrupted. “Gwyneth may want to keep you sheltered in the safety of your ignorance, but I am not so cruel. I’m not the only one imprisoned in this puny world. You are, too.”
Imprisoned? Summer gave a shaky laugh. “I don’t think—”
“How clearly can I say this? You’re the only werewolf in the world because the world you know isn’t real. This is a construct built by angels.” He waved his hand at the forest, the sky, the truck inching down the beach. “There is no world beyond Hazel Cove.”
Was this what going crazy felt like? If the world wasn’t real, then what about everything she had done in her life? Exploring the forests, learning about art and science and history, her education at the university.
“But if the world’s so small, then where does out-of-season produce come from?” Summer asked. “Or—or the designer imports the Tri Delts wear? Or—”
“You’re trying to force logical rules on a place that is magical,” Nash said, stepping close enough that she could shelter under his umbrella again. “There is a need for food to sustain the populace. Food appears. Fashion changes on Earth, and this place eventually follows.”
“So why doesn’t anyone talk about it?” she demanded. “I’ve been in college for two years and nobody has mentioned any such thing.”
“This place bewitches you,” Nash said. “This is a Haven—a place of peace. The very air has a soporific effect on mortals, particularly those born here.”
She pressed a hand to her forehead. It felt like her brain was going to explode out of her temples. “I have travel catalogs,” she whispered.
“And you’ve seen pictures of rainforests, deserts, oceans, frozen tundra.” His cold exterior had melted away to something resembling sympathy. “All constructs, Summer. It’s Leliel’s magic, Leliel’s rules. She built this place a very long time ago.”
And that was what Gran had been lying about for so long. Wasn’t it? Her parents weren’t just gone. They were in another world—a place where other shapeshifters, immortals, and angels were common.
It was beyond absurd. Totally ridiculous.
But there was only one way to find out if it was true.
“I’m leaving,” Summer said. “And you can’t stop me.”
“I wouldn’t even try,” Nash said.
Summer had been certain that she would find Abram at the cottage when she got back, but all she found waiting for her was the faint smell of balam and a very hungry cat. Only Sir Lumpy attacked when she stepped inside. There was no sight of the balam, so they must have only been snooping. Well, let them snoop—in her current mood, Summer was pretty sure she could take a dozen of them at once.
Sir Lumpy yowled at her and wrapped around her legs, almost tripping her on the way to his food bowl.
“You’re real,” she said, stroking him as he chowed down on pureed salmon.
She read the label on the can. Processed in Wildwood. But that didn’t mean anything—all of the food they ate was locally grown and processed.
Summer sat down at her computer and ran a few searches. Vacation websites claimed that they had cruises to far-flung places. There were blogs talking about world events, too—fashion, politics, scientific discoveries. That couldn’t all be a magical fabrication created by Leliel. It couldn’t be.
Sir Lumpy finished eating and curled around her neck, tickling her cheek with his tail. She stroked the paw that rested over her collarbone. “Either way, someone is lying to me,” she told him as he nuzzled her ear. His wet purrs were like a jackhammer.
Summer had been fantasizing about leaving ever since the day she started college, yet she had never tried to explore beyond the boundaries that Gran had set for her as a child.
The river to the east. The hills to the north. The town to the south. The gully to the west. That was Summer’s hunting ground, her territory, her home. She had only ever dreamed of what lay beyond.
Even though the woods were large enough for a normal person to get lost inside, claustrophobia crept up her spine and gripped her heart. Every article she had read about the outside world on the Internet suddenly seemed flimsy, like poorly-constructed fiction.
Summer was trapped. She had been trapped all along, and never realized it.
This place bewitches you, Nash had said.
That unsettled her in so many ways, not least of all because of the truth that rang out in his voice.
Had she been content to stay within her territory because she was really happy there…or was it because she had fallen under the spell of this “Haven”?
Carefully, she dislodged Sir Lumpy and set him on her bed. He glared at her.
“I need to know,” Summer said, rubbing the bald spots over his eyes. He gave a short, grudging purr. “I’ll come back for you.”
He jumped to the floor and disappeared under her bed.
Summer stripped naked and stood in her doorway, poised on the edge of a precipice. The familiar trees looked like the walls of a prison instead of open arms. It was a challenge.
She swallowed her fear.
“I need to know,” she said again, more firmly this time.
Summer stepped into her second skin, and she ran.
fourteen
Night fell quickly in the forest. The trees were dense enough in some places that she had to backtrack to find her way around them, and it became dark for hours before the sun disappeared completely.
At first, she tracked time by the passage of the archer constellation through the gaps in the trees, just as she always did. But eventually, the branches grew too thick for that, too, and all she could do was run.
She reached the ravine where she had found the bear with Abram and raced along the edge. It was a deep gash in the earth that only grew deeper as she moved away from the territory she recognized. There was no way across but through.
Summer jumped carefully down the rocks, and she kept alert for the scent of wildlife as she lapped at a trickle of water dribbling into the gorge. The animals around her cottage knew better than to mess with her, but this was unfamiliar territory. She knew nothing here.
Climbing out of the other side was much harder, and by the time she hit the hills, night turned into day.
She ran and ran.
The sun moved across the sky. Morning, noon, evening. Clouds gathered. Rain began to fall again. The hills were endless.
She found Wildwood—a bigger city than Hazel Cove, and totally foreign to her. She could barely make out its skyline through the rain, but there was one tower that stood above the others. She had seen pictures of Adamson Tower on his website. The tower was real. Wildwood was real.
Summer ran again with new energy.
When the second night arrived, Summer stopped in the mountains for a nap. It was brief and restless, no more than an hour, and tormented by nightmares. As soon as she woke up, she was running again, cutting through a valley
and splashing along a river.
The slopes were steep going down the other side of the mountains. There was more forest waiting for her when she reached the foothills. Unfamiliar trees. Summer had to be getting somewhere.
But when she stumbled out of the forest into civilization again, she was standing near The Cracked Teacup—the coffee shop in Hazel Cove.
Summer froze in the shadows of the alley, caught between forest and town.
No way.
People stood outside the shop to talk about their classes at MU. She even spotted Yolanda, the teacher’s assistant.
How was it possible? Had she gotten turned around?
She must have gone the wrong way.
Summer whirled and ran back into the trees before someone spotted her.
She didn’t take any shortcuts through the mountains this time. She climbed the steepest trails she could find, and when those vanished, she scrambled up the cliffs.
The rocks crumbled beneath her paws, slipping and sliding and holding her back. But she dug her claws in. She wouldn’t stop until she reached the top.
And then Summer hit the highest peak.
Her lungs heaved for breath as she studied the world around her. Wildwood was on one side, a distant line of sparkling buildings. Hazel Cove was on the other, nestled against the side of Lake Ast’s shining waters. Everything was bathed in warm, golden light from the setting sun. There was curve to the ground—almost as though her mountain range was nothing more than a ridge on a small sphere.
The exhaustion of running for two days caught up with her, and Summer collapsed.
“Do you have your answers?”
Nash stood nearby, arms folded and features composed. He wore a charcoal gray suit without a jacket. His hair fluttered in the wind.
Summer was tempted to remain in her wolf skin. She didn’t have to talk to him as long as she didn’t have lips. But her emotions were too big and too human for her to remain a beast, and her skin rippled as she changed.
When her muzzle vanished into her face and her hair grew back, there were tears on her cheeks. Summer couldn’t even find the energy to be humiliated by her nudity.
“Gran never told me,” she said.
“That’s because she wanted you to be happy.” Nash offered a bundle of clothes to her. It was a tank top the color of fresh spring grass, denim shorts, and even a pair of underwear. “Margaret sends her regards.”
Summer gave a weak smile and pulled the shirt over her head. She didn’t look at Nash as she stepped into the panties, but she could feel him watching her. His gaze was so hot that she thought it might burn permanent scars onto her skin. “What about the sun? The stars?” she asked.
“They are illusions meant to comfort the mortals that dwell here,” Nash said. “I can show you.”
He took a step toward Summer, but she held her hands up to stop him. “Don’t touch me. How can you expect me to be okay with this? You’re saying that everything I’ve always known is a lie! This is supposed to be my home.”
But the words fell flat. He was right. It wasn’t a home—it was a prison.
A tear streaked down her cheek. “I can’t escape this forest, can I? I will never escape this forest.”
Nash finally wrapped his arms around her, and she sank into his embrace, shutting her eyes to savor the warmth of his body. Even his comforting gestures stirred a reaction deep within her, as if his hands had strayed much lower than her back.
“You will escape,” he said.
“But I ran all day, Nash. It just loops back around.”
“There is still a place beyond this world. We only have to find the way there.” He tipped her head back with a knuckle under her chin. His face blurred in her teary vision. “Would you like to see more?”
Summer could only nod.
Nash removed his shirt. The fading sunlight lit the ridges and valleys of his muscles with a warm glow, and she had the mental image of that broad chest pressed against hers, her fingers digging into his arms. Even when it felt like her life was over, Nash made her blood burn.
He rolled his shoulders out and breathed a sigh. The wings didn’t seem to appear so much as blossom, like flower petals opening to the sun. The tips appeared over his shoulder blades and stretched wider and wider. Fully extended, his wings dwarfed them both, and the light was more brilliant than the sun.
She had seen dozens of hawks in her life and been awed by their grace. Shirtless and winged, Nash was far more impressive. His pectorals were covered in a fine brush of brown hair, almost like down.
“Are they…real?” Summer asked, wanting to touch the feathers, but too afraid to ask.
“They are indeed part of my physical form, if that’s what you’re asking.”
With a flex of the muscles in his chest, the light dimmed until she could see real feathers. Some were as big as her forearm, and the smallest were the size of her thumb. Some were white shot through with gray, but where they grew dense near his shoulders, they turned a darker shade of gold. She walked around him so that she could see where they attached to his back. They were definitely as much of a part of his body as one of his arms.
She reached out to place a hand between his shoulder blades. Summer wanted to bury her face in his back and breathe his musky, masculine scent. But she forced herself to circle around him again.
“Where do they go when they’re hiding?” Summer asked.
“They’re always there,” Nash said.
“But you can wear shirts.”
He smirked. “They hide well.” He pulled her against his chest, and she melted into him, locking her hands at the back of his neck.
“I think you have a sense of humor, Nash,” Summer said. “A very well-hidden one.”
He dipped his head and his lips were just centimeters away from hers. His breath smelled like s’mores and campfires, like chocolate rolling down her throat. “If you tell anyone, you’re fired. Now hold tight.”
Nash’s wings pumped, and he lifted them both into the sky.
A tiny shriek escaped her before she caught herself. She was a wolf, a beast of the earth, and it felt wrong to watch the ground falling away. Her every instinct cried out for her to get back to the safety of the forest.
Her arms tightened around him, fingers digging into his shoulders. The muscles tensed and released as his wings moved. “It’s okay,” he murmured into her ear. “I won’t drop you.”
Summer couldn’t look. She buried her face in his neck, expecting to fall at any moment.
But the fall never came.
She felt weightless, as though drifting in the shallows of Lake Ast. Water sprinkled against her skin in gusts, cool and pleasant. And Nash’s arms remained secure around her body. After a few minutes of hiding her face without anything happening, Summer peeked.
Hazel Cove was far below them, and the clouds just above. Nash held her vertically, their legs tangled together, and it seemed to take no effort to remain aloft. His knee slipped between her thighs. The way his slacks rubbed against her bare skin almost made her forget that they were flying.
“More magic?” she asked, forehead pressed against his cheek.
“A unique kind of physics,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”
He folded his wings behind him, and they drifted toward the lake, slowly at first. Their speed increased as the waters grew in her vision. All of the breath rushed out of her lungs as they plummeted.
At the last moment, Nash snapped his wings wide, catching the air and stopping their descent. They skimmed just a few feet above the surface of the lake, and Summer’s gasp turned to a giggle as a cresting wave splashed her bare legs.
They soared over the lake, looped around the beach, and climbed again.
Summer did trust that he wouldn’t drop her. There was no fear in her. No fear of being seen, no fear of injury, no fear of death. Only pure joy. It bubbled out of her chest in a laugh.
She closed her eyes and faced the wind as they flew.
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It was like being free.
“It gets better,” Nash said.
They rushed toward the clouds.
She knew what would come once they reached too high of an elevation: the atmosphere would thin, the air would grow cold, and the curve of the earth would become more pronounced beneath them. She had learned these things in her science classes, and knew it had to be true.
Yet as they rose, the air grew thicker, warmer, denser, like slipping into a bath. Moist wind splashed over her cheeks as they entered the haze of clouds.
They erupted into clear night on the other side.
The stars were clustered above them like shimmering gems, and as Nash lifted them higher, she was shocked to see that the stars were almost within reach. They glowed with internal light as they blanketed the sky. Their diamond shimmer was cyan, navy, pink—a vibrating rainbow.
Part of her wanted to tell Nash to stop. Take her back down and let her keep believing that the world was real. But she couldn’t find the strength to speak.
Another pump of his wings, and they were among the stars.
Each one was smaller than her fist, almost like the colorful river rocks she had found in the brook near her cottage. The nearest of them seemed to sing in a low hum.
Nash’s arms relaxed around her, and she turned in his grip so that her back was to his chest. His hips pressed against her. Normally, her brain would have prioritized that sensation above everything else, but she had found one thing even more distracting than his body. “This isn’t possible,” she whispered.
“No?” he asked as they drifted closer.
Summer tapped a finger against a star. It chimed softly, and waves of light spilled through the air like ripples on a pond. It stroked over her hand, her arm, and dissipated in smoky lines.
She tapped another, and another. The second made a sharp sound that almost hurt to hear. The third was deep and melancholy. And then they floated toward a cluster, and she realized that it was the archer that she always used to track the time as a wolf.
