by Carol Davis
In the other room, Jeremiah growled.
Abby tightened her grip on Luca’s hand. As she did, she began to feel warmth coming from somewhere else, another kind of contact, one that filled her entire body with both security and need.
Aaron, reaching out to her from wherever he was being held.
Using her to grasp his brother’s hand.
A few seconds ticked by, broken only by the rasp of Luca’s breathing.
“You’re the only one who can tell us what happened,” Abby said quietly but firmly to the still, silent form on the bed. “You’re the only one who can make this right. Do it, Luca. Help your brother.”
Jeremiah came to loom in the doorway. “Stop this,” he said. “Leave the boy in peace.”
“So he can die?” Abby said. “You’ll just stand there and let your son die? That makes you just about as useless as my father. Someday I’ll tell you how angry he makes me. How he almost wrecked me—how I just put up with everything people did to me until I found your son.”
Without giving him a chance to respond, she turned back to Luca and wove her fingers with his. “Luca,” she commanded. “Your mother’s here. Your brother’s here. You can feel them here, can’t you? Come back to them. Don’t give up because somebody thinks you ought to.”
She looked over at Rachel, who seemed a little flustered. “We’ve tried to call him back,” Rachel whispered. “It didn’t work.”
“I wasn’t helping you then,” Abby said. “I’ll help you now.”
“You’re a human.”
“I’m—” Abby shook her head. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m more than that. Aaron sent me here. He wants me to stop this.”
For a long stretch of time, Rachel seemed unconvinced.
Then she didn’t.
“Leave us, Jeremiah,” she said to her husband. “If you can’t help us call him back, at least don’t interfere with us.”
Like all the men on this island, Jeremiah seemed to entirely fill the doorway. Not just because he was tall and broad-shouldered; it was something more, a sense of power Abby had seen in only a few people back on the mainland. A sense of invincibility. Not ego; true strength.
For a moment she thought he might order her to leave his house, that he might even order her to be locked up somewhere.
Then he barked, “LUCA.”
Rachel picked up the call. “Luca. Come back to us. It’s not your time. Come back to us.”
The three of them continued the call together, speaking Luca’s name over and over again, pleading to his love and loyalty and his will to live, continuing on even after their voices had grown raw and raspy.
For what seemed like hours, they called.
Then, finally, with an enormous shudder and a groan of deep, cutting pain, Luca opened his eyes.
Thirteen
“Come out,” Daniel said.
His expression gave away none of what he was thinking, or what he intended to do, and for a moment Aaron thought this was the end of it, that he was going to be force-marched down to the boats for the beginning of his long trip to Colorado.
He couldn’t tell how long he’d been sitting inside that windowless room with nothing but four plain wooden walls to look at; it might have been a few hours, or an entire day.
Then he felt a pull toward home.
There were other members of the pack behind the watcher: Mason and a couple of the younger wolves. An escort party, no doubt. Aaron wondered if they’d give him a few minutes to talk to his parents before they swept him away.
Then Mason said in a low rumble, “Your brother wants to talk to you.”
Brother…?
Aaron felt an urge to run past him, to push them all out of his way and bolt out of this place, but Daniel was definitely still a force to be reckoned with. He didn’t seem inclined to allow Aaron to run anywhere.
“He’s awake?” Aaron asked.
“He is,” Mason said.
“When did this happen? Has the healer seen him? Has he recovered from his wounds?”
Rather than answer him, Daniel gripped Aaron’s upper arm in his hand and half-dragged him out into the main part of the gathering house.
Caleb was there, accompanied by several more of the younger wolves, all of whom seemed ready to enjoy a little exercise in the form of wrestling Aaron to the ground. A couple of them were Aaron’s age, the rest somewhat younger. It wouldn’t take more than one or two of them to cripple him if that was what the elders ordered them to do.
Because of Daniel’s desire to maintain control, the walk to Aaron’s family’s home was a long one, and they were watched by what seemed like everyone in the community along the way. The mood of the crowd was hard to pin down; some of them seemed angry, some puzzled, and some of them seemed glad to have something interesting to watch. It made Aaron feel naked and helpless.
He felt no better when they reached the house and he was greeted by his scowling father.
“Is Luca–” Aaron began, but his father’s scowl only deepened.
Then he was thrust inside the house, the door was closed, and he was left in the company of his sire.
Was he supposed to confess? he wondered. Had Luca blamed him, after all? Maybe Luca hadn’t actually seen who was attacking him, and had decided it was Aaron because they had quarreled.
“It isn’t true,” he blurted.
His father stepped out of the way, revealing the open doorway of the bedroom Aaron and Luca normally shared. Luca was still lying there in bed, but he was propped up on some pillows, pale but conscious. Their mother was sitting on one side of the bed—and Abby was standing on the other side. Seeing her sent a rush of pleasure through Aaron; it seemed to mean that she’d followed through with his request, that she’d come here to help him, and it had worked.
Or had it?
His feet felt heavy as he walked into the bedroom, and by the time he reached the bed he felt weak enough to need to sit down alongside his brother’s legs. The bed creaked loudly when he did so, and it seemed like a bad sign that Luca didn’t move his legs over to give Aaron a little more room, the way he would have under normal circumstances. Aaron searched Luca’s face anxiously, looking for answers, clues that his brother was going to be all right, and felt his stomach clench at how unlike himself Luca still looked.
“Brother,” Luca said quietly.
Aaron nodded and reached for his brother’s hand. Luca accepted the touch, but there was almost no strength in his grip.
“Tell him what you told us,” Jeremiah said from the doorway.
Luca closed his eyes and drew in a long breath. He seemed like he might fall back asleep. When he opened his eyes again, he said in a sorrowful tone, “I know it wasn’t you who attacked me.”
“Who, then?” Aaron asked.
“It was Micah.”
That hit Aaron like a thunderbolt. Micah?? Granny Sara’s mostly useless grandson, the wolf who had spent his entire life wandering around the settlement, always underfoot, stealing more than his share of treats, upsetting the children with that constant, odd expression of his?
“Are you sure?” Aaron said.
Luca looked over at his mother, then at Abby. Finally, at his father. “I’m sure. He seemed like he’d gone insane.”
Still thunderstruck, Aaron leaned over and sniffed up and down his brother’s torso. Yes, there was a hint of Micah’s scent there, but it was mixed with the scents of a dozen other wolves, male and female—and Abby’s.
“Micah helped carry him here,” Jeremiah said. “We thought nothing of his scent being on Luca’s skin.”
“Has anyone confronted him?”
Aaron turned to demand an answer from his father. Jeremiah shook his head, then lifted a hand to grip his jaw in his palm, as if he wanted to smother something that was threatening to come out of his mouth.
Aaron could well imagine what he was thinking: how would Granny Sara react to this? She’d sheltered and protected Micah for most of his life, had
taken him into her home after his parents were killed. Would she believe he had harmed someone, let alone attacked them as viciously as this?
That explained the continuing anger of Caleb and Mason and the others. They didn’t believe it either.
“But why?” Aaron asked. “Why would he do this?”
But he already knew the answer.
“That’s ridiculous,” Katrin said.
She moved to walk around Aaron, to leave him behind, but he sidestepped quickly and blocked her path.
“You’d rather believe that I attacked Luca?” he demanded. “My own brother? You’ve known us all our lives, Kat. Does that make any sense to you?”
It wasn’t ridiculous, not at all. Some distance away, not far from Granny Sara’s house, Micah was even now watching them. Once Aaron had started thinking about it, he’d realized how often it had been that he’d caught Micah following Katrin around, watching her, trying to offer her small gifts and treats. She accepted the offerings sometimes; other times, she declined. As far back as Aaron could remember, she’d never made any real time for Micah, had never extended any real friendship to him—but it was possible that Micah had interpreted her accepting some of his gifts as a type of friendship. And something more.
Katrin blinked at him and shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that. But Micah–”
She was trying not to look at Micah, but she knew he was there. Knew he was watching.
“Luca shunned you, Kat,” Aaron said. “If Micah feels that the two of you were meant to be together, if he’s decided that you’re his mate—then he sees Luca as competition. Luca, who hasn’t treated you well for years.”
She wouldn’t say anything more, so Aaron left her and strode down the path toward Granny Sara’s useless grandson.
He remembered, now, noticing Micah’s scent among all the others in the glen and thinking how unlikely that seemed. Like the other scents, it had been full of rich emotion, full of what Aaron had assumed was lust.
It wasn’t lust. It was hatred.
He thought Micah might try to run, but he didn’t. He simply stood where he was, watching Aaron approach, his expression dull and unreadable—but there was something burning in his eyes.
“It was you,” Aaron said when he reached the other wolf.
Micah blinked lazily at him.
“It was you,” Aaron repeated. “You attacked my brother and meant for him to die. You’ve committed a grave offense against my family, and the entire pack. My brother should challenge you, but he won’t be strong enough for weeks.”
Micah seemed unperturbed, but that quiet fire was still burning in his eyes.
“I speak in his place,” Aaron said. “I challenge you, Micah.”
“Do you?” Micah murmured.
“I do. I’ll announce it to the pack. Tomorrow at sunrise, I will fight you until one of us is dead.”
Fourteen
“No!” Abby blurted.
A chill flooded through her, and she could think of nothing except how Luca had looked that first night, as still as a corpse, covered with stab wounds that would certainly have been fatal to a human. For two days, he’d fought just to draw breath, and it seemed like a miracle to her that he had survived.
Now Aaron wanted to fight the man who’d stabbed Luca with a knife dipped in poison?
“You can’t,” she pleaded. “It’s crazy, Aaron. Let the elders deal with this. Let them lock him up or something.”
“That’s not our way.”
“Then your way is crazy!”
He seemed not to want her to come close to him, maybe because he thought she’d distract him, that if he touched her, the bond-thing would take over and he’d obey everything she told him to do. Maybe that was true; maybe she could lure him away, but each time she tried to come close, he moved quickly to avoid her, or gently pushed her away.
Finally, she turned to Aaron’s mother, who looked nowhere near as distraught as Abby had hoped she would be.
“It’s our way,” Rachel said softly. “By attacking Luca, Micah has attacked our family.”
“And your way of dealing with that is to put your other son in harm’s way? What if Micah’s still got that poisoned knife? What if he stabs Aaron right in the heart and kills him? What then?”
“He won’t be allowed a weapon,” Rachel said.
“Lock him up,” Abby insisted.
Rachel shook her head, and Abby got no further when she looked to Luca, who was cradled deep in his nest of pillows. His face was still pale, the wounds on his chest and arms livid and red. A while ago he’d tried sitting up, but that seemed to tire him. It was only during the last half hour or so that talking hadn’t worn him out.
“Isn’t there any other way?” Abby said to the injured wolf. “What do you want? You’re the one he hurt.”
Luca closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he said, “No. I don’t want Aaron to fight him.”
“There. See?” Abby said to Aaron.
“But he must,” Luca said.
Abby let out a cry of frustration. “Why can’t they send Micah away, then? They were going to send you away.” She jabbed a finger at Aaron. “My God, I don’t understand you people. You’re going to take the chance of another brother getting killed. What kind of sense does that make?”
Luca made a soft sound deep in his throat. He pressed a hand to his chest and squirmed a little, then grunted again. When he’d recovered, he said, “I remember seeing a good many fights on the mainland—out on the street, and in the drinking places. The bars,” he corrected himself. “Most of them over females. For that matter, I remember seeing a good many females fighting over a male. None of it seemed to make any more ‘sense’ than this.”
“And it’s all stupid,” Abby snapped.
“Maybe so. But the participants didn’t seem to think so. They were very committed to what they were doing.”
“Then is it okay with you that Micah attacked you? Huh? Is it?”
“No,” Luca said. “But—”
“But what?”
“I treated Katrin unkindly. I should not have. She’s not my mate, but still, I should not have shunned her.”
“So, it was okay for him to stab you.”
Shaking her head, Rachel took Abby by the arm and led her away, steering Abby into the bedroom she shared with her husband. She didn’t bother to close the door; instead, she stood with her back to the doorway, forming a blockade of a different kind, one that seemed no less solid than a slab of wood.
“It’s our way,” Rachel said. “The way of the wolf. We live in peace and community most of the time, but the blood can run hot and fierce. The young ones sometimes couple in a way that would probably alarm you. There’s blood involved. Biting, tearing.” She drew in a breath. “Then, more often than not, the one who caused the wounds tends to the injured one in a loving way.”
“Aaron could be killed, Rachel. He could die.”
“In defense of his brother. In defense of our family. It’s the only way to show Micah that this offense won’t be tolerated.”
“It’ll make things a lot worse,” Abby muttered.
“Aaron will fight with honor on his side,” Rachel said. “That will see him through. That, and the strength of the bond. He’ll survive, because he needs to demonstrate to you that he always will. That he brings to your union a strong will, a strong heart, and the ability to become an alpha.”
That struck Abby as being nothing more than more craziness. Thoughts spilled through her head: musclebound professional wrestlers slamming each other to the canvas on TV, football players doing much the same thing, men in expensive suits making decisions that would benefit them and ruin others, dogs fighting in the street.
Then she thought of her father, making judgments that overruled those of his wife, making her look foolish in front of her daughter.
She thought of Lane, telling her that pants made her look “all ass”—and not in a good way, an appealing
way.
She slipped past Rachel, out of the bedroom, intending to appeal to Aaron one more time, to tell him that she’d think no less of him, and in fact would think more of him, if he didn’t do this.
But he had already left the house.
Fifteen
“You don’t want this to happen, do you? Don’t you want to stop this?”
Granny Sara was wrapped in a thick knitted shawl, had it pulled up around her neck and head, almost as if she was trying to hide inside it. Her head was bowed and she looked very solemn, and Abby had no idea why she was here, standing with the crowd around the clearing—unless it was to try to talk Micah and Aaron out of this awful fight. But Sara had gone nowhere near her grandson, something that was completely at odds with the way she’d fussed over him before Luca had woken up.
Maybe, Abby thought, this was Sara’s way of rejecting Micah for what he’d done. She was going to bear witness to his defeat.
For a minute Sara didn’t look at Abby at all. Then she shifted her shoulders underneath the heavy shawl and gripped it tighter. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said in a small voice. “I wish Micah had come to me and told me how upset he’d gotten. I knew he cared for Katrin, but I had no idea it had gone further than that. But then I’m–” Sara smiled wryly, sadly. “I’m just a human.”
“So, no one will listen to you?”
“Not about something like this. It’s their way.”
Their way.
Our way.
Everyone here kept saying that. Over and over, like it had been etched into their brains when they were children.
But how many times had Abby heard the same thing back home, about a whole group of people, or an individual? Oh, don’t mind what he said. That’s just how he is. Even her mother had said things like that about her father.
Maybe it was something you said when you knew you couldn’t win. Couldn’t convince the other person that what they were doing was insane.
Aaron had said almost nothing to her yesterday, or this morning. In fact, she’d seen very little of him; he’d spent most of the time with his family, particularly his brother. He was psyching himself up for the fight, she supposed, the way a ballplayer would prepare for a big game—except that this game involved the strong possibility of his being killed—of having his throat torn out by the teeth of another wolf.
