by Casey Lane
“We should take this downstairs where there’s a little more…air,” she mumbled.
“But I like it here,” he said, his voice a barely human rumble that told Isa his control was slipping. His lips were just over hers; it would be so easy for her to lean forward, to brush her mouth against his. Just to see. Just to taste. Just to know what it felt like.
So she did, closing the slight distance between them, her lips catching his in what was only supposed to be the barest hint of a kiss…just to see.
She should have known better. The moment their lips met, something caught fire inside her, her hands dragging him closer, her lips slanting over his in a kiss that had her stomach swooping, giving her wolf what it was craving. He tasted like mint ice cream, and he looked like heaven and, fuck, he smelled like home. He backed her up against the counter, lifting her off her feet, and setting her down. This was better; he was closer, the heat of his body pressing against her jean clad thighs. She wrapped her legs around him without thought, burying her hands in his hair, tugging hard as her lips trailed over his stubbled jaw. He growled low in his chest, tilting his head, exposing his throat.
Isa’s wolf went crazy, her features shifting as she stared at the corded tendons of his neck, watching his pulse throb. She wanted to bite him, to claim him, to feel his blood on her tongue. The need to declare that he belonged to her was pulling her wolf to the surface. It took everything she had not to give in and bury her teeth in his flesh.
She shoved him away, chest heaving, her heartbeat roaring in her ears. “Go. Downstairs. I need-I need to change my clothes and get cleaned up.”
For a moment, he looked as if he might argue, but then he gave a terse nod, backing up so she could open the door for him. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
She sat, eyes closed, gripping the counter, trying to pull herself together. Only when she was sure her knees would hold, did she escape to her bedroom to stand under her shower’s cold water.
Twenty minutes later, she emerged from her bedroom in faded jeans and a slouchy off the shoulder black sweatshirt. She wasn’t trying to impress him, she reasoned. This...whatever it was...could never happen. She didn’t even bother to blow dry her hair, just shoved her feet in some soft black socks and padded back down the back stairs.
When she entered the kitchen, Wren was setting a bowl of pasta on the center island next to a glass of red wine. She frowned at him, looking around the otherwise empty kitchen, only then registering just how quiet the house was. He gestured for her to sit. “What about the kids?” she asked.
“I fed them an hour ago. They were about to go to war over a bag of Frito’s, so I offered pasta to maintain peace within the kingdom. Then I managed to convince Rhys to help me with the bathroom.”
She sat in the chair he offered, eyeing him suspiciously. “And where are the kids now? Did you drug them? Stash them in a closet? Why are they so quiet?”
He frowned with his brows. “Sleeping.”
“How?” she asked, bewildered.
“They were tired. I made them go play outside before dinner.”
Isa stabbed at her pasta, stuffing it her mouth, noting with annoyance that it was delicious, even if he’d been a bit heavy handed with the salt. “And they did? They stepped away from the video games and television and went and played outside?” She took a sip of her wine and then another.
“Okay, I’m not going to lie, Tristin put up a fight, but yes, I told them not to come back for at least an hour and that they better be sweaty enough to warrant a shower or they weren’t getting dessert.” She glowered at him over her glass, until he laughed. “What? Kids are like horses, if they don’t get enough exercise, they get skittish and ornery. You run all that excess energy out of them, and they’ll practically fall asleep standing up.”
Still, she said nothing, both impressed and irritated at his parenting skills. Finally, she said, “So, in the last two hours, you cleaned my floor, fixed my pipes, fed my kids, put them to bed and made me dinner?”
“Technically two hours and twenty-six minutes and your pipes aren’t fixed, but they’ll hold,” he said with a grin. “But I did what I could in the short amount of time I had.”
She took another contemplative sip of her wine, watching him. While she was in the shower, he’d put on a white shirt, which he’d buttoned—thank god—but he’d rolled his sleeves to the elbows, giving Isa a full view of his muscular forearms and large, rough hands.
“Come here,” she said. He eyed her curiously but did as she asked without question, moving to stand close enough for his thighs to brush the inside of her knees. The stool made her tall enough to reach up, her fingers clenching the fabric of his shirt and pulling him close until his lips were once again, a breath away from hers.
He didn’t move, didn’t close the distance; he just waited to see what she’d do next. She leaned closer brushing her lips against his in an almost chaste kiss. Her wolf shivered anyway, lips tingling. When she pulled away, they just stared at each other, his expression as dumbstruck as her own.
She pushed him back, gently, before draining her wine glass. “Since Neoma is already asleep, you guys can stay here tonight. I owe you a talk anyway. You can have the room at the end of the hall on the right. It has a private bathroom if you want to…shower. Do you have other clothes? I might still have something of my dad’s…” She trailed off, feeling unsure of herself suddenly, unable to read the expression he was giving her. It made her want to keep talking, to fill the void between them. “I have to be to work early tomorrow, so I should probably try to get some sleep.” She jumped from the stool knowing damn well there was no way she'd sleep with him down the hall. “Good night, Wren Davies.”
She was almost to the stairs when he snagged her arm, turning her back to him, lifting her off the ground, feet dangling as he sealed his lips over hers in a kiss that had her grasping at his shoulders for an anchor. Her body dragged along his as he set her back on her feet. “Good night, Isa McGowan.”
Isa stumbled towards the stairs on weak legs, fingers clutching the banister to steady herself. Two chaste kisses shouldn’t have her hands shaking and her body throbbing. Wren was dangerous. Letting him in would be the worst possible thing, but knowing he would be just down the hall was strangely comforting which honestly just pissed her off.
Chapter Twelve
Wren
Wren lay in bed, hands laced behind his head, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rain tap on the window outside. He’d been awake for hours, but that wasn’t unusual. He rarely slept. It was one of the benefits of being a shifter, the ability to drive himself further and harder without his body needing to reset. It had come in handy on his deployments overseas where he’d had to go days without sleep. He’d pushed himself to the limit more than a few times. He was always the first to volunteer to patrol, to scout, to stand guard. He had an advantage over the others in his unit, and he felt a duty to try to take some of the burdens off those whose bodies needed that sleep to recharge. Wren knew his wolf well enough to know when it was time to sleep and when that sleep came, it was always blissfully dreamless, three or four hours of perfect nothingness, and it was enough to recharge and sustain him for whatever came next.
Nights when he was truly restless, he would go for a run—sometimes in his human form, sometimes as his wolf—but not tonight. It was raining, and he was a stranger in Belle Haven. Running in foreign territories was a good way to meet the business end of a shotgun, and he’d already violated a million pack protocols.
The rain outside made his eyelids heavy, and he didn't fight it, picturing Isa's moss green eyes and golden skin. He wanted to bury himself in the scent of her, wanted to feel her underneath him, surrounding him. She was everything he’d always wanted, and it was making him crazy.
He hadn’t expected to find his bonded mate. Until he set eyes on Isa, he hadn’t believed that was a thing. But lying there in the dark, his wolf paced, unsettled with Isa—his mate—so far a
way. Isa may not have made up her mind about him, but Wren’s wolf considered the matter settled, and the need to be closer to her was a physical ache inside him.
He fell asleep with Isa on his mind, his subconscious dragging him just under the surface of sleep into some strange hybrid of lucid dreaming, where he knew he was asleep, but was unable to control the images flickering before him like an old film on a glitchy projector.
His first thought was this wasn't his dream. Or at least he wasn’t himself in his dream. He was a child, a female child. She rode along in the center of a bench seat of a beat up truck that smelled like gasoline and sweat and cheap perfume. Wren knew that road, if one could even call it that. It was a stretch of dirt carved out of the trees that ran at the end of Wren's family's property. His father had created it to help his shadier business partners drop off and pick up their shipments, away from the prying eyes of the sheriff. The terrain was rough, tossing her violently on the seat as they moved deeper. She could barely see over the dashboard, but it didn’t matter, a dense layer of fog shrouded the road and the surrounding trees crushed in on all sides, branches slapping against the truck as they drove.
He looked down at small hands and golden legs peeking out from beneath hot pink shorts with little white stars on them. On her legs were a series of shallow cuts, the deepest one, closest to her knee, oozed sluggishly and stung like a burn.
The girl hated this truck, and she was afraid of the people sitting on either side of her. Her fear was a knife stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe, hard to swallow. She didn’t want to look at them or acknowledge them in any way, but she did, turning to the passenger almost as if she couldn't help herself.
Wren didn't recognize the girl on the right by name, but there was something familiar about her that made him feel as if he should know her. She had huge dark eyes, frizzy brown hair and long pale legs in barely-there shorts. She had a deer tattooed on her inner thigh and another on the dirty foot she had pressed against the dented dashboard. When she noticed the girl's eyes on her, she smiled revealing a slightly crooked front tooth and a silver stud in her tongue. Something about the glint in her eyes drove that knife of fear deeper.
“I wanna go home,” the little girl said. Wren would know that voice anywhere. Neoma.
The girl’s responding laugh was manic and jarring, like glass in a blender. “Well, you can’t. She says it’s time for you to meet her.”
Neoma’s stomach ached, and she wrapped her arms around her waist. “I’m supposed to be at home right now,” Neoma said again. “I’m gonna get in trouble.”
“Would I let you get in trouble? Would I let anything happen to my special girl?” Wren knew that voice as well, and the realization was a kick to the gut. Dylan. That was Dylan’s voice. Dylan was driving the truck. Dylan was running his hand along Neoma’s face with a familiarity that made Wren's stomach churn and his chest tighten.
This child, so terrified she couldn’t contain her trembling, was Neoma, and her tormentor, was his brother. Wren’s throat clenched as Dylan placed a hand on Neoma’s leg, pressing razor sharp claws into her already damaged skin until she hissed in pain. “Just relax. Do as she asks, and I'll have you home before mom has dinner on the table. I Promise.”
A vicious crack brought Wren upright with a hoarse shout. He looked around the unfamiliar room, blinking, sweat from his eyes. Isa’s house. He was at Isa’s house. He took a deep breath and let it out, rubbing his hands over his face.
The rain pounded against the window, lightning crashing just outside with a relentless ferocity, lighting up the sky like a bomb strike. It was the storm that woke him, wrenching him from his dream…or Neoma’s dream. Was it a dream? Now that he was awake, he just wasn’t sure. Neoma would’ve told Wren if Dylan was hurting her. Ezri might have stolen those memories, but before that, when they'd spoken on the phone, she would've told him then. He thought back over their calls, trying to remember if there had ever been a moment when she’d seemed frightened, where she’d tried to tell him something, and he’d missed it. Had she been asking for help for three years and he’d missed it? Or was it just all in his head?
Wren walked to the window, feeling like there was a block of ice lodged in his windpipe. He wanted to scan the perimeter, unable to shake the feeling of a threat lingering just out of sight. But the rain and humidity outside and the chill of the air conditioning had frosted the window opaque with condensation.
He needed to check on Neoma; he needed to see she was okay for himself. He hesitated outside Tristin's door for just a moment, irrationally afraid of what he’d find when he looked inside. He took a deep breath and let it out, pausing for only a moment, before turning the knob.
Tristin and Neoma lay together in Tristin’s twin bed, curled towards each other, knees drawn up, covers on the floor, hands intertwined. Wren frowned, both of their hearts were beating hummingbird fast, brows furrowed and breathing heavy. Did they both dream? Were they both dreaming the same thing? Maybe it was just a nightmare…or maybe this was another memory Ezri had taken from Neoma.
Could his brother have been hurting Neoma right under his family’s nose, and they’d done nothing to stop it? His nostrils flared, heart hammering as his wolf tried to claw its way to the surface. With only six days until the full moon, his wolf was fighting him. He took a few deep breaths, forcing that rage back down. Somebody had hurt his pack—his family—and his wolf wanted to hurt them back, to rip them apart and watch them bleed.
He closed the girls’ door, moving without any conscious thought until he was stopped just outside Isa’s door. He placed his hand against the wood, closing his eyes and concentrating. She was awake. He pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the doorframe, listening to the reassuring thud of her heartbeat, hoping it was enough to sooth his wolf.
“Are you going to lurk outside my door or are you going to come in?” Isa asked quietly.
He entered, closing the door behind him. She sat cross-legged, regal as a queen in the center of her enormous king size bed, engulfed on either side by a sea of storm blue pillows. She wore a thin strapped black tank top and a pair of soft-looking gray shorts that showed off toned legs. In her lap, was a battered paperback novel. She frowned when she saw him, her brows knitting together. “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. He wasn’t okay. He was confused and angry, and his stomach burned like he’d drank a fifth of whiskey, but just the sight of her caused something inside his chest to loosen.
Isa set her book page side down. “Wren?” He could sense her unease. His silence agitated Isa's wolf. He couldn’t blame her. He was just standing there in her bedroom, staring at her like a creep. He wanted to tell her, but the words wouldn't come. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
He wanted to drop to his knees beside her bed and confess his sins. Isa was his mate. His partner. His alpha. But she didn’t see that. She didn’t understand that. So, he didn’t know how to answer. He’d betrayed Neoma. He’d brought her into his pack, and his brother had hurt her. Maybe. He felt a bit like he was losing his mind. He raked his hand through his hair, the words he wanted to say lodged in his throat.
She patted a spot on the bed, one that put a safe distance between him and her. “Come here.”
He went without question, crossing the room, ignoring the spot she indicated, instead blanketing himself over her, taking her backward into the pillows.
She made a startled, “oomph” as her back hit the mattress but she didn’t push him away. He rested his ear over her heart, his arms folding around her.
“Or this works too,” she murmured against his hair, sounding faintly amused as she pried her legs from underneath his, letting him settle between her knees. The steady throb of her heartbeat worked like an anesthetic, driving away the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and easing the crushing fear that gripped his heart. She pushed her fingers through his hair, and he shuddered, holding her tig
hter as he listened to the storm raging outside.
Slowly, his pulse returned to normal, his heartbeat and breathing syncing with hers.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, after a time.
“Just a nightmare,” he said. She had to know it was a lie; she’d smell it, hear it in the skip of his pulse. She didn’t call him on it, though. She just held him, her fingers straying from his hair to trail over the sensitive skin at the back of his neck.
The torrential rain pounding outside created a sort of white noise, engulfing them in this bubble of quiet, making the house feel like it existed somewhere far away from the rest of the world. Wren couldn’t remember ever feeling so content. He sighed as Isa kissed the top of his head.
He tried not to read into the affection. She was an alpha, it was her job to comfort, to protect. But maybe it was a sign that, on some level, she recognized him as one of her pack. Whatever her reasons, he’d take it. He didn’t need her to protect his body, but maybe he needed her to guard his mind.
As Wren’s thoughts quieted, he became more aware of the way his body pressed against hers. His hand found hers against the covers, his thumb caressing the soft skin. She startled beneath him, giving a breathy exhale that hit him like a fist. Maybe she’d thought he'd fallen asleep. He couldn’t imagine ever being able to sleep with Isa underneath him.
Wren’s wolf was quiet, but the rest of him was awake and wanting. He picked up her hand, pressing their palms together, marveling at the difference in size. She had small hands with long, elegant, fingers and short rounded nails painted a soft pink. He stroked his thumb along her knuckles, and her heart skipped beneath his ear. He smiled against her skin. She clearly liked that. He did it again. She rewarded him with a bitten off sound that had the blood in his head traveling south.
Wren couldn’t get enough of those sounds. Even the faintest hitch in her breathing produced a response in him, convincing him they were somehow connected on a cellular level. He brought her palm to his lips, his tongue flicking over the salty skin before biting down gently. Isa's response was somewhere between a whimper and a moan and Wren vowed to himself that he’d do whatever he had to, to get her to make that sound as often as possible for the rest of their lives.
