“Who says I want to be near the top?” I whispered.
He scowled at me. “For fuck’s sake, Stanzie, you’re an Advisor to a member of the Great Council. And, yes, you are Liam Murphy’s bond mate, at least for a little while longer—hopefully more if you get your head out of your ass and kick his. Fee and I have been Alphas for three years. We’ve got another two to go, and then this pack will choose a new Alpha pair. And there’s every chance in the world it will be you and Liam if you play your cards right.
“So people like Alannah Doyle and Declan Byrne, your main competition, are not going to quietly let you sneak ahead of them in the ranks. No matter what I want or what Fee wants, our votes only count so far. The pack has a say, too.”
“The main contender for the next Alpha female is a barmaid?” I spoke without thinking and Paddy groaned and threw up his hands dramatically.
“A barmaid who’s my sister, remember, you horrible bitch? What the hell do you want her to be? A nuclear physicist? Stanzie, for Christ’s sake, since when do we judge who should be Alpha by their damn day jobs?”
“I figure this is a huge pack and it doesn’t just revolve around the fertile duos and triads, so there has to be more criteria than that. Why not day jobs? Sorcha was a scientist, wasn’t she?” I wanted to throw my Guinness at his face, but it was too good to waste.
“A lab technician with delusions of grandeur.” Paddy’s voice was flat.
I wanted to argue. She’d been murdered by the conspiracy, so obviously she’d been more than a simple lab tech. She had to have been.
“She was working late to impress her bosses. She was taking classes and wanted to move up, and maybe she would have, but all that would have been put on hold so she could have her baby. She shouldn’t have even been working still, the stubborn bitch, but nobody could ever tell her what to do. Liam begged her to stop working and act like a real Alpha female, but she laughed in his face. He’s the one who carried that duo when they were Alpha, and everyone in Mac Tire knows it. So they’re going to be doubly hard on you. For all they know, you’re the next Sorcha. Maybe you won’t even stop being an Advisor when you’re pregnant.”
Paddy talked like it was a done deal.
“And when they find out about my wolf, game over, wouldn’t you say?” I looked him in the eye, determined to brazen it out. Did he know my wolf was normal now? Or supposedly so. I inwardly winced when I remembered I’d just taken off for Dublin and hadn’t told Scott I wasn’t going to hunt with him after all. That was rude. I made a mental note to call to apologize, but meanwhile I stared Paddy down.
“Do you not think your Alpha has kept track of you?” Paddy’s eyes burned with triumph, and I knew my bluff had failed. Damn that Jason Allerton.
“Well, since my Alpha never called me once in four months, how the hell was I supposed to know? Who told you? Allerton?”
“I have my sources.” His smile was enigmatic, and I really wanted to slap him hard.
“So Murphy. He told you.” I felt my face turn sullen, and Paddy rolled his eyes.
“He and Allerton do communicate, being that Liam’s his Advisor and all.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” I bunched my hands into fists and looked around for something to pummel. Murphy knew about my wolf. Why did he get to know everything about me even when he’d walked out on me?
Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted to be the one to tell him about my wolf. He’d helped me so much with her. If anyone in the world had ever initiated my wolf, it was him with the help of his wolf.
What had he thought when he’d found out? Had he been pleased? Indifferent? Maybe he’d changed the subject because it didn’t matter to him anymore.
“So you know about the pack bond, too, then,” I said, my voice hard.
“Only the bare bones of it. Just that that bastard father of yours was exiled, mostly because of you figuring it all out. But not the specifics of how you did it or what you felt like going through it.” Paddy’s voice was soft and encouraging. As if I’d tell him anything.
“Well, it’s no wonder you seem to want me back with him. Now that I’m normal and a real contender for Alpha. You’re such a treacherous bastard, Paddy, you know that?”
“Goddamn it,” he swore helplessly. “I never thought your wolf would hold you back even before the bloody pack bond thing. Liam was working with you, and that was good enough for me. I saw what your wolf did for the bloody Council wolves. It wasn’t an issue with me.”
“Maybe not you,” I said through gritted teeth. “She’s normal now, and I’m still apologizing for her. Still making excuses for her.”
“Yeah, and I don’t understand that at all. Nobody in Mac Tire knew about your wolf anyway.”
“Why not?” I thrust my chin out angrily. “You kept it a dirty secret, didn’t you? Afraid it would ruin my precious chances at Alpha? What if I don’t want to be Alpha? Normal wolf or not?”
“You don’t want a baby?” Paddy asked. “Because I don’t believe you. I saw the way you looked at your friend’s baby daughter, and I heard what you said about the subject. I was there, remember?”
“I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.” I knew I was being a coward, but fuck it. I couldn’t even think straight, and maybe I was getting belligerent for no reason. But I was not going to fall for his Irish charm and his bullshit lies. I wasn’t.
Chapter 5
Paddy had a red Mini Cooper with black cloth upholstery. I huddled in the passenger seat with my eyes closed for the entire drive and hoped I would keep my dinner down. The car had a manual transmission, and every time Paddy shifted gears, I tensed. By the time we pulled up in front of a four-story brick apartment house, I was sick to my stomach and so tightly strung every muscle in my body ached. Rain drizzled down and smacked against the windshield. Paddy told me to wait in the car until he got my suitcase and backpack out, but I didn’t listen to him. I wanted out of that damn car in the worst way.
He made no move to give me my suitcase and instead led the way to the glass door entrance.
Inside it was dark, but motion sensor lights picked up our movements, and dim lights lit up to show us the way to the elevator. Since this was Dublin, I guess it was called a lift.
The back wall of the lift was mirrored, and Paddy leaned against it with nonchalant ease while I stood stiffly near the front.
“I could find it by myself.” I knew I sounded churlish, but he only shrugged.
Murphy’s apartment was on the top floor. Paddy led the way down a narrow, carpeted hallway past two light brown doors until he reached the third one at the end.
I had the key, so I unlocked the door and walked in first, but he was right behind me and switched on the lights so I could see.
The apartment was small, with light cream walls and darker tile flooring. The living room and dining room were one long room combined. Twin couches covered in burgundy tweed were propped opposite each other against the walls. Two large prints of the Irish seashore in dramatic golds and bronzes hung above them. One depicted sunset, the other sunrise.
A French door shielded with flat burgundy blinds led out onto a balcony. Small windows with diamond inset beveled glass were set on either side.
Beyond the couches was a dark hardwood dining table with four ladder-back chairs placed around it.
The galley kitchen had stainless steel appliances and granite countertops beneath sleek, modern cupboards the same color wood as the dining table.
A door to the right of the kitchen obviously led to the bedroom. It was closed, and I couldn’t see what lay beyond.
A flat-screen television on a swiveled arm was bolted to the wall opposite the dining table, easily viewed from anywhere in the room.
A wooden coffee table was placed precisely between the sofas on a rectangular burgundy rug. White radiators were mounted to the walls on either side of the room, one by the sofas, one closer to the table. End tables sat on either side of the sofas
and had modern brass lamps with soft white squared-off shades.
Nothing personal was displayed on the tables, but I saw a wine rack on one counter in the kitchen full of Murphy’s favorite cabernets and merlots.
“It’s a bit stark,” muttered Paddy as he watched me take it all in. “He’s still decorating. You could give it a woman’s touch.”
“You really think I’m going to stay?” I was pessimistic. What would Murphy say when he saw me? Maybe he’d tell me to leave. He sure wouldn’t greet me with open arms, or why the hell would he have left in the first place?
“Get some sleep, Stanz.” Paddy propped my battered suitcase against the wall by one of the end tables. Raindrops glistened in his curly black hair. He looked tired.
“You were the one who got me through the tribunal,” I whispered, my throat clogged with tears. “And then you left me behind. I wanted so much to have an Alpha I could believe in.”
He reached out and drew me into his arms. I buried my face against his shoulder and squeezed my eyes shut. If he’d said it then, Now do you believe in me again, I was so tired and sick at heart I would have told him I belonged to him. So I could belong somewhere again. But he didn’t say it, and I didn’t know how to make him.
* * * *
After he left, the apartment echoed with silence. I picked up my suitcase and crossed to the bedroom door. It was a strange, European door with a shiny finish and a thin silver handle that moved up and down instead of twisted.
The bedroom walls were the same modern cream, but the floor was carpeted in pale gold. The bed was huge with a sleek wooden headboard screwed into the wall matching the built-in wooden floor-to-ceiling cupboards.
The drapes were a shade lighter gold than the carpet. A white, down-filled duvet covered the bed, and a thin burgundy blanket was folded across the bottom.
Mounted to the wall across from the bed was a small television, and beneath it, a compact wooden desk with a laptop and a banker’s lamp with a burgundy-colored shade.
Mail had been carelessly tossed across it. A wooden shelf hung to the side of the desk, and it held a few paperback and hardbacks novels.
One other thing rested on top of the desk—a small box covered with creamy brown shells. My heart slammed against my ribs as I picked it up, unable to keep from looking inside.
His bond pendant was there, the silver link chain carefully arranged so it wouldn’t knot. The peridot I’d bought and had mounted next to the lustrous pearl he’d had since he’d been born gleamed under the electric lights.
Of course he wouldn’t wear it anymore. Why would he? My own bond pendant’s clasp was broken, and I’d never fixed it. It was in the small pewter box Murphy’d given me the night we’d bonded in the chateau just outside Paris.
I remembered a time when neither of us had taken off our bond pendants except when we’d shifted or showered.
I put the shell box down and crossed to the clothes cupboards. The second I opened them, I smelled Murphy. The sterile apartment filled with his unique scent, and before I knew it, I was on the floor with one of his shirts in my hands, my face buried in it so I could drink him in with my olfactory sense.
My heart bumped painfully in my chest, and I heard it even above the strangled sound of my sobs.
She found me that way, crying into his damn shirt so hard I didn’t even hear the door open.
The sharp intake of her breath alerted me. I lifted my tearstained face and saw her.
The first thing I noticed was that she looked eerily like Murphy, only her features were softened and more feminine, and her hair was blond, not light brown. Her eyes were hazel with flecks of amber, different than his forest brown, but they were the same shape and size.
The second thing was she was pregnant. She wore a pair of maternity jeans and a loose purple top with a leather jacket that glistened with rain. Her hair was long and straight and slightly damp, even though I could see a half-furled umbrella in one hand.
She could only be one person on earth. Fiona Carmichael, Murphy’s twin sister and Alpha female of Mac Tire. Still I asked, “Who’re you?”
“Now that’s a damn silly question,” she scolded, and our gazes locked.
Sometimes it clicked between two people and an immediate friendship formed. No need to speak or even for introductions. A look created an instant bond and the two people just knew how it would be between them. That’s how it was with Fiona Carmichael and me—we were friends before she finished that first sentence and we both knew it.
She had a bag of groceries in her free arm, and a small bouquet of wildflowers poked out of the top.
“I like to take care of my stupid brother because if I don’t, nobody will. Isn’t this apartment like a small corner of a very neat and clean version of hell? Maybe you’ll put some personality into it. I keep trying, and he just erases it all. Help me arrange these flowers, will you?”
She walked into the living room and I followed, Murphy’s shirt still in my hands.
“Here, let me.” I dove in front of her as she tried to bend to rummage in the cupboard beneath the pristine stainless steel kitchen sink for a flower vase. I estimated she was at least seven, probably closer to eight months along, and although she carried well, it couldn’t be easy to bend at this point.
She gave me a grin disturbingly reminiscent of Murphy’s and began to unload the groceries. Small colorful oranges went into a glass bowl on the counter, coffee beans into the freezer, cans of soup into the cupboard, and a loaf of fresh rye bread into one of the drawers that held the heel of another one, which she threw away with a grimace because it was rather moldy. Milk and eggs went into the refrigerator.
I found a large modern burgundy glass vase, which I filled with water and a teaspoon of sugar while Fiona snipped the ends off the flowers with a pair of scissors.
We worked together seamlessly, and a few moments later the flowers were arranged in the vase and placed in the center of the dining table.
She helped herself to a glass of cold water. I decided I needed a cup of tea and plugged in the electric kettle.
We sat at the table while we waited for the water to boil. She sipped her water and stared at me. I knew I looked like shit—how could I not after a twelve-hour layover and a long flight with virtually no sleep and no change of clothes.
“I won’t stay long, you look knackered,” she said with another Murphy smile. “So you love him, don’tcha?” Forthright hazel eyes locked with mine. I slowly nodded.
The woman found me sobbing into one of Murphy’s damn shirts. A person didn’t do a thing like that unless they were in love. Or psychotic.
“I knew it,” she crowed. “That stupid brother of mine is so damn dense you could use his head to knock down walls.”
“How come I didn’t know you were pregnant?” The electric kettle shut off with a sharp click, and I rose to make my tea. Murphy had two kinds—Irish breakfast and chamomile. I went with the latter since I didn’t want to delay sleep any longer than a short soak in the tub after I drank it.
“I wanted to surprise you both when you finally dragged your asses to Dublin.” She watched me pour boiling water over the tea bag as she sat at the table and drank her water. “You fucking ruined the moment, though.”
“Not my idea.” I held up a placatory hand, and she grinned at me and brushed some of her sandy-blond hair away from her face. The earrings she wore were handmade and beautiful. Twisted silver, they formed dangling spirals that twirled from her earlobes and glittered in the light. They were reminiscent of the abstract design of the Mac Tire pack ring she wore on her right middle finger.
I touched the empty space around my finger as I waited for the tea to steep.
“Boy or girl?” I wondered as I scooped two teaspoons of sugar into a white ceramic mug and stirred.
“Hell if I know,” she replied. “I do know it’s just the one though. Glenn and Siobhan were convinced it would be twins since they’re both twins and Liam and I are twins,
but the pack doctor’s sure it’s just the one. Can’t say I’m upset about that. Twins are a terrible lot of work, don’t you think?”
I shrugged because I’d had no experience with twins. Both the children born in Mayflower after me had been singles, and there had never been a baby in Riverglow at all, let alone twins.
“Paddy’s a single. Can you fucking imagine more than one of him? Jaysus.” Fiona went off into gales of infectious laughter. “If this baby’s anything like him, the world’s a lucky place it’s just the one.”
The way she spoke about him let me know how much she loved him. Her hazel eyes danced with the same warmth that lit Paddy’s when he talked about her.
“The three of us grew up together. He’s two-and-a-half years older than we are, so he thinks he’s the boss, but he’s not. That would be Liam. Didn’t he get to be Alpha before us, and didn’t we bond a year before he ever even heard of Sorcha, damn the bitch.”
“Not a fan, huh?” I brought my steaming mug of tea to the table and took a sip before I sat. It was hot and sweetly comforting.
“I hope she’s fucking burning in hell. Not that I believe in such a place. But the otherworld is too good for her. Bitch. The only time Liam ever stayed mad at me longer than an hour was the day I begged him not to bond with her. He didn’t speak to me for three fucking months. Ignored me if I walked into the same room. And, of course, Sorcha laughed her skinny ass off, the little cunt. I couldn’t stand her. Can you tell?” Fiona’s voice dripped poison, and I tried not to grin.
“I hate her too, and I never even knew her,” I admitted. Fiona threw back her head and laughed in genuine amusement. I liked her more and more with every minute.
“So what did you fight about? I’m not trying to be a nosy bitch, I know my stupid brother, and I’ll help you figure out a strategy. It’s been four months, and he’s miserable, so maybe he’s forgiven you, but just in case, I can help you if you let me.”
I wrapped my hands around the hot mug of tea and willed myself not to wince when it burned. The pain focused me.
About Face (Wolf Within) Page 7
