About Face (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  Murphy picked me up into his arms and ran through the pelting rain into the forest. When I screamed at him to put me the fuck down, he did. We both tore at my clothes. My fingers were more like claws, and then…

  * * * *

  The rain is wet on my fur. I shake it off, but it feels good on me. I am free. I am whole. It is no longer hard to think. That is an oak tree. That is an oak leaf on the ground. Before it fell, it belonged to the tree. On a branch of the oak tree, there is a bird huddled against the raindrops. That bird is a crow. It looks at me and makes a sound. Caw is the sound. I growl, but I only play. I cannot reach the crow in the oak tree and we both know it. He caws at me again, but I do not want to play with him. Crows are not as fun as other wolves. Like me.

  I smell him. I smell my Friend, and he is so beautiful. He has silver-gray fur and a white chest. One front paw is white. The others are gray. He has a thick tail he waves very fast because he is with me again. He was gone before, but now he is here. I thought he went away the same as Him and Her, and I was sad, but he did not. He is here.

  Once, a long time ago, I ran with Him and Her. Their real names were Grey and Elena. They are dead, but I do not know how they died. One day they were with me when we ran through the forest, and the next time there was only Friend. But he is enough.

  My heart beats fast when I look at Friend. He grins at me and waves his tail. His whine is excited. He runs and I run after him. I can run faster and I will beat him. My legs blur beneath me as I stretch into the run. I run so fast he is left behind. I hear him howl behind me and I lift my nose and howl back, but still I run. He chases me. Friend chases. Should I let him catch me? I do not know this forest, it is not mine. I think it must be his, but I can smell there are no roads ahead. No Others. The rain feels so good on my fur. The air is full of good smells. I want to roll in the wet leaves, but if I do, Friend will catch me. Maybe I want him to.

  I roll. I roll and make snuffle noises. Friend pounces on me. We roll together. He snaps his teeth at me, he bites my ear, but it does not hurt. I snarl at him, but I am playing. We roll. We roll together. Friend gives me his throat.

  I remember. I remember the throat of the bad man. The taste of his blood in my mouth. I do not like this memory. I make it go away. I take Friend’s nose in my mouth. No, not nose. There is another, better word. I think hard, and I will find that word. I squeeze Friend’s nose- not nose, still I think of better word—with my teeth, but I do not hurt.

  I let go. Friend takes my muzzle—yes, that is the better word- in his mouth. He bites but it does not hurt. We roll. We roll together. I want to run, but I want Friend to play with me. I feel the rain on us and I have never had the glad feeling like this. It is so much I cannot keep it inside me. I must let it out, and I hope Friend feels it, too. I love Friend.

  * * * *

  Cold rain against my face. Human again. My wolf was gone. Naked, I surged to my feet and saw Murphy beneath the sheltering limbs of an oak tree. He had on his jeans, but that was it.

  I found my shirt and put it and my panties on. My clothes were wet with rain and clammy against my skin, but I was still filled with the wonder of my wolf.

  Murphy watched me dress. As was his habit with important things, he allowed me to speak first. Waiting for me to say something was probably agony for him, but he stood there in the rain and was silent.

  I zipped my jeans and turned to him with a huge smile. Joy spiked through my veins. Huge, life-altering elation the likes of which I’d never experienced before. “Oh, Liam, She could think in full and complete sentences. And she knew all the words. Some didn’t come as fast as others, but she didn’t get mad, she knew they’d find her eventually. Oh, the best part—the really, really, really best part—was she could see in color. Does your wolf see in color?”

  A tremendous smile lit up his face. “You never saw in color before?”

  “No. Did you know your wolf’s eyes are the most beautiful orange amber? They’re almost like Faith’s, but deeper gold somehow. What color are my wolf’s eyes?”

  “Very, very bright blue. With flecks of silver. They’re gorgeous. And your wolf’s fur is almost white.”

  “Like Kathy Manning’s?” I whispered, entranced.

  “Prettier. Darker. There’s a lavender glow to it, and the tips are silver-gray. Never seen a color exactly like it.” He edged closer to me.

  “My wolf can’t be more beautiful than Kathy’s. Her wolf’s the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” I smiled to think of her.

  “Ah, Stanzie, why will you never take a compliment from me?” A bittersweet smile tugged the corner of his mouth.

  “Don’t I?” I was momentarily thrown as I tried to remember.

  “Never,” he said. “Not once. I guess I don’t give compliments properly.”

  “Bullshit. You give them right and left. The waitresses in almost every restaurant we ever ate at, the girls behind the counter at Target—you know damn well how to give compliments,” I countered.

  “Ah, but then why don’t you take them from me?”

  “I would if you meant them, but you just say them because that’s how you are with all women. Pack, Others, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “No,” I said. “Just force of habit.”

  “Any compliment I’ve given all these multitude of women, have I exaggerated? Told a homely woman she was the most gorgeous girl on earth? What?”

  I thought back. His compliments to other women had been generous, but definitely fair.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “So why, if I tell you your wolf is the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen, do you automatically dismiss it? Why, when I tell you that you stole my breath away the first time I saw you in that sexy red dress, do you think I’m full of shite?”

  Uncomfortable in my own skin, I shrugged. I wished he’d change the subject. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not just my compliments either. I’ve seen you brush off sincere compliments from any number of people— Kathy Manning, Allerton, Paddy. It doesn’t seem to matter. You don’t believe them. Tell me, when Grey told you that you were beautiful, did you believe him?”

  Please change the damn subject. “Well, I always thought Elena was the beautiful one, but I didn’t tell him that.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of Elena, and she was beautiful, but so are you.” His smile turned wistful. “You don’t trust people anymore, do you?”

  “Sure, I do,” I argued. Most of my wolf’s magic dissipated and I shivered in the cold rain. “I trust everybody until they lie to me.”

  “Until?” He stressed. “Why not unless?

  “Because.” I came to a slow, horrible conclusion. All my wolf’s joy evaporated and left me despondent. “It’s always until now. Unless died in the car crash with Gray and Elena. Everybody lies to me eventually. Even you. Especially you.”

  “When have I lied to you?” He stepped closer so he could search my face with his dark gaze.

  “When you left. When you said it was for the best. How was that the truth when I was left behind? When you took everything away?”

  “I didn’t know you loved me.” He moved close and took my face between his hands. “I thought I’d give you the chance to have what you said you wanted. A pack. A bond mate. To be happy like you used to be.”

  “But you were my bond mate.” Tears slid down my cheeks and mixed with the rain.

  “I thought you’d go to Vaughn and bond with him and Jossie. He used to be in your pack, and you loved him. I thought he could give you more than I could. He could keep you safer for sure.”

  “Vaughn and Jossie?” My mouth trembled. “After my father’s tribunal, I took Wren to Maplefair, to Vaughn and Jossie. I wanted to confront my fears. I went down into Grandmother Emma’s root cellar all by myself, and I walked around and knelt in the dirt where I’d killed Nate, and I took away his power to scare me. And when I came back up, Jossie was there, and she very politel
y hinted that I ought to take Wren and leave because Vaughn was going to ask me to bond with them, and she didn’t want that. She wanted him to herself. Anyway, all I’d ever have been with them is spare to the pair. I wanted what I used to have, and I was not the spare to the pair.

  “I thought I would come here and work things out with you and everything would be like it was before my wolf tore Nate’s throat out. But it can’t be, can it?” More tears leaked out of my eyes, and I tasted their warm salt on my lips.

  “I guess they can’t be the way they were. Too many things have changed, you’re right. Your wolf, for one.” He pulled me against his chest, and I buried my face in his neck. I inhaled his unique scent, and it fucking killed me.

  “Thank you for all you did for her,” I whispered. “For initiating her.”

  “Is that what I did?” he mused. “Whatever I did, it was a two-way street. Your wolf was so happy today. I haven’t seen her this happy since the first time we shifted together in France. Remember that?”

  “I remember your wolf growled at me,” I sulked, and his fingers dug into my side until I couldn’t feel low anymore and shrieked with laughter. The bastard knew just where I was most ticklish.

  * * * *

  “I don’t like it because it makes me feel like one of them,” I said. Murphy paused as we made our soggy way back to the car park. Mud squished between my bare toes. I’d only been able to find one of my sandals. I hoped the other one was by the car, but if not, I could always go shoe shopping. Besides, sandals were not the right shoe for this weather or terrain.

  Murphy had on a pair of Doc Marten boots I’d never seen before. I wasn’t sure I liked them—they added to his new edgy and dangerous look and danced him just out of reach of the Murphy I remembered from Boston.

  His hair stuck up in strangely compelling spikes. He looked as if some salon professional had labored hours over his hair for a scene out of some supernatural drama set in the woods, whereas, my hair was plastered to my skull in unbecoming chunks, and yesterday’s makeup clung to the corners of my eyes and lashes.

  “When you compliment me,” I clarified because, while our previous conversation had gone on in my mind, he’d apparently stopped thinking about it. “You make me feel like just another pretty girl in a long line of them. Nothing special. Sorcha wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t even pretty. But she was mysterious.” I knew my voice turned bitter on that last word. It had galled me for months. “No matter how hard I try, I can never be mysterious. You always know who I am and what I’m thinking.”

  “Why do you want to be like Sorcha?” He pitched his tone low and calm, but I could see the turbulent flow of emotion in his dark eyes.

  “That obvious, isn’t it? So you’d love me back. Doesn’t it fucking kill you to think you’re in the exact opposite position you were with her? Cause it kills me if I let myself think about it too much.”

  A strangled noise escaped him. Was the man laughing at me?

  “Stanzie, I have been madly in love with you since New Orleans.”

  There was no sound for a long moment but the ragged patter of rain against the oak leaves.

  “New Orleans.” Was he kidding me? He’d loved me since New Orleans? Rage warred with exultation inside me. “But that was before Christmas. This is August. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Why didn’t you?” he countered.

  Oh, wrong answer, Liam Murphy.

  “Because you said you didn’t want anything from me!” The volume of my voice made him grimace.

  “When did I say that?”

  “At the safe house in Hartford after you bashed my head against the wall when I tried to show you how I felt.” Remembered shame and grief slammed into me and left me shaky.

  He winced at my bluntness. “I meant pity. I didn’t want your damn pity. Because that’s what I thought it was. How the hell was I supposed to know any different? That’s all I ever got from Sorcha—why wouldn’t you be the same? I spent ten years trying to get that woman to love me, and after that I figured I was just unlovable, that there was some sort of fatal flaw inside me that prevented people from loving me back.

  “And anyway, I tell you all the time how I feel. It’s not my fault you don’t speak Irish.”

  I gaped at him. “You—you tell me you love me in bed, Murphy? In a language I don’t even speak?” Unbelievable. Did I even know this guy at all? “All this time I’ve been thinking you’re talking to her mostly, but it’s been me?”

  “Why the fuck do you persist in thinking every time I’m inside you I’m screwing Sorcha, too?” Murphy’s yell roused a nearby crow. It rose squawking from the branches and flapped away. “That woman only crosses my mind when you shove her there.”

  “What a lie that is,” I shouted back, fists clenched. “You’re after Mick Shaughnessy and the conspiracy because of her. She has to cross your mind a hundred times a day!”

  “She doesn’t! She doesn’t, Stanzie. I’m worried to death about Paddy, Fee and my father, not frigging Sorcha. How many times do I have to tell you she’s dead before you’ll let her lie in her grave where she belongs?”

  I could see the car park between the tree branches ahead on the path.

  I rubbed my face and tried to focus, but my thoughts scattered in fifty thousand different directions.

  “So you loved me and left me anyway?” One by one my thoughts disintegrated until there was only one left. One monstrous thought that was full of betrayal.

  His face fell. “I left you because I loved you.”

  I began to walk again, and he was forced to move, too, if he wanted to keep up with me. Dark emotions churned in my stomach like battery acid. How the hell was I supposed to deal with that statement? He left me because he loved me? Were we in some sort of fucking Oxygen Channel movie? What kind of a stupid idiot did that man think I was?

  “That is the sort of declaration that sounds noble as hell but means shit when you really break it down and think about it.” I waited for him to unlock the doors to the BMW. “You wouldn’t have left Sorcha behind, and you know it. The truth is you didn’t want to love me. You just wanted to play knight in shining armor. So you sacrificed your love for me to save me and thought yourself quite the great man.

  “Well, in my eyes, Liam Murphy, you’re a fucking pathetic piece of shit. And you’ve ruined everything. Good job.” I threw myself into the passenger seat.

  He stood there a moment in the pouring rain, driver’s side door open, frozen and oblivious of the torrential downpour before he got in.

  “Not how I wanted this conversation to go,” he remarked.

  He sat there for a moment and then pounded the steering wheel with his fist once, twice, three times, until I thought the damn thing would break and we’d be stuck in this miserable rain forever.

  * * * *

  Paddy sprawled across the sofa in Murphy’s apartment, his gaze fixed to the comedy on the television.

  I stalked, dripping wet, for the bathroom and a hot shower while Murphy stood just inside the door and stared at Paddy.

  “I used Fee’s key,” Paddy explained. “Gave mine to Stanzie, didn’t I?”

  “Did I say anything?” Murphy asked.

  Paddy straightened up on the sofa. “Where the hell have you two been? You’re drenched.”

  “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” I muttered.

  “Oi,” shouted Paddy, “I’ll not have that tone directed to me as Alpha!”

  “Is this better?” I extended my middle finger.

  “Marginally,” Paddy decided and winged a throw pillow at me. I dodged it and slammed the bathroom door behind me.

  Breakfast smells greeted me when I emerged in dry clothes. I had a slightly better handle on my temper, but I was still pissed off.

  The idea that Murphy loved me should have had me walking on the moon with delirious happiness, but instead I wanted to break something. Preferably his head. It wasn’t fair. The four months I’d spent alone, agonizing over w
hat I’d done wrong, had been hell. He loved me and didn’t think I loved him back. He’d left because he didn’t want me involved in the shit mess of the conspiracy. Did he truly believe I’d think him noble for it? I wasn’t some weak, doe-eyed girl. I didn’t run screaming into the night when confronted with nasty shit. How many times would I have to prove I was a strong, capable woman before any Mac Tire man would fucking get it?

  Paddy stood at the stove over a pan of frying bacon while Murphy whisked eggs in a white ceramic bowl on the granite countertop.

  “Take over.” He handed me the whisk so he could have his turn in the shower. Quarters were tight in the galley kitchen, but I didn’t think he had to brush quite so much of his damn body against mine as he squeezed past.

  I stared after him for a second and then turned to the eggs. The mouthwatering scent of bacon nearly drove me to my knees, but I gamely began to whisk.

  “Liam said you shifted and your wolf was fantastic.” Paddy flipped several slices of bacon over in the pan and gave me a grin.

  “So what,” I snarled and his grin faded.

  “Jaysus, woman, isn’t this what you wanted? Your wolf to be normal and you and Liam back together?”

  I grimly beat the damn eggs into a froth.

  “You did tell me you came here to make it up with him. I’d say shifting proved you made up with him considering you can’t shift without having it off with each other. People who aren’t together don’t screw, do they?”

  “You’re so fucking eloquent, Paddy.” I brandished the dripping whisk, and he ducked, obviously recalling the many objects I’d thrown at his head since we’d met each other.

  “Why are you here?” I looked around for a frying pan so I could scramble the eggs, and Paddy prudently backed away, his gaze fixed on my hands, presumably so he’d know when to dodge.

  “Can’t a man have breakfast with his best mate?” He ripped off a few sheets of paper towels and arranged them on a plate to soak up the grease from the bacon.