I hurried through the woods, holding my skirts off the ground, rushing to meet my love. After what felt like an eternity, I broke through the forest. I hurried across the muddied lawn, reaching the front door and knocking frantically.
There was no answer.
I tried again.
Nothing.
My shoulders slumped. He must not be home. I should have known. It wasn’t appropriate for a woman to call on a man uninvited, anyway, and I was paying the price. Thank God there was no one around to see my embarrassment.
I climbed down the steps of the front door and began crossing back toward the woods when the sound of voices floated through the air. I paused. I could make out Adam’s voice and a female one mixed in. I turned and started back toward the house, following the sound to a window on the side of the house.
“No, absolutely not,” Adam said.
“Come on, Adam,” said the female voice.
“Lillian—”
My whole body froze. Lillian? What was Lillian doing at Adam’s house?
I was closer to the window now, and standing on my tiptoes I could see inside. The dialogue had stopped, and I could see why.
Lillian’s arms were wrapped around Adam’s neck, and they were kissing.
Chapter Twenty–Six
My entire body had gone numb. I couldn’t breathe. An iron hand was squeezing my torso, making my heart beat faster and my breathing stop.
I stumbled backward, worried my legs would give out as I tried to back away from the window. I lost my footing, tumbling backward, my body hitting the ground before I scrambled to my feet.
The whole word spun around me as I put my hands on my knees, trying to find my bearings. Breathe. I needed to breathe, but it felt like I was drowning. I clutched my hands, my nails digging into my skin, hoping the pain would help me focus.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to go home, get as far away from Adam’s house as possible before he caught sight of me. I gathered my skirts and sprinted toward the trees. Clouds were rolling in now as the sun began to set, darkening the sky quickly. Under the cover of trees the light was even dimmer. My eyes searched frantically for the path, and when I finally found it I began to run, tree branches hitting my arms. I kept my eyes straight ahead, trying to keep myself on track.
Somehow I had lost my way, and I realized it as soon as I broke through into a clearing. I stopped short. In the center of the clearing, in front of me, was a well.
I may have gotten turned around, but I knew exactly where I was. I had stumbled into the same clearing where Adam and I had spent the night together nearly a year ago, the first time that Adam had confessed his feelings to me. When I had woken up that morning, I had been confused and a little hurt. Returning here, I was still confused, but my pain was ten times what it had been that day. A hundred times. A thousand times.
The tears came. I had been holding them in, but I couldn’t control them anymore. They spilled down my cheeks as I stood staring at the clearing. This place had once held happiness, but now filled me with sorrow. I covered my mouth with my hands trying to stifle my sobs. It didn’t work well as I choked on my tears and my breaths. This place had given me momentary happiness, and now all I felt was the emptiness consuming me.
Home. I needed to go home, sneak in the back door, and climb into bed, not to reemerge until I was past the age of marriage. I had stumbled into the middle of the clearing, and now I had to figure out how to get back to my home. The darkness swirled around me as I tried to peer through it, and finally I found a path. My skirts gathered around me, I started off on the path, tears streaming down my face, just wanting to get home and hide away before my parents would return.
The path didn’t lead to my house. Instead, it led me to the lakeside. My heart sank as I pushed through the foliage and found myself on the rocky beach, the waves crashing against the shore as the wind picked up.
This was wrong, this wasn’t where I wanted to be. I wanted to be home, coping with this betrayal, figuring out how to move on with my life. I didn’t want to be on this rocky, angry shoreline, where just yesterday we had sat together and had our picnic. The dark clouds were coming closer, and the usually beautiful sunset was instead menacing over the horizon.
I collapsed to the ground, my hands clutching at the rocks. I couldn’t take it anymore, I had tried and failed to hold it together. I sat on the shoreline, sobs racking my body. I pulled my knees to my chest, burying my head in my skirts, rocking back and forth, struggling to breathe through the tears.
The wind whipped at my body, mussing my hair, but that was the last thing on my mind. Who cared if I looked terrible? Adam certainly wouldn’t care anymore. I wondered if he had ever cared in the first place.
I had never felt such a profound betrayal. What a silly girl I’d been, how stupid I’d been to let myself fall into the trappings of love! Look where this foolishness had gotten me. I was tainted now; no man would want me after all this. No man would want another man’s reject. Once word got out, I’d never marry. My dreams of having a family, being in love, had evaporated. Those things would never happen now that Adam had left me for someone else. Not just left me, but betrayed me in the harshest way, for the woman who had threatened my happiness since I was a child.
Had he known? What could he have possibly gained by that? Perhaps, as Lillian had first suggested, it was all played out for laughs. What could I have possibly done to Adam to cause him to hurt me so, I had no idea. But if he was in love with Lillian, surely he knew of the terrible things she had done and said to me. Surely he knew how she insisted on torturing me. She wanted me out of the way so that she and Adam could be together. She would get that.
If Adam had told me from the beginning that he never loved me, instead of stringing me along, I would have given up willingly. Perhaps I should have gotten the hint when Adam kept his distance for so many months, but I had been easily swayed when he came knocking on the door. Stupid, so stupid! What had this gotten me? My heart had been shattered into a million tiny pieces like a bad luck mirror, and there was no way that mirror would ever be smooth as glass again. No matter what I did or how I tried to move on, the damage was permanent.
How was I going to move on? Could I move on? I had to do something. I couldn’t stay on this beach forever. With the storm rolling over the lake, I probably couldn’t stay on this beach for much longer at all. Still, I had a future ahead of me. A grim one, yes, but I’d have to decide what I was going to do with it now that marriage and children were out of the question. I would have liked to wait until after my heart had healed to move on, but planning what I was going to do was helping.
Obviously, I’d need to break things off with Adam. Perhaps I could salvage my reputation if I was the one who broke things off with him. I’d go over tomorrow and tell him that things simply weren’t working out. I wouldn’t even tell him I knew about Lillian. If I told him I knew, he’d only laugh at me. Let him think that I was breaking it off with him because I didn’t like him; that would throw him for a loop. I’d release him to be with Lillian, and we could go our separate ways.
And what would I do? I’d have to leave here, that was certain. There was no man in Weylyn who was going to want to marry me after all of this. I could go south to Irving, or maybe go north toward Ireland. If I was lucky, I could find a job as a teacher at a girls’ school. No one would expect me to be married in that case, and I’d have a wage and somewhere to live. It wasn’t ideal, and it would be strange doing things for myself, but I came from a good pedigree. I’m sure I’d be accepted as a teacher.
The most difficult thing would be explaining all of this to my family. My mother would be profoundly disappointed that she wouldn’t be planning my wedding and that I wouldn’t give her grandchildren. My father would be disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to use me to make new business contacts. Harry...well, Harry was maybe the one person I could tell. If I told him, it would destroy his relationship with Adam. He might even hurt
him. If I had left, gone far away by that point so that the rumors didn’t matter, that might actually be satisfying.
I was surprised to find that my tears had nearly dried up. A few still rolled down my face as I considered how much I’d be disappointing my family, but overall, the new plan for my life had given me a new resolve. It wasn’t the life I had always wanted, but it was a life that I could live with a small amount of happiness. Tomorrow I would break things off with Adam and explain things to Harry. The day after, I’d leave.
I took a deep breath and climbed to my feet. It was time to go home. I’d sleep, and tomorrow I would be ready for my new journey. Tomorrow, I was going to be a woman who could have a perfect life without a man.
I started toward the tree line when I heard a rustling in the trees. I paused as my heart began to pound, praying that it was Harry and not Adam. Despite my resolve, I couldn’t handle seeing Adam again. The mirror had been repaired, albeit with cracks, but if I saw Adam again too soon, it would shatter all over again.
It wasn’t Adam. It was the next worse person, dressed in pink with a bow in her hair. It was Lillian.
“Well. Fancy meeting you here,” Lillian said.
I swallowed. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Lillian.”
“But why not? After all, we have something in common.”
I glanced past her, but she was blocking the path I needed to take to get back home. I steeled myself.
“I’m not talking to you. I’m going home, Lillian.”
She reached out a hand and shoved my shoulder, crossing in front of me, blocking my way. “Hazel. Perfect Hazel.”
I did not have the energy to deal with her taunting.
“I don’t understand it,” she continued. “I never thought you’d really be a threat, but apparently, you are. I tried to scare you away. I did everything I could think of. And yet, here we are.”
She sounded like a madwoman. I put my hands up. “Look, Lillian, I just want to go home.”
“I just want to go home,” she mocked. “Well, you can’t always get the things you want, Hazel. I mean, I do. I will. But you don’t.”
“Is this really necessary?” I asked, fighting back tears. “You’ve gotten what you wanted. Just let me go home.”
“I’ve done everything!” she hissed, her eyes alight with anger. “I don’t have freckles, like you do. I have a slim waist. I look perfect before I leave the house. I’ve never let him see me looking less than perfect.”
“I get it!” I said. “You’re better than I am.”
“One would think,” she mused.
“Lillian, just let me go home,” I begged.
“I can’t. I can’t.” She shrugged. “I have to get rid of you. I don’t have any other choice.”
“Get rid of me.”
“Only other choice,” she sighed.
“No, no,” I said, trying to keep my voice reasonable. “Lillian, I’m not sure what you mean—”
“You need to die. I need you out of the picture.”
My heart dropped as I took a step back. “No, Lillian. That’s absolutely not necessary.”
“I need you out of the way. It’s the only way for me to get what I want.”
“No, Lillian, that’s not true.”
She had a faraway look in her eyes that struck terror into my heart. She was mentally unbalanced, and I needed to get as far away from her as I could.
I put my hands up as I backed away from her. “Lillian, you’ve already won. You can have Adam. He’s all yours.”
“He doesn’t want me!” she shrieked. “He wants you! He pushed me away. I tried everything. I offered him money. I tried to seduce him, but all he wants is you! What do you have that I don’t?!”
I didn’t have time to process her words because she charged at me. I turned and ran and without realizing it crashed straight into the lake, my skirts heavy around me. Lillian had slowed to a walk now, and she was walking toward me with menace.
The lake had been a mistake, a huge mistake. There was no way for me to get away from her here; I couldn’t swim away. I walked parallel to the beach, trying to work my way around her, but she blocked me. Our eyes locked, and I was taken aback by the malice hers held. I froze in the cold water, my wet gown weighing heavily on me. Every step I took toward the beach, she took a step for me. I was trapped like a rabbit.
With an unexpected rush Lillian careened toward me. With nowhere else to go, I ran further into the water, but my long skirts tangled around my legs and I fell face first into the water. Before I could break the surface again and regain my footing, I felt hands clutching around my neck. The unexpected wiry strength she had was back and crushing my neck. I grasped at her hands, trying to pull her off of me. When that didn’t work, I turned my head, latching my teeth on the skin of her arm. She pulled her arms away from my neck. I managed to break the surface for just a moment to take a breath of air mixed with water, but then her hands were on my head, pushing it under.
She was trying to drown me. My head was scrambled, but that I knew. I reached out with my leg and kicked her, hitting her somewhere below her hips, somewhere on her leg. When that didn’t work, I stopped trying to pull my head up and instead dove further down and tried to swim. I grasped at her ankles, pulling, until she fell backward into the water. I pulled myself up, clothes completely soaked, breathing heavily. Lillian did the same, but instead of coming toward me, she backed herself onto the beach.
I thought perhaps she had given up. If only I was so lucky.
Instead, she bent over as if she were vomiting. I should have known better, but it was so shocking to see it that I didn’t connect the dots right away. In fact, I didn’t realize until she arched backward, claws springing from her fingers, body rippling and ripping through her dress.
Moments later, where Lillian had once stood, a gray and silver werewolf was snarling at me.
Chapter Twenty–Seven
I stood, my mouth agape, mind struggling to process what I was seeing. My mind couldn’t seem to comprehend what I was seeing, the gray wolf wearing tatters of a pink dress, salivating as it snarled at me on the shoreline.
I had considered that either Lillian or the wolf was responsible for the threats, but I had never once thought that they could be one and the same. There were so few female werewolves, even in Weylyn. As far as I was aware, I had never seen one before, and that made everything even more surreal.
My breath was heavy as I clenched my fists at my side. Thunder rumbled in the distance, reminding me that the oncoming storm was now the least of my worries. I couldn’t stand here frozen for too long; that made me only a bigger target. Somehow I needed to escape into the woods, get back home, send Harry after her.
I moved left, she mirrored me. I moved right, she mirrored me. No matter where I tried to go, she had me stranded in the middle of the cold lake. My whole body was shaking from cold and fear.
I put one hand out. “Lillian, it’s all right,” I said, trying to move closer to her, hoping that I could soothe her, but instead, she snapped her jaws and razor–sharp teeth at me, and I drew my hand back. My heart was pounding, and she could hear it. She knew I was terrified of her. Instead of giving me sympathy, she was all the more determined to tear me limb from limb.
My life may have been turned upside down, but this was not how I wanted to die. I choked back tears as I realized that if I didn’t get out of this, I was never going to get to say goodbye to my parents or Harry.
This wasn’t how I was going to die. Somehow, some way, I was going to get out of this. I needed to distract Lillian, get her to lose her focus just long enough so I could make it into the woods. But I had nothing at my disposal.
“Harry!” I shouted, but my voice was lost to the wind. Even with his advanced hearing, it was doubtful that he could have heard me. Lillian had scarcely blinked at my cries. I needed a different option.
Slowly, my eyes never leaving Lillian’s, I reached down and picked up a handful
of rocks from the lake bed. My aim wasn’t perfect, but I pummeled her with rock after rock, moving a few inches closer every time she winced. I bent back down again and my hands closed around a large rock, about the same size as the one that had been thrown through my window. With all the strength I had, I launched it at her. It hit her right near her tail, and she whimpered. I didn’t pause to see what sort of damage I had done. Instead, I rushed past her, my dress dripping, water leaking from my boots.
The dress weighed heavily on me, and I stumbled as I tried to find my footing on the rocky shoreline. Had I been thinking, I would have cast aside my gown before trying to run, but it was too late for that now. I stretched my arm out, ready to grasp the first tree to help steady myself, but my fingers hadn’t even closed around it before there was a tug on the back of my skirt. Lillian had latched onto my gown, yanking me backward. I tried to pull away, but the fabric was so heavy with water that I lost my balance, screamed, and tumbled backward, my back and head hitting the rocky ground.
Within an instant Lillian was on top of me, her drooling jowls just inches from my face. Her sharp claws dug into my ribs and stomach, surely drawing blood. I reached up, trying to shove her off, but she was so heavy that all that I managed to do was keep her from biting my neck. Her back claws were pressing on my thighs, and there was no way for me to do anything other than fend her off with my hands.
I reached back and with as much leverage as I could get, punched her in the nose. With another whine she stumbled back and I rolled onto my side. I grasped the first thing I could, a thick branch, and tried to climb to my feet. My punch hadn’t kept Lillian down for long, and as I tried to stand she launched herself at me, knocking me to the ground once more. Using the branch, I hit her over the head, but it was almost ineffective. I reared back again, jamming it toward her mouth. She whined, falling back, and I was finally able to climb to my feet. I took the opportunity to run once again, but I was no match for her speed. She nipped at my ankles, and I turned, brandishing the tree branch.
The Wolf's Choice (The Wolf's Peak Saga Book 4) Page 21
