Caleb kicked his door shut without breaking away and into his room. Suddenly, there was the bed, and I was on my back with Caleb’s big body pinning me down. His mouth trailed fire from my ear to my throat. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. I twisted my fingers into his hair and tugged, making him growl. He nipped my throat and I gasped, hips arching against his. He brought his mouth back to mine, kissing me with hungry desperation.
It was overwhelming. I hadn’t been touched this way in so long—hadn’t felt desire like this for even longer. I felt every single sensation at once—the firm, hot press of his lips and tongue. The scrape of his beard. The weight of his body. The strength of his hands and arms. The rise of his erection, pressed against my belly. Instinctively, I shifted, wrapping my legs around his waist, pressing the needy hot core of myself against the hardness of him. He worked his hips, thrusting that rigid length exactly where I needed it. White-hot pleasure lanced through me, and I tore my mouth from his with a sharp gasp. Caleb sagged against me, panting for breath. The yarn was caught between us, a hopelessly tangled mess.
Still clinging to him with both arms and legs, I lay still for a moment, catching my breath. His room was dim, but something about it seemed strange. Struggling to comprehend through the fog of lust, I looked around. Unlike the awkward L-shape of my room, with the slanted ceilings, Caleb’s room was a perfect rectangle, with normal ceilings. He had a ledge beneath his window like I did, and he’d filled it with books, like I had. A big one at the end caught my eye, Montezuma.
Why did that seem familiar?
“Grace?” Caleb must’ve sensed my confusion. He eased off of me. The yarn stretched between us, tangled around both of our arms, looped around several of the buttons on Caleb’s flannel. I looked down and saw his quilt bunched beneath us. A blue and green pattern.
It hit me like a gong—the dream. His room had looked exactly like this in my dream. Exactly like this.
Caleb searched my face. “Shit,” he swore softly, pushing away from me entirely. He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to untangle the yarn from his shirt.
I sat up, looked around his room again. There was his dresser, shaped exactly how I’d dreamed. And the chair he’d slept in that night, while I’d taken his bed.
“It wasn’t a dream,” I said. We’d kissed, and he’d tried to make me think it’d never happened. The dream that wasn’t a dream replayed in my mind.
His hands all over me, his lips on mine.
“Wait—hang on—you don’t like me.”
Caleb’s unrepentant grin. “Aw, Gracie, come on. You can figure out werewolves, but you can’t figure this out?”
Oh god. I’d been so pathetically obsessed with the kiss that I’d forgotten what had started this all.
He was a fucking werewolf. They all were. That’s how the wolves had come from nowhere that night. That’s how Arthur had suddenly appeared, naked, in the distance. That was why nobody wanted me to know about Caitlin’s “health condition.” It was why Caleb and Jess did that sniffing thing. It was why Natasha was feeding wolves at the kitchen door. And it was why the wolves came into town so often. Because they lived here.
I shifted to look at him. Was I insane? I had to be. And yet… “Why did you make me think I dreamt that?”
Caleb said nothing, searching my face with a pained expression.
“Please, Caleb. I won’t say anything to anybody. Just tell me I’m not crazy.”
He wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t even look at me. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at his hands.
I got to my feet, pulling the yarn off of my arms and tossing it on his bed. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”
I left.
I stood in front of my first class the next day thinking, werewolves. Each and every one of you is a werewolf. Or were they? Linnea had said Caitlin’s “condition” ran in their family. So maybe only some of the locals were werewolves. But even if that were the case, the rest of them obviously knew about it. How else would the whole class have known to react to Caitlin’s episode so immediately?
The fourteen-year-old werewolves stared back at me, clearly wondering what the hell was up. I’d been silent for too long. Jarring back into motion, I cleared my throat. “Okay, so yesterday we left off with…”
Every hour, every class, I wrestled with the same negotiation between reality and logic. Werewolves. I’m teaching werewolves how to identify metaphors. Even when I was speaking to the class, a constant stream of questions was flowing through the back of my mind. How many of them were werewolves? Did they retain wolf-like qualities when in human form? More acute hearing? A craving for raw meat? I’d already seen Caleb, Jess, and Elena smelling the air, and suddenly remembered Connor telling me “You smell like him.” An uncomfortable suspicion crossed my mind—could my students smell Caleb on me? I’d showered this morning, so hopefully his scent was gone.
“Ms. Rossi?” Mia Lance waved her hand around impatiently.
“Huh?” I realized I’d zoned out. “Sorry, I was… What’s your question, Mia?”
By the end of the day, I’d mostly come to terms with it. Maybe some of them were werewolves. Maybe all of them were. But they were still kids. They interacted with books just like anybody else did, they liked good stories just like anybody else.
My last class ended and Daniel Gray—possible werewolf—hung back as the rest of the students filed out. He’d finished the last book I’d loaned him, and set it on my desk.
“What did you think?” I asked, turning in my chair to shelve the book.
“It was good,” Daniel answered with his usual reserve.
“Do you want the next book in the series?”
He shrugged, which I took as a no.
“Are you looking for something different, or something similar?” I asked, scanning the spines on my shelves. I’d figured out that Daniel was more likely to open up—just a little—if I wasn’t looking at him, and if the conversation remained brisk.
“I want something…” He hesitated, and I resisted the urge to turn to face him. “Um… something where the parents are gone.”
I nodded casually. My emotional-landmine radar was pinging, but I kept my focus on the book spines. “The orphan trope is pretty common in young adult fiction, I’ve got quite a few—”
“Not an orphan,” Daniel cut in. “The parents just…aren’t there.”
The radar went crazy. Keeping my tone even, I said, “Well, that narrows it down. Give me a second here.” I pulled a couple books and finally turned to face Daniel. Keeping my focus on the books, my face impassive, I laid them out. “Have you read A Wrinkle in Time?”
“Yeah, a long time ago for school.”
I picked up The Golden Compass. My juniors had been reading it earlier this year, and it was a little slower paced than what Daniel had read so far, but he’d been mowing through books at a breakneck pace, so I decided to give it a try. “This one takes a little while to get going, but once you get into it, it’s amazing. It’s set in a world like our own, but just a little different. Everybody has an animal familiar—” I almost choked on my own words, but managed to keep it together. I cleared my throat. “They have animal familiars. And the main character thinks she’s an orphan, but… well, it’s a good story.”
“Sure.” Daniel took it and slid it into his backpack. “Thanks, Ms. Rossi.”
I watched him walk out. When the sound of his footsteps faded away, I got up and made my way to Margaret’s office. She looked up when I knocked on the door, phone pressed to her ear, and gestured for me to come in. I sank into one of the chairs across from her desk while she wrapped up her call.
“Well, of course,” she said impatiently to whoever was on the other end. “That goes without saying.” She listened for a moment. “Okay. Keep me updated.” She hung up and looked at me. “Gracie. How are you?”
Is Margaret a werewolf, too? I remembered her change of clothes after the shadow attacked me and Natasha, the way sh
e called younger people “pup,” and concluded that she definitely was.
“Uh, I have a question that maybe isn’t my place to ask.”
Margaret folded her hands together, regarding me for a moment over her desk. A heavy weight seemed to settle between us. “I can’t guarantee I’ll answer,” she told me. “But why don’t you ask, anyway.”
She thinks I’m going to ask about werewolves. She must’ve been wondering how much I’d seen the night of the attack, how much I’d figured out. And if Caleb had spoken to her…
“It’s about Daniel Gray.”
Immediately, the heaviness faded. Margaret sat back, her expression softening. “Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know. That’s my question. Daniel’s so much more reserved than the other kids. He has this…guardedness that he’s too young for. He’s been borrowing books, and today he asked me specifically for a book where the parents aren’t dead, but are gone.”
Margaret nodded. She was quiet for a moment, contemplative.
I steeled myself to be shut down with yet another “Valley business” dismissal. But instead, she said, “Daniel’s father left him and his mother about a year ago. Left the Valley, left Alaska. Obviously, that’s hard on a child.”
My stomach twisted. “Okay. That explains some things.”
“Daniel’s having a tough time right now, but he’ll come through it. He has the entire Valley standing behind him. His mother’s a little lost in grief right now, but she’ll recover. The same thing happened to her mother, and Meredith came out the other side, whole and capable.”
“Meredith Kinoyit?” Caleb’s mother? Had Caleb been abandoned by his father?
Margaret’s expression flattened. “Damn me. That wasn’t my story to tell. I trust you’ll keep that knowledge to yourself.”
“Of course I will.”
“I know.” She contemplated me for a moment. “How have you been doing, Grace?”
I shrugged, uncomfortable. “I’m fine. Same as always.”
“After the attack?”
I laughed. Between Caleb and Daniel, I’d almost forgotten about it. “Oh, that. I’m…” Alex's face flashed into my mind again, and I somehow managed not to flinch. “I’m totally fine. No frostbite.”
“No frostbite.”
“Yep.”
Margaret rested her chin on one hand, considering me. “You haven’t asked much about that night.”
Did she want me to ask about werewolves? “Nobody seems to have any answers,” I said, observing her expression carefully.
She betrayed nothing. Another silence stretched between us.
Margaret shifted, leaning back. “Does Longtooth feel like home to you?”
The change of topic caught me by surprise, and I didn’t know how to answer her. I didn’t want to reveal too much. The crushing loneliness hadn’t been quite so crushing lately, and I didn’t want to think about it too much, for fear of reviving it.
“I don’t know if…” I hesitated. Margaret watched patiently. “I don’t know if anywhere has ever felt like home, you know? I’ve moved around a lot.”
“Don’t you have a hometown?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to live there.”
“Even though your family is there?”
I shrugged. “I was only ever close to my grandma, and she died when I was sixteen.” Her wedding ring was the only memento I had of her and it had been stolen by Alex.
“What about your parents?”
I shrugged again.
Margaret continued to watch me.
“They’re not bad parents. They didn’t abuse me or anything. We just…” I trailed off, trying to find the right words. “Some families aren’t close.”
Margaret considered that for a moment. “Grace,” she began gently, “people need family. They don’t have to be your blood relatives, but everybody needs people they can depend on, people who love them.”
I said nothing. My stomach was twisting again. Living in Longtooth, seeing the tightly interwoven community, the strong bonds between friends and family and lovers, made me acutely conscious of how little of that I had in my life.
“People here care about you a lot. If you wanted to make your life here, you’d be welcomed with open arms.” She paused meaningfully. “There are things about the Valley that we don’t talk about with outsiders.”
Werewolves, my mind whispered. I said nothing. Margaret and I regarded each other quietly, caught in a mild stalemate.
I started to rise from my chair. “Okay, well—”
“Did you know,” Margaret said, pulling her reading glasses off to check the lenses, “that when your truck broke down and we realized you were missing, two dozen people went searching for you?”
I cringed into my seat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Caleb was the first one to notice you weren’t back when you should have been.” She picked up the hem of her sweater and rubbed at one lens.
“Caleb?”
“He asked Natasha to call you. When you didn’t answer, he badgered her to call Sheryl Toonikoh, up in Eagle Ridge. Sheryl told her you’d left hours ago. As soon as Caleb heard that, he was out the door.” She switched to clean the other lens.
“Caleb?” I repeated, incredulous. He’d been so pissed at me when he’d found me.
“The rest of us weren’t too far behind—though we did take a few minutes to form a search plan.” She slid her glasses back on and smiled at me. “We care about you, Grace. All of us.”
Chapter Twenty-One
When I got back to The Spruce, Caleb was standing in the dining room, speaking to Arthur. He was still wearing his outdoor gear, and his cheeks were flushed with cold. I stopped when I saw him, overwhelmed by the memory of his heated touch and thrown off-kilter by what Margaret had told me. He’d worried about me. He’d been the one to start searching for me.
As if he could feel my gaze, he suddenly looked up. Like an awkward teenager, I spun away from him and hurried towards the stairs.
I was halfway up when I heard Caleb’s boots pounding behind me.
“Grace, wait up.”
“No.” I didn’t know what to say to him, or even what I wanted from him. I ran up the stairs.
Behind me, Caleb chuckled, and it sounded eerily like a growl. His big body hit the landing a split-second after mine. I yelped and sprinted up the next flight. I felt him at my heels, his fingers teasing the backs of my legs.
“You shouldn’t run from me, Gracie,” he warned me with a growl.
Werewolf.
But I wasn’t scared. Somewhere between the dining room and the second flight of stairs, it had become a game. I skittered around the corner on the final landing—letting out a small scream when his hand closed around my ankle. I kicked free and sprinted down the hallway. I hadn’t taken more than two steps when Caleb tackled me from behind. We went to the floor in a tangle of limbs, but Caleb wrapped his arms around me and rolled so that I landed on top of him.
Panting for breath, I lifted my head to look down at him. “That was unnecessary.”
“Was it?” He grinned at me. It was such a self-satisfied, unrepentant expression. But it also so wholly and unreservedly happy—and directed at me. Lightness like I hadn’t felt in a long time made my chest ache.
I couldn’t hold back any longer. I cupped his smiling, cocksure face between my hands, and kissed him. There was a split-second of fear where I thought he wasn’t going to kiss me back, that he was going to shove me away like he had in the past.
But I worried for nothing. His arms tightened around me, pulling me close, and he kissed me like I was the only thing keeping him alive. I had started this, but he quickly wrested control from me. His mouth was hot and hard against mine. , devouring me with the focused hunger of a predator.
I broke the kiss for a second. “Caleb—”
He kissed my jaw, the tender skin on my neck. I gasped with each explosive bloom of heat beneath my skin.
&nb
sp; “Caleb—ah!—” he bit my collarbone “—not in the hallway!”
Without breaking away from me, Caleb managed to get to his feet and hoist me up in his arms. He kicked his door open, carried me inside, and kicked it shut again. He dropped me on his bed and followed me down, covering my body with his. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling myself harder against him. We were both still wearing our parkas, and it was too much between us. I wriggled against him, frustrated by layers of goose down and gore-tex. He went for my zipper, opening my jacket and peeling it off. Our hands clashed as I tried to do the same for him. Between groping kisses and muttered cursing, we managed to get our coats off.
“I have to tell you something,” I gasped when we broke apart for air.
“Later.” He moved to kiss me again.
“No.” I hooked my heel behind his right knee at the same time as I shoved against his left shoulder. If he’d been expecting it, I doubt I would have budged him. But that’s the fun of a sneak attack. He collapsed with an oof onto his side. I shoved him onto his back and straddled his hips. “Listen to me.”
He gripped my hips and flipped me onto my back. Still cradled between my thighs, he grinned and ground his hips against my heated core.
“Oh!” I arched against him with a ragged gasp.
Caleb looked slightly undone himself, breathing roughly, head bowed.
“Look,” I said breathlessly, “Not to kill the mood but I just need to tell you something—I talked to Margaret about what I saw that night, at the party.”
Caleb groaned. Not a sexy groan. An annoyed one. “Grace—”
“Just listen. I want you to know that you don’t have to tell me anything, okay? I won’t ask about things you can’t talk about. I’m not family. I don’t belong here. I get that.”
Cold Hearted: An Alaskan Werewolf Romance Page 18
