by Skye Jones
He came and sat on the bed, slumped, all the fight seemingly gone from him. “Don’t take the tincture. I don’t want you to forget.”
“I don’t want to take it, but I need to go home. They say it’s the only way.”
“Take the one for the burning, but leave the other. When you are healthy enough, I will take you back home, but with your memories intact. You swear not to say anything about us?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t.”
“Then don’t take the one to wipe your memory.”
My heart beat fast. If I didn’t take the second liquid, I’d remember him. It meant a chance to come back, once I’d sorted things at home. It also gave me the opportunity to process the attack properly. This changed everything.
The door opened and Marissa came back in. “Time, my dear, to take your medicine.” She smiled.
I tipped back the first drink, the one for the burning, but left the second untouched.
“Now the second one.” Marissa pushed the small glass toward me.
I looked at Louis and she followed my gaze. “Oh, my. It seems we are going to have some trouble.”
She went to a phone on the wall and dialed three numbers. “Can you send Adam and Jake to the medical center, please? Boyd, too.”
Louis slammed his hand down on the bedside table. “You’re bringing Boyd here? To do what? Why bring the other pack enforcer? You’re going to try to make her take the tincture?”
Marissa gave Louis a sad smile. “She’s not the problem. You are.”
“I’ll take it.” I didn’t want Louis hurt because of me.
“No!” Louis shouted.
He swiped the glass off the table and it rolled onto the floor, not breaking but spilling its contents in a deep red stain.
Marissa sighed. “I’ll simply make up another. It’s the rules. You know this. She can stay with you, but she chooses not to. I know it hurts to think of her forgetting you, but you can’t break pack law.”
The door opened and Adam walked in, Jake at his side, and a huge male bringing up the rear. He possessed a friendly enough face, but his heft, and the way he eyed Louis, scared me.
“It’s not all about me.” Louis ground out his words, as if forcing them from his throat. “She’s been attacked. It will mess with her mind to wipe her memory of the event. She’ll learn about it through the police but have no recall. She’ll imagine much worse things than actually happened. I offer my life as a sacrifice if she betrays us.”
“Very heroic.” Adam placed a hand on Louis’s shoulder. “But if she betrays us, it means so much more, as you are aware, than the safety of just this pack. There are others. What about the agreement? What about the warriors?”
Warriors? I had no clue what the hell Adam was talking about.
“I don’t want her memory wiped, and the rules can be changed. They didn’t use to be this way.”
“Maybe not, but we have an agreement now. And I’m sorry, but she’s traumatized, which means she’s even more of a risk. Who knows what she might do if she’s struggling with trauma? I apologize. This is my decree.” Adam hitched his jaw higher.
“Do you want to go, Isobel?” Jake asked.
I nodded, tears blinding my vision. I didn’t, but I couldn’t stay, not like this. And I didn’t want Louis hurt by these men.
“Then you must take the memory tincture,” Adam said.
“Here, child.” Marissa thrust another glass at me. “Swallow it in one go.”
“No!”
Louis lunged forward, but Boyd grabbed him by one arm, Jake by the other, and they started to pull him back.
“Don’t go against your alpha, Louis. Please. You can’t challenge Adam’s ruling.” Boyd held him firmly, but his words were quiet, caring.
Louis turned on them, somehow managing to twist out of their grip, growling and snarling. His eyes seemed to become even greener in his face, and I saw Jake tense.
Boyd’s eyes began to change color, the brown leaking away and a golden amber taking its place. A low rumble resonated from his huge chest.
I didn’t know what any of it meant, but it didn’t look good. They were two large males squaring up for a fight. Boyd, reluctantly perhaps, but if Louis went for him, then I had no doubt he’d protect himself. Someone might get badly hurt. That someone could be Louis. I couldn’t bear that.
“Louis, stop it! Please, if you have any feelings for me, stop it.”
“Friend, listen to your woman. She speaks to you—listen and calm down. We can discuss this, okay? But you need to calm down.” Boyd tried to get through to Louis, his tone pleading.
Louis didn’t calm down. Instead, he continued to struggle, and Boyd’s face grew hard.
I panicked. Stuck, not sure what to do, I told the most horrible lie I’d ever uttered, forcing each nasty word from my mouth. “I don’t want to remember. Not the attack and not you. Not this place. None of it. I want my normality back, not to be plagued by memories of freaky wolf people.”
Louis froze in his struggles. He turned his head to me, lips set in a thin line, and I wanted to take it all back. I couldn’t, though. I’d said it for him, to stop him being harmed or doing something he’d regret to his fellow pack members.
“As you wish.” He regarded me coldly, and then turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. The door slammed against the wall behind him and I sobbed.
“Gods, what a mess.” Adam ran a hand over his face, and he looked stricken, nowhere near as high-handed as he’d been a moment ago.
“Jesus, Dad.” Jake shot an angry look at his father. “This didn’t have to go this way. I’ll go and look after him,” he muttered and walked out of the room.
“I’m coming with.” Boyd followed Jake out of the door and paused as he crossed the threshold. He looked at Adam and sighed. “You’re my alpha, I defer to you in all things, but this here in this room wasn’t good. I hated being asked to do this.”
In the silence the men left behind, I avoided Adam’s gaze, deciding I kind of hated him.
With a shaking hand, I reached for the glass and drank, feeling boxed into a corner and left with no choice. I only hoped that when Louis read my letter, he’d understand I did want to see him again and he would come find me.
Chapter Nine
The wolf paused and cocked his head. He heard something rustling in the undergrowth. A small deer stalked out of the woods right in front of him. The wolf wanted to give chase, but Louis held back. He didn’t have it in him somehow.
These days, he didn’t really want to do much of anything anymore.
He knew his wolf suffered being trapped with him in this body they shared. Two symbiotic entities, supposedly, but Louis ignored his wolf’s needs and so they were in discord. They both agreed on one thing, though. They missed Izzy.
Louis wanted to curl up and let the world pass them by until this ache lessened. He had no energy for anything, and he didn’t see the point. So he did his job every day, protected the pack as he always swore he would, but other than that, he did…nothing. Nothing except for wander through the woods in wolf form, repeatedly visiting the area where he’d first happened across Izzy. Some days he fancied he caught the memory of her scent, but he knew that was a crock.
He padded out into the open and let the deer see him. It startled and at once kicked up its heels and ran away. Louis let it and put his nose to the ground, scenting the area.
Another wolf shot by him and he recognized Jake, chasing after the deer he’d just let go. Jake turned and gave a couple of yips, inviting Louis to join him, but Louis shook his head and walked away in the opposite direction. Jake gave a low, mournful howl and then crashed through the forest, hardly being quiet about the pursuit.
Louis didn’t want to spend time with Jake at the moment. He felt betrayed by the pack leaders. He’d given his life to them and for what? For them to turn on him when he really needed them. They could have decided to let Izzy keep her memories.
Drew had
come to see him and explained that Brooke was furious with the way things had gone down. She’d given Drew such an earful about it. He’d talked with his father about the strict rules, and Adam had indicated he might be open to changing how they dealt with empathines in future. He’d also admitted that Louis and Izzy had a strong bond, one that superseded the rules about empathines always being with the alphas of a pack. Great! Fat lot of good that did him and Izzy now.
But then, what did it matter in the end? He remembered her words, the way she’d rejected him. She didn’t want him and it tore him apart. He wished he’d never met her. She’d come into his gray world and brightened it, colored it in. When she’d left, it hadn’t turned gray again. No, it had turned black and empty. Like the days after his sister died, only worse, because now Izzy’s departure piled one more loss onto his shoulders.
He slunk back toward the village, head low and tail down. Fuck, he hated being this way, but he didn’t know how to pull out of it. If he carried on like this much longer, though, his wolf would suffer.
He reached the gates and resolved that tomorrow he’d end this moping about shit. Tomorrow, he’d go out and hunt. He’d start to live again, even if it hurt like hell, and he’d let his wolf out to do what it did best.
*
“I don’t know, Dad.” I sighed into the receiver.
My father had asked me to move back home with him. Not wanting to witness my father killing himself with shocking amounts of codeine and booze meant I’d so far declined.
I’d been back in my cruddy flat nearly four weeks, and it didn’t get any easier.
“Listen. I need to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.” I hung up without waiting to hear his response. I didn’t need him guilt-tripping me anymore about going to live with him. I also didn’t want to face more questions about my mental and emotional state.
I had no idea what happened to me on our trip. One moment, I’d been camping with friends. The next, nothing, nada, a big fat blank. All I knew, all my knowledge, came from police reports. They’d found a crime scene, and it soon became apparent I’d been attacked. Further investigation into Gregg turned up a string of crimes, including battery against his own mother, attempted rape, sexual assault, and grievous bodily harm.
The police figured I’d fought back, gotten free somehow. But the blow to my head meant I’d suffered a concussion and traumatic brain injury. An old man who lived in the woods, isolated and alone, had found me. Apparently, I’d babbled about the attack before passing out and waking up with my memory gone. From his statements and the medical examinations, the police concluded I’d been one lucky girl and gotten away before Gregg raped me—or worse.
My memory might return, or it might not. The authorities figured Gregg must be long gone by now. An alert went out for his arrest, but the police didn’t think I remained in any danger. Gregg didn’t seem to stalk his victims or go back for more. They tagged him as an opportunistic attacker. Cold comfort, but there you go.
I suffered from daily headaches and an awful nagging sense of unease and anxiety. I’d used all the tools in my psychologist’s tool kit to try to help myself, but so far, they hadn’t done much good. If I continued down this path, I knew I’d need some pharmacological help eventually.
Work began to get me down, too. New management meant the pressure to sell and hit targets became immense. In my humble opinion, either people wanted to buy the clothes we stocked or they didn’t. No amount of pushy sales tactics changed minds. Tomorrow, I had an eight-hour shift to get through, but today lay ahead, all mine to do with as I pleased. Trouble was, I had no clue what to do with myself these days.
I sighed again and moved around on my bed. My body ached with a bone-deep weariness I hadn’t experienced before the attack. Day in and day out, I felt so damn tired. Not sleeping properly didn’t help. When I did sleep, strange dreams came to me, vivid and real. Over and over again, I dreamed about the same man. A tall, dark-haired guy with killer eyes and a jagged scar down his neck. An elemental air of danger crackled around him, but somehow I always understood he’d never harm me. Each dream ended the same way, with him leaving me in a clearing in the woods, and me crying my eyes out, trying to follow him and failing.
Not knowing what to do, I reached inside my bedside drawer and took out my iPad. Idly, I scanned the headlines. War, famine, general mayhem. My mood didn’t need depressing further, so I switched to looking at celebrity gossip. As I browsed, I came across a story about some hotshot model who planned to marry her guy at Skibo Castle. This made me think of the Highlands and the holiday gone wrong, which made me think of those repeated dreams of my mystery fella. Fingers suddenly itching with a strange urge, I typed in the name of the area we’d been staying. Only reachable by foot or off-roaders, it counted as one of the last true wildernesses in Europe.
I scanned the search results and clicked on one or two links. There were travel guides to the area, a few scholarly articles on the flora and fauna, and a number of blog posts. I clicked on the first two and skimmed them. When I clicked on the third, unsure of what drove me to keep looking, my heart stalled. The blogger discussed an eco-village they’d come across. They’d been surprised as heck to find a community out there. After all, the walk from the main road to the nearest coastal settlement took three days, with little in between other than the odd barn to sleep in and a few isolated farms and houses. The coastal village used the sea to bring supplies and visitors. This settlement, though, seemed to have no way in or out, other than on foot. The blogger also talked about the frosty reception they’d received at length.
The village was called Mac-Tire Collie. I looked it up and found it loosely translated to mean something along the lines of woods of dogs, or wolf woods. I shivered and carried on reading.
Creepy sensations skittered over me as I read their description of the wooden houses and the not terribly friendly welcome they’d received before being guided back onto the coastal track. I racked my brain for any cast-iron memory of the place, but turned nothing up… And yet, I felt as if I knew it intimately. I yawned and exhaustion crept over me. A stealthy opponent always lying in wait these days for me to drop my guard. A nap wouldn’t hurt. The soft pillow cradled my head, and I closed my eyes.
I jolted upright and tried to catch my breath. Once more, I’d dreamed about my mystery man, but this time, we weren’t in the woods but in a beautiful, wooden house. We didn’t stand and stare at one another but touched and kissed and more. My skin tingled at the sense memory of him touching me. This guy didn’t feel like a figment of my imagination. He seemed so real. Perhaps he’d helped me after the attack. I needed to find out, and the only way to do so was to go back to the wilderness and find the eco-compound. Something told me the place and the man shared a deep connection.
I thought about my bike. Unridden for so long, my baby presented the perfect way to get back into the wilds without having to hike for miles. I’d probably be breaking any number of laws taking her into such a pristine environment, but I couldn’t face hiking it alone, and I didn’t want any company. The bike meant I’d be able to get in and out in a day.
The rest of the day passed in a blur as I consulted maps and made plans. I had six whole days of work ahead of me before my trip. But then I had, as luck would have it, three days off in a row. I packed my rucksack with a change of clothes and some food and drink, along with a bivouac I’d bought ages ago from an army surplus store. Better to be safe than sorry. I hoped to be there and back in a day, because the thought of spending a night terrified me. In case I got lost, though, it made sense to be prepared.
A week later, and I sighed in frustration as I turned my bike around at the end of another dead-end run toward where I thought the village lay. I’d struck out on four occasions, and the time to head home grew near. The daylight waned, and I did not want to be here come nightfall. Memories of the trip kept flashing into my mind, along with images and sentences from the crime report the police had shown me. They�
�d said Gregg matched the profile of an opportunistic attacker and would be long gone, but what if he’d remained in this area? The thought made my skin crawl. The bike idled while I pondered my next move.
Voices to my right startled me, and I turned to see three men approaching through the woods. They saw me and stopped in their tracks, faces tense. Oh, great. I seemed about to get a rollicking for riding my bike out here. At least if they were from the village, I had a chance to persuade them to let me come and look around. Maybe? If they didn’t take total offense to my polluting ways. Crap. Perhaps the bike hadn’t been such a stellar idea after all.
One of the men, a stupidly handsome creature, walked toward me. I flexed my hands on the bike’s handles, in case I needed to make a quick getaway. As he neared, his expression changed. His frown lifted, and a radiant smile spread across his face.
“Izzy?” He stared at me. “How the fuck? I mean, what are you doing here?”
“How do you know my name?”
“She doesn’t remember.” The second guy possessed the same insane good looks, and he addressed the first without looking at me. “Way to go using her name, idiot.”
“Excuse me if her turning up here, a mile from the village, didn’t make me think she’d remembered somehow.”
“You’re from the eco-village?” I interrupted them.
“Yes,” the second one said, with some hesitation.
“I need you to take me there.”
“No can do, sweet cheeks.” The third guy came into view. I gasped. The guy from my dreams.
Heat flooded my face as my body reacted in a none too ladylike manner. My core throbbed and my panties dampened. Not as classically handsome as the other two, he possessed a charismatic power that made him stand out. Broad, tall, with a strong jaw and hard features, he captured all my attention.
“You,” I whispered.
“You know him?” the second man asked.
“It is irrelevant whether she does or not, Drew,” answered my hot, dream dude. “Let’s get back.”
