Anchor

by Jorrie Spencer

  Mala frowned.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She blinked a few times, trying to make herself more awake for this conversation, he guessed. “I’ve been better.”

  “You heard we found her, the woman in your dreams? I want to thank you for that. A lot of us want to thank you for what you’ve accomplished this week.”

  Mala nodded, her expression lightening as if pleased. “How is Sally?”

  Angus shrugged. “Physically not too bad. I can’t tell about the rest of it. She’s had a rough time.”

  Looking away, Mala moved to the side of the bed. He could tell she wanted him to leave, but she wore flannel pajamas, so he didn’t think modesty was a huge concern. She scrubbed her face and spoke straight ahead. “I’ll be down soon.”

  He didn’t like the way her body seemed so fragile, a slight tremor there. “Can you stand?”

  She jerked her gaze to him, her expression turning indignant. “Of course I can.” To prove it, she pushed to her feet and stumbled. He was beside her immediately, taking an arm to steady her.

  “Is it always like this?” he asked in a low voice. “After the real-world dreaming?”

  For a moment, she stayed stiff in his grasp, before she slumped against him. He brought an arm around her shoulders, ready to catch her.

  “I’m not going to fall this time.” She turned her face towards him, muffling her voice. “I’m just so tired afterwards. I usually take a week off work from exhaustion following a nightmare. And then I get fired.”

  “No one’s firing you here.” It was odd, her leaning against him and yet she wouldn’t actually embrace him. He pushed hair off her face. “Mala? I’m worried you’re going to collapse.”

  “No.” She stepped away, stronger now. “I can navigate the bathroom all on my own, I promise. But maybe you can bring me up a sandwich or something. Whatever Eden has.”

  “You bet.” He watched her enter the small bathroom attached to the room. She expected him to leave right away, but he waited a few minutes, fearing she might faint in there. When she didn’t, he exited the room to fetch some food for her. He also phoned the town’s doctor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  That the emotion she felt most keenly was embarrassment annoyed Mala. It was because of the dreaming. She needed to be alone, when her nerves were so easily frayed, not staying with strangers. She understood what she’d done was significant and life changing for herself and others—to actively search out someone in her dreams. But to process it in Wolf Town, well, it was something she shied away from.

  Go through the motions now and figure out what it means later, she told herself.

  Normally she spent a week on her own recovering, going easy on herself, sleeping and eating and watching TV. This was proving more difficult to accomplish in Eden’s B and B, especially with Angus popping in to wake her up. She’d almost fallen down in front of him again, when twice in a lifetime was more than enough.

  She shook her head. Don’t focus on the embarrassment. Which was easier said than done outside the solitude of her Toronto apartment. Here she had to talk to people, including Angus, and that was both wonderful and awful. He unsettled her and settled her at the same time, and she didn’t know how that was even possible.

  Upon waking, she’d expected Aileen to be around and had been shocked to have Angus walk into her room. Yet when he’d taken her arm, a kind of relief had flowed through her, as if she’d been waiting for him to do just that. She hoped he hadn’t minded her leaning against him. He didn’t seem to.

  She splashed her face and took her time in the bathroom, partly because she wasn’t at her most coordinated, being sleep-groggy and wiped out, and partly because she hoped Angus would be gone by the time she exited the washroom.

  The room was empty, but five minutes later he returned with a smorgasbord, and Eden in tow. Eden marched over to put a hand on Mala’s forehead like she had a fever.

  “I’m not sick,” Mala protested.

  “You need to eat.”

  “I will.” At Mala’s assurance, Eden simply glared at Angus, as though everything in the world was his fault. Mala could have sworn that when Angus was away, Eden had attributed everything good in the world to him. Perhaps that’s what came of being all-powerful in this small community.

  “You need to figure out a few things.” Eden wagged her finger at the alpha and sailed out of the room before Mala understood what she meant by that admonishment.

  “I always do,” Angus half-murmured, though Eden wouldn’t hear him. Then he was placing the tray in front of Mala. To her relief, she was hungry. Sometimes after the dreams, the nausea induced by what she’d witnessed made it hard to eat, and not eating slowed her recovery.

  But today the dream wolf was safe—and Sally was not even a dream. That knowledge churned her stomach, but not enough to kill her appetite.

  Before Mala was a quarter done with her food, a knock came at the door. She looked to Angus who appeared unsurprised.

  “Keep eating. I’ll be back.” He moved out of the room, leaving the door ajar. She heard soft, deep voices.

  Mentally she shrugged, figuring Angus had all kinds of important things to do and people to see. At least someone didn’t want to see her. However, the minute she finished eating, laying down her fork, Angus poked his head back in. Which had her wondering how good his hearing was. Alarmingly good?

  “Mala? I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

  She frowned. She was in her pajamas and felt like crap. Did he have to insist on this? Hadn’t she met enough denizens of Wolf Town?

  He took her non-answer for compliance and a man followed Angus in. His expression, a sympathetic quirk of his lips implying he understood how she felt about the situation, disarmed her. She hoped he would soon leave. But instead, Angus said, “Teo, this is Mala, the woman who has helped save two of our own.”

  Our own. Mala imagined what it would be like to be referred to as that after a matter of days. So welcoming on such short notice. Well, she wasn’t a wolf, was she? God knows what she was. She didn’t, and neither did anyone else.

  “And Mala…” Angus kept his eyes on hers, clearly trying to read her expression, “…this is Teo, Wolf Town’s doctor.”

  No. Her body stiffened up at the thought of seeing a doctor. Angus had no right. She forced herself to keep her words steady, reasonable, to not get overemotional and easy to dismiss. “I don’t need a doctor, thank you very much.”

  To his credit, Angus didn’t slide his gaze over to Teo but remained focused on her. “You’ve done a lot for us, Mala, and we want to make sure you’re all right.”

  “I am all right,” she said.

  “I want to take your blood pressure and pulse,” Teo put in calmly. Like Angus, he had a nice voice, though it sounded more professional than friendly the way Angus’s did. He didn’t crowd her but waited for her permission.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted.

  “Mala.” The pleading note in Angus’s voice surprised her. “I asked you for a huge favor when you went looking for Sally. I want to make sure it did you no harm.”

  “It didn’t. I promise you. I always feel exhausted after dreaming, that’s all.” This reaction of hers was familiar, for better and worse, but Angus didn’t look convinced.

  “Not a full physical,” Teo assured her. “Just a cuff around your upper arm.”

  She could keep arguing, she could sit and say nothing, but both men seemed so…sincere. Plus, and this was key, they were waiting for her assent. She sighed.

  “All right,” she said rather gracelessly. Her tendency to wear overlarge pajamas meant loose sleeves, and she rolled one up so he could fit the black armband around her. Next she submitted to his careful fingers on her wrist as he counted her pulse, then his stethoscope on her chest and back, and finally his request that he check her throat for some infection or another. At least he didn’t insist he take her temperature.

  By the end she was rather c
ross but not sullen enough to point out this had been more than a cuff around her arm. Admittedly she felt a lot less shaky than when she’d first woken up.

  It occurred to her that it might be healthier to be distracted by people after her dream rather than caught up in her own thoughts that became a nightmarish merry-go-round, circling back to the terror she’d just emerged from. Well, it hadn’t been a terror, it was true, but Sally had felt so alone, so despairing, and those feelings lingered within.

  “Mala?”

  She focused. She supposed she’d been drifting, because the twin concern on the two men’s faces was a little oppressive. She tried on a smile.

  Teo’s dark eyes held her gaze as he delivered his verdict. “Everything’s within the normal range, though your blood pressure is on the high side and I’d like to check that again. Do you know what’s normal for you?”

  “Usually it’s low,” she admitted. “I don’t remember exactly but less than the standard 120 over 80.”

  “You’re 130 over 92. I’ll take your blood pressure in a couple of days and compare, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this dreaming ability of yours is a stressor.”

  She tried not to snort out loud in laughter.

  Teo smiled, and his rather stolid if sympathetic expression transformed into something very attractive, approachable. “You wouldn’t be surprised either, right?”

  “No,” she muttered. “I sometimes get headaches.”

  “Ah.”

  She liked him. She liked Angus, but she needed to set them straight, given that Teo believed she’d be here two days from now for more doctor visits. “I can’t stay any longer. I have to return home and look for a job.”

  There, that sounded reasonable. She hadn’t made it sound like she was anxious to retreat into her hidey-hole.

  Still she added, “My money’s running out, you see.”

  For the first time, the men did look at each other, not so much to talk over her, she felt, but to avoid her gaze. Then Angus stared directly at her, apology in his face.

  “That’s not a good idea, Mala.”

  She cleared her throat. “It’s not up to you though, is it?”

  Teo lifted one eyebrow in a way that suggested Angus needed to deal with this, not him. “If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded at Mala. “It was very nice to meet you, and I appreciate what you’ve done for us. You’ve gone above and beyond.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he slipped out of the room before she could say anything.

  “I’ll offer you a job,” Angus said abruptly.

  She looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t know my work. How can you offer me a job?”

  His blue eyes gleamed. “Very easily. There’s work to be had here.”

  She rose from her bed, because she didn’t like him gazing down at her from quite such a great height.

  “You belong with us, Mala.”

  Hadn’t she been envious of Caleb and Sally being welcomed so wholeheartedly? And he was offering the same thing to her. But she wasn’t a wolf and never would be. She didn’t trust the offer. She’d been in families before where it became clear she didn’t belong. “Do I?”

  He nodded. “I don’t understand what you can do, what you can achieve, but it’s clear you have a connection to wolves.”

  “Achieve?”

  He was talking in a way that she found incredibly odd—as if she was useful. When her dreams had always been debilitating, always took away and offered her nothing in return.

  Angus reached out an arm and drew her to him. She didn’t resist. She found it impossible to resist. But she couldn’t relax either, and he must have found it strange, holding her as she stood stiffly within his arms.

  “Mala,” he whispered across her ear. He said her name a lot and for some reason she loved to hear it. Yet she found herself shaking her head. “I want to protect you.”

  Her laugh was muffled by him, by his broad chest, and she felt herself snuggling in there. That same relief as earlier flowed through her. She’d been an affectionate child, her mother had always told her that, but during the estrangement with her parents she’d withdrawn from shows of physical affection, and since then she sometimes craved it.

  That’s what was going on here. Angus was a physical guy. The thing that puzzled her was the fact she’d developed an aversion to touch over the years. Where had that gone?

  He was rubbing a circle on her back and she had to stop herself from sighing in reaction. Was this some type of werewolf magic?

  His words filtered back to her: I want to protect you.

  She picked up the thread of that conversation. “Who or what do you want to protect me against?”

  His chest rose and fell against her as he took in a breath and delivered the answer: “Caleb’s father.”

  “But he only caught my first name.” There were plenty of Malas, at least in the city. “In the dream,” she added, in case that wasn’t clear.

  The hazy contented feeling of being held vanished as Angus’s hands clamped down on her arms, and he jerked her away so he could look into her eyes, his alarm clear.

  “What?” His face had turned stone cold and she didn’t like it. She wanted to retreat, but he didn’t release her. “He caught your name? How?”

  “Please let go of me.”

  He did so, though not her gaze, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away. “Mala, please tell me how Davies knows your name.”

  She rubbed a hand across her eyes to break their eye contact. “He heard me, I mean he felt me inside him, a presence, and when I heard you saying my name, he heard it too. It’s too easy to communicate when I’m inside someone. It’s as if our thoughts are shared.” She glanced at him, wondering what he made of that oddness. “I didn’t mean for John Davies to get that information…”

  His expression loosened from that severe flat look to one of guilt.

  “Jesus Christ.” He closed his eyes and pivoted away from her. Then he turned back, touched her forehead so lightly with his blunt, square finger that she shivered. “Mala.”

  There was a kind of despair when he said her name and she didn’t understand it.

  “I’ve put you in danger. Do you understand? This town talks among each other. I do not rule with an iron fist or any such thing. Everyone knows about you. It will not be hard for Davies to send someone here to find you. And if you go back home, it will not be hard for him to find you there.”

  She stared back at him, dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe this made sense. Because, despite the proof of what she could do, the dreams still seemed to be something that was all in her head. Her dreams had always been her own stupid problem.

  “You need to stay with me,” said Angus grimly.

  She shouldn’t like the sound of that so much. Besides… “He can find me more easily here than in Toronto.”

  “True,” Angus agreed. “But here, Davies would have to go through me and the rest of the town first.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Angus took over Eden’s B and B, small as it was. One room for Aileen, one for himself, and Mala’s sandwiched between them. He would have preferred that Mala move into his house, but with Jancis, Caleb and Sally there, it was too crowded.

  He needed a bigger house, but that was a project for later.

  He’d persuaded Mala to remain in Wolf Town for a temporary stay. It wasn’t, perhaps, his finest hour, working on her fear like that. But he wasn’t making up stories. Davies was dangerous and, with Angus’s help, knew Mala’s name and had some idea of what she could accomplish.

  Angus now had three people under his protection who were threatened by Caleb’s father. While Angus didn’t relish taking another life, he was preparing himself to do just that. There was no other recourse when it came to sociopathic werewolves, and Davies had proved himself to be one.

  Caleb cleared his throat, and Angus left his thoughts alone to focus on the boy who was lingering in the threshold of the kitchen. It bothere
d Angus that Caleb felt he needed permission to enter the kitchen when Angus was in it, and it made Angus wonder how welcoming some of his mother’s friends and acquaintances had been.

  “Looking for something to eat?” Angus asked. “We’ll be disappointed if you’re not eating as much as you want whenever you want. It’s considered bad form in Wolf Town.”

  Caleb’s slight frown indicated he didn’t quite know how to respond, but he dug into the fridge, which was the main thing. Meanwhile Angus finished making the coffee.

  As Caleb chomped down on his hastily made sandwich, he asked, “Are you going away again soon?”

  Angus poured his coffee. “I’m staying here, where I have people to look after, including you.”

  “I don’t need to be looked after.”

  Jancis strolled into the kitchen. “Doesn’t matter, Caleb. That’s Dad’s only way to function, to look after people. He doesn’t know how to exist otherwise.”

  “Thanks, Jancis. I think,” Angus said dryly, though she had saved the conversation. Caleb didn’t need to be told things quite so baldly as Angus just had. His ward was teen boy enough to need his independence.

  “If it wasn’t for my dad, I’d be fine,” Caleb insisted.

  “And so would Sally,” said Jancis. “But you’re not fine because he’s not letting it be fine. So we’ll all deal with it. You don’t have to take this personally, you know. It’s clear he’d be after someone, if it wasn’t you, and he needs to be stopped.”

  “Mala stopped him,” Caleb said.

  “Yes, and we’re glad for it. Very glad.” Angus set his cup on the counter, careful not to let anger get the better of him. “But it’s not something we can count on.”

  Caleb met his gaze, brown eyes dark and deep. “I want to kill him.”

  That reaction didn’t surprise Angus, but he would not put such a burden on Caleb’s young shoulders. No one should have to kill their father. And no one under Angus’s watch was going to.

  Once the house was quieter, Caleb at school and Jancis at work, Sally made her way into the kitchen. She was a slight woman, if tall, small-boned and too thin. Not surprising for a werewolf on the run. But she compared poorly to someone like Aileen who was wiry and strong. Angus hoped that Sally could regain some of her health here.