They lie together, neither wanting to be the one that pulls away, that breaks the moment. It’s too perfect but too fragile at the same time and, inevitably, it has to end. The rap on the door makes Sofie jump but Ashton just tightens his hold on her.
“Wheels up in 5! I’ll be outside.” The sound of Lindsey’s booted feet retreating fills the silence between them.
“I can’t believe it’s time already.” Sofie shakes her head, like it can’t be true. Ashton doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t let go of her either. “I guess it was never going to be enough time. I should get ready, Lindsey’s waiting.” She slips out of Ashton’s grasp, knowing that if she stays in his arms any longer, there’s no way that she’s ever going to be able to leave.
She dresses quickly, keeping her back to him as she does, not feeling strong enough to look at him yet. She hears him get up from the bed and when she finally turns around he’s half-dressed, his jeans pulled on, his hair looking haphazard and sexily rumpled. But that’s not what stops her in her tracks, it’s the expression of pain on his face. She rushes to him, and he crushes her to his chest, covering her face with kisses, holding on to her so tightly she can barely breathe.
“Why does this feel like goodbye?” Sofie asks looking up at him and wishing that he would tell her to stay.
“It’s only goodbye for now.” Ashton’s voice is low, but the emotion in it is clear, filling him up.
“Promise me that you won’t do anything stupid.” She looks up at him, narrowing her eyes.
“Well, that I can’t promise!” Ashton laughs, but it’s tinged with sadness, with longing.
“I’m serious!” she punches him playfully on the arm. “No matter what Luke is playing at, don’t rise to it. Don’t let him get to you. You’ve said yourself that standing up to him and all the people behind him would be suicide. You don’t have anything to prove!”
Ashton’s expression turns serious. “I’m the Alpha that has lost everything, our homeland, our safety, our secret. It’s all gone, on my watch. I can just hear the sound of my father’s voice ringing in my ears. I can taste his disappointment.” Ashton shakes his head, trying to dispel the sinking feeling he’s getting. “I have everything to prove.”
“None of this was your fault, Ash. You couldn’t have stopped what happened any more than you can hold back the tide. Your father would have understood that.” Sofie looks up at him anxiously, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Now, promise me, don’t be a hero, practice what you’ve been preaching to the rest of the pack.”
Ashton smiles at her, running his fingers up and down her back, trying to comfort her. “You don’t have to worry about that, running girl, I’m no hero.”
“Ashton -,” Sofie wants to tell him that he’s her hero and that she doesn’t care how corny it sounds, because it’s true. But he doesn’t give her a chance to say the words.
“Don’t forget what I said.” He fingers the rock hanging around her neck. “You never take this off, no matter what happens, this stays on. It’s a long way from here to where you’re going and you’re not taking any chances.” The sternness in his voice makes her wonder what he knows that she doesn’t.
“I promise,” she nods quickly. “I promise not to take it off.” She closes her fingers around the rock and Ashton covers her hand with his as he leans his head against hers. “I wish I didn’t have to go.” Her voice feels like it’s being squeezed out of her around the lump in her throat.
Ashton seems about to say something, but instead he takes her hand and leads her out of the house to where Lindsey is waiting with a small pack and an expression of agitation that’s nothing like her. “You alright?” He gives his friend an appraising look, wondering what’s got her so jittery.
“Fine, just want to get this show on the road.” Lindsey avoids all eye contact with Ashton, as if she knows she won’t be able to keep her thoughts to herself if she does.
“I don’t need to tell you -,” Ashton starts.
“I know the drill, Ash. Keep Sofie safe. If anything happens to her, I shouldn’t bother to come back. Did I leave anything out?” She cocks her head at her Pack Master, who is also her oldest friend.
“Yeah, look after yourself.” Ashton’s pulls Lindsey into a bear hug that catches her off-guard. “If anything happens to you then I’ll kick your ass!” His voice is gruff, but it doesn’t manage to cover the emotion.
“Roger that, chief!” Lindsey gives him a mock-salute, smiling impishly.
Ashton turns serious as he turns to Sofie, reaching out to trace the line of her cheekbone, as he feels the softness of her skin under his fingers. “Take care of yourself, running girl. I’ll see you soon.”
Sofie’s too full of emotion to tell him that he’ll be seeing her sooner than he thinks. She bites her bottom lip, desperately wanting to tell him everything and simultaneously knowing that there’s no way that she can. He leans in and kisses her so softly and tenderly she wants to cry.
“We should go.” Lindsey’s voice breaks the moment and Sofie wonders if she’s finding it as hard to mislead Ashton as she is.
Sofie nods, stepping away from Ashton, needing the physical distance from him to force her legs to move in the opposite direction. She takes one last look at him and turns around, falling into step beside Lindsey and heading to the tree line. She forces herself not to look back, knowing she won’t be strong enough to carry on if she sees him standing there, watching her go.
“We’ll be back soon.” Lindsey gives her arm a squeeze, trying to comfort her.
“I know. I know.” Sofie’s voice has more conviction in it than she feels. She doesn’t add that she doesn’t know what the hell is going to happen once they get back.
They fall into companionable silence as they may their way out of eye-sight and then Lindsey starts to lead them not towards the path that Ashton had pointed her towards, but instead doubling pack, heading up the mountain, to a place that calls to her, like it does to all the weres. It’s the place that is going to give Sofie what she wants, to become a Lycan. She doesn’t dwell on what it might take away from her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They climb for what seems like hours. Sofie keeps pace with Lindsey, despite how tired she is. She waves Lindsey on when she suggests that they stop to rest. She knows that there’s no time for rest, they don’t have the luxury of that. With every minute that goes by, they’re closer to dawn and closer to Luke and his followers finding where the weres are hiding, closer to some of the weres changing their mind about leaving and instead deciding to fight. There’s more dissent within their ranks than ever before. It doesn’t take much imagination to know that things are close to spiralling out of control.
Lindsey keeps an eye on Sofie out of the corner of her eye. She knew that the girl was tough, but this is something else. She’s more than impressed that Sofie can keep up with her. But it’s not just Sofie’s stamina that’s keeping her going, it’s the strength of her conviction, which even seems to be able to fight the intense pain of her headache.
“You okay there, honey?” Lindsey reaches a hand out to steady her friend who is standing perilously close to the edge of the track, facing a life-threatening drop.
Sofie sways a little, bringing her hand up to her head. “Fine, it’s nothing.” She shrugs off Lindsey’s hand, as if she’s embarrassed at needing the support and looking weak.
But Lindsey won’t be put off. “It’s the headaches again, isn’t it?” She plants herself in front of Sofie, hands on her hips. “They’re getting worse.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just go!” Sofie tries to storm past her, but Lindsey’s too fast for her.
“Fine? You can barely stand up straight! We need to turn back.” She starts to march back the way that they’ve come.
“Lindsey, no!” Sofie’s shout echoes along the mountainside. “We’re not going back, not when we’re so close.” She looks at Lindsey, pleadingly. “Please, Lindsey, please I can’t do this without you.”
Lindsey’s shoulders drop at the sound of Sofie’s voice. She already knows what she’s going to do. She growls at her own lack of conviction as she turns around and stomps back towards Sofie.
“Why do I feel like I’m going to live to regret this?” She mumbles under her breath as she continues to lead the way up the mountain. “If it gets any worse, you tell me, alright? Ashton will kill me if I let you fall of the side of the friggin’ mountain!”
Sofie doesn’t say anything, keeping her mind focused on advancing up the treacherous path. But she smiles to herself, as she lets Lindsey lead the way. They’ve been traveling for a good few hours, but the moon is still high in the sky. Sofie looks behind her and sees the canyon laid out before them and beyond that she can see some twinkling lights in the town of Beaumont. There’s a spiral of smoke heading towards the sky and Sofie doesn’t allow herself to wonder if that’s the remnants of Lindsey’s bar still smoking. She knows that it’ll just make her angry that anyone would do that to her friend.
“What’s up?” Lindsey looks over her shoulder, wondering why Sofie has stopped.
“Nothing, just thinking.” Sofie shrugs as she looks out to the horizon, her eyes peering through the thick black of the night. “The next time I see this view, I’ll be different.” The thought sends a thrill through her but the excitement is mixed with trepidation.
“There’s still time to change your mind, you know?” Lindsey’s voice carries over the wind. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes. I do.” If there had been any doubt in Sofie’s mind before, it had been driven out. “This is the right thing to do, Lindsey. I feel it with every fiber of my being.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that,” Lindsey grumbles good-naturedly as they come off the path and she leads Sofie through towards the clearing that draws her in with its power. She doesn’t add that her instincts are buzzing too, telling her that something momentous is about to happen, she’s just not sure if it’s something momentously good or momentously bad. Instead she says, “We’re nearly there.”
A silence falls over them as the importance of what they’re going to do comes to the front of their minds. As Lindsey leads her through to the clearing, Sofie breathes in a gasp of wonder. Even to her, untrained, eyes she can see how beautiful the place is. The grass is lush, a shade of vibrant green that she’s never seen. The tall pine trees around the clearing link together, creating a kind of shelter, as if whoever stands in the centre of the field is being protected, and right now that included Sofie and Lindsey.
There are seven tall stones standing up in the dirt, they tower above Sofie, she guesses they must be over 8 feet high and there are other smaller stones scattered around the floor. They look the same as the one that hangs around Sofie’s neck, the stone that Ashton has told her has special properties, that has saved her from death twice already.
There’s a feeling of peace in the clearing, as if nothing bad could ever happen here and, for the first time in what feels like a good long while, Sofie feels herself relax. Her shoulders loosen, she stands up straighter and she feels an overwhelming urge to smile, so she does. She wonders if this is what Eden must have been like.
“No! No! For the love of -- fuck!” Lindsey’s cry of concern snaps Sofie out of her Zen-like state.
She rushes over to where her friend sits, crouched over to one side of the field. “What? Are you hurt?” But as she gets closer, she sees what has caused Lindsey’s shoulders to sag and her hands to fly to her gaping mouth.
“Oh my God.” She sinks down next to Lindsey who has started to cry silently. The spring, the source of the stream that runs down the mountain and finally into the canyon isn’t the clear blue isn’t full of clear blue water like it should be. It’s black with oil.
Lindsey dips her fingers into the water like she can’t believe what she’s seeing and they come away covered in a slick of crude oil. She turns her tear-stained face to Sofie, looking like a little lost child. “I don’t understand! How...how has this happened? We’re miles away from the Shale site.” She looks back at the water, as if she’s expecting some kind of answer there.
Not for the first time, Sofie curses Luke Calambor in just about every way she can think of. Don’t forget to curse yourself there, Dr.Braun, her brain reminds her, you’re part of the reason for this too. I didn’t do this, she responds to the more uncharitable part of her mind, I study rocks, I don’t destroy entire ecosystems! All I did was find the oil, the rest was out of my hands! Must be nice to be able to abdicate all responsibility like that, her brain pipes up again.
“Oh, shut up!” It’s only when Lindsey looks at her with a concerned expression that Sofie realizes she’s said the last part out loud rather than just in her imagination. “Not you,” she mumbles, pushing herself up to sit on her haunches and sighs deeply, feeling like she’s just been punched in the gut. “Shale’s digging has polluted the water. They must have hit on a channel and opened it up by mistake. The channel would have brought some of the oil through the water table, up to the spring.”
Lindsey looks at her, shocked and appalled and Sofie wishes that she could make it all right. That time machine would really come in handy right about now, she thinks to herself, but without any of the humor that she needed to soften the devastating blow that this discovery has dealt them.
“This, this water is the life-blood of the canyon and the mountain. How long will it take to go back to normal?” Sofie is cradling her oil-stained hand, staring at the marks it’s leaving on her skin.
Sofie turns away from her, wincing at the truth that she is about to tell. “The oil has found its way into the water table, it’s stretching out for miles. It’s hard to say, but it’s not likely the spring will ever go back to normal, not while Shale continue to dig in the canyon at least.”
“But without the water everything will wither and die.” The pain in Lindsey’s voice is like a physical blow to Sofie. She knew that werewolves were tied to the land, that they had a bond with the natural world around them, but this was the first time she’d really seen it.
“Damn that man to Hell! God damn him!” Sofie kicks at the backpack that she had dumped on the floor behind her. Luke has sentenced every living thing in the mountain and the canyon to death and he probably didn’t even care. “If anyone found out about this, he’d be ruined. Drilling for oil is one thing, but destroying an entire ecosystem, that’s cause for criminal negligence.” Sofie’s mind is starting to race and a plan is starting to form. She thinks about the evidence that Finn is starting to gather together, if they could find a way of proving that Luke knew about the contamination he was causing, then they really would have a shot at putting him away.
“Sofie, you know what this means, don’t you?” Lindsey has clearly blanked out her babbling, she’s focused on the more immediate ramifications of what the polluted spring means for them.
“It means I can’t be turned,” Sofie responds dully. She needs to drink the water to start the transformation process. Without it, she can’t become a Lycan, it’s as simple as that. She’s out of options.
Lindsey watches her cautiously, as if she’s expecting Sofie to start freaking out. But, in fact, that’s the farthest thing from her mind. More than anything she feels tired, tired down to her bones. She had been building up to this moment, putting all her eggs in this one basket only to find that her basket had sprung a leak. The disappointment weighs heavily on her, but her exhaustion overpowers every other feeling that she has. She goes to lean against one of the sacred stones pointing to the sky for support, and as soon as the bare skin of her back touches the cool rock, something happens. She can feel the stone hanging around her necklace heat up like a searing hot coal, burning her chest and, before she even has time to cry out, a series of images flash through her mind, like strobe lighting. There’s a blinding pain in her head and she vaguely hears Lindsey’s voice calling out to her as she falls, but she can’t seem to reply and then she bla
cks out.
Sofie dreams, but how can it be a dream when it feels so real, she asks to herself? It feels like the time she had shared Ashton’s memories. But what she was seeing in front of her weren’t her own memories of the past. This was something she didn’t remember ever seeing before.
“Mommy.” She breathes the word, reaching out her hand to touch the woman that she hasn’t seen in years, the woman that was a ghost. It’s only now, seeing her mother like this that Sofie realizes how much she wants to say to her, how many questions she has.
She already knows that her mother can’t hear her, she’s intent on the Moses basket in front of her, the sound of a baby crying from within it. But, instead of reaching inside and picking the baby up, she just sits there, watching it as if it were a creature she didn’t recognise, as if she were at a complete loss as to how to comfort this wailing thing.
Sofie leans over the basket, seeing a baby that looks like any other. There’s no sign of what would make her mother watch the child with such trepidation, with such distaste even. “My Sofie.” Her mother says the words so faintly, Sofie wonders if she’s imagined them. She looks between herself as a wailing baby and her mother who doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in putting her at ease.
“What kind of a mother are you? Aren’t you going to do anything?” Sofie rages at her mother, even though she knows it won’t do any good, she can’t hear her and she can’t change the past. That’s something she really should have learned by now.
She remembers the way that her mother would try her hardest not to spend any more time than was strictly necessary with Sofie. She had a string of nannies from as far back as she could remember. While other girls would go on shopping trips with their mothers and learn how to paint their nails and put on their make up, Sofie was usually to be found sitting alone in the library, a textbook balanced on her knees. Her mother had avoided her, actively avoided her in fact and she’d never understood why.
Torrent (Alpha Love - a Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 4) Page 9
