by Amira Rain
Which was about the time I started feeling incredibly guilty about what I’d done. I did behave like a criminal, like you said, and I’m so sorry for that, Tara. I just hope we can continue moving forward despite what I did.”
With a soft heart but a head full of confusion, I reached for one of his hands in the dark. “Of course we can keep moving forward, and I appreciate your apology. But I’m confused. You said you wanted Sam and me, but you didn’t even know me. How did you know you wanted me? I could have gotten here and been a person with bad hygiene and looks and a personality you couldn’t stand.”
“I was pretty sure I loved your looks the moment I saw your picture. And as far as any bad hygiene, I was pretty sure Charlie would have told me about that.”
Now I was miles beyond confused.
“What picture? And who’s Charlie?”
Warren didn’t answer right away. “Charlie’s the man who brought you here. Remember?”
“Oh, you mean Ballpoint Pen Man. Well, that’s what I called him in my mind. But, anyway, what picture are you talking about?”
The second the question was out of my mouth, I remembered the picture that the man apparently named Charlie had taken of me before leaving my apartment the day we’d made our deal. I’d been standing more or less to the front of my dad’s recliner, he’d been passed out, and I was pretty sure I’d had misty eyes and had been lifting a hand to my face to wipe a tear away.
“Never mind. I remember the picture now. Charlie said something about you wanting one just out of curiosity or something, just to see what I looked like.”
“Yes, that was the plan. But then I saw the picture, and something about the look in your eyes, an almost unbearably sad yet strong and determined look somehow, instantly got me right in the heart. I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but your eyes in that picture just did something to me.
I asked Charlie to tell me more about you, and he did, telling me that you had agreed to the surrogacy deal in order to save your father’s life. He didn’t mention anything about you being responsible for caring for your three younger brothers, which might have given me serious pause in what I’d already started thinking about, but he didn’t.
I just knew that you were not only a beautiful woman with these haunting eyes that just mesmerized me, you were also obviously a woman capable of great love and loyalty in order to be doing what you were doing to save you father.
I saw him in the background of the picture, and my heart ached for what he’d put you through and still clearly was. I honestly even became a little mad at him.”
As if he was even still a little mad just at the memory, Warren took a deep breath before continuing. “I formed a plan in my mind, a plan to have you brought here, not making up my mind to actually do it until the day before you had Sam. Having no way of knowing if your dad was the violent kind of alcoholic, I thought I might even be saving you from a terrible situation.
Like I said, I just wasn’t thinking things through. I was being selfish. I wanted both you and our child in my life, and I just couldn’t think of any other way to go about it, doubting that you’d come here if I just simply asked, being that you might have been afraid of getting too close to Sam, and then me cutting you off from her.”
“You were right to think that. I would have never come, thinking that I might get attached to her only to have her ripped away. You were absolutely right.”
“It was still wrong, and criminal, of me to do what I did, and I realize that now. I’m so sorry, Tara, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
Looking at moonlight reflecting in his eyes, I smiled. “You don’t need to. You’ve already made me the happiest woman alive, and I just want to enjoy our happiness together. I love you, Warren.”
“I love you, too… so, so very much, Tara.”
That was actually the first time we’d verbally expressed our love to each other.
Slowly smoothing my hair, Warren just held me close for a little while before releasing me to look at my face again. “There’s something else I want to tell you tonight. I’ve been putting it off because I haven’t wanted to scare you.”
Instantly alarmed, I asked him what it was, and he sighed. “It’s about Sam.”
*
“What is it? What about Sam?”
Suddenly, my heart was pounding in my chest.
“Warren, please tell me.”
He sighed again before responding. “Whenever she starts doing her Magical sparkling out in public, like when you’re at the café, or walking on the sidewalk, I want you to take her inside somewhere immediately from now on.”
Although Sam hadn’t done her “protection shield” since the day we’d seen the Chihuahua, she’d been doing her little fingertip sparkling trick frequently, at least several times a week during the previous month. One week, she’d even done it every day. Or, it had happened to her every day. Until she could talk, Warren and I figured we’d probably never know if she was actively making her sparkles happen just by thinking about them and wanting them to happen, or if they surprised her just like everyone else.
I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t do them in public anymore, though, and I asked him why. “What are you worried about happening?”
With the action just barely visible to me in the moonlight, he frowned deeply before answering me. “We don’t know when or where a Graywolf spy could get into town, and if one ever does, we can’t let them see that Sam is a Magical. If they ever were to find out, I think they’d try to kidnap her, and if that didn’t work, I think they’d launch a full-scale attempt on our town to try to get her.”
With my mouth going dry, I realized that the Graywolves had likely already been trying to kidnap her. The little groups of them that had been trying to break into town probably hadn’t been intending to spy, or at least not only spy.
“This is why we need to take her inside right away whenever she shows any sign of being a Magical, Tara. We can’t take any chances on the Graywolves ever finding out. It might put her life in danger.”
I just remained silent, wanting to tell Warren that the Graywolves already surely did know, but I just couldn’t get the words out. I just couldn’t tell him that I was the one who’d put our daughter in danger. All I could manage to ask him was why, specifically, the Graywolves would want to kidnap Sam.
He said it was just simply because she was a Magical, even though she didn’t have any real powers yet. “Knowing that these little girls who are Magicals are likely going to grow up to be some kind of sorceresses someday, the Graywolves would love to take Sam and raise her as their own, in the hopes of one day using her and her eventual powers against their enemies, including us, and everyone in the FDS.”
I was suddenly feeling sick, nauseated like I hadn’t felt since my first trimester of pregnancy.
When I didn’t speak after a few moments, Warren planted a tender kiss on my forehead, letting his lips linger, before pulling away to look at my face. “Please don’t worry about a thing. I and my men are doing everything in our power to keep the spies out of Greenwood so that they never find out that’s Sam’s a Magical. Just to cover every single one of our bases, though, and to prepare for the off-off chance of a spy getting into town someday, just take Sam indoors and out of sight when she sparkles.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Good. And just so you know, tomorrow my men and I are building an alarm tower right in the center of town to help keep Sam safe, too, along with everyone else in town. In case of a spy being spotted, or even a larger attack, one of my men will call the guard in the tower, who’ll then sound the alarm so that all non-shifter residents know to take cover indoors. This will help, along with everything else we’re already doing. Everything will be fine. We’ll keep our daughter completely safe.”
I nodded, still feeling ill, and still completely unable to tell Warren that I had already made it so that our daughter wasn’t safe. Holding me, he soon fell a
sleep, but I remained awake in the dark for at least an hour, trying not to cry.
He was gone when I woke up the next morning to feed a very hungry Sam, who hadn’t even woken up once all night.
Holding her to nurse her, felt nearly overcome by guilt and struggled not to cry, the same as I’d done the night before. “Mommy made a huge mistake, baby.”
Playing with a lock of my hair, Sam just looked up at me with her big blue eyes, not seeming that concerned.
As we’d planned a few days earlier, Ally came over for lunch early that afternoon, surprising me with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and another plate of sugar cookies.
Despite my low mood, I mustered a big smile and thanked her, then asked what I’d done to deserve two different kinds of cookies.
She shrugged, smiling a little. “When I’m a little bummed, I bake, and that was my deal this morning. I woke up to a visit from Aunt Flo. A pregnancy just didn’t happen for me and Nathan this month. Again.”
Her eyes suddenly welled, and she gave her head a quick shake, smiling.
“I’m so dumb. It’s not like we’ve even been trying that long. I just wanted it to happen this month, though.”
Wrapping her in a one-armed hug, because I was holding Sam on my hip, I told Ally I completely understood, and that I hoped she’d get pregnant very soon. Sam suddenly started waving her hands wildly, cooing with delight, trying to show us that her little fingertips were sparkling.
Sniffling, Ally pulled away from me and grinned when she saw Sam. “Now that’s a smart girl. Sparkles make everything better.”
Sam squawked, smiling and covering her face with her hands as if embarrassed by the praise.
She fell asleep in her playpen while Ally and I ate the club sandwiches, potato salad, and fruit with yogurt dip that I’d fixed for our lunch. We were both fairly quiet, especially compared to how raucous we usually got. I couldn’t decide whether or not to tell Ally what I’d done, feeling sure that I should tell Warren first. Outside, it stormed, pouring buckets, gray weather that matched my mood perfectly, and I suspected Ally’s as well, even though she made some attempts at levity while we ate.
When we’d finished, we helped ourselves to a cookie each, and she nibbled hers quietly for a little while, eyes on her glass of milk, before speaking. “I haven’t ever told you how it happened, have I? How Michael died.”
I said no, and she set her cookie down and continued after a moment or two, still not lifting her gaze. “It was late October, and really weirdly warm for that time of year, especially for up here. It had been in the high seventies and low eighties for days, and sunny.
Just beautiful. Nathan and I decided to go fishing at this tiny little lake just northwest of town, and we’d been there for an hour or so when I realized that I must have somehow dropped our thermos of lemonade without even realizing it, somewhere along this fairly short little trail from our car to the fishing dock.
Nathan said he’d go look for it himself so that I wouldn’t have to walk, because I was already pretty big in my pregnancy by this time. The trail would only take him a few minutes to search while running in bear form, and then he’d just carry the thermos back in human form. He thought nothing of leaving me for just a few minutes, and I didn’t think anything of it, either, because the patrol guards were out and about, not very far away.
So, Nathan left. I got up to stretch my legs, walking up the dock and sort of near the forest just looking for birds, or whatever I could see. Next thing I know, this woman is flying toward me… just tearing up the trail that bisects the one that goes to the little dirt parking lot. I saw a wolf paw tattoo on her throat, the same one that most of the Graywolf women have, and I knew what it was.
Knowing she was probably a spy, I started yelling, telling her to stop, but she just blew on by me. I still kept yelling to alert Nathan, and that’s when the woman just stopped, pulled out a gun, and just shot at me. She just shot at me, even though she could obviously see I was pregnant.”
The grandfather clock out in the living room began chiming the half-hour, and Ally waited until it had finished before continuing, gaze still on her glass of milk.
“Everything is kind of a blur after that. I screamed, the woman ran off, and I fell to the ground. She’d got me in my side. The bullet didn’t hit Michael or any major organs, but I just bled and bled. And by the time that Nathan got me back to town and to the doctor’s, I’d lost so much blood that my heart wasn’t even beating normally. And Michael’s had stopped. He was gone.”
Chest aching, I said I was so sorry, and Ally nodded with shiny eyes.
“Thanks. Things have really gotten better as far as me being able to move past things, but at first, I was just… so angry. I just wanted to literally kill the woman who’d shot me, whose name is Brooke, I later found out. For a while, she was constantly trying to spy in our territory, and that’s what she was doing the day everything happened.
She was running because the patrol guards had spotted her. In all the commotion of me getting shot, though, they were never able to catch her. They think she covers herself in some kind of natural bear scent so that they can’t pick up on her human scent. The conniving little bitch. Murderous bitch.”
After glaring down into her milk glass for a long moment, Ally suddenly looked up at me. “I shouldn’t have even said that. And not because she’s not that, but because it gets me in a bad state of mind, and I just can’t go there anymore. I want the rest of my life to be about honoring Michael by living happily and in peace… not stewing with hateful thoughts.”
Nodding almost imperceptibly, I said I understood, forcing my mouth to move and my voice to work. Not only had I been incredibly saddened by hearing Ally’s story, but I’d also felt like I’d been punched in the gut as well, upon hearing Brooke’s name and thinking about what might have happened to Sam and me.
And now that I’d heard firsthand about the evil ways of the Graywolves, I knew I had to come clean to Warren about my interaction with Brooke as soon as possible. I had to come clean, even if that meant he’d get angry and never forgive me.
*
As I’d he’d suspected he might be, Warren was mad when I confessed to him that the Graywolves surely already knew about Sam being a Magical because of my interaction with Brooke. I would have even said that Warren was incredibly mad, bordering on livid. However, to my extreme relief, he wasn’t mad at me.
Sitting at the dining room table, he unclenched his jaw to speak to me after having ground his teeth briefly. “I don’t blame you, Tara. You’d been abducted, and you didn’t know who to trust. This is my fault much more than anyone’s, and I’ll probably blame myself for the rest of my life.
But right now, I know that the small groups of Graywolves have probably had kidnapping on their mind and not simple spying, we need to focus on keeping Sam safe. Within the hour, I’m going to have a special guard patrol around the house, adding to the protection of the patrols constantly circling the town.”
“Okay.”
He went on to say that he didn’t want me taking Sam into town anymore for the time being. “Best to just keep her on the property for right now.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“We’ll keep her safe.”
“I know.”
I hardly slept a wink that night. I wasn’t sure if Warren did or not, because he was gone all night, organizing additional guard patrols. I paced the floorboards until nearly three in the morning, feeling as if disaster was going to strike at any second. I felt as if a pack of Graywolves was going to come charging right up the stairs at any second to snatch Sam from her crib.
However, when dawn broke, Warren called to say that he and his men hadn’t seen a trace of the Graywolves or any human female spies all night. “It’s far, far too soon to even start to hope they’ve all given up, but part of me has to wonder if they’ve seen our guard activity from a distance and are now having second thoughts about attempting any future kidnapping plans.”
I hoped with all my heart he was right.
That day was a peaceful one in Greenwood, with zero Graywolf attacks and zero spies seen. Same for the next day. And same for the next. Despite this, on the fourth day since I’d come clean to Warren about Brooke, I still didn’t leave the house with Sam, even though we were both getting a little cabin fever-ish. Even though Warren had said that it was fine for me to take Sam outside to the garden or for short walks around the property, I’d just wanted to be on the ultra-safe side by keeping her indoors, and I still did.
However, when another day passed, and then another and another, my cabin fever escalated to the point that I was pretty much doing nothing but pacing around the cabin and looking longingly out of the windows. Despite the fact that the cabin was huge, it was still indoors, a word I was coming to hate. It was full summertime in Greenwood, almost July, with some unseasonably warm days, and I just wanted to feel the sun on my face and smell the sweet, earthy air of my garden.
By the way she’d been acting, Sam did, too. Having become uncharacteristically fussy, she spent most days whining in my arms, whining in her playpen, and whining in her high chair. She’d even seemed to have lost her appetite a little, still nursing but not wolfing down her baby cereal and her pureed vegetables as she’d been doing.
She even began turning up her nose at her favorite sweet potatoes after just a bite or two. Dr. Bailey came out to the house to check her over and see if she might have an ear infection or something, but she didn’t.
On the morning of the eighth day since I’d confessed what I had to Warren, I just had to take Sam out to the garden. Warren thought this was a very good idea, reminding me that not only were there guard patrols protecting the whole town, but there was a guard patrol always making circuits around the property, too, making sure there were no enemies lurking in the dense forestland surrounding it.
