by Roxie Noir
Still, nothing.
“Miles,” she said. “Miles, don’t do this.”
He stood still for long moment and then, at last, he nodded.
“Do what she says,” he told the crowd, and then walked into the lodge, a small throng following him.
It seemed to take the ambulances hours to get there, but when they did, both the injured men were still alive. Delilah made up some story about there being a hunting accident, a bear attack, and the lodge’s phone line unexpectedly getting knocked out. She didn’t think the paramedics bought it, but she didn’t particularly care — besides, they were in quite a rush, and had another hour before they got to the real hospital in Anchorage.
At last, they were driving down the long gravel road, and Delilah felt all the fight go out of her. She went back into the lodge, where Miles was holding court, a group of men around him, taking orders — Brock and Nathan included. Brock didn’t look happy at this turn of events, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right in there, sucking up to the new alpha.
Delilah walked past them, nodding once at Miles, going back to the room that had been her prison. She quickly tossed everything into the suitcase, then walked back out, heading for her car.
“Babe,” said Miles, a question in his voice.
“I’m going home,” she said. “I gotta take care of some stuff.”
He walked toward her, his throng parting, and lowered his voice. “I’ll be over soon, okay?”
Delilah wasn’t quite sure, but she nodded.
“Okay,” she said.
She had a long, empty drive ahead of her, and that was just the drive back to her dead father’s house — that wasn’t even the drive back to California. That had to wait until tomorrow morning, when it was light enough, and she’d gotten enough sleep.
There was a sick, twisted feeling in her gut, and she tried to tamp it down but it kept on rearing its ugly head. She had seen how Miles had hesitated about calling the ambulance — alpha for thirty seconds, and he’d already changed.
He was already willing to consider a man’s life in exchange for some minor discomfort.
At exactly that moment, it had dawned on her: Roy hadn’t been the problem. The pack had been the problem; there was something toxic and twisted about the Fjords pack, and they’d infect every single shifter who was a part of it.
That’s why she had to leave as soon as she could, before she saw Miles again, because she knew she might not leave if he tried to stop her — but she also knew she’d spend the rest of her life regretting staying in Fjords.
When she got back to her father’s house, she threw her things in her car, took a single picture of her and her father together, set her alarm for six a.m., and then flopped onto the bed, falling asleep before she could even manage to get under the covers.
Chapter Eighteen
Miles
The sun never really went down, not during an Alaska summer. The sky did get darker, but it never got darker than medium-silver, and when Miles realized the sky was getting lighter instead of darker, he cut everything short.
Still sitting on the leather couches in the lodge’s main room, the fire roaring, he rubbed his eyes and stood.
“You’re leaving?” asked a young man, sitting to one side of Nathan. The older men had been respectful but distant for the past couple of hours, his tenure so far as Alpha. It was the younger men, Brock and his group, who’d started sucking up almost immediately.
“I told Delilah I’d be over,” he said.
The young men sitting in front of him looked at each other, or at least Miles thought they did. He was too tired to care. Brock opened his mouth, and then shut it, looking across the room at Michael.
It occurred to Miles that he’d barely seen his father since he won Alpha from Roy, but he didn’t particularly care. It had only been a couple of hours. There was a lot to process: the first overthrow in living memory, for one thing.
He walked to the door, ignoring the young men he was leaving behind in the room, the whole lot of them gossiping like old women. Let them talk; none of them were going to do anything about this new situation.
As he left, he quickly glanced back and saw Brock, standing, talking to a small circle of older men. Roy’s former inner circle. They all looked very, very serious, but Miles didn’t think anything of it: he was alpha now, and if he wanted to go see his girlfriend, he could.
He pulled into her driveway thirty minutes later. Right away he noticed that her trunk was open, and she wasn’t there. She’d just left it like that in the driveway — something about it seemed odd, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it.
It was only six-thirty in the morning. Had she left it like that all night? Had she opened it and then forgotten it, just gone to bed after her long day?
Miles frowned, walking around the back of her car, meaning to close the trunk for her. Sure, it was only Fjords, but why invite someone to steal stuff out of your car?
Then, he saw that it was full. It had her suitcase, a couple of duffel bags. Two small cardboard boxes, with just one spot remaining.
As he was standing, facing the trunk, both hands on the lid, ready to close it, he heard the screen door slam behind him, and then footsteps came to a quick stop.
Delilah stood there, on her dad’s front porch, carrying two big coats and one small box that would just barely fit into the remaining trunk space.
They stared at each other for a moment, neither one speaking. Miles was tired and hadn’t slept, and with everything that had happened — the sex, with the fight, staying up all night — he felt unmoored and adrift, like the things he was seeing in front of them weren’t anchored to reality.
“Shit,” said Delilah. She’d stopped short and now stood there uncertainly, looking a little like she might try to bolt at any moment.
“What’s going on?” asked Miles. He tried to sound casual.
Maybe she’s taking a trip to the Goodwill, he thought. Getting rid of her dad’s stuff.
Even as he thought that, the pieces began to align themselves in his brain, one big arrow pointing to the obvious answer.
Delilah didn’t answer, but she came down the three concrete steps and crossed the driveway, heading for her trunk. Miles moved out of the way as she fitted the last box in perfectly, then laid the coats over top of everything, squashing them as she slammed the trunk closed.
Finally, she turned to him, taking a deep breath. Miles felt like he couldn’t breathe.
This can’t be happening again, he thought.
“I was hoping to get out of here before you came by,” she said, slowly. She hugged her arms across her body like she was trying to make herself as small as possible.
Questions flooded through Miles’s tired brain, the half-light of dawn making everything seem even murkier, even harder to grasp.
“Where are you going?” he finally said.
“Home,” Delilah said. “Back to California, I guess.”
“This is home,” Miles said. “I thought that — after yesterday —” he stopped for a minute, forced himself to collect his thoughts. Delilah still wouldn’t look at him.
“I thought you’d stay,” he said, simply.
She sighed, exhaling all the air in her lungs. Nothing else made a sound in the gray morning.
“I thought maybe I would, too,” she said.
Miles frowned slightly, feeling like he was grasping as something just out of his reach.
“Then do it,” he said. “Stay here. Stay with me. Your parents are gone, I’m alpha now. Things will be different from here on out. No more kidnapping pretty doctors, for starters.”
That didn’t get a smile, but at least Delilah looked at him, her beautiful eyes brimming with tears.
“It wasn’t just Roy,” she whispered. “Yesterday, when I said he needed an ambulance, and — Miles, you had to think about it. You nearly choked a man to death and then you had to think about whether to rescue him.”
Miles stared at her, open-mouth
ed. He felt like she’d punched him, right below the sternum, the spot that knocked the wind from him.
“It’s the pack,” she went on, her voice gaining strength. “They’re poisonous. Toxic. This place is a pit of vipers, and you’re not going to lift them up, they’re going to bring you down to their level, and I can’t—” her voice broke— “I can’t watch that happen to you.”
“I’ll change it, I promise,” he said, the words tumbling out now. He’d do anything to get her to stay, he knew — promise to give up Alpha, not even a full day after he’d won it, promise to order everyone to play nice from here on out. Anything.
Anything.
Delilah shook her head. The tears were falling down her face now, and she wasn’t even bothering to wipe them away.
“You can’t,” she said.
He wanted to reach out and touch her, take her in his arms, make her feel better, but an invisible wall had gone up between them, and he was totally incapable of breaching it.
“I’ll do anything,” he said “I’ll overhaul the pack, I’ll exile anyone who acts out. I’ll give up Alpha.” He felt like there was a black hole in the center of his body, threatening to collapse in on itself.
Delilah looked away again. She was already shaking her head.
“Just don’t go. I can’t watch you leave again, Del.”
She walked around him, to the driver’s side of the car, and unlocked it. She didn’t say a word to Miles. He felt like he was in a tunnel, everything around him narrowing down to a few degrees of vision: just Delilah, by the car, about to drive away from Fjords forever.
He moved fast and blocked her, standing between her and the driver’s seat, holding the door open, his body in the way.
“Please don’t go,” he said, talking fast now, only half-aware of the words spilling from his mouth. It didn’t matter what he said, he thought, only that she didn’t leave.
“I love you,” he told her. “I still love you. I loved you when you left before and I thought I would stop, but I didn’t, and I thought I was going to be okay until you showed up again—”
“Stop it,” she said, her voice shaking. “You think I want to have to leave you again? You think I like having to do this twice?”
Miles looked stunned.
“I can’t live here,” she said. “Not with people who wanted to kidnap and rape me, Miles, and I know you think you can fix it and maybe we’d be okay for six months, a year, but not forever. You became Alpha by force. What’s to stop someone else from taking it the same way? Then where would you be?”
Delilah swallowed hard. Miles opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him.
“This can’t end well and we know it,” she said, quietly this time, looking Miles dead in the eye. “So just let me go and forget I was ever here. Marry a nice girl from Fjords and have some kids. Before you know it it’ll be like I never existed.”
“I don’t want to forget you were here,” Miles whispered.
He put one hand on Delilah’s face and she jerked her head away from it, her jaw flexing. Another tear trickled down her face.
Behind her, the morning was turning from gray to pink, the long slow sunrise of an Alaska summer, the only kind he’d ever known.
Suddenly, Miles knew what he had to do. It was dead simple, really, so obvious he nearly laughed out loud.
Chapter Nineteen
Delilah
“Let me come with you,” Miles said.
Delilah blinked.
“What?” she said, suddenly confused.
“Let me come with you,” he said. He was smiling all of a sudden, almost grinning, and Delilah felt like the world had turned upside-down, like she couldn’t trust her own eyes and ears.
“You’d leave Fjords?” she asked. “You’ve never left Alaska before.”
“Fuck this place,” he said. “Fuck the pack. Fuck being alpha. I’d rather have you.”
Delilah blinked, still stunned. “You’re alpha, aren’t there rules or something?”
Miles shrugged. He seemed almost giddy.
“I don’t care,” he said.
Is it really that simple? Delilah wondered. She looked up at Miles, and despite herself, she started smiling.
“You can just do that?” she asked.
“Who’s going to stop me?” he asked. He couldn’t stop grinning.
Delilah couldn’t help it. She started giggling, half from sheer surprise, half from delight, tears still running down her face.
“Can I come?” he asked. He put a hand on her cheek again, and this time she let it stay. “Wherever you’re going?”
She put her hand over his, interlacing their fingers.
“How could I say no?” she said, half-laughing, half-crying.
Miles swooped down and picked her up in his arms and Delilah yelped, looping her arms around his neck.
Then he bent his head down and kissed her, their lips touching softly, electricity singing between them.
She felt like there was nothing else in the world besides Miles, like there could never be anything else, and she never wanted that kiss to end.
At last, he put her down on the gravel driveway, and they looked at each other.
“They’ll be pissed,” she said, reality beginning to settle in a little. “When they figure out you’re gone.”
Miles snorted. “I don’t care what they think,” he said. He took her hands in his, twining their fingers together, kissing Delilah’s knuckles. “Let’s just go, before they find out.”
“Right now?”
“I’m ready if you are.”
Delilah pressed her hands to her temples, all the reasons why this was foolish flooding into her brain. “You’ve got a house, and you’ve got family, and you’ve got a job, you can’t just walk away. You’ve gotta sell the house, and put in notice—”
Her took her chin in his hands, very seriously.
“Forget it,” he said. “We’ll figure that out tomorrow. There are ATMs in the rest of the world. Nathan can have the house.”
“But—”
“I’m coming with you.”
Delilah swallowed, then nodded. She wasn’t spontaneous by nature, she was careful and methodical, but all at once she felt swept away by this giddy whirlwind.
“Okay,” she said. Then she started laughing again. “This is crazy.”
“This is perfect.”
She leaned her face up for one more long, hard kiss, then pulled away, her car keys in her hand.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Epilogue
Epilogue
FIVE YEARS LATER
Delilah drove up a long, gravel driveway to a log house in the woods. Just like always, it somehow looked exactly right there, like it was part of the forest.
She parked, gathered her stuff, and went inside.
“I’m home!” she shouted, wiping her shoes on the doormat, just inside the door.
She’d talked Miles into going easy on the woodsy decor inside — looking like a log cabin on the outside was acceptable, she felt, but she’d wanted a regular house on the inside. Aside from the exposed beams and rock fireplace, she’d gotten it.
“In here!” came his voice, and Delilah dumped her stuff on the couch, took her shoes off, and walked through the big door to the kitchen.
“Smells good,” she said, coming around to Miles and putting a hand on his back. “What is it?”
“Cajun stuffed pork chops,” he said, turning the meat with big tongs.
He looked busy, so Delilah kissed his t-shirt clad shoulder.
“I was going to grill, but then it rained,” he said.
“The nurses at the clinic say it’s time to take the snow tires off the car,” she said. “Though they said that this time last year and you know what happened then.”
“What did they say was the reason this time?” Miles said, a smile creeping into his voice. “Did one of them see an eagle fly counterclockwise at noon or something?”
; Delilah laughed.
“Sometimes their country wisdom is right,” she said, and poked him in the side. He scooted away her from a little, but not fast enough. “Besides, I don’t think you’ve got room to talk.”
The meat in the pan sizzled, and Miles put the tongs down, wiped his hand on the kitchen towel, and turned to properly kiss his wife.
“GROSS,” came a small voice from across the room.
Delilah laughed, still kissing Miles, and pulled his head down closer to her, her thumb feeling the scar on his cheekbone.
“Get a ROOM,” said the little voice, and this time she let him go.
“Where on earth did you learn that?” she asked the child, watching them from about ten feet away.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Cade, can you put your toys away before dinner, please?” asked Miles.
“Can Mom read me a story?” Cade asked.
“After dinner,” Delilah said. “Come on, put your toys away.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Looking very serious for a four-year-old, Cade walked into the other room.
“I’m going to go change,” Delilah said, giving Miles’s shoulder another squeeze.
“Dinner’s in ten,” he said.
As she left, he leaned back just far enough to gently swat her ass.
“Hey!” she said, giggling.
“Can I have a bedtime story too?” he asked, grinning.
“Only if you’re well behaved,” she said.
“It’s hard with you around,” he teased.
Out of her scrubs and in her comfy fleece-lined jeans, Delilah took a moment to look out the window of her house. Five years ago they’d more or less picked Crestline, Montana off of a map, a little town in the mountains, not far west of Glacier National Park.
It had been rough at first — living in a trailer on land they bought with savings, Delilah working a night shift at a hospital and Miles filling in at a garage in town — and that first winter had been cold, but they could shift whenever they wanted and they’d gotten through it together and now, here they were, happier than she’d ever let herself hope they’d be.
