The Trouble with Fate

by Leigh Evans

  “Ah, ah, ah.” He shook his head reprovingly. “Don’t say something you’ll regret.”

  “How’s this, then? You’re a total bastard, who has turned out to be a disappointing drunk. I can say that without a shred of regret. So why don’t you take in another snootful of air, and test that statement for a lie?”

  Merry moved against my chest, showing the first signs of life since she’d clamped herself around her buddy. She disengaged one of her twining stems from the ball to reach for my bra cup. I helped her in, fighting another surge of terrible fatigue. I leaned against a cedar to rub my eyes again. Some hero I was turning out to be. I wanted to just stop it all—smack the pause button on the timer ticking inside my head nattering at me to hurry; Lou was waiting, hurt and frightened. Move, I told myself, you’ve only got another couple of feet and then you’re over the hump. Back on level ground.

  Trowbridge folded his hands over his stomach. “So where have you been all this time?”

  “A nice man let me live under his roof.”

  “Human?” His scent drifted over the lip of the hill, subtly altered—now it was hotter, muskier, somehow speaking of spice and complicated emotions; one of which my Were recognized as a predator’s red flag.

  “Yes.”

  “You were what? Seven?” His tone was casual—the type of strained blandness that never really deceives the listener. “There’s an oak tree root a little bit farther to your left.” He watched me fumble, and then asked, “Did he abuse you?”

  I almost laughed. “No.”

  And just like that, the smoky heat in his scent signature dissipated. “A little more to the left. There. Just follow the roots up to the top. Should be easy enough.” He got out of the car and stretched. “Even a nearsighted Fae could do it.”

  “I’m not nearsighted.” I felt for a handhold at the top of the hill.

  “Stronghold.”

  I squinted up at him, and discovered that my vision was almost back to normal, save for the fact that his halo hadn’t dimmed. Trowbridge sat on his haunches, gazing down at me with a look that some dim-bulb might think bordered on friendly. “Give me your hand.” When I didn’t offer it, he reached down, grabbed the collar of my shirt and started hauling me up like I was the piece of luggage with the “heavy load” sticker on it. I was hanging from my collar, suspended from his iron grip. I coughed and spun, and tried to find another toehold.

  “Stop wiggling, you’re heavier than you look.” He grabbed the seat of my pants and hefted me over the lip of the ravine. My feet found the ground, just in time, as the last two buttons holding my shirt together popped off, one after the other. The back of my shirt went over my head and then the rest of the garment peeled off my torso until it came to a wet, wrinkled mess on my forearms.

  “Oops,” he said, letting go of the collar.

  “Oops?” I covered my chest. “I only had one shirt, idiot.” I turned my back, lifted my hands, and tried to shimmy-shake the whole sodden mess down the length of my arms.

  Trowbridge did a poor-assed job of smothering a snort.

  I glared over my shoulder at him. For the first time he resembled the kid I’d had such a crush on. He grinned down at me, his wet hair partially screening his gleaming eyes. There was a bona fide Trowbridge-the-devil smile breaking out on his mouth.

  “Turn your back,” I said, taking a step sideways.

  “Not on your life, kid.”

  The first attempt to swing the wet, scrunched shirt back over my head was a face-griming disaster. Part of me wanted to stamp my foot and cry. This was so not the way I’d planned on meeting Trowbridge again. I was supposed to be thin, wearing a kick-ass dress that screamed sex and seduction. Yeah, maybe the style of my gown kept changing in my head—sometimes it was long and body hugging, other times it was skimpy and short with a flirty kick-pleat at the back; but it was always black, and droolworthy sexy. And my hair was wrong—I’d envisioned it as being gloriously blond, not mouse-colored, and wavy, not hanging in limp strands around my flushed face. I’d be wearing a touch of makeup. Definitely no glasses. Plus, I’d planned on being in control of the moment—hell, I had clever comebacks worked out for every feeble excuse he summoned. My voice was going to be cool and detached; almost indifferent. My hands were going to be steady as I … aw, for Pete’s sake—I was supposed to have a gun.

  You’d think Karma would throw me a bone. I plucked at the rolled shirt, vainly trying to find the end of it.

  “As much fun as I’m having watching you, I think you should let me help you.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re going to have to lift your arms for a sec,” he coaxed, coming up behind me. Glumly, I raised my arms and saw his hands over my head, reaching for the shirt. “Better duck your head,” he said.

  I did.

  He rolled the shirt down my arms, and pulled it down across my back. Then his hands smoothed the wrinkled front down my sides. And that’s when he stopped breathing. I could tell. He was right behind me, his hands were still on my waist, and he had forgotten to exhale.

  What was it? Merry? She was mostly hidden beneath the lace cup on my left boob, with the exception of the tip of one gold leaf peaking through a scallop. My dangling glasses filled in my cleavage.

  My boobs had definitely enjoyed reverse gravity and were now very eager to pour themselves into any open palm. There they were, Hedi’s twin peaks, eager and nipple-hard, doing the boob equivalent of “look at me, look at me.” He let out his breath in a long, slow hiss. I know I’m not Were thin; I know that put beside one of those leggy stick figures, I’m Betty Boop. Or better yet, Betty Boob. There’d been no miraculous makeover for me when I hit puberty. I’d gone from butterball round, to round with an exaggerated dip in the middle for my waist, as if someone had taken a ball of dough and squeezed it. My breasts were too large for a girl with short legs. My hips were too padded, and no matter how I tried, I always had a rounded belly, not a flat one.

  There was a flush on his cheeks and an arrested quality to his face, as if he’d always been a fan of peanut butter sandwiches, and had only now discovered he preferred his peanut butter with a bit of jam. He reached around—my own breath got caught in my lungs—and tugged my glasses away. Merry’s chain hung in a long twisting rope of gold that kissed my cleavage and led to the soft white hill of my breast.

  And for the life of me, I forgot where I was. Only for a second or two. Because his eyes, they were … smoldering. How could arctic blue blaze like that? Maybe if it was blue steel, and it was heated to the point of melting … At that, my Were-bitch placed a paw on my spine. “Let me out,” she whined. I silently shook my head. An undisciplined brain will get you into trouble. That’s what Lou always said, usually when she was looking right at me. I took a few steps closer to the edge of the ravine, and pulled the edges of my top together into a knot.

  “You’ve ruined my shirt,” I muttered.

  He stared at me thoughtfully for another moment, before he blinked, and then he was back to being Trowbridge, all irritated Were, who never knew when to give an inch. “I’m standing in everything I have left, thanks to you.”

  “Not my fault.”

  “Well, Heloise, it seems to me I was under their pack’s radar until you broke into my room to steal my amulet.” He slipped my glasses into his shirt pocket.

  “You stole the amulet from one of my kind; I simply stole it back.”

  “I don’t need to steal anything. I’m the son of an Alpha, for Christ’s sake. It was in the mud by our pond—”

  “Our pond.”

  “It was our pond.” He led with his jaw. “Because every rock, tree, and shrub in that town belonged to the Alpha of Creemore, which made it my dad’s pond. Every person who lives in Creemore is a tenant, not a landowner. You kids took over that pond like it was your own personal swimming hole—”

  “As if Weres could swim. What good would a swimming hole be to one of the pack?”

  “We choose not to swim. Swimming is
for Faes and trout.”

  I limped toward the car.

  He followed slowly, hands tucked into his pockets. “Interesting you call yourself Fae when your father was a full-blooded Were. You’re part Were. You going to kick that under the carpet?”

  He kept pushing, never letting me rest, probing and stirring up things better left sleeping. I paused in my tracks and stared ahead; seeing nothing in that dusk but encroaching darkness and road that twisted its way to a place I had no map for.

  “I don’t want this thing inside me,” I whispered.

  “You think you can cut the Were out of yourself? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’ve tried and I couldn’t do it.”

  “Tell me, Trowbridge.” Merry shifted inside my blouse, one tendril seeking the growing heat collecting at my throat. “Where were your kin the night my father called for help? When he lay dying on our kitchen floor with his guts all torn up, where were they? When the Fae came and executed my mum? Where were they? No one came. No one except you … and you left us there.”

  He’d grown still. “You weren’t there. It was just your mum and dad … I’d have … I thought they’d taken you to Merenwyn.”

  I whirled on him. “I was there, Trowbridge. I saw you. Mum had hidden me in the kitchen cupboard—the cream-colored one on the wall right behind you. We used to tease her … she called it sacred wood, but it was just some old pine cupboard from a farmhouse kitchen. When the Fae came, she shoved me inside it, and set a ward.” I wrapped my arms around my middle, suddenly feeling cold. “It had two sides, and a heart cutout on each door. Our spy holes. But Lexi said he’d grown too big and that he was never going to climb inside that box again.” Bitterness climbed to my throat. “You came through the smoke, all bent over, like a hero out of an action movie running through a hailstorm of bullets. Blood all over you. You had your shirt wrapped around your bleeding hand. I thought you’d battled your way through the Fae to get to us.”

  “I didn’t know you were there,” he repeated through his teeth.

  “Your father was supposed to protect us, and he let them slaughter my parents. He let them take Lexi over to Merenwyn.” My anguish was bubbling up, tearing at my control. I flung my hands out in frustration and shouted, “Why would I ever want to be a Were?”

  He jabbed a finger at me. “You know nothing about my father.”

  “I know his word was worth nothing,” I spat back.

  Trowbridge didn’t speak for a moment. He was still looking at me, but he wasn’t seeing me anymore; he was examining something else—something deep inside him, turning it over in his mind as if he were seeing it truly for the first time.

  “His word meant everything,” he said finally, in a deadly soft voice. “He died because of his word. They all died because he got our pack tangled up with the Fae. You know what the price was for protecting your family? My family. My father. My mother. My brother.” His mouth twisted and a look of haunting loss swept over his face. “My wife … You weren’t the only person to lose a family that night.”

  “Who killed them?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were flat. “But the pack thinks I did it.”

  * * *

  I hate thinking. I hate remembering; memories are worse than dreams. With dreams, you can be on guard. Vigilant against a sappy moment. But memories are sneaky. They slide into your head when you aren’t paying attention. You reach for a can of soup at the supermarket and you remember. The picture was the same—the summation of my heartbreak as witnessed through a heart-shaped hole—Dad’s splayed legs, the new smile line cut into Mum’s throat, Trowbridge crouched beside her. But now, my treacherous memory added sound. A much younger Trowbridge holding my mum’s hand, his voice breaking, as he pleaded, “Who killed them? Just tell me who killed them.”

  I did the math. He would have been eighteen then. Four years younger than I was now. He didn’t kill his family—he’d been searching for their murderer. Probably still was.

  I did not want to feel like this—like Merry’s chain after a bad night’s rest; tangled and knotted.

  Trowbridge was silent, his mouth pulled down, as he twisted sideways to fight with the seat mechanism. I studied his right hand: his last two remaining fingers were curved around the steering wheel. The nub finger and one-jointed finger didn’t have anything to hold on to. They stuck out. The battered gold ring jammed on the nub on his ring finger caught my eye; I looked away.

  Why hadn’t he died? He’d married right after graduation. He still wore his wedding ring, even if it was on the wrong hand—how come he wasn’t dead if she was? That was part of the mating deal, wasn’t it? She dies; you die.

  “Would you have left me there if you had seen me?” I asked.

  “Of course not. You might have known something about the wolf who murdered my family … That’s all I wanted. The wolf that killed them. I wanted to rip him apart with my teeth. You weren’t even on my radar until I tracked his trail to the Fae portal. Anyone who could lead me to them—”

  “Was important to you,” I finished. “That’s why you tried to pick my mum up and carry her out of the house.”

  “I didn’t realize her throat was cut. I saw the blood, but when she was lying there, with her hair all over her neck, I didn’t see the wound.”

  “So you put her back down again.”

  “It was too late to save her.”

  He’d been very gentle. He hadn’t shaken and cursed her like he had Dad’s body. He’d smoothed her hair back, and attempted to read her lips. When she tried to tell him about us with her eyes, he’d looked over his shoulder, puzzled. His own eyes had been red. Teary red.

  “You said a wolf killed your family. How do you know for sure?” I asked him.

  “From the wounds and his tracks,” Trowbridge said. “I woke up maybe fifteen minutes after he ambushed me. My hand was hurting, and there was blood everywhere.” He gazed ahead into the dark night, his eyes hooded. “That’s all it took. Fifteen minutes. Dad’s body was in the living room, on the floor by his chair. My brother’s was on the stairs.” He slowly shook his head. “There’s no way a strange wolf should have got the drop on either of them. Not unless he was someone they knew and trusted … I tried to find the wolf’s scent, and that’s when I realized … the bastard hadn’t left one.” He slanted his eyes toward me. Fierce, blue. “It’s impossible. Everything has a scent.”

  Except me, I thought. Or a Were who’d visited Merenwyn.

  “The bastard used my own blood to frame me. There was some of it in the hall, on the stairwell, on my brother’s face … One day, I’ll hurt him for what he did to them.” A horrible smile, white teeth against the dark night. It faded slowly. “He planted my fingers under my brother’s body and upstairs…” A pause during which he stared blindly at the gearshift. Then he continued, his voice a monotone.“I picked up his tracks outside the house, but the trail died out on the side road—too much gravel—so I backtracked them to the fairy pond. What’s the name of that flower?”

  “Freesias,” I said softly.

  “You couldn’t even smell the pond over it. I counted five fairies crossing back to their own side. Two of them had a Stronghold kid between them. As soon as they were through, I went down there. The fairy portal was still floating over the water … I’d thought I’d seen a lot of shit in life, but nothing like that. I couldn’t find any more tracks from the wolf; his prints seemed to start at the water.” He inclined his head toward me. “I found yours and your dad’s there too. A minute later, I found the Fae amulet caught in some bushes nearby. Then I saw the flames shooting out of your window.”

  He lapsed into a brooding silence.

  I shivered. Trowbridge reached for the heater control and turned it to high. A tear dribbled down my cheek.

  He turned the key in the ignition. “Do not start crying. The time for that is long gone.”

  “I’m not crying; my eyes are burning again.”

  “Here.” He tossed my glasses in my
lap.

  I started looking over my clothing for a dry spot.

  Trowbridge glanced sideways at me. Then his lips thinned. In what? Frustration? Exasperation? “Jesus,” he snapped, jerking the gearshift back to neutral. He took my glasses out of my hands, pulled up a corner of his shirt, and started cleaning them.

  “I’m twenty-two, not seventeen,” I protested.

  He rubbed the lens harder, gave it one last polishing swipe before passing my glasses back to me. His skin brushed mine as I reached for them.

  And then I flared. Oh Sweet Stars, no, not him. Not now.

  “Shit,” he said. “Your eyes.”

  Instinctively, I slapped my hands back over them.

  “They’re glowing green,” he said in awe. “I can see it right through your fingers.”

  Yes, of course my eyes were glowing green. I’d waited all my life for my first flare—that pivotal moment in life when everything shifts, and you accept the full weight of your destiny. For some Fae of noble birth, it happened when their magical talent kicked into high gear, for others their flare sparked at the sight of the child, the grandchild … their lover. It was that instant in time when you realized your one true thing—the thing you were born to do. I had flared. I’d finally done it, and the bright light beaming from my eyes wasn’t Mum’s cerulean blue, nor even Alpha-dog blue. I lowered my hands. Oh Fae Stars, the inside of the whole car was lit neon green.

  “Only Alphas have the flare,” he said slowly.

  “Well, as it happens, so do Faes, born of royal blood.” I turned to him. “I am Fae. See me flare.”

  As soon as my eyes locked on his, an answering white-blue flame deep within his eyes sparked to life. Wicked light, seductive and abrasive. Yield, it demanded. I stretched my eyes open, and held them wide, resisting the gut-deep urge to let my gaze drop before his.

  I’d wasted too many hours coming up with words to describe just what shade of blue his eyes were. Mediterranean blue is how I remembered them. Deep set. Surrounded by a thick ring of stubby black eyelashes. They weren’t Mediterranean blue; they were Trowbridge blue. Right now, they were lit with the Alpha-blue flame of his blood kin, and were beyond my ability to describe.