Yes, he’d shifted to naked human form. I glanced over each shoulder in quick succession to make sure no Arborville residents were driving past at just the wrong moment. Beloved community member or not, Celia would be eyed askance if anyone noticed a bare-assed twenty-something prancing around on her front lawn.
“We’ve got the whole place to ourselves, so we can do whatever we want. Claw skids, mirror shifts—it’s gonna be a blast,” Cinnamon continued, ignoring my trepidation.
“And, when you’re ready...no, if you’re ready,” Celia said quietly, “then you and I can talk about the past.”
Her words were meant for my ears alone, but the human would need to speak more softly than that if she didn’t want my pack to hear. I could feel the loyal quartet forming ranks around me, their wolves alert as they took in my trepidation.
My pack. One month ago, in a preview of my coming mistake with Hunter, I’d tossed these four young adults into the wind...and they’d still flown back to me. Forever or just for this weekend—it didn’t really matter. For the first time in days, my stomach settled and my wolf curled nose to tail with contentment within my human skin.
“Okay,” I told them all, gaze scanning the circle of expectant faces. “Let me grab my bag, then I’ll be ready to go.”
Chapter 16
Listening to my mother’s quiet breathing from the next hotel bed over while I lay intertwined with four wolves that night, I relaxed at last. And as my eyes closed and I drifted into near sleep, my consciousness followed the tether binding me to Hunter until I was once again drifting behind my mate’s eyes.
The uber-alpha was more awake than I was, but otherwise our situations were so similar I accidentally forced a small laugh from his lips. My long, tall mate was stretched out in human form atop a king-sized bed. And scattered around him were wolves.
Big wolves, small wolves. Sleek wolves, scarred wolves.
Every specimen was a bloodling. And every one was blissfully asleep.
“I’ve been waiting for you to show up.” He spoke aloud, his low rumble sounding subtly different through his own ears. Not quite so deep, not quite so enthralling. Was that how Hunter saw himself?
“I didn’t want to interrupt and get you hurt again....”
“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re never interrupting me?” To my delight, my mate crossed his arms around his own shoulders and squeezed tightly. A long-distance hug? Whatever it was, the gesture made me both regret my mate’s physical distance and revel in his emotional proximity.
But I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to stay here in this shared mental space. Plus, there was quite a bit of information that I needed to impart before succumbing to slumber, so I got down to the important business of trading war stories from the time we’d been apart.
As I’d gathered previously, Hunter was living up to his name, tracking down bloodlings who had been sold to unsuspecting humans over the last dozen years. The pups themselves hadn’t been a problem—or so the uber-alpha said, although the cuts and scratches dotting his arms and legs pointed in a different direction. But the Tribunal was making waves.
“They want to put the bloodlings down,” Hunter whispered silently, his mental voice hushed as if he thought the shifters arrayed around him might catch wind of the topic despite their slumber and his secrecy.
“We can’t!”
“Of course we can’t.” I could feel but not see my mate’s mouth twitching up into that signature smirk. How could I have doubted that he’d stick his own neck out to save innocents? Despite Hunter’s protestations about not understanding pack, his gut reaction was always to keep the people around him safe.
“The other uber-alphas aren’t thrilled with my decision,” my mate continued sardonically. “So I’ve gone rogue.”
He went on to explain that the Tribunal was monitoring his cellphone usage in an effort to track him down, which explained his lack of phone contact. Hunter didn’t quite say that he’d abandoned me in order to protect me, but I could read the words between the lines.
“I might already be on their radar,” I admitted reluctantly. Then it was my turn to share the story of Lupe, my calls to Meeshi, the danger stalking my mother through the streets of Arborville.
“I’ll come get you both.” Hunter spoke aloud this time and one of the bloodlings on the bed twitched into near waking at the interruption. With shared intent, our hand reached out and stroked the curly fur at the animal’s ruff until the beast fell back asleep.
“No, we’ll manage. I’ve got the pack and you need to find the rest of those bloodlings before the Tribunal finds you.”
“You’re my top priority,” he countered.
His simple statement was sweeter than the L word. Rougher around the edges, but also more profound.
And I was much less scared to reciprocate that particular sentiment than I was the other. “You’re my top priority too,” I breathed, reaching up with Hunter’s huge mitt to gently trace the outline of cheek and jaw that I couldn’t see from my current vantage point but could at least feel. “So take good care of yourself. Get your job done. Then come back to me soon.”
***
The facility Wolfie had rented out for us was part skating rink, part haunted house...and all fun. We spent all day Saturday gliding down long corridors filled with mirrors and monsters, pausing to scarf down catered sandwiches that gave Celia’s open-house spread a run for its money, then repeating the antics in lupine form.
And as we played, I could feel the pack bond regrowing between the five of us. I hadn’t meant to tie my ex-clan members back to me, had in fact thought the young adults were better off living in Haven. But I didn’t really have a say in the matter. The tendrils of light that connected us into a web of intertwined bodies, minds, and spirits emerged unbidden with every nip-the-tail gag and affectionate shoulder bump. I wasn’t so sure I was becoming the quartet’s alpha again, yet it was clear we were now and forever a pack.
As my glance scanned across my comrades, in fact, I abruptly found it hard to breathe, repressed pleasure tightening my chest into a painful sort of joy. Still, I knew I couldn’t put off the difficult part of this day forever. So, once Cinnamon had engaged the rest of the shifters in a game of paint ball using ketchup bottles as weapons, I pulled Celia off to one side, gritted my teeth, and said, “Lay it on me.”
I’d expected the one-body to jump at the chance to tell me whatever had been floating behind her eyes ever since I showed back up in her life. But, instead, my mother glanced away evasively as if she was unwilling to break the spell of simple fun that had lain like a mantle across the entire charmed day.
Still, Celia nodded at last and led me back around the edge of the rink until we were well clear of condiment mayhem. Sagging down together onto a bench, we released cold toes from cramped skates in tandem. Then my mother pulled out the tremendous purse she’d been lugging by her side all day long.
“I think you should look through this first,” she said tentatively, “and then I’ll explain anything that doesn’t make sense.”
No wonder she chose such a gargantuan handbag. As my mother spoke, the pouch in question disgorged a shoe box...but not the usual kind that footwear came in. Instead, this was a box-turned-scrapbook, images and words carefully papered across the sides.
The images were all of me.
Not of me now, but of a growing halfie child. Gangly teenager, pimply pre-teen, even some adult shots I was pretty sure had been taken no more than six months earlier.
My brow wrinkled up in confusion. “I don’t understand....”
“Look inside,” my mother said gently, lifting off the lid to reveal printed emails and additional photographs. Dozens, maybe hundreds of each.
I skimmed the words, saw that the missives were signed by Wolfie and addressed to Celia. The reports were dated the first of every month and they summed up each significant life event with careful precision. My hopes, my dreams, my skinned knees, my mi
nor triumphs.
I couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that Celia had vicariously experienced my entire childhood...while she’d remained resolutely out of arm’s reach. But then I noticed something odd—the first five years’ worth of emails were addressed to my father, then after a gap of a few months they began coming to Celia instead.
Despite myself, my eyes began to water—no, those weren’t tears, gosh darn it—as everything clicked into place. “Da...Harbor didn’t die last month, did he?” I asked, Celia’s lack of grief at her husband’s funeral finally making sense. Because why would you suddenly be overwhelmed with tears if your mate had been absent for the better part of a decade?
“No,” Celia answered quietly. She reached out as if to take my hand, then hesitated and wound her manicured fingers together in her own lap instead. Looking away as if unable to meet my eyes, she added, “It took me about two years to get over myself and really accept your father as the amazing partner he wanted to be. That’s when I found out he’d been in touch with your alpha that entire time, and that you had settled into your life even better with me out of the picture.”
“I wasn’t...” I began, but my mother interrupted with a pained smile.
“You were better off without me. I was trying to accept your father’s wolf, Fen, really I was. But I just wasn’t ready to give you the nurturing home and family that you deserved. Harbor and I thought maybe once you were a little older you could come visit, but then....”
The last word came out as a sob and I winced, feeling my mother’s pain in my bones. Strange how she could affect me just as strongly as my pack mates did even though she possessed no inner wolf. “What happened to him?” I nudged her verbally after a long moment.
“I still don’t know.” The words were almost a sigh. “Harbor went out one night and never came back. I tracked down his car a few miles away the next morning, found his body torn apart...but he was a wolf at the time and I couldn’t report him dead. Just missing....”
Celia looked down and I realized the nails of one hand were biting into her other palm. I understood where she was coming from—sometimes it was easier to feel physical pain instead of that aching hole in your gut that never seemed to want to go away. Still, I couldn’t prevent myself from easing one of her clenched hands away from the other and smoothing it out between my own fingers.
“It was probably another shifter,” I admitted, even though I didn’t want to give my mother a new reason to hate my fur form. “Harbor wouldn’t have been strong enough to defend a territory on his own, so he was easy pickings for a more powerful wolf.”
A tear trickled down Celia’s cheek, but she didn’t brush it away. “You’ll hate me for this next part,” she said with a little laugh. She made as if to pull her hand away, but I held tight.
Across the skating rink, I could see solemn-faced shifters drifting closer. I hadn’t meant to transmit my feelings across the pack bond, but apparently I had a lot to learn about this web of attachment that had sprung up unbidden between me and the people I cared about the most.
With their concern buoying me up, I couldn’t really regret having shared my pain either.
“It’s okay,” I told Celia and my pack mates alike. The former took a deep breath and nodded once before continuing with the information she felt compelled to divulge about her past.
About our past, my wolf whispered. I didn’t brush her assertion aside, but I didn’t overtly agree either.
“Harbor made me promise that if...if anything happened to him, I’d cash in his life-insurance policy then get in touch with your alpha, ask him for help. Wolfie wrote back immediately to say I was part of his pack and would be taken care of. But I...I couldn’t leave Arborville.”
She paused, catching her breath, then continued illuminating the mysteries of our shared past. “Since there was no body...well, no body the police would understand...I couldn’t declare Harbor dead until recently. The insurance company suggested a funeral would expedite my claim. And I hoped it might tempt you to come back to me....”
Celia’s voice trailed off, her words rough from repressed tears. Her heart appeared to be in the right place and I wanted to forgive her past neglect. But, honestly, holding a funeral as a way of getting in touch with me seven years after my father’s death felt like too little too late. So I kept my eyes averted and flipped through the printed emails to give my mother and myself both a bit of time and space in which to recover.
Then one paragraph caught my eye. “You asked Wolfie if I could come live with you? Again after Daddy died?” I asked in surprise, not even noticing my use of the avoided honorific until it had already left my lips.
After doing some quick math in my head, I realized that I would have been on the cusp of womanhood at the time, around the same age as when I changed my last name to match my alpha’s in a fit of pique. No wonder Wolfie’s answer had been polite but had recommended against the change of scenery...and even against Celia coming to visit me if she wasn’t planning on staying awhile.
I wanted to resent Wolfie’s heavy-handed decision making. But I had to admit that young, angry Fen wouldn’t have dealt well with the one-body whose warmth now pressed ever so gently up against my side. Left to my own devices, younger me might have burned bridges that I would have regretted for the rest of my life. In the end, I had to admit that my alpha had made the right move.
And maybe Celia had as well.
“I’ve been a shitty mother,” she said by way of reply. “But I want to make it up to you, Fen. I’ll do whatever it takes to stay in your life now.”
For the last twelve years, I’d assumed that if Celia ever came crawling back to me, I’d kick her to the curb and spit in her face. I’d thought about how much joy I’d get out of being the one to spurn a parent who had never accepted me enough to really make her abandonment equate to a rejection in the first place.
As a teenager, I would have reveled in the way Celia was currently unable to meet my eyes. In the way her whole body vibrated with tension.
But I wasn’t a teenager. And as I felt the pack bond reach out to engulf the spark of human life that was my mother, all I wanted to do was pull her into a long hug and never let her go.
I wasn’t quite sure our relationship had reached the hugging stage yet, but I did grip the one-body’s shoulder briefly before I verbally lifted her off that hook she was dangling from.
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” I told the one-body. “I’d like to stay in your life too...Mom.”
Chapter 17
Celia and I were both emotionally wrung out, but the pack’s antics rejuvenated us enough so we could enjoy the rest of that afternoon and evening. Which turned out to be a good thing since I had to rouse everyone early the next morning to ensure we made it back in time for my appointment with the rogue. I was bound and determined to do everything in my power to bring the bloodling teenager into the shifter fold as seamlessly as possible, and lateness definitely wasn’t going to stand between me and my goal.
Lupe wasn’t the only problem weighing on my mind, though. Despite our Saturday of pack bonding, I was still a little leery of leaving Celia alone with four high-spirited shifters. And Robert’s presence hiding in the shadows (not literally...I hoped) didn’t help me rest any easier either.
So my parting shot to my second was more plea than order. “Don’t let Celia out of your sight,” I begged forty-five minutes before my under-the-bleachers rendezvous.
The two of us were sitting in a new rental car in front of Celia’s house, Glen and I having wasted an hour ditching the previous vehicle in an effort to keep Robert on his toes. Now the swapped-out car idled in my mother’s driveway long enough to drop off the shifter who I was trusting to watch over Celia while I was gone.
“We’ll keep your mother safe,” Glen promised. “But two of us could do that while the other two rode with you to reel this bloodling in....”
We’d been around and around this issue half a do
zen times already, and it took an effort not to roll my eyes at the umpteenth iteration of his request. Still, I patted Glen’s hand reassuringly rather than letting my amusement at his overprotectiveness show. “I’ll be fine,” I said, not realizing until the words had left my mouth that they’d emerged as an alpha compulsion.
My steadfast second quirked one eyebrow in reply but didn’t appear miffed as he obediently exited the vehicle and thumped a companionable fist on the roof in farewell. “Take care of yourself, Fen.”
“Ditto,” I mouthed as I sped back down the drive. I’d just have to hope that neither Glen’s nor my misgivings had a root in reality.
***
The kid was late.
I’d expected as much. So after cruising through the school parking lot, I turned down a side road to park in an alley on the other side of campus. Then, after a moment of internal debate, I donned the strangest battle outfit I’d ever cobbled together. A wrap-around dress and flip-flops for fast shed-ability should the time come to shift...plus my sword because the longer-bladed weapon simply looked more impressive than Hunter’s throwing knives did. My goal was to be prepared for the worst, but to give the rogue a reason to back down without either of us getting a hair out of place.
Ginger would have had a fit at my fashion faux pas....which made me doubly glad that I’d chosen to leave the pack behind at Celia’s house. Still, the mental image of the redhead’s horrified expression was enough to make me laugh as I emerged from the car, and I was still chuckling under my breath as I padded across pavement then grass to return to the designated meeting ground...which continued to be stubbornly devoid of life.
I wasn’t worried, though. Lupe had been too intrigued at hearing the term “one-body” to stand me up entirely. So I settled in to wait, hoping that the rogue’s eventual arrival would be solo rather than with a band of armed thugs at her back. This operation would be so much more difficult to pull off if we had to hide the true meaning of every sentence from prying one-body eyes.
Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) Page 11
