by A. K. Morgen
I couldn’t convince him to let me pay for that either. I got the lunch tab away from him and paid for before he noticed though. He objected as soon as he figured out what I’d done, of course, but the damage was already done. I’d spent a whopping $27.38 on lunch.
We arrived back in town at one, unloaded our goodies, and then Dad headed over to the Inn to check in and see how things were going. I wasn’t sure if he and Melinda, the owner, were dating or not, but he spent a lot of time over there. Melinda didn’t seem to mind much. Dad was one of those people everyone loved. Not pushy or demanding, but quietly there to lend a hand.
I prowled around the house for a little while. Took my new laptop out of the box and set everything up on the desk. Without access to the network, my interest quickly fizzled. By three, I was bored out of my mind, and my thoughts quickly returned to Dace and our bizarre meeting.
My obsession with him had grown by leaps and bounds. He didn’t make any sense. Hell, nothing made any sense anymore.
Yet again, I tried to convince myself to forget about him, but I couldn’t. The fact that part of me, a big part, didn’t want to stop didn’t help the situation. I still hurt, but I felt better. Stronger. And I owed that to him, though I didn’t understand why. I knew I wasn’t obsessing because he made me feel better. I was obsessing because the things happening between us were unbelievable, yet still somehow felt as familiar to me as an old, worn blanket.
I didn’t understand a lot about the world. The Bermuda Triangle, people who swore they were abducted by aliens, psychics, serial killers, ghosts, Bigfoot … an endless list of unsolved mysteries existed. I knew that. I accepted it. But I’d never seen any of those things for myself, let alone felt them. So why now? Why here? Why me? I was just a girl. Just a sad, messed up girl. Nothing special about me at all.
Except, I wasn’t so sure that was true anymore. I felt as if some new road stretched before me, obscured in shadow, and ominous, but one I needed to travel anyway. Whatever lay at the end was important, vitally so, though I couldn’t say why.
I had to find Dace and demand an explanation for the bizarre things happening to me. About why he felt so familiar, about the thing inside him, how he could access my mind, about everything that had me recounting our meetings on an endless loop.
I didn’t want answers. I needed them.
I braided my hair Pocahontas fashion, added a headband, grabbed my coat, then jogged down the steps, on my way to the park within ten minutes, iPod in hand.
The weather had taken a plunge into frigid, but I didn’t mind. I got wrapped up in the music I’d downloaded from Dad’s computer, and before I knew it, the crumbling wall loomed to my left. A touch of disappointment hit when I realized Dace wasn’t there, but I didn’t let his absence deter me from my purpose.
I cleared a spot where I could sit with my back to the wall and keep the trail in sight, then settled in to wait him out. Call it instinct or whatever, but I knew he’d show sooner or later. I had music, a warm coat, a crumbling wall, and a list of questions that needed answering. I could wait.
Forty-five minutes later, there was still no sign of him.
I rested my head against the wall with my eyes closed, listening to the music and drifting. I still wasn’t sleeping much. When I lay down at night, my mind refused to shut off. Memories of my mom, questions about Dace, and a million other things which made sleep impossible came bubbling up from the depths of my mind.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was setting, and I wasn’t alone. A huge black Labrador laid three feet in front of me, his head tilted to one side as if trying to figure out what I was doing sleeping in the middle of the woods. A good question, I thought.
I pulled off the headphones. “Hi, boy. Where’d you come from?”
He raised his head to look at me and scooted forward a few inches on his belly. He stopped and whined.
“Well, come on,” I laughed, giving him permission to approach.
He bounded to my side in an instant, butting me with his head, demanding to be scratched.
I obliged, cooing and talking to him as his tail thumped happily on the ground. He didn’t have tags, but I wasn’t surprised. In small towns like Beebe, seeing dogs with tags tended to be more notable than seeing them running around untagged.
The dog flipped onto his back, and I dutifully scratched his stomach. Almost instantly, he jumped to his feet with a sharp whimper.
I jerked my hand back, thinking I’d hurt him somehow.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
He spun away from me and growled low in his throat, his eyes trained on a point in the shadows on the other side of the trail. I tried to look around him to see what had his attention, but I couldn’t see anything but shadows and undergrowth from my seat on the ground.
“What is it, boy?” I climbed to my feet.
My gaze landed on a solid gray wolf, half obscured by a massive tree on the other side of the trail. Unlike the animal I’d seen on the day of Mom’s funeral, this wasn’t the domesticated kind of wolf. This was the real deal. Big, gray, wild, and ferocious.
My heart stopped, then started racing.
The wolf stared in our direction, snarling at us. The warning sound coming from his throat screamed “I’m going to eat you” loud and clear. I suddenly understood what Little Red Riding Hood must have felt when she figured out her grandma wasn’t her grandma.
I was shaking in my boots.
I looked around for something, anything, to defend myself with as the dog alternated between excited barks and low, warning growls. A menacing enough sound so far as it went, but I kind of doubted the wolf thought so. He looked curiously un-intimidated as he snarled. As per Murphy’s Law of animal attacks, not a loose brick, rock, branch, or stick lay anywhere within grabbing distance.
I was so screwed.
The wolf paced forward.
The lab lowered his head and growled one long, continuous growl.
I held my breath.
The wolf looked at me and then at the dog and growled back. Unlike the dog’s, though, the wolf’s growl was actually scary. Warning bells sounded in the far reaches of my mind, but they started too late. Of course.
Between one quick, panicked breath in and one sharp exhalation out, the wolf charged toward us. Bits of leaves and mud flew up where his paws hit the ground.
The dog dove in front of me, snarling protectively.
I knew the wolf would rip right through him and land on me any minute. I’d been in town a whole week, and I was going to be eaten by a wolf.
Life really wasn’t fair.
The scream building in my throat whistled out in a choked gasp.
Dace burst into my line of sight, dressed as casually as the last two times I’d seen him. He ran full out, his shoes hitting the ground with solid slaps. I stood frozen as he leapt into the path of the oncoming wolf. He hit the ground on his side then jumped to his feet in an instant, crouching down with one hand out in front of him.
“Stop,” he commanded.
The word was a near echo of the warning growl the wolf had let loose before flying at us. The sound sent shivers up and down my spine, and not the good kind of shivers either.
My legs threatened to collapse beneath me.
I’m not sure if Dace’s sudden appearance stunned or confused the wolf, but he turned aside mid-leap. Instead of plowing into Dace with his fangs bared, he landed right in front of him. Had Dace moved an inch, his face would have bumped into those sharp, yellowed fangs.
He didn’t move, and neither did the wolf.
They simply stood there, the wolf snarling viciously and Dace staring. I couldn’t even put to thought what I watched. The entire scene was unbelievable, something you only saw the Croc Hunter do on Animal Planet reruns. Daring, dangerous, and somehow not in the least surprising that Dace, rather than the late, great Steve Irwin, was staring down a wolf.
It seemed as if Dace had been made for this moment, and I think the wolf agreed.
He stopped growling, stopped snarling, and lay down on his stomach with his head lowered submissively. Just like that.
I couldn’t believe it.
Dace stared at him for another moment, and then lifted his hand and pointed back into the trees. “Go,” he said softly.
The wolf turned and melted back into the shadows he’d come from without a single backward glance.
I released a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.
The lab watched the wolf go, and then sniffed once before trotting back to my side. He lay back down, seemingly satisfied I was no longer in danger.
I dropped back down to the ground myself, shaking too hard to even attempt to stand on my own any longer. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. It was impossible. Impossible.
And yet, it wasn’t.
Dace got up, then came over as I sank to the ground.
“Arionna?”
I heard him say my name, but I didn’t want to talk. I wasn’t ready to face him. I felt like I might start crying if I opened my mouth.
He dropped down on his knees beside me. “Look at me, Arionna,” he said. He reached out a hand toward me.
“Don’t!” I jerked back, afraid to let him touch me. Half afraid the scene from Thursday would repeat if he touched me and I’d be left unsatisfied by our encounter yet again, and half afraid I’d fall apart if his skin touched mine and I’d start crying. I didn’t like either option.
I looked at Dace instead.
Concern and something else—resignation, perhaps—shone from the green pools of his eyes.
“Who are you?” I demanded. The question came out more breathless and awed than I intended.
“You already know who I am, Arionna.” His tone teased and appeased at once. “I’m Dace Matthews, annoying, won’t go away guy, remember?”
His casual reply irritated me. He knew full well that wasn’t what I meant.
“That doesn’t explain the wolf, Dace. Or your eyes. Or”—I lifted my chin and faced him squarely—”your thoughts in my head, now does it?”
I’d hoped I would catch him off guard with my question. I’d hoped, maybe, he’d look at me like I was crazy and I could get back to life as normal where I was the only one in my head and doctors prescribed pills for what I’d experienced. Aside from the ever so slight raising of one brow, he showed no reaction. I might as well have just asked him about the weather. No surprise. No guilt. No “Are you crazy?” looks. No resignation. No denial. Nothing but one arched brow.
I couldn’t decide if his silent confirmation relieved me or not.
“Who are you?” I repeated, more demanding than awed this time.
“I’m”—Dace ran a hand through his hair, rumpling the golden strands worse than his roll across the ground had—”I’m only a guy, Arionna. Can’t that be enough?”
He looked tired, as if he’d been running toward home for years only to realize home lay in the opposite direction. The defeat in his eyes warred so strongly with the vitality he exuded, I wanted to say yes, his answer could be enough. That yes, I could forget my questions, my need for answers, and walk away from the situation. For a minute, I wanted to believe I could, if only to wipe the wrecked look off his face.
And then I remembered the way he’d looked at me as … whatever … burst into my mind on Thursday. The hungry look in his eyes had been as close to “the look” as I’d ever come in my life. Remembering it, I knew not having answers would never be enough, no matter if walking away from them eased his mind or not.
“No,” I said a little regretfully, “I don’t think it can.”
I wanted his simplistic explanation to be enough. I honest to God did. I think things would have been easier for both of us if I could accept his olive branch and move on. I couldn’t though. The compulsion to understand the weird things going on around me engulfed me. I literally had to know, and I didn’t know why.
Dace sighed. “I thought so.” He sat back on his heels and crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want to know?”
What did I want to know? Could it truly be that easy? He was going to tell me?
“The wolf.” I looked up and into his eyes. “Where did he come from?”
The wolf’s presence probably wasn’t the most important question, but I needed a place to start, and the wolf provided me that much. Red wolves were native to the area and all but extinct. Gray wolves hadn’t lived in the area in decades. The animal shouldn’t have been here, and I couldn’t think of a single explanation for his presence.
“Easy enough question, I suppose,” Dace said, more to himself than to me. “He and a few others have shown up over the last year. I don’t know where they came from or why they came here, but they’ve made the area home. They hunt in the woods and have never bothered anyone or any of the livestock around here, so no one pays them any attention. I’m not sure the wolves are even aware this isn’t their home.”
“Okay.” His answer made a little sense, at least. They might not have been native to the area, but wild wolves had been known to pop up in odd places on occasion. Right?
I had no clue.
I decided to forge ahead and come back to that later. “How’d you do it? Make him leave like that, I mean.”
“Wolves are pack animals,” Dace explained, “and incredibly territorial. They won’t hunt in another’s territory, and they bow to the leader of the pack. I guess he thought I was stronger than him.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t let him attack you. Taking the chance seemed worth it.”
Hmm.
“And your thoughts in my head? We both know it happened, so don’t deny it,” I warned him as he opened his mouth, no doubt to pretend he had no idea what I meant.
He pressed his lips together without saying anything.
“How?” I demanded, a little relieved he wasn’t going to try to convince me I’d made up the entire thing. I seriously lacked the patience for evasions.
“I don’t know how.” He shook his head, seemingly frustrated. “I don’t know why either. That’s never happened to me before. Ever.”
He looked at me, and I saw the truth in his eyes. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know why, but he had a pretty good idea of what the answer to both of those questions might be. I’d stake my life on it.
“Guess then,” I said, bringing my knees up in front of me and wrapping my arms around them. I no longer felt on the verge of panic, but I still felt curiously fragile. I’d felt small and vulnerable for weeks, but almost being eaten by a wolf made the feeling worse.
Ugh. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
“I don’t …” Dace hesitated and closed his eyes. “I don’t know, Arionna, any more than you do. Maybe we’re soul mates.” His lips twitched.
“I don’t believe you.” Not about him not knowing, anyway. The soul mate thing looked more and more rational by the day. I climbed to my feet and looked down at him, frustrated. The little frisson of heat running between us grew, sending butterflies into flight in my stomach. I ignored them. “See, I could have believed the wolf story. I could have even believed the rest of your explanation, but altogether? It’s too easy.”
“And you don’t believe in easy, I take it?”
“No. When something is that easy, it usually means it’s not real. Coincidences happen, but they don’t happen like that. Too easy,” I repeated. “And”—I pointed a finger at him—”you forgot something.”
“What?” He pulled himself to his feet with ease, then leaned back against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
“The wolf obeyed you before you ever stared him down. You said stop, and he did. There was a reason he did that, and we both know it wasn’t because you ‘took a chance’.” I turned and walked along the wall, frustrated because I’d gotten no real answers from him.
The dog stayed where he was, his earlier interest in me all but gone.
I’d have preferred if he’d gotten up and followed me.
&nbs
p; Light faded fast beneath the cover of trees. I didn’t want to be walking alone through the woods in the dark with wild wolves prowling around. I wasn’t stupid. The dog, at least, would have been some comfort. He had a nice snarl. Not very intimidating, but better than nothing.
Being afraid sucked.
I started toward the path with an unhappy sigh.
“Did it scare you?” Dace called out from behind me.
I stopped and looked back over my shoulder. “The wolf, or you?”
“The wolf. Me. Both.” He tilted his head from side to side.
“The wolf did,” I said, “but you didn’t. Besides”—I started walking again—”maybe we are soul mates like you said.”
I’d hit on that answer once before. Why argue if he’d hit on it as well? As idiotic as the explanation sounded, it made more sense than some of the other possibilities I’d bounced around. And quite frankly, the soul mate theory was a whole lot more preferable to some of those possibilities. I absolutely refused to consider the possibility that his thinly veiled smile when he’d said it meant anything though. Nope. Nothing at all. He was just twitchy.
“Arionna.”
My steps slowed but I didn’t stop this time.
“I didn’t say that out loud.”
Chapter Five
I froze mid-step, his words shocking me.
He hadn’t said anything, had he? He’d closed his eyes after I demanded he guess, and hadn’t said another word until I told him I didn’t believe him. I’d heard those words, true enough, but his mouth had not moved.
I stood there staring at the ground, trying to work through the problem. I didn’t even know where to begin. He could talk to me in my mind. There was something dangerous about him. Hell, he had something inhuman in him.
Did that change anything? Did it change everything? Did it change nothing?
I didn’t know.
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn.
When I turned around, he no longer leaned against the wall; instead, he stood not even a foot from me. Like I’d told him, I wasn’t afraid of him, not really. I probably should have been, though. Today had driven that home in a big way.
