by Carol Davis
“If the purpose is for me to discover the true path of my life–”
Luca’s attention jerked toward Abby, then back to Aaron. “You can’t be serious. Don’t be a fool.”
“Hey,” Abby said.
Both men turned to look at her.
“Excuse me,” she said with a frown. “I’m standing right here, you know. And I sort of object to the idea that having anything to do with me makes somebody a fool.”
“No one invited you to speak,” said Luca.
“Invited me?”
This was feeling like Lane all over again. Like her father. Like almost every boss she’d ever had, both male and female, and half of her boyfriends. It made Abby boiling mad and ready to cry from shame at the same time. Her whole life, what she’d wanted was the self-esteem and strength that would allow her to stand up for herself in a sane, rational way. Instead, almost every single time, that feeling of being too small to have an opinion had sent her scurrying off somewhere. At home, while she was growing up, she’d gone to her room. At work, she’d sought refuge in the ladies’ room. With Lane, she’d all but stolen a boat and set off across the ocean.
Now, she wanted very much to run back to the cabin. What had she been thinking? Carrying on like this with Aaron?
No. NO, she told herself.
“We’re two adults,” she said to Luca. “We decided to have a little fun. Yeah, I’ll be leaving at some point, I guess. I need to get back home. I have a job I need to get back to, and… and… stuff. But we’re—we can make up our own minds. We decided to have some fun. What business is it of yours?”
“It’s entirely my business,” he said. “Much more so than it is yours.”
“What are you, his keeper?”
It was an odd picture: Aaron standing there naked and dripping, arguing with a guy who was fully dressed while Abby stood there wrapped in an old blanket. It was nothing she’d ever imagined herself being involved in, for sure.
She thought of her travel bag, that big yellow purse jammed full of clothes and toiletries, and wished she’d brought it out here with her. Her only tie to home, to her normal life.
The life she’d run away from.
“Can I talk to Aaron?” she asked Luca.
He thought that over for a moment, then scowled at Aaron. Then he walked a short distance away and looked off into the trees, arms clamped so tightly over his chest that Abby thought he might squeeze out the contents of his body. He was red in the face with anger.
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” she told Aaron quietly.
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I guess that’s your business. Family stuff. He’s your brother, right? Is he your brother?”
“Yes. My older brother.”
“But we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“Not at all.”
“Maybe I should.” She looked down at her feet, frowning, feeling a little heartsick. “He said there’s a boat. Or if there’s gas for the boat I had—I can pay you for it. I should go.”
“Luca is not the arbiter.”
Abby frowned. The word sounded more like an official title than a description. “That’s—it’s like a court thing? Arbitration?”
She felt like Alice, lost down the rabbit hole. Almost everything had felt surreal during the past few days (some of it a little, and some of it a lot), and it had gotten worse instead of better out here in the sunlight. None of this was anything she could get a handle on, other than that Aaron and his brother seemed like the type to argue all the time. She had the sense that they didn’t agree on anything, ever, and that they were usually pretty loud about it.
Getting into the middle of that seemed like a bad idea.
“I should go,” she muttered. “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I wasn’t going to stay here anyway.”
“Abby. I don’t want you to go.”
She looked over at Luca, who seemed angry enough to self-combust, ignite the woods and burn everything down around them.
“Abby,” Aaron said.
Shaking her head, she retrieved her dress and shoes from where she’d left them. “I think I can find my way back to the cabin,” she said. “I’ll get dressed and dry my hair, then I think we should go find that boat. It’ll be better that way.”
“Let me talk to Luca.”
“No,” she murmured, and bent down to slip on her shoes.
She was gone before he could say anything more.
Eight
“I suppose you’re going to blame me now,” Luca said.
They’d both watched Abby disappear into the woods, wrapped in that old blanket and wearing her thin pink shoes, carrying her dress like a big bundle of cloth. The path wasn’t difficult to follow, so Aaron was relatively sure she’d reach the cabin without a problem—at least, not much of one. The shoes might trip her up, or the blanket might come loose. She’d probably be flustered by the time she reached the clearing, maybe scratched a little, but nothing worse.
“You’ve upset her,” he told his brother.
“A human,” Luca said sharply. “You’ve allowed a human onto the island, and the two of you have been—you’ve coupled with her, haven’t you?”
“As if you haven’t spread your own seed around.”
“Not with a human.”
“Why do you insist on using that tone? Granny Sara is a human, and Old Abram, and Jenna,” Aaron reminded him. “The pack has a long history with humans. We’ve always lived near them, among them. We might well have died out long ago without them. And what’s the point of the Involvement if not to learn how to interact with them? We buy goods from them all the time.” He gestured at his brother’s jeans and shirt with a sweeping hand. “Don’t act as if I’ve committed some unpardonable sin. If you’d left us alone, I would have handled things. Now she’s probably curious about who else is here.”
Luca’s brow furrowed. “Has she been here the whole time?”
“Of my Separation? No. I found her… a few days ago.”
“Days?” Luca scoffed. “And you’ve already mated with her. Many times, is my guess. You couldn’t wait until the end of your reflection period and come back to the pack to choose your mate from amongst us?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
“Did you mate with humans during your Involvement?”
“No.”
“But you thought about it.”
“We all think about it!” Aaron sputtered. “After you came back, you told me for weeks how beautiful the females were. How rich their scent was. How you could barely keep your cock in your pants.” Then a thought occurred to him. “You didn’t, did you? You’ve bedded a human too. Maybe more than one. And all this time, you’ve told me over and over that you want nothing to do with humans. You stand there and criticize me for–”
Luca said in a grating tone, “You know what for.”
“Bathing?”
“Wanting a bond.”
“I don’t want anything of the kind.”
Luca tossed his head. His nose twitched, and Aaron knew he was sniffing the air. “I’ve thought many things about you during our lives, brother, but I never thought you were a liar,” he said with his eyes locked on Aaron. “Do me the courtesy of not starting now. Give me that measure of respect.”
“When you’ve criticized and belittled me?”
“I ask that you use good sense. Recognize that I may have traveled this road already and that I’m capable of offering good advice.”
There was something in Luca’s voice that gave away more than the words did. Aaron almost missed it; he was looking at the path Abby had taken, wondering how far she’d gotten. He had almost stepped away from his brother when what Luca hadn’t said outright flashed into his mind, and it startled him so much that his mouth lolled open.
“You did more than bed a human,” he said. �
�There was one who was important to you.”
Luca closed his eyes for a moment. His expression was so intense that he seemed to be in pain.
“Brother,” Aaron said.
“No.”
“Now who is the liar?”
“All right,” Luca groaned. “Yes. There was a woman. A girl.”
“What was her name?”
Again, Luca grimaced. His shoulders were tense, his head bent a little, as if someone had struck him hard on the back and he expected another blow to follow. “Allison,” he said to the ground at his feet, then turned away to look at the stream. “Her name was Allison. She was very close to her home, her family. I couldn’t ask her to leave them, so I thought about remaining there. Among the humans. I thought about relinquishing my ties to the pack.”
“You’ve never told me that.”
“I’ve never told anyone.”
“But you left? You gave her up and came back to us.”
Luca heaved his shoulders. “I had to. There was no other way. So I tell you with full knowledge, let this woman go. Send her away now, before the desire becomes too strong. You’ll save yourself a lot of pain if you do.”
He had barely finished saying that when he began to move away, back toward the settlement, back to the rest of the pack. All the bluster he’d been displaying a few minutes ago was gone. Now he seemed sad and defeated.
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said.
“For what? You had no part in any of it. Listen to what I’m telling you. End this before the knot gets too tangled.”
A few rapid steps took him into the woods, and a minute later Aaron heard him groan loudly. A moment after that, a howl rang through the trees, one that told Aaron that his brother had shifted, had allowed his wolf to emerge so that he could run across the island in that preternatural form. Not much else would help him quell the kind of pain he seemed to be going through—the pain of loss and grief.
Whoever Allison had been, Luca had loved her. More than likely, he still loved her.
And look what that had done to him.
With an ache deep in his chest, Aaron pulled on his jeans and shirt and shoes. Luca was right: he needed to get hold of a boat and take Abby either back to the mainland, or to that island she’d come from. He could indulge himself all he liked, but that didn’t change reality. He’d been foolish in becoming close to her, and more than that, in indulging his urges by mating with her.
He knew better. Truly, he knew better.
Abby was clothed when he got back to the cabin, in yet another colorful dress he supposed she’d pulled out of that bottomless yellow bag. She’d combed her hair as well, though it was still wet. She didn’t seem to want to face him at first; instead of looking at him, she spent several minutes fussing with the contents of her bag.
Finally, she said firmly, “Your brother is right. I should go. This… this all has been wonderful. You’ve been wonderful. But I need to go.”
“It will take me some time to get the boat,” he told her.
“That’s… that’s fine.”
“I need to walk to the settlement, then bring the boat around to this side of the island. It may take a while.”
She nodded, an awkward jerking of her head.
Aaron took a step back toward the door. “I’m sorry, Abby. I did not mean to take advantage of you in any way. To take something that was not my due. Though it’s possible I did… expect too much.”
She blinked at that. Then she nodded again.
“All right,” Aaron said. “I’ll be back in as little time as I can manage. You can wait here if you like, for a while, but you should go down to the dock eventually. If I don’t find you there when I return, I’ll come and look for you here.”
All of this was making his head ache—and only a few days ago, everything had seemed so simple. There had been only two weeks left of his Separation. The weather had been pleasant, and he’d had to endure almost no discomfort, no serious hunger, no thirst. All that had troubled him was that he hadn’t yet determined the course of his life. What work should he do to benefit the pack? Whom should he pursue, with the goal of mating and siring children? What should he seek to learn from the elders? But that gap hadn’t seemed insurmountable, because he had another two full weeks out here alone to ponder all those questions.
And now? Every breath he took seemed like a problem.
“Do you want me to go?” Abby asked softly.
He frowned at her, not sure he’d actually heard her say that; maybe he’d simply imagined it because he wanted her to be unsure.
The question was still there on her face.
“Yes,” he whispered. “It’s best.”
“But is it what you want?”
If only one of them could stand strong. If one of them could be firm, and logical, and sensible…
“No,” he said.
“Neither do I.” She let the bag droop to the floor, where it slumped over and spilled some of its contents. “I can’t remember a time where I felt so… so right with someone. When I felt so at ease. Like I’ve known you for a really long time, somehow.”
Yes, he thought. “I feel the same.”
“What will happen if I don’t go?”
Aaron tipped his head back and pressed his shoulders up, trying to ease the ache in his neck. He thought about cursing his brother’s timing; if Luca hadn’t come near the pool, he and Abby could have gone on splashing around in the water. In the evening, they would have prepared another meal. Perhaps a rabbit this time.
His brother’s persistent voice reminded him that Separation was supposed to mean eating only what was necessary for him to survive. No feasts. No basking in the sunshine or splashing in warm water.
And certainly, no partaking of the lush flesh of a human woman.
But there she was in front of him, hair spilling over her shoulders in damp blonde waves, the curve of her breasts revealed by the low neckline of the dress she’d chosen. This dress had a more form-fitting skirt than the other ones, and it made the roundness of her hips very plain. He remembered following those curves with his hands and slipping his fingers into her warmth. It had been a delight, all of it, one that had made his wolf howl with pleasure.
The animal was pleased, too, when she smiled. When she laughed. When she gave voice to her thoughts, talked about her life—about anything, really. Simply being in her presence delighted the animal as much as it did Aaron.
They loved her, both he and the wolf. This troublesome, emotional woman who had shown up here entirely by accident.
“Stay,” he blurted.
Her forehead wrinkled. She’d looked down at her spilled bag several times and seemed to be worried about the mess.
“He said–” she started.
“My brother has no say. No one has any say, except the two of us.”
“But–”
“I’ll fight for you, Abby. I’ll face the elders and convince them to let you stay with us. Others have done it.”
She looked at him as confused as if he had spoken in some unfamiliar language. Her face quivered in a way that made him think of poor, unfortunate Roja, who had struck his head in a fall onto the rocks a few years ago and had never again been able to speak properly. There were tears welling in her eyes, and that broke Aaron’s heart enough that he went to her and cupped her head in his hands.
“If you want me to,” he said softly, “I’ll fight for you.”
She was trembling in his grasp, her eyes shimmering with tears. He was careful to keep his grip loose enough that she could escape if she wanted to, but she didn’t try to slip away. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and knotted her hands together at the small of his back as she pressed her head against his shoulder.
Fight for her? He would die for her.
“Yes,” she said, and peered up at him through her tears. “I want you to.”
“It will be difficult. There are things… We aren’t what you would think of as a normal communi
ty.”
“Because you live out here on an island?”
“Other things.”
Again he thought of Roja, who had trouble sorting things out in his head. Roja could seldom handle a question whose answer was anything more complicated than “yes” or “no.” He couldn’t parse things out, solve a puzzle, imagine anything that might happen more than a day or two into the future. Abby seemed like that now—not because she wasn’t bright, or had been injured, but because she had seen only the surface of what this island was.
Maybe the bond was clouding her judgment.
“Abby… I’m not what you think I am. At least, I’m more than what you think I am.”
“Are you married?” she asked in a small voice. “Like… a polygamist? You want me to be a sister wife or something?”
“No.”
He needed to fetch that boat. Truly, he needed to fetch the boat.
But there were good people here. People who would accept her. His mother would, if he told her he loved Abby, that she was meant to be his mate. Certainly Granny Sara would accept her, and Old Abram. Jenna, too, after a while. The others would give in eventually. Only a few would try to shun her. And if he showed Abby that none of them were dangerous, that they were simply different…
“What is it, then?” she asked. “You’re cannibals? You’re a drug-smuggling ring? You do human trafficking?”
“No. It’s none of that.”
“Then why won’t you tell me what the problem is?”
“It’s… difficult.”
She seemed to want to ask something else, something she was having trouble giving voice to. It took her a long while to speak again.
“Aaron,” she said softly. “Please give me some credit. My whole life, people keep assuming I can’t make the right decision. They keep pushing me around. Do you know what that makes me feel like? How much that hurts? I’m not a child.” She paused, and he could see her anguish in the depths of her eyes. “Please be different. Please just tell me the truth, and let me decide for myself.”
