Glory Reborn

by Sherry L. Brown

  Hurt flares up high and bright in in my breast. Was I just a ‘trophy wife?’ I never thought of the label, but I have to admit from the outside...what I was could be viewed that way.

  But not anymore. No.

  I finish my fries and chunk the empty container in the bag. I stare out the front window with him.

  “No! I want peace.” My annoyance shoots up. He’s ruined a good food coma. A satiating meal turning unsatisfactory by way of the truth. Useless trophy wife and the devil is recruiting. How long till he finds me? How long till he attacks? How long do I have to enjoy this world I so recently woke up in?

  “Then you know what you have to do.” His words are said with conviction. With finality.

  “Huh? What am I supposed to do? You want me to fight?” How ridiculous.

  “Yes, goddammit! Show me the woman that took what she wanted.” His flame of passion sparks to match mine.

  His words plummet me through time to the memory. I refuse to go back there. The crazy reality is we don’t know each other and one night of sex does not equal a relationship. Or a call to arms.

  I tell him exactly my thoughts. “You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We crashed together fourteen years ago and had an amazing night of sex. That’s it.”

  He taps the steering wheel. Shakes his head ruefully.

  “Newsflash, Glory. You won’t be able to sit around, drink wine and eat bon-bons in your garden when the other side takes over. The humans that make and provide those things will all be dead, and if you manage to live through whatever the other side has planned for us, it’ll all be about survival.”

  I narrow my eyes at his words. He can not know I drink wine, eat dessert and dance in my garden. That had to be a lucky guess on his part.

  I throw my hands up. “How is what you’re doing any different than what Alastor is doing, huh?”

  I wait for him to answer and when he doesn’t, I realize he has no refutation for that point.

  He is doing exactly what Alastor is. Recruiting.

  “What do you want me to do?!? I can’t fight! I can’t be what they wanted me to be! I can’t be what you are asking.”

  I won’t say the word. It’s gone so dormant in my mind I wonder if that part of me even ever existed. Did I imagine it?

  “You can train. Learn to harness your strengths. Mitigate your weaknesses. You can lead. Intelligence gathering. Reconnaissance.”

  “Is that what you do?” My earlier pointed comments have come back to me. I don’t know him.

  But you want to.

  I turn to him, hoping to glean something from his answer.

  “Some.”

  Frustratingly vague. His turns his head to me. Our eyes meet in a search for answers from each other.

  How did you find me in that silo? I want to know. What powers does he possess? What makes him more than simple bitten wolf? What makes him alpha?

  Oh yes. I smell it on him.

  He doesn’t answer my unspoken question, but charges on. “You would be able to have access to all our research. The things you want to know about your mother. Your biological father.”

  Do I want to go down that road? Do I want to know?

  “Yourself.” He tacks on with a quiet exhale.

  With that I’m certain I don’t want to know. There’s ugliness inside me. The ability to destroy. I put that in a box, locked it and tucked it away into the depths of my self.

  “And what about you? Would I be able to have access to you?” I ask. My filter has completely shut down.

  His smile is triumphant. Predatory.

  I just stupidly played my hand. I’m interested in him. Will he use that information against me? His knowing look says yes.

  “Please, take me back to work.” I ask.

  He starts the truck and pulls out of the lot. The drive back to the store is quiet. We’re both lost to our own thoughts.

  Pulling to a stop in front of my workplace, I don’t waste time unbuckling and hopping from the cab. Before I shut the door though, I remember my manners. “Thanks for lunch.”

  He lifts up his butt, and pulls out his wallet. Extracts a card and leans across the console to me.

  “If you change your mind.”

  Chapter 25

  I am a moth to flame.

  I managed to ignore the card all throughout my afternoon shift. I had slid it in my back pocket without a glance. And all throughout the rest of my workday it felt as intimate, personal, and aggravating as having his hand on my ass.

  Only when I got home, pulled my work clothes off, and started the shower did I look at it.

  Sutton Gun Range. The address was in the outskirts of town. Rural.

  I had the urge to hop in my car and drive over there.

  Instead I poured myself a glass of wine and told myself drinking and driving is illegal. I’d rather have wine than answers.

  But I’d rather have Nick than wine.

  My traitorous wants! I groan. Picture his body as I knew it to be. Wide chest and shoulders, defined abs, round butt; I’d managed to see a few more men’s naked butts since that night, but none compared to my first.

  I take a sip of my wine, my gaze turned inward to that memory.

  The feel of him inside me. I’d never been so complete. So whole.

  I chug the rest of the wine. Definitely can’t drive now.

  I pour a second glass to enjoy at a more leisurely place.

  I grab the plants I rescued from the trash bin today. Three nearly-dead bleeding heart plants. A perennial preferring shade. These three are so sad, our manager wrote them off as a loss, and gave orders to chuck ‘em. Sadly not a unusual occurrence in the big box store. My house and the greenhouse are slowly filling up with all manner of plants ‘written off.’

  I head out to my backyard and the table I use as my re-potting place.

  Everything I need is already there.

  Actually. I may just be able to plant them in the sunniest part of the garden. The southern facing corner of the greenhouse would work nicely. They’ll die back in winter and come alive next spring.

  I find my bigger shovel in the green house. Bring it out to the spot I’d selected.

  Put my back into it and break ground.

  This house was a mid-90s tract house with two major selling points for me. Skylights in the master bathroom, which were directly above the huge hydro tub, and a greenhouse.

  I’d had to paint and replace carpet before moving in, but it also boasted a good-sized backyard with an pin-oak tree and patio.

  All-in-all not a bad place to be. A small road bordered the fenced-in backyard, and more tract houses ran along the other side of it. The neighborhood seemed to cater to retired folks and first-time home buyers. All normal humans.

  Vulnerable humans.

  I shiver as the sweat from digging dries in the cool evening air.

  Alastor Moon is here. Isn’t it in my best interest to learn all I can to defend myself?

  Last time we crossed paths, I was stupidly inept. I don’t want that again. I don’t want his consort queen to snap her fingers and end my life.

  How long would he have left me in that silo? Why didn’t they ever come for me? How had Nick found me?

  Perhaps I should take Nick up on his offer of training and answers. Besides my ineptness in being able to keep myself out of the other side’s hands, the thing that grates the most is the fourteen months I spent being ignored. Not existing.

  At the very least it’s an excuse to learn more about Nick. Be close to him.

  At the very best I’ll learn more about my parents, myself, and this other side that’s threatening my freedom, my cupcakes, and my consumption of wine.

  On the other hand, it’s possible this other side will remain exactly where it’s at. On the other side. Nothing to fear as it has been for the past - what? Six hundred years?

  I can enjoy all the earthly pleasures in anonymity. Savor every cup of coffee. Every glass of wine. Grow my garden to n
ew heights.

  I pull one of the bleeding hearts from it’s pot. Root bound. Not unexpected.

  I sit it in the hole I created. Jump up and grab the bag of fertilizer to put in with the roots. Back at my hole, before I can bend down to spread dirt a sound stops me. Like a scuff of a shoe against the fence. I can just barely make out a shape on the other side. In the alley.

  I freeze. Panic at who might on the other side.

  Has Alastor found me? Come to throw me back in the darkness?

  “Hello?” I barely breath the word out in my fear.

  “Glory?” The tiniest question of my name spoken by a woman.

  The confirmation of sex wipes away some of my fear. The only woman I’ll ever fear is Nevaeh Henries, and she carries a particular scent of fire and brimstone with her.

  “Yes?” I call back in confirmation.

  “Glory Faoláin?” The words are spoken so tentatively. My married name.

  “Yes. I’m Glory. What...?” I don’t even know what question to ask. This conversation through a fence is awkward. A scent like I’ve never smelled before drifts to me. It is like earth and blood mixed together. Far from gross, it makes me think of nourishment.

  “Your sister. She said I could find you...only you weren't in Colorado?”

  “No. I moved here two months ago. I’m sorry.” My brain fires. Justice has known my whereabouts since they found me. She must be talking about Independence.

  “Please. Come around to the front. Have a glass of wine with me.”

  I walk through the house to meet my guest on legs of curiosity.

  Who is this woman with the earthy scent?

  I see her through the opaqueness of the front door. A diminutive figure with a slightly rounding belly. Like a dream becoming a reality, I open the door.

  “I’m Desdemona. You can call me Des for short.”

  “Hi Des.” I step back to allow her to enter, “Please come in.”

  Her hair is dyed red. And I think if she were trying to change her appearance to blend in, she chose wrongly.

  But she’s classically beautiful. Symmetrical face, weary blue eyes.

  Her paranoia reminds me a bit of my mother.

  “Please come into the kitchen. I have actual furniture in there.” I smile at her. She follows hesitantly, but doesn’t rebuke my offer of food, drink.

  There’s an immediate affinity I feel for her. I can smell that she’s a wolf and something else. Maybe that’s what I feel. We’re the same species.

  And she’s lost. I am at least able to offer a sanctuary. For a short time or a while.

  Chapter 26

  My next day off, I do what I resigned myself to do after settling Desdemona in my guest bedroom. Find answers and protect.

  It’s Thursday, mid-morning and I use my phone GPS to direct me to the Sutton Gun Range.

  It’s been cloudy with off and on rain the past three days. I could feel the moon waning even though I hadn’t seen it, hiding as it was behind clouds. Fall was here even though the official start was a month away. Soon the rain would turn to spitting snow. Maybe even within the next week.

  SGR (as I was coming to abbreviate it in my mind) was set a good mile off the highway at the base of a mountain. The right side of the mountain was naked. Gleaming granite, pale and symmetrical where it’d been mined. The acres below, scourged earth and a large pit. SGR had at one time been a functioning quarry. The left side of the mountain was a stark contrast. Swathed in trees, the base of which stood a skirt of meadow. Above it, through the trees I could just make out a the windows of a house. It was set behind evergreens, and something told me this was it’s tactical camouflage.

  A wolf’s den is his castle, and he will defend it viciously.

  A small niggle of worry enters my stomach. And I am going to the wolf’s den voluntarily.

  Maybe the nerves are not in worry. Maybe it’s in anticipation of seeing him. The hot one.

  My gaze lowers from the house to the square building poised at the edge of the pit.

  A parking lot with ten or so spaces in front of it, a few cars. I recognize Nick’s black truck at the back.

  When I push through the glass double doors, the space is a square that simply holds a cashiers desk perpendicular to the door I just came through. The far wall holds another set of doors. A woman - attractive and young - works behind the desk.

  She sighs, and lifts her head from her laptop at my entrance.

  “Welcome to Sutton’s. Twenty bucks an hour.” She says to me without a smile.

  A brunette, straight teeth, hair wavy and a pointed chin.

  “Ummm.” I step closer to the counter. I catch her scent. Wolf.

  “I’m here to see Nick.”

  Her eyes narrow at me, dip down and back up to take my measure.

  I bristle a little at being judged. Echoes of shooting start up from behind the double doors.

  “He’s on the range.” Her head tips to the doors.

  “Ok. I can wait.”

  “Nah. Just go on in. There’s ear protection on the left side of the door.”

  I push through the back doors, see Nick in the middle of the long room. The opposite side is rolled up doors, facing out to a range set in the gray-white stone quarry. Arms crossed, stance wide, watching the people in the firing stalls. He glances at me, then away when a person starts pulling the trigger again. I grimace at the booms hitting my ears. I reach over and find a pair of mufflers hanging on a hook by the door.

  I slip them on. Walk the few paces to his side.

  He gives me a head nod. He holds up his hand, fingers splayed wide and mouths, “Five minutes.”

  With nothing else to do, I turn my attention to the people in front of us.

  One woman, two men. One of the men smells like wolf. The two others, I smell only human. What I can detect over the gunpowder anyway.

  They are all firing handguns. After watching them hit, I see that the woman is a fair shot, one of the men really good, and the last abysmal.

  The abysmal guy is out of ammo first. Then the other man, the one that smells of wolf, is out. Finally the woman puts her gun on safe and puts it down on the small table in her stall.

  When she turns, sliding her ear protection off, I recognize her for the blonde that was eating lunch with Alastor.

  I suck in a breath and her eyebrow shoots up at me in question.

  “All right, guys. Good job today.” Nick claps the guys on their backs as they file out.

  “See you next week?” Blondie sidles up to Nick. She hands him the gun, the empty clip.

  Her skin is warm, sun-kissed. Her jeans cup her ass, and her sweater hugs her full c-cups.

  A growl bubbles up my throat and I work to swallow it down.

  “Of course. Good work today, Sienna.” Nick takes the gun from her, turns to put it on a table by his hip.

  She watches him, realizes she doesn’t have anything else to say, and tucks her hands in her back pockets while regarding me.

  “Have a good weekend.” She heads out the door.

  I unclench my jaw forcefully.

  “You’ve been busy.” I accuse Nick when he turns back to me.

  “Yes.” Again our eyes meet, measuring each other.

  He’s honest with me. Unapologetic. I can feel the truth in his words and I respect him for it.

  “C’mon. I have some things for you. Some things to show you.”

  He pushes out of the firing range, leaving me to follow and admire his butt. The mystery of what he might have for me motivates me past any misgivings.

  “Mere, We’re heading up to the house. You can close up early - don’t think we’ll see anybody else today.”

  Nick directs his words to the pointy chinned brunette manning the reception desk.

  “You got it boss.” Her eyes flick curiously to me. “See you tomorrow?”

  He doesn’t even break stride. He has a rapport and familiarity swathed in trust for the brunette. It feels easy, where
the exchange with the blonde felt sexually-predatory.

  “Of course. Tomorrow.”

  In the parking lot, I follow Nick to his truck. Watch as he waves to the SUV pulling out of the lot. Looks like his firing range guests carpool.

  He gets in his truck and I follow suit.

  Immediately upon settling in, I’m swallowed up by Nick’s prevalent scent in the cab. It warms something inside of me. Melts away my barriers. But not my jealousy. I cut my eyes to study him as he points the truck out of the lot.

  Square hands. Hot on my skin. I remember.

  Muscular forearms exposed by his rolled up sleeves.

  Work shirt. Down vest. Worn jeans. Brown scarred boots.

  Jaw covered in a quarter inch of blonde stubble. Carelessly sexy. Tousled hair. And his delectable scent. Woods and…

  I can’t put my finger on it. I just know I like it. Could roll in it.

  The visual of my wolf doing just that ironically snaps me out of whatever-the-hell state I’m in.

  We have climbed the mountain’s left side through a rough graveled switch-back road.

  “Must suck to plow this in the winter.” I offer. Small talk. Small talk is good.

  “Hmmm.” Nick’s response is a hum from the base of his throat.

  I am saved from having to respond, as he’s turned a final switch back and pulled up to the strangest looking house I’ve ever seen.

  Large windows, and stone. White-gray, almost concrete. From the quarry. The face of the house is shaped in asymmetrical rectangle. In front of it, there’s just enough room to park two cars, before the forest begins. And I would imagine, drop off down the front of the mountain.

  I inhale deep while closing the truck door. Stone. Trees. Mountain.

  I somehow find it comforting, despite knowing there’s no grass, no flowers, no shrubs, no space for plant life up here. Rock and Pine. Sky and cold. Fortress.

  Nick rounds the hood of the truck. Pauses at the front door to enter the key.

  The front doors are ten feet high and something off a castle. Honest to goodness gargoyle knockers and those tiny iron spikes spaced evenly from the bottom to the top.

  The minute I’m through the door, all thought of the impressive outside is obliterated by the inside.