Moon Chilled (7 page)

There was a moment in which Maiki said nothing, and I stared across the tiny kitchen of my rented cabin until the faded blue wallpaper blended in with the pale blue of the winter sky beyond. But then Maiki spoke, and I could hear the fear behind her words.

"You need to come home. To us. Something's coming. We'll need you. He needs you."

My lips pulled back in a snarl, but I would not release that hatred on her submissive wolf. However, I knew I'd go. Not for him, though. Never for him. But for Maiki I'd always be ready to run back there, and in that moment I realized I'd never really gotten all that far. I took a deep breath to quiet my anger, then said, "I'm on my way." It was a promise, but of what I couldn't be sure. I'd go there anyway, to whatever fate awaited me.

The line went dead, and I let the phone drop to the bed beside me. I supposed that was it, then; there was nothing left to say after that.

Chapter Five

Maiki

"Did you call her?"

I shivered as the force of my alpha's presence washed over me. I slowly put the phone down and nodded. This wasn't right. I wasn't supposed to feel this way about him. My alpha, he was to be loved. Wasn't he? Something must have been wrong with me to have this kind of reaction in front of him. That had to be it. Everyone else loved my alpha, but I'd never been able to do so, not like I thought an alpha should be loved. I knew I had to try harder, to give him more of myself. But there were only so many fractured pieces I could give him before there were no more pieces left of myself for me for me.

"Well, what did she say? Is she coming?" my alpha asked me. He sounded impatient, and I flinched.

His hand came up to grasp my shoulder. I nodded again, my shoulders rounding as I tried to become smaller and less noticeable. Maybe then he'd forget about me. It didn't work, but then again it never did, and his hand trailed up to the back of my neck and tangled in the sensitive strands of my short blonde hair.

"Good. It'll be good to have our stray little wolf back again. Won't it?"

I couldn't lie to him. I'd never figured out how to. But he expected an answer. And I didn't have one for him. Shae had left for a reason. I knew this. And her reason was standing right next to me and his hand was in my hair. That he'd wanted me to call Shae had been a surprise. He'd forbidden it every other time I'd approached him until I'd stopped asking years before. He had her number but had to have known that Shae would never come back for him. She was the strongest wolf I knew, and from the few glimpses of her life that I'd caught in my dreams and had to tell him about, he must have known that too. Strength in numbers was the pack way; having Shae there would only help him avoid whatever was coming for us all.

I'd called her because he'd told me to. But I'd also reached out to Shae because it had been ten years since I'd last seen her and I wanted her back. It was selfish, but I did it anyway.

"Come on, seer, answer me," he coaxed. "You want your girl back. Don't you?"

I held back my sigh of relief and slowly forced my neck to make the careful, concise movements of a nod. I could answer him honestly about that. I wanted to see Shae again. I'd missed her. That wasn't a lie.

His fingers tightened in my hair, and with one yank I was forced roughly to my knees on the hard wooden floor. "Now, little wolf, tell me what you see." His voice was dark, the command behind it clear as I closed my eyes and tried to bring that other part of me in to settle down.

The woman, the wolf, and the seer in me rarely all worked well together and certainly not on command, but as his hands twisted in my hair and pain began to lace through my skull, I tried to force the connection until his deep growl against my ear halted my thoughts. It wasn't just that he'd interrupted me; it was that his presence frightened me, annoyed my wolf, and irritated the seer all at once until I didn't know which part of myself turned and looked up at him.

The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn't the one that pulled back my upper lip in a fierce display of something I should have never shown my alpha. And my reward for such behavior was a swift and painful smack across my cheek that had me falling to the floor in a heap as I played dead under him. I hid inside of my mind as the tip of his boot met with my ribs. The wolf inside of me whimpered and the seer trembled, but against the sound of her alpha's yelling, the wolf's noises meant little. There were other noises too. I could hear them from where I lay as quietly as I could, trying not to encourage him to do more to me today. Men ran forward, likely wondering what was happening in their alpha's house. But none came further than the front door. I met their gazes as blood filled my mouth and leaked over my cracked bottom lip. Another kick to my belly had me choking on the thick fluid as tears fell from me eyes.

A few of the men looked away. Some whined, their wolves wishing to help me, the weakest of them all. But they wouldn't. I'd long ago given up hope that they'd rescue me. Most of them were a few decades older than me and had been here when things had started to go so very wrong. They hadn't helped me as a child, and I knew they'd do nothing to help me now. Especially since now I'd gone and done the unthinkable. I'd brought Shae back to him. Shae was the only wolf I'd ever cared about, and now I'd lured her out of hiding. I closed my eyes and let the tears fall freely.

I cried for the child I was, broken and bleeding in a room upstairs after the first time my alpha had pulled me to him. I wept for the son I'd brought into this world, a life that had grown inside of me and that I'd sworn to protect, knowing that by letting him live I'd already likely let him down. And for Shae I shed the most tears, because as a child her only choice had been to run. I should have let her keep running, as I knew that my alpha wouldn't make the same mistake with her now that she was an adult. He'd kill her, I was sure of it. And I'd knowingly brought her to her death.

I was still crying when my alpha left me there in the kitchen with blood pooling around my mouth. My wolf had long retreated from the scene, and the seer had left me as well. In that silence, I heard him joking to the men that had stayed to watch, and I closed my eyes as, for once, they didn't take him up on his offer where I was concerned.

Chapter Six

Shae

It took me nearly three days to arrive at the sleepy little mountain town of Elderthorne. Though not much had changed, I took note of the differences in the trees. They helped to remind me that I'd been away. That coming back wasn't permanent. I wouldn't be staying long; just enough to make sure that Maiki was all right and hopefully convince her to leave with me this time. She'd turned me down a decade before. I hoped she wouldn't do it again today.

The wolf took a breath and placed her paw on the base of a nearly white Aspen tree, glowing against the early dawn. I wasn't a child anymore. I wasn't running away. My wolf couldn't understand this thought as she continued trotting along the side of the road. It wasn't the safest way to travel, but my wolf wanted to see the differences as much as I did. She sent me pictures of what it had been like. I didn't need them—I remembered this place too. But it helped me put together what she was thinking as she gave me an image of a house as it once was along with what it was now. She remembered the pain we'd been through here, though in a very different fashion. I remembered the words, the scars that they'd left on my mind and heart. The wolf was far more tactile and focused on the feeling of fists and feet on her fur, of teeth on her neck and the taste of blood on her tongue.

Admittedly, that last bit wasn't completely uncommon. Even now the acrid taste lingered on my lips from the rabbit I'd eaten for dinner the night before. The wolf was thankful to be let out, in her own way. It wasn't in so many words, not like I would have expressed the feeling. But it was there all the same. The wolf is faster, stronger, and far less bulky than I am. I protested, thinking about clothing and my phone, both things we'd left behind at the cabin. The wolf paid no attention to the images of human things that I sent her, things I knew I could go without but that I'd grown accustomed to. But we were here to do one thing, and after that we'd be gone again.

I sent my wolf a feeling and watched in her mind to see what she thought. It took her a moment to place it, but once she had, I knew that she felt better for having received it. I trusted her and I wanted her to know that, especially as we walked into the place where I had first learned not to trust anyone. That was why I had let my wolf out for the journey, why we were approaching on four paws and wearing fur. The wolf was safer for me, and while I was not as weak as I had been, I was hardly strong enough to take on the man who had hurt me as a child.

A blue door opened across the narrow street, and a face peeked out from the shadows. The wolf kept walking while I sought to remember and eventually did. I recalled the family that had lived in that house when I'd been just a small child playing with the other pups in the street. The man in the doorway watched us, and though I didn't know him from my short time in the pack, the wolf knew he wasn't a threat. I could feel that in her and in the way she easily dismissed him after just a cursory glance. He was submissive to her and would never be capable of doing more than watching her curiously. My wolf hurried along the road, the gravel falling away from her paws as she walked.

More people opened their doors to see me now, as if there had been an unspoken call on the morning breeze announcing my arrival back into the place I'd once called home. I heard their fevered whispers. The wolf was more interested in an elk off in the forest. Its musky scent lingered on the grass it had walked through only a few hours before. The idea of the hunt, of having a meal that large, was only a momentary distraction for her before the scent of a fox distracted her. She continued on, walking past small houses and a few shops with peeling paint that showed their age through their thick glass windows and ragged exteriors.

I tried not to let the memories of my time here enter my mind. I'd grown up here, in a way. My parents had joined the pack when I'd been only ten. Three years after that I'd been gone. A cold chill that had nothing to do with the crisp morning air seeped into my thoughts, surrounding me just as the wolves in human skin had started to. My wolf sped up, not understanding what was bothering me but wanting to get away from it all the same. She didn't understand my thoughts, my fears, my trepidation. She lived in the moment in a way I'd only ever be able to attempt.

Only there was no escaping what I was afraid of. In fact, the only thing we could do was go directly toward the source of my discomfort as my wolf trotted along a quickly narrowing street. Her hackles rose as we approached the large white farmhouse at the end of the lane as the street narrowed into a fine point that fell directly at the farmhouse's front steps. I was nearly silent in my wolf's mind as she fiercely rejected the image of the place she hadn't laid eyes on in over a decade and never thought to see again.

My wolf couldn't enter without my help, so she stood on the front porch, her ears back and her tail swaying in the light breeze as she waited. Men, women, and small children approached her from behind. Some of their scents were familiar, but when she looked over her shoulder at them, none of the faces made sense. They weren't wolves. Not right now, at least; she didn't know them as humans, but I did, and I tried not to let the faces of the people I did remember bother me.

Voices drifted down to me from inside the house. Noises that the wolf didn't understand but that I cringed at. As my discomfort grew, she bared her teeth, ready to fight off whatever threat we faced. I sent her images that I hoped were calming. But there was still something there, something in the air that had my wolf's nerves standing on end, and I was too messed up in that moment to tell her that it was going to be okay. It would have been a lie anyway, since I didn't know that for a fact. I only hoped it as a litany of reasons to run as fast as I could in the other direction swarmed through my mind.

The noises abruptly subsided and footsteps could be heard in the old farmhouse. A moment later, the front door banged open, and a girl ran out, her face covered by her hands as shrill cries fell from her lips. The crowd behind my wolf absorbed the crying girl, and my wolf focused on the new set of sounds. Heavy footsteps, the kind made by humans wearing boots, came down the stairs I could see through the partially open door. We waited impatiently as the footsteps came closer and the door opened fully.

My wolf slowly blinked up at the man. He'd aged badly since I'd last seen him, and while I could tell he'd lost none of his dominance in the years since I'd run away, he was hardly the large beast of a man I remembered him being. What little hair he had was greasy now, and his once muscular form was much less so. My wolf was unimpressed and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.

I slowly uncurled in my wolf's mind, looking out through her eyes and taking in the man fully. I remembered him differently than my wolf did. After all, what he'd done to me had been as the man and not as the nearly white wolf he hid inside. But still, I looked and noticed the differences between them. I judged him as the man he was now and not the one he had been. And I did it all through the eyes of a wolf that was far stronger than the cub I had been. Now I was faster, stronger, and far braver than I had been then. And he was just an old man who used his power and dominance to hurt and control the wolves unfortunate enough to call themselves his.

With that in mind, I steadily took control back from my wolf and slowly shifted. The wolf helped me along, something she normally wouldn't have done. But she must have somehow been able to sense that I needed her strength and that appearing weak in front of this man would never be acceptable. Old magic fused with my human form, and I found the shift far easier with the animal's help as I rose to my full height in front of him.

"Ray," I greeted him, his name dripping off my lips like the poison it was.