Seduced by Innocence (9 page)

Bending over, I dry heaved until my body had nothing left to give in its emptiness. My tears came in harsh sobs, mingling with the rain, and Sandy howled and whined and paced around the kennel, uncertain about what to do.

All five of her puppies lay in the kennel, cut in half from head to tail.

I didn't hear anyone approaching until they grabbed my arms from behind, squeezing my stitches.

"No!" Mother gasped as I winced and pulled away from her. She turned to me. "What happened here?"

"I don't know." My words came between hiccups and sobs. "I heard the puppies barking and came to make sure they were all right. I found them this way."

I turned to leave and she grabbed me again. Blood seeped through my shirt and onto her hand. "Why are you bleeding?"

"I… I cut myself on a gate earlier. It's nothing." I tried to pull away but she wouldn't let me. I had to get out of there. Out of that room and away from that gruesome sight.

Jasmine came in, her face pale and tears in her eyes. "She's lying. I heard her talking to Ocean. She was on a date with a boy and was attacked."

Mother turned on me. "Is this true, Rose? Did you disobey my orders and go out with a boy?"

I tried to summon my courage, tried to be more like Ocean, but it had fled at the sight of those poor puppies. "Yes."

"You've put everyone here at risk. Do you understand that? Being a part of this coven means following the rules. If you can't do that, then you will no longer be welcomed here. From here on out, you're not allowed off this property unless accompanied by me or someone I appoint from the coven, and it certainly won't be Ocean, who's on thin ice with us as well. Are we clear?"

Lacking any will to fight, I would have said anything if it meant getting back to the cottage and away from this horror. "Yes." In the back of my mind, in the place that existed before this tragedy had occurred, I wondered about Derek. The thought of
not
seeing him again penetrated the fog inside me, bringing with it even more pain.

"Go back home and stay put while I deal with this. I'm very disappointed in you, Rose."

Sandy didn't want to leave her puppies, but finally walked away when she saw me leaving. As I walked past Jasmine I frowned at her. "Are you really so jealous of my relationship with Ocean that you'd betray me like this?"

She had the grace to at least keep her eyes down in shame as I stormed out and then ran back to my house.

When Ocean saw my face, she pulled me to the couch. "What happened?"

I told her everything and she stared at me in horror. "Rose, this may not be the best time to tell you this, but I think it's important."

I wasn't sure I could handle anything else, but I nodded numbly.

She pulled out a piece of paper she'd printed, and I looked at it, not totally comprehending what I was seeing.

"This picture was taken 25 years ago at a charity event. That's David O'Conner, head of Rose Botanicals." She pointed to a man in an expensive suit. He reminded me of Derek, but probably any good-looking man would remind me of him just then. I was so tempted to call him and beg him to come over and get me out of here, but I couldn't leave Ocean.

There had to be a way to be with him and protect those here as well. Mother's new rule had to have a loophole, but I couldn't see it through the horror of this night.

"Rose, look! The woman he's got his arm around, do you recognize her?"

I looked more closely at the grainy black and white photo and my heart stopped.

My mother stood arm and arm with our enemy, and she looked very much in love.

"No, this can't be. This doesn't make sense. It must just be someone who looks like her."

"Rose, look at her necklace."

I did, and my heart sank. She wore the rose pendant that my grandmother had given Mother to pass down to her first born daughter. Me.

I reached for the pendant hanging around my neck and stroked the hand painted rose, custom made for my grandmother when she was my age.

My mother and the Druid's leader had been involved, and she'd lied about it all these years.

The horror didn't end as Ocean kept speaking.

"Maybe he's attacking us out of jealousy or something. But by all accounts, he's a happy family man with three kids and a loving wife. Not much is mentioned about them in public, but they seem like a solid family. Rose, I'm so sorry to say this, but what if we have this all wrong. What if there's something more going on than we realize?"

My mind couldn't process anything else in that instant and I lay back against the couch and closed my eyes, willing everything to just go away.

This day's black fate on more days doth depend;

This but begins the woe, others must end.

— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

THE MOON HUNG
low in the sky, full and bright. We had no more compulsion to shift on a full moon than any other night of the month, but it did bring out our more animal nature.

I'd tried to sleep, to read, to work out, but nothing could pull my mind away from Rose. Grabbing my phone, I gave in to the need to call her, despite the late hour.

"Hello?" She sounded dried out and scratchy, like she'd been crying.

"Rose, it's Derek. I'm sorry to call so late, but I had to see if you're doing okay."

I paced back and forth, leaving footprints in the light dusting of snow that coated the courtyard behind our house.

"Derek. Um, I can't really talk now. And I'm not sure I'll be able to make our date tomorrow night. I'm sorry." Her voice cracked and she stopped talking.

"Are you okay? What happened?" She hadn't said she didn't want to see me at all, so there was some hope.

"Someone killed a litter of puppies tonight. I'm the one who found them… " Her voice trailed off as if she'd left something else unsaid. But what she
had
said was bad enough. I wanted desperately to hold her and take her away from all the pain she'd experienced today, but that wasn't yet my role. I was still a relative stranger, despite a few intimate moments.

"God, I'm sorry. Do you know who's responsible? Can I do anything to help?" I silently begged her to say yes, that I could help by coming over and being there for her.

"No. Thank you, but I have to go. It's been a tough night. I'll try to call you tomorrow."

"I understand. I'm here for you if you need me, Rose. Get some rest."

I slipped the phone into my pocket and walked toward the one place I might be able to find some peace.

As I walked through the woods, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, as if someone were watching me. I looked around but didn't see or hear anyone. Using my shifter senses, I inhaled deeply to catch the scent of anyone unfamiliar, but got nothing. I shrugged it off as my own paranoia after the night I'd had.

A field of magic surrounded the hidden garden, and for a moment I worried that being away might have turned it against me, but I slipped through without a problem.

Inside I stood in awe at the beauty of this place. No matter how many times I came here, it always stilled something restless inside of me.

Exotic flowers grew side by side with indigenous trees. Mossy boulders had been placed strategically for sitting or leaning against. Ripe fruit hung heavy from trees long out of season, and in the center of it grew the most perfect rose bush I'd ever seen.

Roses of every color grew from one bush, always fragrant, no matter the weather, petals pristine and powerful.

Each rose color held different magical properties, and the tonics that we derived from them and oils we culled from them had made up the bedrock of my family's successful business at Rose Botanicals.

The few remaining Druids heavily guarded this power source, as it also held the heart of our power.

I didn't want to admit, even to myself, how much I'd missed being in proximity to these roses, to my family. Here my soul began to mend, filling out like a person starved and dehydrated who finally found their oasis. I couldn't allow myself to accept the truth of that, because if I did, I would have to choose this life, and then I would lose any semblance of freedom and choice I'd ever have.

Shoving those thoughts aside, I plucked the right combinations of petals to make the cream I'd need to help Rose heal her arm. Even her scar would heal almost completely, leaving only a faint line to indicate anything harmful had ever befallen her.

All the equipment I needed to make a basic healing salve was hidden in a secret compartment in one of the rocks. I pulled it out and began crushing the roses, mixing and blending.

"Would you like some help?"

I looked up to see my father standing over me. My instinct to fight him in everything fell flat as I looked at the mess I was making with the salve. "Yes. Thank you. I guess I've lost my touch since I've been gone."

My father sat next to me on the ground and looked at what I'd made. "Not so, you've got the basics. We just need to add a few more ingredients and get a cleaner sample of the oils in the rose. May I?"

I handed him the bowl and watched him work his own magic, turning my mush into a fragrant cure for serious cuts.

"Are you injured?"

"It's not for me."

"I see."

He didn't ask, and I wasn't planning on telling, but my stupid mouth didn't feel like listening to my brain. "I met a girl. She's special, Dad, real special. I took her out tonight but the whole date was a disaster." I told him everything that had happened. "This is for her arm, but I don't even know if she'll see me again."

"Do you think you could love her?"

I might have been falling for her already, but that was a tidbit I'd keep to myself. "I could, with time."

"Is she worth it? Is she worth whatever it would take to make her happy, to love her and be there for her?"

Yes. "I don't know."

His eyes settled on mine without judgment. "Son, I think you do, or you wouldn't be out here in the middle of the night mashing rose petals together."

Crap. "We've only had one date and one training session at the studio. No one can fall in love that fast."

"Really? I see. Well, let me ask you a question." Uh-oh. He had that voice that said I'd be learning a lesson. "Do you think your mother and I are in love?"

"Of course." They'd been deeply in love for as long as I could remember.

"Did you know that I told her I loved her after our first date?"

Double crap. "No, I didn't know that."

He mixed in another oil and stirred some more, using his Druid magic to accelerate the process. "It's true. I met her at a bookstore. She looked stunning standing in the classics section browsing through Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet
. I wanted to impress her with my charm and brains, so I struck up a conversation and told her that I thought that the true tragedy in
Romeo and Juliet
wasn't in their love and death, but in their misguided notion that they had really been in love at all. Infatuation, I said, was at the heart of that play. Foolish, youthful lust."

I laughed, trying to imagine the look on my literature professor mother's face as my dad criticized her favorite play.

"You can imagine her response. She defended them and spoke eloquently of social injustice and sins of the father and how the true tragedy lay in their family's inability to look past ancient grievances and see into a brighter future. She postulated that the deaths of the two young lovers spurred a renewed self-reflection in their families and forced them to consider the painful arrogance and futility of their struggle against one another.

"Before she had even stopped speaking, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with her. I asked her out on the spot and proposed to her, ring in hand, that night on our date."

The romance of his courtship stunned me. I'd always seen my dad as a business man, a good father—if a bit overzealous in turning his kids into his corporate puppets—and a devoted husband, but never an impulsive romantic. "Did she say yes?"

"Of course not." His deep laugh rumbled through the garden. "She hardly knew me. But it didn't take long to finally convince her we were soul mates."

"Do you really think Rose could be my soul mate?" The idea terrified me, but also gave me an uneasy joy.

"Only you can answer that but, based on what you've said, I'd say yes."

"Are you just trying to convince me I'm in love with her so I'll stick around and join the business?" I didn't mean it to sound as accusatory as it came out, but he didn't flinch or frown.

He smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. "Son, all I have ever wanted is for you to be happy. I don't care if that's with Rose Botanicals, or the studio, or driving your motorcycle around the country. I apologize for the things I said when you turned eighteen. I realized after you left that I'd driven a wedge between us, and it's pained me ever since. The only question I have for you now is: are you happy? Truly happy?"

In that moment I knew the answer. I'd been running my entire adult life, trying to find that one thing that would make me feel alive. I'd never found it, but when Rose walked into the studio that day, it found me.

"I think I might be starting to find happiness. But what if it's too late? What if I've already lost her?"

"It's never too late." He handed me the salve. "This is ready. Go to her. Fight for her. Show her you love her and won't hurt her. Trust your heart above all else."