12. Orion
CHAPTER 12
Orion
I solde was already in bed by the time I crawled my sorry ass back to the house, and neither Lycan nor Poe would meet my eyes. That was fine by me because I didn’t have much to say to them, either. I reheated some dinner and headed to my room, pausing for only a moment outside her door to consider apologizing for running out earlier.
The next day passed in companionable routine. Isolde busied herself around the house, and when she finished there, she came out to the barn to help with the animals. The closer we got to the full moon, the stronger her scent permeated through everything else. I smelled it when I woke up in the morning. I smelled it when I showered. I smelled it when she wasn’t anywhere near me.
Lycan had picked up on that fact and wouldn’t let the fucking thing drop.
“You need to do something about this,” he said three days before the moon while we were tagging the pregnant sheep. “Her family’s not coming before the shift.”
“I know that,” I said, sliding my red marker over an ear before releasing the critter back to the herd.
“Did you talk to Kodiak?”
I grunted but ignored his question because I had ; I just didn’t mention the fact that Lycan suspected she might be latent.
“He knows she’s gonna be here for the moon,” I explained. “We’ll be out in the woods. Nothing’s gonna hurt her.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Lycan said, glancing at Poe before standing up to grab another ewe. He dragged it over to me and read off her measurements so I could write it down.
“She’s not latent,” I said. “If she was, we would have known by now. She would know by now.” We were so close to the moon, she would have already gone into transition.
“And yet, there she is, rearranging the fucking house.”
“It’s been lived in by Bastards for decades.” The stab of anxiety that went down my chest and into my gut had nothing to do with how right he might be. Nope. Not at all. “It needed a good cleaning.”
“She’s a Vanderbilt princess,” Poe added. “She’s never cleaned a day in her life.”
“I’m sure she never shoveled hay, either.” I rubbed at the back of my head. “Look, I don’t know what you two want from me. If she’s latent, we’ll know soon enough. If she’s not, then we’ll be glad we kept our distance.”
“And what if she’s your?—”
“Don’t fucking say it again,” I snapped. “I already told you she wasn’t.”
Lycan narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer to me, taking a deep inhale before letting out a deep belly laugh and turning to grab another sheep. “Whatever, your holiness, the great pharaoh of the Fiver.”
I raised an arm to sniff under my pits, but I didn’t smell anything weird. Yeah, maybe I was a little sweaty from the day, but that was it. When I glanced at Poe, he shrugged and went back to work. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“King of Denial,” Lycan said with a deep guffaw.
I didn’t understand what happened with Lycan until later that evening. Isolde had made chicken and vegetables for dinner, and although she wore a pair of baggy jeans and a huge shirt, I couldn’t stop staring at her neck. She’d pulled her hair up on top of her head and joked with my brothers, but my canines throbbed and my wolf paced inside my blood. I was leering, and it was fucking creepy as hell, but Goddamn it, all I wanted was her. I couldn’t stop.
I wanted to draw blood. I wanted to lap at the skin until she melted in my embrace. I wanted?—
“Right, Ry?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in my direction.
I cleared my throat and shook the indecent images from my head. “Yeah, sure.” I didn’t even know what I’d agreed to.
“See?” She stuck her tongue out at Lycan in a playful retort, but my brother reacted by grabbing the perfect pink muscle between his index finger and thumb.
And I didn’t like that shit one fucking bit. A growl erupted out of my chest before I could stop it, and I pushed to my feet, the chair sliding out from under me so hard it smashed into the cabinets behind me.
Isolde jumped and turned toward me. Poe dropped his fork and straightened. But Lycan only smiled and cocked his head to the side, raising an eyebrow in my direction.
“You got a death wish, Barton?” The words flew over my lips so quickly that I didn’t realize I’d used his real last name in my rage until I’d already said it.
“Whew,” Lycan said, holding his hands up in a display of feigned innocence. “You smell that, Princess? It’s Orion’s bullshit coming in hot and heavy.”
“Kodiak said don’t touch her.” I put my hands on the table, preparing myself to go flying over the damned thing if he made one more wrong move.
“And I guess those rules don’t apply to you, do they?” Lycan crossed his arms with a shit-eating grin on his smug face.
“Hey,” Isolde cut in. “What’s this about? Orion and I agreed that?—”
“ Orion doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.” Lycan sneered, licking his teeth with an indignant swipe of his tongue.
“What?” Isolde glanced at me before looking at Poe for help. I understood what was happening better than Lycan ever could. The full moon was weighing on us, and if she wasn’t here, we might have been snippy with each other, but it never would have gotten territorial. But she was here, and she was a viable submissive, healthy and strong and beautiful. Our feral sides were already emerging, and her presence made us itchy.
I was more dominant than Lycan, higher in the pecking order. But that did not stop his wolf from trying to test the boundaries of my patience. If I had to, I’d take him out back and remind him why I was the veep, the second in command, the strongest only after our alpha.
“Back off, Lycan,” I said.
“Make me, Morrison.” The glint in Lycan’s eyes indicated he knew what would happen by using my real last name. It only pissed me off more.
“Hey, enough,” Isolde cut in. “My head is throbbing, my muscles ache from cleaning all day, and I’m pretty sure I’m having an identity crisis. The last thing I need is you two tearing each other apart.”
At that, the impudent brother snorted and shook his head, dropping eye contact as he evidently decided he didn’t want to tempt me further. “I think I’ll sleep in the barn tonight.” He stood and headed to the front door.
“Lycan,” Poe cut in, standing up to go after him. “C’mon.”
After the two of them were gone, Isolde stared at me with an open jaw and wide, confused eyes. “What the hell was that about?”
“He’s been riding my ass all week,” I said. “He shouldn’t have touched you like that.”
“He was joking around,” she said, sitting in the spot next to me with a nearly empty plate. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
Wrong. He wanted to provoke me into a reaction to prove that he’d been right about her, that she was more important to me than I let on. But I didn’t want to believe that. Even if I’d never touched her, she would still be off-limits by Kodiak’s orders. Grabbing her tongue…doing anything to her tongue…would be grounds for an ass-kicking.
I should get my ass kicked.
“You need to eat more than that.” I glanced down at her small scoop of mashed potatoes and tiny helping of carrots.
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “I haven’t felt like eating in days.”
“What did you mean that you feel like you’re having an identity crisis?” I cleared my throat and tried not to be too obvious.
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her palms over her eyes and propped her face in her hands. “Vanderbilts don’t clean. We don’t shovel shit. We don’t enjoy manual labor. I should be freaking out, but I feel like…it feels like I’m home, ya know? Like I’m meant to be here. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.”
It’s the moon, I wanted to say. You’re latent. You’ll probably transition come tomorrow night.
But that couldn’t be true. Lycan was projecting his own desires onto a poor woman who had gotten stuck here by bad circumstance. That was all.
“Try to make up with Lycan, okay?” She smiled, her perfect pink lips matching the flush on her cheeks. “He’s just being playful.”
“Hmm,” I grunted, but I didn’t agree. When we shifted together, our wolves would take it up among themselves. In the end, we were pack. We’d come out of the shift with lowered hormones and a new mindset on this whole thing. A few days after that, she’d be gone and we wouldn’t have to worry about it any longer.
I sat there and watched her move food around on her plate while she talked about tackling the boxes in the attic tomorrow. She still hadn’t confirmed with her family about when they might be able to come get her, but she insisted she didn’t mind it here.
“It’s peaceful,” she said, smirking. “I like the quiet.”
“Yeah, me too.” I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. “I volunteer to come here more than anyone else, despite the isolation.”
“I understand that.” She reached across the table and grabbed my hand, tucking her dandy fingers into my palm with a squeeze. But all I focused on was how hot her skin felt in comparison to mine, and I was a fucking pure-blooded wolf. I naturally ran hotter than humans, so if she felt warm, she probably had a fever.
Fuck.
“Thank you again, Orion,” she cut in, drawing my attention back to her. “I know I’ve said it before, but I really do appreciate all you’ve done for me.”
The anxious tone in her voice set alarm bells off in the back of my mind, like there was so much more she wanted to say but held back.
“Anything for you, Isolde.” I smiled. “Why don’t you go get some rest, huh? You feel warm. You might be getting sick.”
She frowned.
“If you still feel bad in the morning,” I continued, “sleep in and we’ll work the ranch. You can finish cleaning up in here…only if you feel up to it.”
“Yeah, okay.” Rubbing at her temples, she pushed to her feet and headed upstairs, her food only half eaten. I pretended like I didn’t know what that meant, like I hadn’t seen the same thing in other shifters teetering on the edge of their transition. I simply would not believe it. The Vanderbilts had a long, complex history with this land, but if they had shifter blood in them, we would have known. I was a stubborn shit. Once I had my mind set on something, it was damn near impossible for me to be swayed…even if all the evidence pointed elsewhere.
Eventually, I went upstairs to pass out. A few hours later, a strange noise brought me back to consciousness, forcing my eyes open in the darkness of my room. A figure stood at the end of my bed panting, but the thick, heady feminine scent made me pause.
“Isolde?” I murmured, sitting up so I could see better.
She didn’t answer, just hugged her arms tighter around herself and breathed heavier, her eyes hazed over. Was she sleepwalking?
“Ry,” she said, and panic seized my chest, pulsing scalding blood through my veins. “Ry, I need you.”
“I’m here,” I said, pushing to my feet so I could walk toward her and touch her shoulder, her burning skin nearly shocking me back a step. “Isolde?” I tried again, this time giving her a shake. She didn’t wake, just stood there and gasped for air like she was trying to catch her breath after a marathon. “Isolde, come back to me.”
“Ry?” she murmured, and relief sank into my gut only for the moment. “What’s going on? Where are we?”
“We’re okay, Princess. You’re in my room.” I turned her to face me so I could put both hands on her shoulders. Her normal scent now emanated with something darker and richer, reeling me in, making me want to yank her down on my mattress and bury my face in her neck for the rest of the night.
“What happened?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes.
“You were sleepwalking.” I brushed the hair out of her face and ran my knuckles down her cheek, forcing her to glance up at me the same way she had in the dream.
“What?” She winced and took a step back. “I’m sorry…I’ve never done that before.” Her voice cracked, sending a painful jolt right through my chest. “What’s going on with me?”
“You’re okay.” With the way the moonlight trickled in through the window, I saw that she wore a thin shirt and nothing else. Sweat had soaked through the fabric, making her skin shimmer and shine. “You’ve got the flu, Princess.”
Instead of answering, she stared up at me, the confusion behind her green gaze melting away to something else, some mischievous and heated. “Why do they do that?”
“Do what?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Your eyes.” She brought her hand up and traced it over my cheek, down to my lips. “Most of the time, they’re brown. But sometimes, they turn blue. It’s…impossible. And beautiful.”
Ahh, shit.
I clenched my eyes shut as my wolf protested in the back of my mind. It didn’t see the point in lying to her, and there were a thousand fucked-up things about it that I didn’t want to analyze.
“It’s just the moonlight,” I said, glancing down at the ground while I tried to force that fucker back in its cage. The moon was so close now, it was nearly hopeless.
“No, it’s not,” she said. “I saw it the other night, too. With the wolves and again between us.”
“It’s late, Isolde,” I said, nodding toward the door. “You should go back to bed. You need rest.”
“I can’t sleep in there,” she said. “It’s too cold.”
Cold ? We’d been burning the fire for days now. The second floor had been heated like a sauna, even with the six feet of snow outside.
“Can I stay with you?” she whispered, and the sound rattled right through me, down to my lower stomach and the back of my legs.
I took a deep breath and ran my hands over my face, back into my hair. “You shouldn’t.”
A tiny whine poured out of her chest, and it broke my heart even more, making my wolf pace and howl with stubbornness.
Pay attention, it growled. Look at her. Look harder.
I put my palms on her shoulders again, smoothing them up her neck to her cheeks, her soft skin so fiery under my touch. “Christ, you’re burning up.”
Instead of answering, she whimpered like an animal in pain and stepped closer, burying her face in my chest, rubbing her tear-stained cheeks against my pecs. Being skin to skin with her felt like heaven, and when I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and guided her toward my bed, I told myself it was just for tonight. Just until she felt better.
She settled against me, her back to my chest, my arm over her waist, tucking her in close. She wrapped her freezing toes in between my legs, and despite the surge of ache at the temperature difference, it pleased both me and my beast that I could care for her like this.
I slept better than I had since the last time she was here with me, and I decided not to read too much into that.