Chapter 22 – Carina
Twenty-Two
CARINA
Having comfy clothes is life changing.
Keeping Ryder’s hoodie on but switching out my other clothes for a t-shirt and jogging pants makes everything feel a bit better. When I’m warm and cozy, I decide this will be my outfit for the next while, given the whole outdoors, lack of insulation thing.
While Ryder’s bed is calling my name—the ultimate coziness—I don’t dare get into it and risk him being pissed off, so I take one of the chairs again. Bringing my legs up to get comfortable, I let my head slump between my shoulder and the chair’s backing, my eyes shut.
But sleep remains a far-fetched dream as today hits me in a second wave of harsh truths. Because apparently earlier just wasn’t enough.
Mom isn’t my birth mom.
Twilight Grove will do who knows what to turn me Dark.
I’m stuck inside a shifter pack’s camp with wolves who despise me.
Everything builds and builds until the heavy weight of realizing I am not okay becomes suffocating, tearing at my insides until finding the source of my grief, and tears burst forth.
No matter how much I wipe them away, more come. I bury my head in my knees and plead with Hecate to grant me sleep in this position. For tears to exhaust me so much, it’s inevitable. At least in slumber, everything goes away. No one’s coming for me, and I’m home, safe behind a magickal barrier.
She ignores my prayer.
I cry for Mom, who took on so much by keeping me.
For my birth mother, who died on the front step of a stranger’s home.
For my birth coven, who haven’t been seen in decades.
I cry for myself.
For the coming week.
For an elderly wolf, ill a few cabins away.
I cry and cry, unable to stop the swarm of tears that create a blubbering mess within Ryder’s cabin.
I cry because of that. Because I’m not home. I’m alone in this crusade, all because of my bloodline.
I cry while trying to not cry, which doesn’t end up working. Instead, the sobs I attempt to quiet become snorts until Ryder’s hoodie is a mess of fluids he might very well kill me for.
Time passes differently when grief has its hold, but eventually, distantly, the door opens and wolf claws tick along the wooden floor. Shuddering through my tears, I subtly wipe my face a final time and exhale to stifle the sobs.
If I’m lucky, he’ll go to sleep and not be any wiser of my misery.
Silence falls through the cabin until a heavy and large hand rests on my head. A pause. An inhale. The hand slides down my hair, between my shoulder and face, until a finger I don’t have the strength to fight breaks through my barriers of fake bravado and tips my tear-streaked face up to his.
Anger flashes. Which, why wouldn’t he be annoyed to return home, presumably to rest, only to find his captive crying?
“Don’t cry.” His order is tinged with a plea. His hand covers my cheek until his thumb sweeps beneath my eye, clearing more tears. His skin is rough but feels pleasant too, like something I never want to stop touching me.
“I’m fine, only wallowing. Sorry, I’ll stop so you can rest.”
He snarls, but it’s nothing that frightens me. In fact, the opposite, and a warmth settles on my shoulders. I may not be home, but Ryder feels pretty safe too. Trusting my kidnapper after a day doesn’t say mentally stable, but when life goes to shit, I’ll take comfort where possible.
His hand drops from my face. With another shuddering breath, I readjust my legs to settle in for a long night of begging for sleep to take away my melancholy.
He doesn’t head for his bed, though, but instead bends at the knees until one arm is sliding beneath my legs, the other around my back, and he hoists me from the chair.
Startled, I latch onto the closest thing—his neck—as his heat warms my side. His heart thumps against my arm, the same rhythm as mine, and I find comfort in that fact. He crosses the cabin to rest me in his bed.
“For as long as you’re with us, you will sleep here.” He slides his arms out from beneath me and grabs one of the furs by my feet to lift it over top. “Understand?”
He tucks me in, readjusting pelts to form a pillow, and I let him care for me. It’s…nice. I’m twenty-four, and Mom long stopped taking care of me like this, not that I really need her to. But sometimes… Sometimes it’s nice to have a hot guy comforting you.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why do you keep apologizing?”
“You came back to me crying my eyes out.”
His tone lightens—as does his touch as he sweeps bangs from my eyes and drops to his knees so we’re face-to-face. “You cry as much as you need to, kamahki. You’ve earned that much after today.”
I catch his hand as he goes to move it away, not realizing until too late what I’ve done. Eyes meet, and with a heat of embarrassment—and a bit of self-doubt—I release him to instead rest my hand beside his.
“How was hunting?”
“Fine ’til coming back and finding you crying.”
“It almost sounds like you care,” I joke because for these few minutes, it really felt like he does.
And that isn’t something I can process. “This time next week, I don’t know who or what I’ll be.
Harlow made it out fine, but her circumstances were different.
Darkness clearly made Sloane—that’s Twilight Grove’s High Priestess—insane. What’s to say I won’t be like her?”
Ryder slides his hand the inch towards mine and covers it. He flips them, until his fingers are latched around my wrist, palm cupping mine. His touch makes me want to cry because of all people to counsel me through grief, he wasn’t on my list. Not even the top one hundred.
“You don’t know what you’ll become, so don’t think like that.”
“It’s hard not to.”
A squeeze of my hand, and the glowing eyes move closer. Given how dark it is, they should frighten me. Ryder himself should terrify me. Fear isn’t what’s unfurling in my stomach.
“I know,” he whispers. “But don’t believe the worst. Is…is this helping?” Another squeeze of my hand.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Minutes pass and I’m beginning to drift, sadness finally catching up. Dried tears still cake my cheeks, and a quick charm would clean them, but doing so means pulling my hand away, and I’d rather the world end than do that.
Instead, it’s Ryder who releases me before heading for the fireplace.
I peer through slitted eyes as he lights a small flame, then crosses the room, and his large body moves overtop and drops beside me.
The sleep I was succumbing to evaporates as he tucks an arm above my head, another around my hip to pull me against his body.
His impossibly perfect body that makes me feel small.
A purring rumble, like the sound I woke to this morning, vibrates my back and sleepiness immediately slams into me as though he cast a spell on me. My mind drifts, senses about to sweep me away, and the only thing holding back is the need to know.
“Whadya doin’?”
His body curls tighter, knees hitting the back of mine. The hand by my hair twists until fingers drag through the strands with the ideal amount of pressure against my skull.
“I don’t know.” His nearly silent response coasts along my neck but being swept away by the tides of his purrs, by the moment of peace, his reasoning means nothing.
He murmurs something else. Something that starts with an N, but sleep has already snagged me.
Ryder’s gone when I wake the next morning, but the spot beside me is still warm, reassuring me I hadn’t made it up.
Despite the morning chill being chased away by the fire, which maintains a toasty temperature in the cabin, my cheeks heat for another reason. While Ryder isn’t the first guy I’ve shared a bed with, he’s the only one to ever make me feel like he cared.
It’s a strange thing, knowing my enemy cuddled and stroked my hair while I slept.
Given he’s already left, I take it as a silent command to pretend nothing happened, and I swap out his hoodie for one of mine. It’s not without dismay, but considering the amount of snot that got wiped onto his, mine’s cleaner.
Stepping outside proves how early it is, when the sun barely appears, a mere glint through the trees at the precise blinding angle. Yawning, I curse myself for not sleeping longer. Stupid forest fucking with my internal clock.
Pack members in both animal and human forms crisscross the camp.
Kids run around. There’s a gathering of people working nearby on a sled-like contraption and beside Alaric’s cabin, the two elder wolves are drinking from a mug that makes me immediately hanker for caffeine, considering it’s been a couple cruel days without.
“Carina!”
My eyes peel for Ryder’s distinct form, whether as human or wolf, but then my sleepy brain comprehends the female voice calling me. Leah’s standing beside Xander and Claire, waving me over.
Gazes stalk me to the trio, so I stuff my hands in my pockets to make myself as small as possible. Ryder claimed I’m safe from them, so hopefully their curiosity remains at exactly that.
“Morning.” Leah grins. “How’d you sleep?”
If only she knew. “Fine. Why is everyone up so early?”
“Morning around these parts start about five, before the heat picks up. And in general, shifters don’t need a lot of sleep.”
Heat? What heat do they feel mid-September in the mountains? Oh, to have fur. Starting to think I was born the wrong species.
The conversation tugs another yawn from me. “Not us. We’re kinda lazy, like mortals.”
Claire’s excited bounce has her almost stomping on my feet as the energy she’s so clearly been tapering down bursts forth.
She bounces from her mother’s side to Xander’s, grabbing his hand.
“Carina, guess what? I get to go on a perimeter run with Xander today! You should come too, with Ryder. It’s so fun! ”
That’ll be a never. Ryder would trample me before letting me on a run with him.
Xander smiles down at the child. “Go wait for me by the entrance while I say bye to your mother.”
With an animated wave, Claire takes off to follow his instructions.
Once she’s safe out of listening range but still in view, Xander grips Leah’s hands in his.
A look fills his eyes that makes me want to back away and not disrupt the intimate moment that now has me laughing at myself.
To think I once believed Ryder was hers.
“I’ll keep her out for an hour or so. Be sure to take time for yourself.”
“Thanks.” Leah reaches up and pushes strands of hair from Xander’s eyes. Her touch is brief, though familiar, suggesting it isn’t their first. “I’ll be hanging out with Carina.”
He turns his head into her palm before nodding once and turns to jog after Claire.
“Is he your—”
“Mate?” she interrupts, her tone hiking in exclamation before breaking out into a nervous chuckle, the sound contradicting her words.
“No, I have no mate. Xander’s a friend, same as Ryder.
A few of us—them, me, Holly, Conan, we were all born within moons of one another, so we formed the younger pack. ”
She gestures to the group working on the sled thing, pointing and naming the few—and I don’t have the heart to tell her I’ll never remember their names.
“They’re considered the main pack. Or they were, for a while.
They’re closer to Alaric’s age, while we’re the next generation.
Although they still serve Ryder, in a few more years, they’ll start retiring to be elders who assist around camp rather than hunt and defend.
Claire and her cohort will make up the next generation.
Circle of life and all that. In packs, at any given time, there’s two main age groups, one set of elders, and then a mini pack of pups. ”
Strangely, that makes sense. Unlike us, packs need the constant survival.
“So what—all your parents procreated within months of one another?”
“Months and years, yeah, pretty much. Mating habits are pretty easy to track.”
“Huh. So Xander?”
“Is one of my best friends,” she replies softly, glancing towards the camp entrance where he and Claire are no longer visible. “Xander’s protective of me and Claire, but with Ryder officially being Alpha, he’s now the main beta, so work will keep him busy.”
Going off that two-minute interaction, Xander’s so much more than a friend to her—and she to him. Since none of this is my place, I let it go.
Two shifters start towards us only to suddenly change direction and skirt the edges of the fire. “They don’t like me around here.”
“They don’t know you. We’ve always been told witches should be avoided. The more you’re around, the more they’ll see you’re not bad.” She shrugs, acting as though I’ll have months when we’re almost halfway through the week Sloane gave Ryder.
“They haven’t seen what I’m capable of.”
“Come on.” She links her arm into mine and pulls me away from the fire pit. “Assuming you’re hungry, let’s see if we can scrounge up any food.”
And like that, someone in the pack accepts me.
Becomes the girl friend I’ve never really had.
As a kid, it was Harlow, but then she was believed to be dead, and I didn’t see her until recently.
With Jasper being my cousin and neighbour, we grew up close because the other girls in the coven were harder to connect with.
So I accept Leah’s friendship with a smile and let her lead me away.
But not before scanning the camp one final time for the dark-furred wolf who slept with me last night.