Eight #2
He shook his head. “Our pack has never been a real community with how spread out we were in the city. It’s one of the reasons I was so surprised when Abel made this move.”
“Why do you think he did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has it occurred to you that maybe he’s running from something?”
“It has now.”
I smiled at him. “Well, I’m sorry Evan wasn’t smothered and loved on hard, but there’s no way to know how Ondine will be with him. She can change like the wind, with everything, and yet she’s been a constant in my life for over six—for a very long time.”
He nodded. “Nice save. You’ll tell me one of these days.”
Sadly, I would have to.
At dinner, both Cole and Evan were stunned by my culinary talent, and afterward, as I brought out cookies and brownies I’d baked over the weekend, Ondine sat on the counter and talked to Evan while he did the dishes.
She would dry only. Not wash, not put away, but the middle step, she didn’t completely hate.
Washing was tedious, and placing items on shelves or in drawers bored her.
She also wouldn’t clear dishes; she was not the maid.
“I don’t mind,” Evan told me when I mentioned it to him, smiling sheepishly. “She’s keeping me company, and we’re gonna watch a movie after.”
“Does she have a whole entertainment system in her room?” Cole asked me.
I squinted at him. “Of course she does.”
For whatever reason, he thought that was funny.
As Ondine was on her way upstairs, she ordered Evan to make popcorn.
“She can get really bossy, so you have to call her on it now and then.”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll do whatever she wants me to do.”
“You’re not her minion. She can’t just boss you around.”
“I don’t mind. I think she’s awesome.”
I groaned, because she already had him right there in the palm of her hand. He was enthralled with her.
“Okay.” I smiled at him. “And listen, I want you to feel free to invite your friends from school here whenever you feel like it, during the week or on weekends.”
He almost stopped breathing for a moment, he went that still.
“Evan?”
“Are you sure, Merritt? Abel has a rule that only humans who plan to—”
“Humans are amazing. I’m friends with a lot of them, and you should be too. I’m sure, okay? And you go to school right there in Lewisburg, which probably seems far, but really isn’t. Especially if they drive.”
“Yeah, I’ve been saving up for a car, and Cole says he’ll pitch in next spring. He doesn’t want me driving in the snow until after I’ve practiced with him this winter. I mean, I’ve been a subway guy my whole life, you know?”
“That’s probably for the best.”
“Yeah, but being the new kid who gets dropped off and picked up by his big brother… I have no aura, man.”
I just stared at him.
He grinned back.
“English,” I ordered.
“I need a car. Not to be cool, but just so I can do more things with my friends and I don’t need to bother my chauffeur.”
“Got it.”
“I want butter on that popcorn,” Ondine called down to him.
“Yes, ma’am.” He bolted for the pantry.
A couple hours later, he conked out, so Cole went up to Ondine’s room, collected his brother, and walked him down the stairs. I caught his expression as I was finishing up in the kitchen, having made bread, then making sure it was pristine and ready for the next day.
“What?” I asked softly, not wanting to wake Evan. He was basically sleepwalking, not all the way conscious.
“How does it sound like you’re underwater up there, and now there’s moonlight coming in from the ceiling but there’s no skylight?”
I just looked at him.
“Don’t say magic.”
I pressed my lips together and tried not to smile.
“Really? That’s the answer?”
“She’s a siren,” I reminded him. “Have you ever met a siren before?”
“I have no idea,” he muttered, leaving me to walk his brother to his bedroom.
When I went into my bedroom afterward and saw Cole’s clothing laid out, I was stunned. I stood there surveying the utter chaos that covered practically every surface of my room.
“What’s with your face?” Cole asked as he sauntered in, closing and locking the door behind him.
“I normally leave that open,” I told him.
“Well, I’ll open it later.”
I squinted at him, confused.
“Since, perhaps, I might want to attack you in here.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t have much experience with this.”
“With what?”
I gestured between the two of us.
“How?”
I looked around for somewhere to sit down, but the question was where.
“What’re you doing?”
“It looks like an armoire exploded in here.”
“A what?”
“Like a chest of drawers.” I pointed at mine.
“I need one of those.”
“I’ll make you one. I made that one.”
“You made that?”
I nodded.
“Ondine’s right, you’re good at everything.”
My smile came out quickly.
“So, yeah, I’m slowly hanging stuff up.”
“I see that.”
He squinted at me. “I’m getting there.”
“No, it’s fine, I just… It’s all very similar.”
“I’m sorry?”
I cleared my throat. “I’ve just never seen so many pairs of cargo pants, and long-sleeved T-shirts, and white crew socks.”
“Construction,” he said, exaggerating the word for me. “You get that you’re involved with a guy who works with his hands, right?”
I chuckled. “But why is everything the same color?”
“No, no. Those are very different shades of khaki, brown, and gray.”
“Of course. How crazy of me not to notice.”
He suddenly dropped the basket of socks he was carrying and darted around the king-size bed to me.
“No, go back to your side. You’ve got a million more things to put away. I cannot sleep in disorder.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” He grinned at me, and the heat in his eyes made my stomach flip over.
“I’m serious.” I barely got the words out.
“Here.” He moved his pants, throwing three pairs on top of two others, clearing a spot so he could sit down on the bed and patting the space beside him. “Now go on with what you were saying.”
“What was I saying?” I asked as I took a seat next to him.
The lazy, sexy grin, the way his muscles moved under his T-shirt, the gold skin of his throat, the way his hair kicked out over his ears and at the nape of his neck… All of it really made me want to touch him, and it was hard to focus.
“That you don’t have experience with what goes on between two people, and I want to know how that’s possible.”
What was I supposed to say?
“Listen,” he said gently, softly, sliding a hand around the side of my neck. “Don’t figure it out in your head, just tell me.”
“You’re gonna think I’m nuts.”
“No. You’re not a wolf and you’re not human.
Since I’ve met you, I’ve seen my brother possessed by a ghost, I’ve met a siren, I’ve learned that you have fae on your land—which I want to know everything about, by the way—and most amazing of all, I have found out that my mate is a mythical creature. So just tell me.”
I took a quick breath. “At first, when I came into being, I felt the drive to do one thing, and that was to find evil, judge it, and punish it. That was my sole purpose.”
“Okay.”
“And I only had the one form that you saw.”
“Which is beautiful.”
“Most people have been terrified of it.”
“Of a glowing green wolf?”
“I’m a dog, actually.”
He scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
“Fine. A glowing green wolf.”
“Speaking as one who turns into a wolf, I can say with authority that you’re beautiful.”
“What color is your wolf?”
“I’m black with the normal yellow eyes. Evan’s are blue, and he’s black too.”
“I look forward to running with you both.”
“Yeah, me too. I really can’t wait.” He choked a little, like the thought had caused a surge of emotion. “But go on about what changed.” He tugged me close, rubbed his face in my hair, and inhaled deeply.
“Sometimes, when I was prowling through the hills, I’d see people who were running from others.
One night, there was a woman carrying a baby, and there were a lot of men chasing her.
When they caught her, they stripped the baby, and the wind was cold, so it was screaming, and then they stripped her to… You know.”
“And you slaughtered them all.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And once she was dressed, and she had the baby all wrapped up, I led them to a home where an older woman lived.”
“Did she take them in?”
“She did, and all winter I brought the three of them wood for the fire and game, but they needed a small barn for some animals and had no way to build it…and so I changed.”
“You became a man.”
“Yes.”
“How long ago was that?”
“I—see, I was one thing for a long time before there were even people. I was formless, just wind, and then when the goddess decided that wickedness needed punishment, suddenly, I took on the form you saw.”
“So for a long time,” he murmured, smoothing a finger across my eyebrow, “you were made of the elements, of wind and water, and then you were a Cù-sìth, and then a man.”
“Yes,” I ground out.
“And when you became a man, you changed from something that killed, to something that protected.”
“Yes.”
“And your goddess didn’t mind that, even though you were made to do one thing?”
“I think since I’ve never seen another like me, that the others might be where we began, and I’m the only one on this side of the world.”
“With Teague, and Ondine.”
I nodded.
“It makes sense that you’re different—a healer and a protector.”
“I’m not a—”
“I suspect that all the people you’ve saved over the years would call you a healer.”
And many had, so arguing was fruitless.
“What about this form you took, with your bright green eyes and jet-black hair?”
“I can’t change it like Ondine, so it’s always been this.”
“There must be legions of men and women who have—”
“Just men,” I corrected him quickly.
“Okay, so what? Thousands of men in your bed?”
I tried to move, to get up, but suddenly there was a hand on my throat, tight, and another fisted in my hair, holding my head back. My breath caught, and he couldn’t miss the full-body shiver that rolled through me.
“You’re ancient, Mere. Older than mountains and rocks and trees. And yet there’s been no love for you in all that time, only sex with strangers?”