Chapter 14
LUCY
Irush through the woods, my red cape dragging through the dead leaves.
The path bends, and movement catches my eye. I freeze on the spot. Someone steps out from between the trees not far ahead, the shadows clinging to him, then he takes another step, and relief washes through me. It’s Roman.
He’s dressed all in black, standing in the middle of the path as though he’s been waiting for me all along. I smile and hurry toward him because I know that as long as Roman’s here, nothing in these woods can touch me.
But he doesn’t smile back, and panic slides through me.
Something isn’t right.
When I finally reach him and tip my face up, his eyes catch the thin silver light filtering through the branches, and my stomach drops.
They’re wrong. Not the soft hazel brown I’ve fallen into before. They’re pale now, yellow, flat and gleaming, as if something wild is staring back at me through Roman’s face. A low growl rolls out of his chest, so deep I feel it vibrating through the ground beneath my feet.
His lip curls, exposing teeth that seem sharper than they should be.
Every sensible instinct in me whispers to run. Instead, I find myself leaning closer, unable to stop. “Roman?” My voice barely rises above a whisper. “Are you okay?”
He grins, showing just a little too much of his teeth, then folds me into his arms. The growl doesn’t stop. It vibrates through his chest and into mine, a strange, constant rumble beneath my cheek.
“I’m fine now that I found you,” he murmurs into my hair, tightening his arms around me. “Thought I’d lost you.”
I pull back enough to look at him. “You couldn’t lose me.”
His gaze narrows. “Couldn’t I?” His hand closes around the back of my neck, and his mouth comes down hard on mine. I stumble into him, fingers gripping his shirt as he kisses me with fire. He takes my mouth as though he’s been starving for it.
His teeth catch my bottom lip, and pain flashes bright and sudden.
I gasp at the sharp sting, blood blooming across my tongue, but Roman doesn’t let me retreat.
His hand tightens at the nape of my neck and pulls me straight back into him, his mouth claiming mine again before I can even catch my breath.
I grip his shoulders as he kisses me deeper, deeper, and whatever strange thing has gotten into him only seems to make me want him closer.
A wolf howls somewhere in the darkness, but Roman doesn’t even pause.
His fingers slide into my hair, holding me exactly where he wants me as another howl answers, much closer this time.
The sound raises every hair on my arms, yet I’m still kissing him, still caught between the warning screaming through the woods and the man who seems determined to make me forget it.
Suddenly, I jerk away from him, my heart instantly hammering, and turn toward the trees. Another howl answers from farther along the path behind us.
“Roman, we need to move.” I grab his hand and pull, desperate to get us both out of here. “The wolves are down from the mountains. They’re not supposed to come this close to the lodge.”
Except he doesn’t move. I turn back, expecting him to be watching the woods, but he’s staring at me instead. A slow grin spreads across his face, and that strange look is there again.
Those yellow eyes, and I’m certain now they aren’t his.
“It’s okay,” Roman murmurs, his grin widening as another howl rolls through the trees around us. “They’re with me.”
Leaves rustle nearby, followed by the unmistakable crack of a branch, and I twist around quickly, my heart in my throat.
Grayson steps out of the trees to my left, and Wolf appears on my right, as though the forest has been hiding them all along. They don’t rush me. Instead, they simply close the distance, their smiles warm but their eyes pinning me in place. They’re gleaming yellow just like Roman’s.
Every instinct I have screams at me to run, but my body betrays me. And I’m between all three of them now.
Their hands find me first, then their mouths. Roman brushes a kiss beneath my ear, Grayson’s lips skim my jaw, and Wolf finds my throat, all three of them surrounding me. I’m melting into the middle of them.
Beyond Wolf’s bare shoulder, standing just inside the trees, is Jerry.
My Jerry. The first Alpha I ever loved, the man I thought I’d spend forever with. My heart slams so hard it hurts.
For one impossible second, I can’t breathe.
Then the guilt suffocates me like a knife driven straight through my chest. He’s staring at me as though he’s walked in on the worst betrayal imaginable, his face drained of color, horror written so plainly across it that I can barely stand to meet his eyes.
“No…” The word catches in my throat. I shove against the three of them, panic exploding through me. “Jerry!”
But their arms only tighten around me. Their hold is unbreakable. I reach past Wolf’s shoulder, stretching toward the trees, toward the man who’s already beginning to disappear into the darkness.
“Jerry, wait…” My voice breaks. “It’s not what it…”
He shakes his head, slow and final, and my heart cracks straight down the center because he’s my Alpha. Then he vanishes into the darkness without glancing back, and I claw at the arms holding me, desperate to reach him, when a growl rumbles low at my feet.
Pausing, I stare down, and the three men are gone. In their place stand three enormous black wolves with their heads lowered and pale yellow eyes locked on mine. They take one slow step closer, lips curling back to reveal gleaming teeth, and my scream rips free just as they lunge.
I shove myself upright in the morning light, gasping as if I’ve been held underwater. My tank top is plastered to my back with sweat, and my heart is slamming against my ribcage. For one horrible second, the yellow eyes are still there, but then the wolves dissolve and it’s just a bed in a room.
It was a freaking dream.
I press both hands over my face and drag in air until my heart climbs down out of my throat.
Beside me, Roman’s dead to the world, flat on his back, his breathing deep and even, that healing crescent I gave him dark against his neck, and the house around us is silent.
The sealed bond sits behind my ribs exactly where it belongs, settled, humming low and content.
Then I remember Jerry in my dream, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
The guilt sinks through my stomach. Except, nobody did anything wrong.
But my body isn’t taking arguments this morning, because the wrongness isn’t in my head; it’s deep in my gut.
A sick twist that feels as though the old bond with Jerry woke up somewhere down in the dark part of me. Which is insane.
I ease out from under the blanket one careful inch at a time and find my shorts crumpled on the floor. I shimmy into them without producing a sound, then make the mistake of glancing back at Roman.
He’s sprawled out, and my chest just about caves in because I’m absolutely stupid over this man.
Pulling myself away from him right now feels like peeling off a layer of my own skin.
Every cell I’ve got is voting to crawl back into that bed, tuck myself under his arm, and let the bond hum me straight back to sleep.
Which is exactly why I can’t—because the dream is still right there every time I blink.
Jerry’s face, the wolves, and under it that awful conviction that I’ve done something there’s no coming back from.
Maybe you can’t stuff a dead bond and a live one into the same body and expect them to share nicely. Maybe I’ve broken something in myself.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. My sneakers are by the door, which is news to me, since I have zero memory of taking them off.
But then again, most of last night is a smear of pain and euphoria, so I’ll allow it.
I grab my robe, put it on, and cinch it tight, then I slip out of the room. And let myself out the front door.
The morning is cold, in a good way, and I gulp it down.
The sun has barely cleared the ridge, and everything’s silvered with dew while birds are chirping through the pines.
God, the mountains at this hour, there’s nothing like it, and I’d be swooning over it properly if I weren’t also, inconveniently, crying.
Fat, stupid tears, rolling down my face for the crime of feeling like I cheated on my dead Alpha in a dream, which I know is ridiculous.
I’m heading down the porch steps and along the path, needing distance.
“You want me to chase you as Wolf did? Is that your thing?” Grayson’s deep male voice rolls out of the trees behind me, and the very first thing my traitorous brain coughs up is Grayson last night, on his knees between my thighs, which is not remotely where I need my head right now, and I cry harder.
Boots hit the track behind me, and he’s in front of me. “Hey. Hey, whoa, what’s this?” His whole voice drops. “Did I do that? Fuck, little bird, I take it back. I’ll never chase you anywhere. I swear on my life.”
He just wraps a hand around the back of my head and pulls me into his chest, all that solid heat, and I fall apart against him. He doesn’t say a word or tell me it’s okay but just holds on, one hand stroking my hair, the other flat and steady between my shoulder blades, and lets me soak his shirt.
When the storm finally passes, and I’m just hiccuping into his sternum, he hooks two fingers under my chin and tips my face up.
“Better.” His eyes search mine, and there’s nothing soft about how closely he’s reading me, as if he means to track down whatever hurt me and destroy it. “Talk to me. Did Roman do something? Is the bond not taking?”