Chapter Thirteen Blood and Milk
She comes to see me.
The house is full of smells of other people, and blood stinks up my shelter.
She wasn’t supposed to see me like this, but I had no choice. I wanted to tell her the truth.
Now she sits at the edge of the basement stairs.
The door of my room won’t shut anymore, but I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Never have. I stay down, lying on the floor, knowing I did the right thing, but waiting until my human form comes back so I can cry like I want to.
I know I’ve lost her. Lost them both. But I saved them.
My brain is handling these whirlwinds of tortured thoughts better now that I’m almost at the point of changing.
Loretta leaves the top step. Comes halfway down. “Thank you, Jasper,” she whispers.
My head jerks up. Ears perk.
“You understand me?”
I can nod.
“Can you talk?”
I let out a grumbling noise.
“You saved us. And Matt... Well, I didn’t want him to die, but he lit the match on the dynamite, didn’t he?”
Another nod.
“The body and the truck are in some snowed-in part of the mountains. They’ll find him at some point. Days from now, probably. I’ll have to wait until then to take care of things, but that’s okay. You said you’d wait. I’ll wait, too.”
She doesn’t have to wait long. I know the second the sun pokes its crown above the horizon. My fur recedes. Bones shrink. The charley horse feeling comes back, but this is like the feeling of doing way too many crunches.
Naked and bloody, I stay sprawled down in the blankets, hiding myself as best I can.
But I don’t need to. Loretta races down the rest of the stairs now and into my arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she whispers, and then sobs on my bare chest.
I stroke my hand down her back, blood caked in the creases of my skin. That’s cheating, honestly. What good is fur if you can't use it to hide the evidence of your crimes?
I killed a human.
Loretta’s husband. Ari’s father.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, Loretta. I wanted to stop him. I heard you screaming. I’ve never gotten out before, but you were calling for me, and I grabbed him—”
“He was going to drop Ari out the window if I didn’t come with him.”
Hot fury boils in me, and I can’t move. Can’t speak. I let out a snarl from low in my chest, an incredulous, grieving, enraged noise.
“Exactly,” Loretta smiles sadly. “You get it. So I’m not mad.
I’m not scared. I’m only thankful. Oh, my God, I’m free!
And so thankful, on so many levels. Ari won’t ever have to go spend time with him.
I won’t have to worry about him using her as a pawn to hurt me.
I saw that he would totally do that tonight.
She can still see his parents and his younger brother if they want to. ”
“But... But I’m a monster. You know that? You understand that?”
She pulls back and looks at me—keeping her eyes aimed at my face and not down below, because she’s a lady. “I get that. Ardy is a pooka. Alban is a warlock. Alain is a... mechamagi? Something that sounds like a toy I had in kindergarten.”
I laugh at that one. “Please forgive me for not telling you the truth. I never lied—exactly. I just went along with parts of what was said.”
“I realized that. I’ve been up all night. Izzy and Ardy stayed here, but I couldn’t sleep. I missed you. I was worried about you, but everyone said I couldn’t come down.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Isolation is important, so no accidental scratches or bites occur when I’m in wolf form.
In human form, you can’t catch this. Children of mine will be like me—but more human than wolf when they turn.
My grandfather was the one who was bitten.
He passed it to my dad, and my dad to me.
But I can think. I can walk on two legs.
I just... It’s harder for me than it will be for my kids.
But I won’t need more kids if you and Ari. .. Well. If I haven’t ruined it.”
“Ruined it?” Loretta shakes her head as if she can’t understand what I’ve said.
“Baby, you’re a hero! The real deal, Superman and Clark Kent.
Oh! Oh, speaking of that, you have to be at work in forty-five minutes, or people will get suspicious.
Shower and get dressed, and I’m going to make the fastest batch of blueberry pancakes you ever saw.
Oh! And I can drive to the store. And the library!
He’s not following me. He’ll... He’ll never hurt us again. ”
I nod and clasp her hands—wincing with her when I see they’re bandaged. “What—”
“He threw me against the wall and down into the mirror that shattered. We’ll get a new one.”
“Yes. We will. In our house. Is this our house?”
She hesitates. “It’s fast.”
“I know.”
“But I’m not leaving.”
IT’S AN AGREEMENT AMONG the group of people who helped with the “situation” that it won’t be mentioned unless it must be.
Jasper is my hero. I turn my phone back on.
I move money into my checking account. I know that soon, I can go back home.
If anyone ever asks for proof of Matt’s insanity and rage issues, there are literally 220 messages on my phone from October 31st to November 5th, and 190 are from Matt.
They range from tearful pleading to dire threats that make my stomach contents come back up.
The others are from friends, wondering what the hell happened to me.
Well, today, I called my friends back and told them why I hadn’t called. I told them about the abuse. About running. About getting help and filing for a divorce.
Then, I turned my phone off. Jasper’s coming home.
Ari is napping when he arrives at three. Jasper told me over breakfast that he has to go into the basement at quarter of five, and he’s taking two doses of his potion to make him sleepier and calmer. He wants me to leave the house tonight, but... But I’m safe. Even with the wolf.
My big not-so-bad wolf, I realize. I tingle (in a good way) when I think of how he saved me.
I flush when I remember his naked body pressed to mine when he transformed, warm and rugged, exhausted and riddled with guilt and pain, sure he’d lost me—when he was actually cementing the fact that I love him in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Messy, imperfectly perfect love.
Does it make me a horrible person to want to show him tonight? I should wait.
But then his voice calls, “I’m home.”
And it feels like I’m home, too. “Baby is sleeping!” I rush to tell him when he opens the door.
He looks beat, and he collapses into my hug, his big form leaning on my petite one in a way that shows this big beast is as vulnerable as I am, in different ways. I know his secrets. He knows mine.
I kiss Jasper Wainwright like I can breathe life into him, and I soak in his warmth, thanking him for the life he’s been giving back to me.
“Whoa.” He looks at me in wonder when I pull away. “Loretta.”
“Too much?” I blush.
“No. Not enough—but I’m not in a hurry!” he protests.
“Well, I don’t think you’d want to do more now,” I explain, showing that I understand. “I’m still nursing. Sometimes there’s leakage. And my pre-baby body never came back.”
Jasper looks like I smacked him. “What? Is that... Do you think I don’t like your body?”
“Well, you’ve never seen it. It’s got sags and stretchmarks.”
This man moans. Moans, with his eyes closed. You know, that kind of moan. Bow-chicka-wow-wow noises.
“Is Arianna going to be up soon?” he asks.
“Not until 4:30, I’d guess.”
“Can I show you how much I want that body, with its sags and stretchmarks? With every perfect ripple and line?” he asks, dropping kisses on my skin.
“But Matt was—”
“Was idiotic? We found that out.”
My body throbs when he touches me. Scoops me up. “My hands are sore. And my knees. I can’t—”
“Can you lie on your back and let me love you?”
“Mmhm.” I squeak in surprise.
“Do you wanna do that?”
“Yes, but—”
I don’t even get to protest. Jasper lopes with wolf-like grace, carrying me to his bedroom and snuggling into his massive bed with me, mouth on mine. “You can always tell me no. And that this isn’t the time.”
“It’s time for something. I just don’t know what.”
“A million kisses?”
“I’d like that.”
“Make sure you’re counting,” he teases, and starts to shed his shirt, ripping buttons, revealing a broad chest with a tapering of hair that spreads over muscles and leads the way to a bulge in his pants that’s huge.
Well. Maybe that’s good. Matt complained I was a little looser.
I’ve been trying to do pelvic floor exercises, but when you are always tired and feeling stressed, the motivation to work on your sex life is low.
I give my inner muscles a hard squeeze now, and I feel the warmth and wetness inside start to flow.
Jasper moans. “I love that smell.”
“What smell?”
“You. In heat. My mate. You know that wolves know their mates when they meet them?”
I shake my head. Heat? Mate? The terms are raw and sharp, primal and passionate. That’s not me. Not Jasper. At least, not the parts the rest of the world gets to see.
“They do. I knew— I knew from the second I saw you, but I wasn’t going to tell you. I didn’t think you’d like that. Like I didn’t pick you, or you didn’t pick me.”
I slowly unzip my velour top—navy this time—and think about what he said. “Why do you know?”
“I don’t know. Something in the magic. The way the moon pulls us to itself? Maybe it pulls us to others? Wolves mate for life. Maybe there is something in that?”
For life.
“Once they find each other... Do they live happily ever after?”
Jasper nods, shirtless form over mine. He doesn’t wince at the serviceable cotton nursing bra that arrived in the mail today, or the way my belly hangs with wrinkles, not smooth and taut like it used to be.
“So beautiful. Most beautiful.”
“You don’t have to say that.”