Chapter 6
Chapter Six
It was funny how a house that had always been home-like but not quite home could suddenly feel like home simply because of someone new. Kaeli made the place feel totally different just by being inside.
It was late, and he was nervous because he didn’t know where her head was at. Conversation in the truck had mostly revolved around superficial things. He probably only knew the bare minimum of her past, but he didn’t want to make any demands on knowing things she might not be ready to share.
He took her suitcase into his bedroom, the largest of the two and the only one with a bed. The other one was used for storage.
When he came back into the front room, she was right where he left her, like she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“I know it’s late, but I’m kinda starving. Can I make you something?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“I don’t cook much,” he said, moving to the fridge and opening the door. “There are some she-wolves who bring meals around to pack members, so I usually have a freezer full of things to reheat. Do you like mac and cheese?”
“I love it,” she said.
He pulled two packages of mac and cheese out and put them in the microwave. Then he grabbed sodas from the fridge and set them on the counter. He didn’t have a kitchen table because he never needed one, and he either watched TV while he ate or used the counter.
She fidgeted with the soda can, and he could practically feel her nerves.
He reached across the counter where she sat and gave her hand a squeeze. “So you told me you came by bus to see Lorene, and considering your magics were acting up before we met, I think there must be a reason you came when you did. Do you want to talk about it?”
She stared at him intently, and he realized her eyes were moss green and really beautiful.
But hell, he found her wholly enticing. Long dark hair that fell in soft waves past her shoulders, a cherub face with the most kissable lips of any female ever.
And she smelled like sage and honey, his two new favorite scents.
And her freaking curves. He’d had to hold back from grabbing her during their first amazing kiss in the truck, but he knew she had a body made just for him, curved and lush, and smelling like a dream come true.
She tilted her head, her eyes flashing amber for a moment, and he wondered if she could sense his arousal. Or if that was a quirk of her magic.
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat as her eyes returned to moss-green, “if you want to know what brought me to Cleveland, it actually goes back to when I was sixteen, and I walked in the house after school and found my mom and the South Corner’s husband packing a bag.”
He was taking the first mac and cheese out of the microwave when she spoke, and he froze, hot container in his hands. “Your mom and someone else’s husband were packing?”
“Yeah. To run away together.” She sipped at the soda and gave him a small smile, shame pinking her cheeks.
“I hadn’t even really come into my magic yet, so it was before that when everything went to Hades.
My parents were never together. My bio-dad was a warlock from another coven who got together with my mom because his leader told him that procreation was the best thing for warlocks and witches to do.
I don’t know where he is. Heck, I don’t know where my mom is either. ”
He moved into motion and put the container in front of her with a fork and got the second one in the microwave as she told a story of abandonment and loss, of a selfish, self-absorbed mom who ruined a marriage and left her only child on her own to chase her dreams. Another witch had taken Kaeli in until she could support herself, but once her power had shown itself to be uncontrollable and dangerous, she’d essentially been exiled.
Always on the outside, never quite part of the coven.
He sat next to her with his own mac and cheese, stirring it. “I’m so sorry, Kaeli.”
“Well, it was twenty-some years ago,” she said. “But it does still sting.”
“So you don’t know where she is, but do you ever hear from her?”
“No. She reached out a few times that first year, and then she stopped altogether. She never said where she was, so I don’t think she ever wanted to be found. By me or anyone else from her past. She clearly wanted to start her life over, and I wasn’t part of that plan.”
Her story continued, ending the day before with the coven testing her but clearly knowing she’d fail, and sending her off into the arms of strangers without caring whether she’d be safe or accepted once she was there.
Lorene had mentioned Cinder to Kaeli, and she’d been planning to visit the pack to meet her.
“Well, hell,” he said, sitting back on the stool. “You would have come to Thorn Hollow, and we’d have met anyway, even if I wasn’t on the bluffs tonight.”
“But I’m so glad you were,” she said. “I might have really hurt someone the way my magic went nuts tonight. So yeah, we would have met one way or another when I came here, and I can thank my heartless, former coven for pushing me to Ohio, but I think tonight was when we were supposed to meet.”
“Do you feel more in control of your magics?”
“Yeah. But I haven’t tried much past that tiny little glow spell in the truck.
I’ll have to work at fully controlling the two together.
I’ve never had magic go right, so having access to dual powers means I kind of have to go back to being a newbie and learning from the ground up.
The good news is that I know a lot of spells, I just have to work at utilizing them properly. ”
“Tomorrow, when we meet with Adam and Cinder, you can talk to her about it. She’s a dual witch-wolf and has two powers she contends with.”
“But she can shift?”
“Yeah.”
“That would be cool.”
“I think it’s cool you have access to magic.”
She smiled, then she yawned, before turning back to the food and continuing to eat. They talked more about Thorn Hollow and the pack, about his security job and his friends, but she didn’t ask about his family.
When she yawned a fourth time and put the fork down, he took care of the dishes, and when he turned back to tell her she could have the bed, he found her on the couch, patting the space next to her. He sat down, and she curled into him immediately, resting her head on his chest.
“I can feel there’s something hollow inside you, something achy,” she whispered.
“It’s your past, I think. I want to ask you about it, but I’m so tired I’m afraid I’m going to pass out while you’re talking and miss something.
” She tilted her head briefly, her eyes lowering with exhaustion.
“But I do care, and I want to know. If you want to tell me.”
He kissed her forehead and breathed in her sweet scent.
“We can talk tomorrow, Nightling. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
The hollowness she could feel, he knew was definitely his past. The loss of his family and how he’d never really felt at peace until he held her on the bluffs. Even in the midst of all that chaos with her magics, he’d felt whole for the first time in his life.
“Do you want to take the bed?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, and he realized she’d fallen asleep.
He grabbed the blanket off the arm of the couch and draped it over them, then toed off his shoes and settled down into the cushions.
“Rest well, Nightling, you’re safe with me.”
Her magic seemed to hum in acknowledgement of him, and his wolf growled softly in response, already fully charmed by her.
His sweet Kaeli.
Protective instincts flared inside him as a faint memory of his parents embracing flashed through his mind, and his father calling his mother by the nickname he’d given to Kaeli, an anchor to his past he hadn’t consciously made, but he liked it.
He might be a bridge to her magics uniting, but she seemed to be a bridge to his past, to finding peace and making a home.
To the future.
Closing his eyes, he rested his arms around her and vowed to keep her safe no matter what.