Chapter 6 #2
“How are you so fast?” I panted a while later, lying on my back in the middle of some trees to the side of the clubhouse building. You’d figure I’d be used to running after him since it had been our daily game before his change, but I wasn’t. We’d had to replace outside time with indoor mental stimulation for weeks, and my lungs weren’t used to anything harder than a speed walk at this point.
I wheezed as he threw himself across my stomach, belly to belly, chewing on a stick he’d found at some point that was stripped of bark.
“I’m going to have to buy you a treadmill, man.” I gasped some more, reaching blindly for him so I could run my fingers through his coat.
He was breathing normally. Show-off.
“I think I pulled my hamstring jumping over that log back there,” I told him in between trying to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth to calm down. Maybe I needed the treadmill too. Two treadmills. I might have to start doing some weightlifting because it seemed like we were going to get to the point soon where carrying him around was going to be impossible at the rate he was growing.
His tail swished through the air, resembling a shooting star.
I ran my fingers through his coat again, admiring its softness.
“Donut,” I told him, letting my eyes settle on the full pie of a moon still visible through a gap in the towering trees surrounding us. “If you don’t like it here, tell me, okay? I’m serious. I want you to be happy.”
“Love,” he told me, and it hit me the same way it had from the first time he’d projected that emotion. It choked me up.
“I love you too. With my whole heart. You know that, don’t you?”
Duncan stopped chewing. A second later, he dragged his body the rest of the way over mine and jumped over my shoulder to stand beside my head, his ears so long they almost grazed the ground. My little black hound that was no puppy. He licked my cheek.
“Yes,” he answered.
I framed his face with my hands and kissed his nose, knowing we were on the same page. Just as I let go, his body suddenly tensed and he spun around, a tiny growl erupting from his throat. I jackknifed into a sitting position. I hadn’t heard anything, but I trusted him enough to know that he sensed something.
Duncan’s tail stuck straight up in the dark just as a low voice murmured, “All is good, pup.”
He sat, but his frame was rigid, and a long, low growl rumbled in his throat.
Matti had sworn we were safe here. There were tall layers of fencing closer in to the clubhouse. Plus, the scent of big predators should have marked this entire territory off.
But we were out at night, in an unfamiliar place, with strangers who held no allegiance to either of us. Anticipation and nerves came to life in my body as I caught sight of three figures moving through the trees toward us. Two were men and the other was a woman still a hundred feet away, their movements dead quiet as they crossed the ground.
No wonder I hadn’t seen or heard them until the last second, they practically hugged the shadows and walked on air.
My puppy growled louder, staying in his seated position.
“Ah-ah,” the deep voice corrected him. “You’re safe. We’re not going to do anything to you.”
It was Henri, I realized, setting my hand on the bristling hairs of Duncan’s back. That husky, bossy voice could only belong to him. “It’s okay, but good job sensing them, Donut,” I praised him.
His tail swished back and forth once, his whole frame tense and focused on the strangers approaching so dang silently. It was kind of impressive considering the fact that I’d put Henri at around six foot five or six, his build stocky and muscular. The man to one side of him was shorter and also well-built. The woman trailing behind them wasn’t exactly small in comparison to either of them.
How long had they been creeping through the woods? They weren’t exactly walking fast.
I’d tripped over a branch a little while ago—not that I cared if anyone saw me bust my ass playing with my pint-sized partner in crime, but I was kind of glad they hadn’t arrived three minutes earlier, when I’d been on my back moaning and clutching my leg.
“Why are you bleeding?” the familiar-ish voice asked, somehow sounding even more gruff in the dark… and confirming that chances were, they’d witnessed my very fine moment.
Too bad for me. “My shin got assaulted by that branch you just walked by,” I called out. It was the same leg Matti had kicked earlier too. When I’d rolled up my pant leg to see why it had hurt so much, there’d been a pretty good scratch there.
Matti’s cousin slipped through the trees, clear, bright moonlight occasionally illuminating the shape of his frame as it moved through them in a way someone half his size shouldn’t have been capable of.
But it was more than that, I thought, that kept my gaze riveted to him—stealth aside.
How was he so huge? I wouldn’t call him burly exactly, but it was close. Thick neck, thick chest. Biceps? Thick. Thighs? Thick. He was….
My pride kept the gulp from climbing all the way up my throat.
Some women were attracted to six-packs made up of strict diets and three-hour gym sessions.
I’d always had a thing for a brawny, muscular build. In my imagination, the more I could grab onto, the better. The thicker the thighs, the better the prize—andddd that was nothing I needed to focus on.
If I wanted a big, beefy guy to ogle, I could pick a football game to watch. Or a rugby match. Not the man I used to call Fluffy who didn’t exactly seem all that pleased to have me here, even if he had the exact body type that would’ve caught my attention in a crowded room.
“You injured?”
I knew he could see me, so I shook my head. “The only thing hurting right now is my ego if you saw me bust my ass.” The words “help me, I’m dying” had come out of my mouth, mostly because I liked Duncan’s attention as he climbed all over me, making sure I was fine… and because it had stung like an SOB.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be running around in the dark, Cricket,” he suggested, even closer now.
So we were back to “Cricket” again, huh?
And was that a joke ?
I snickered, not sure how I felt exactly about this hot-cold thing we had going on. He had going on. I’d offered a hug. Offered to let him smell me up close. I was trying. Sure, he was teasing me now, but he’d thrown me under the bus hours ago.
I needed to talk to him about that. The sooner the better.
“I can see in the dark just fine,” I told him; there was no point in keeping that a secret. “I stepped on my shoelace, it’s my fault.”
Henri kept coming, not commenting on my explanation. But the man beside him made a sudden rough sound. He stopped, and I watched him take a deep breath.
Henri hadn’t given me back my bracelet after the meeting.
I touched the spot on my wrist where it usually sat, missing its weight. Missing what it meant. It’d been almost two decades since I’d begun wearing it full-time.
Henri gave the man a sharp look for some reason; it drew his eyebrows down flat. “Both of you can go home. We’ll search again in the morning.”
The small group whispered to each other, and the man and the woman changed direction when their chitchat was over. They headed toward the homes behind the main building. So many of them still had light coming through their windows, making the whole place even dreamier than during the day. It reminded me of something out of a postcard. The moonlight, the woods, the houses… all it needed was snow covering the ground. I bet it looked surreal during the winter.
I hoped we were here long enough to find out.
Unlike the two strangers, Henri kept coming toward us, stopping when he was a few feet away, so close his amber eyes reflected when he crouched.
He didn’t look very happy. He didn’t look very anything if I was going to be honest. I smelled different, but I was still the same person, just bigger and a little more mature most of the time.
I smiled at him. “Nice to see you again, Fluffy.”
The only reaction he had to the childhood nickname was the slightest flick of his left eyebrow. He didn’t say a word, which also meant he didn’t tell me not to call him that either.
It also reminded me that he and I needed to talk. “Sorry I bit you,” I apologized, hoping he could sense my sincerity. It seemed like a good place to start. The obsidian Duncan and I wore only helped keep our magic a secret; it didn’t do anything against feelings or facial expressions.
His eyes swept toward Duncan, who was watching him like a hawk, his small body still on edge. He had tried to take this man down for me. He had risked his life. I was going to need a private moment so I could cry over that at some point soon, I decided. He was going to get whatever he wanted for the rest of his life, dang it.
For now, I focused on Henri. “Sorry if it hurt,” I added.
That got him to snicker. “I’ve had stubbed toes that hurt more than that.”
Was that another joke? I guess I’d expected him to pretend he hadn’t heard me. But I could work with this. I’d rather have a joking Henri than a Mr. Rules and Regulations Henri. And that’s why I said, “All right. Next time I know to bite harder.”
That got me his undivided attention. “Excuse me?” he asked in that rumbly, commanding voice that I needed to get used to.
I laughed. “You heard me.” Did he expect me not to mess with him back?
Those clear eyes moved over my face as his features gradually hardened.
He’d always been so serious. In my memories, he used to smile once in a blue moon and rarely laughed, unlike Matti whose first language was cackling. Where my best friend was a joyous handful, I remembered Henri as being the opposite: quiet, stoic, too responsible, even as a teenager.
I needed to try my best not to let his back-and-forth seriousness get under my skin.
So I smiled some more and drew my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
“Did you go looking for the river crone?” I asked, keeping an eye on Dunky-Dunk, who hadn’t moved a muscle other than the ones in his throat as he growled like a tiny chainsaw. The barest hint of white teeth peeked out from between his lips, his little nose working overtime as he tried to smell the werewolf attempting to be friendly and nonthreatening in a subtle way.
“We did,” Henri answered, his attention still on my attack puppy.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Duncan not breaking eye contact yet. The boy had balls of steel. “No luck finding her then?”
His gaze met mine for a split second before returning to Duncan just as fast. “No. We lost her trail a half mile from where you ran into her.”
Someone sounded a little sour about that.
The defined line of his jaw flexed before he looked at me again with those sober features that I wasn’t sure how to take. “What did you do to make her leave?”
Did he sound a little accusatory, or was it my imagination?
“They’re known to be aggressive.”
She had been a little b.
I hugged my knees closer, reminding myself of the importance of honesty. Of the roots the elders had briefly mentioned that were so important here. There was a chance that despite their assurances, one day they would ask for more specifics about what I was, and then nothing would be a secret.
And that made me think about the bracelet I know I’d seen on Franklin’s wrist.
But wondering what he was made me feel like a hypocrite. If there was anything I needed to focus on, it was myself and my donut. And Henri’s careful curiosity.
He definitely didn’t know the one thing I was very careful not to bring up. The same thing Matti and Sienna and my parents also avoided like the plague. Nobody pretended anything, but we had all gotten really good at tiptoeing around the truth.
But these strangers were either going to accept me or they wouldn’t. So I answered, “Nothing much.” That wasn’t a lie.
Duncan leaned forward a little bit, getting a better smell of the man patiently balanced on the balls of his feet in front of us.
I shared a little more. “I told her to leave and not come back.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. He didn’t actually raise an eyebrow, but there was something about his features that made it seem like he had. “You talked to her?” He paused, and I’d swear I felt him scoff. “That’s all?”
He thought I was full of it.
I had an idea of what he saw when he looked at me. I wasn’t short or tall. I was a handful up top and down below. The only part of me that anyone remembered, if they did, was my face, and it wasn’t an intimidating one either. A drunk ex-boyfriend had told me once that I was “beautiful but not at the same time.” My bone structure was a mix of the heritage I highly suspected ran through my blood and a very different one that softened my nose and gave me a lighter eye color.
I was the attractive equivalent of brussels sprouts: some people were about it, and other people would rather starve.
Some people had soft faces that they could shape and make personalities for. Mine was angles and knew exactly who it was and made no apologies for it. Maybe one day I could learn from it.
“Yup,” I confirmed. “That’s all.”
He scoffed as much as a man his size was capable of, and it was rough like the rest of him. He shoved his right sleeve up his forearm. “You want me to believe that?”
That was definitely a little bit of accusation in there.
I didn’t want to take it personally, but…. “Yeah. Why would I lie about that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.
“People lie about everything.”
Ouch. “You’re not wrong, but I meant what I said. I’m not going to start building bonds here based on lies.” I thought about that a little more. “And that’s such a dumb thing to make up. If I’m going to lie about something, it wouldn’t be that.”
Something flicked across the striking lines of his face, mostly in his eyes. He had thick, expressive eyebrows, his features all dark Viking. He was good at hiding what he was thinking, that was for sure, but I was excellent with body language.
I scrunched up my nose, taking in the scruff along his jaw and cheeks that had grown in from when we’d first seen each other. He’d stuck around the whole meeting, but right as the elder had offered to take us for a tour, his phone had rung and Henri had disappeared.
“Matti and I showed up, I volunteered to handle the situation so he wouldn’t have to fight it in front of the kids?—”
“He agreed to let you handle the situation?”
Did he have to sound so suspicious?