Chapter 13 #3
“She didn’t need my help,” the dad countered as a familiar body got right in front of me, so close I had to shuffle backward to give him room.
But he wasn’t listening anymore. At least not to Pascal’s dad.
His attention was on Dominic.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Henri demanded, his voice flat and cool, and I leaned over, my cheek going to the side of his arm.
He was standing almost nose to nose with Dominic.
Henri was in his space, all in his face, a few inches taller, his build bulkier, Henri’s expression even fiercer than the one he’d had when he’d dealt with Spencer the day he’d been a jerk.
He was pissed .
I might even use the word infuriated to describe him at that moment.
But as much as I would’ve been willing to pay for a front row seat to Henri going big and bad on someone—because I knew, I knew he had it in him, that quiet intensity wasn’t fooling me—this wasn’t what I wanted. I’d been trying to stand up for myself and all the other small potatoes that this asshole intimidated. Fluff had enough reasons to dislike and argue with this jerk. I didn’t need to add onto it more than I wanted to avoid being a pushover.
More than anything, I didn’t need to be one more person who made Henri’s life harder. I refused to be that kind of friend unless I had to, and in this case? It wasn’t worth it. Dominic wasn’t worth it. Maybe I’d given Dominic something to think about, and maybe I hadn’t, but it didn’t matter anymore. I set my hand on the carved biceps beside my face, and whispered, “I’m okay, Henri. He doesn’t know I’m not the little pig in this story.”
At my words, his head turned. Those clear eyes met mine, and I saw the strain on his face. The anger . It wasn’t just him being mad or annoyed; he was dang near furious.
That couldn’t mean anything good.
I had done this, and I needed to fix it. So I did the first thing I could think of when he leveled me with his attention: I oinked at him. Then I squeezed his arm.
Fluff blinked.
“He hasn’t heard the myth of Big Jaws,” I whispered, still trying to deescalate the situation.
His blink was even slower the second time, and just as I was about to try and come up with another comment to distract him, Henri grumbled in a voice so low I felt it along my spine. “Get the fuck out of here, Dom.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Dominic started to argue before Henri snarled, his head whipping around to face the other man.
The sound made my hands tingle, and not in a bad way. There was something wrong with me. I leaned around Henri’s arm to peer up at him.
“You and I are going to talk about what you have and haven’t done,” Henri murmured in that deadly tone.
“She’s fine,” the asshole replied. “She was talking shit back. She wasn’t scared.”
Henri’s face darkened, and I was pretty sure his pupils went wide like a great white shark. “You’re goddamn right she wasn’t. If she had been, this would’ve gone down a whole lot differently.” He sounded even scarier, all flat and emotionless.
And here I’d thought him controlling his facial features so well was impressive. He was even better at being intimidating at a low volume. I had to fight the urge to tug my collar away from my neck.
My newest protector leaned forward so he was nose to nose with the other man again. “Go home before I change my fucking mind about letting you leave.”
Since I wasn’t looking at Dominic, I didn’t see if he made a face as he left. From the sound of his footsteps, he was pissed, but screw that guy. The second I stopped sensing his magic, I finally took a step back, only to find Pascal’s dad had moved closer to us.
Just how much had he overheard? Did he hear me threaten Dominic?
I opened my mouth to apologize, but a small, very careful smile crept over his face when we made eye contact.
I closed it.
That careful smile turned into a full-blown one. Was there a tear in his eye? “That was pretty badass how you stood up to him.”
Who were these people?
It took me a second to get my reply together. “Thank you...?” My face felt hot.
“You ever thought about a career in?—”
Henri’s hand rose between us, and he pointed at Pascal’s dad, his “No” sharp. The other man rolled his eyes but held up both hands.
Henri eyed him for a second before dropping it, the lines at his throat flexing. “Help me put the pups up, would you?” he asked, his tone still all grumbly but not anywhere near as intense as it’d been when he’d been dealing with Dominic.
I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but Pascal’s dad and I both moved toward the puppies.
But halfway to Duncan, I happened to notice Agnes’s eyes were open. She closed them the second I busted her. I wished she hadn’t heard all that. I didn’t want to be a bad example.
The one small blessing was that Duncan, at least, had slept through everything, which was a surprise since he was usually so in tune with me. When he wasn’t exhausted, that was. Pascal’s dad collected his son, Henri hoisted a fake-sleeping Agnes over his shoulder, and I carried my donut. Pascal Senior went out the back door, but Henri and I went the other way; the silence not stifling, but it left a little knot in my stomach.
I hoped he wasn’t mad at me.
While Henri headed to her room, I took the stairs with the small body that was getting heavier by the day.
I cuddled my boy, my thoughts drifting back to the asshole wolf who liked to pick on people smaller than him.
If only he knew….
Back in our room, I set Duncan on the foot of the bed and covered him with his blanket. Then I took my phone and snapped a picture. I was in the middle of texting it to Sienna when a knock came at the door.
I sighed.
“Why are you sighing?” Henri’s voice came through the other side, reminding me yet again that there was no hiding anything living here, much less from him.
Nothing in this world could have prepared me for Henri Blackrock becoming the nosiest person in my life.
And he was right there when I opened the door, arms crossed over his chest, looking like….
He raised his eyebrows, asking me again with them what I was sighing over.
My shoulders dropped. “I was expecting you to give me a hard time for what I did,” I answered.
His eyebrows went up a little more. “Why would I do that?”
I shrugged.
“Knowing Dom, he asked for it.” Henri tipped his head to the side, showing off that strong jaw. “I’m glad you didn’t back down.”
“You are?” I squinted. “Why?” This sounded too good to be true, or maybe I was that paranoid.
“Because now everyone is going to know the truth.”
“That I’m stubborn sometimes?”
The muscles at his cheeks tightened. “That you shouldn’t be fucked with,” he explained.
That wasn’t what I’d been expecting him to say. Not today, not tomorrow, not in a million years.
“We admire strength.” He nodded to himself. “Good for you.”
I didn’t say anything. I was too surprised by his support, even though it made sense. He was right, werewolves took strength as a gift, though they accepted those weaker as well. It had been easier before, when I’d been a kid. The rules back then had been totally different though. Children were cherished and protected, above all else.
Now? I had no idea where I was, and at this point, there were still a couple of things I wanted to keep a secret… which was why Henri had put himself between us.
He’d been trying to protect me again.
I lifted my chin. “Thank you for standing up for me against that… person.” More like a moron, but I was trying to be diplomatic because of ears.
The man I liked to think of as my friend looked at me. Really looked at me. It was a long, serious inspection that made me want to squirm because I couldn’t tell what was going through his head despite the fact he had just said what I had done was a good thing. His forehead scrunched and his voice was low. “I used to wonder what you were going to be when you grew up.”
He had?
He drew his palm down his mouth. “How old were you when your magic finally kicked in?” he asked.
Here I was, feeling shy all over again. “Sixteen.”
That seemed to surprise him as much as it had me when it had finally happened. I’d started to think it never would, that maybe that “different thing” everyone else had always brought up with my scent was a fluke. I had assumed I was half human, and because of that, I’d kept my expectations low. That maybe that was why I’d been given up to a magical couple.
Mythical beings didn’t have kids with humans because there would have been no hiding what they inherited and would eventually become.
As for children of other magical beings who could pass for human, there wasn’t a whole lot on them. Most of the stories I could find of demigod kids in mythology didn’t have happy endings. For all I knew, maybe nothing about them changed either. Maybe for some of them, depending on who their parents were, they never even realized there was something different about them.
Then it had happened.
My parents had burst into my room in the middle of the night, the moon bright and full in the sky, because they’d smelled something different in the house. Something that shouldn’t have been there. That had never been there before.
I wasn’t sure who’d been more shocked to find that the only thing that had changed was me.
One moment, I’d been awake, the same as I’d always been. Then I’d fallen asleep, and when I was woken up, there had been this feeling in my body that hadn’t existed before. This thing that felt like a very calm butterfly in my stomach.
It hadn’t left me since. It had gotten easier to ignore, or maybe to live with… as much as I could. When we’d learned just what my magic meant, I’d had to accept real quick that while I could pretend it wasn’t there, I had to keep control of it at all times.
Fortunately for me, I didn’t have a temper; the most I did was talk a whole lot of crap when I was mad. I never really wished ill on anybody, and I was definitely a lover more than I would ever be a fighter.
At least until a loved one was endangered, then, even if I didn’t have in me what I had, I would’ve found a way to torture someone.
“I’m not asking what your magic means, but I am asking how much control you have over it,” he explained, probably seeing the borderline panic on my features. “You said something about the fertility aspect being involuntary. That’s not all though, is it?”
I hesitated, but then I shook my head.
The fact he wasn’t asking about my ancestry said he might have some vague suspicions. Or maybe he thought I was a chihuahua; I might not be the biggest or the baddest, but that wasn’t going to stop me from going after your ankles and whatever else I could reach.
Henri didn’t look concerned though.
But I was. Because I hadn’t wanted to talk about this, and he might have a good feeling that there was something in me that was different from most other magical people. I could tell everyone here not to worry as much as I wanted, but he’d made it clear from the beginning that he protected the ranch’s residents.
He wanted to know if my bite was as big as my bark or if I was just bluffing. So what was I supposed to say?
I couldn’t lie.
So I fidgeted, and I shrugged. “It’s more complicated than just having control over it, like how all you need to do is think you want to be a wolf and it happens. Right? Then how, when you want to be this version of Henri, you come back to it and your clothes are on. My body doesn’t change. The fertility, I have no control over.” That reminded me of the gnomes’ comments. We could circle back to that. “The other parts of what I am? I do feel that in me, and I choose whether to let it… make my hands tickle or not.” Did that make sense?
I wasn’t sure it did. Not entirely, and he confirmed it when he murmured, “Your hands tickle?”
I nodded.
He wanted to ask. He wanted to know so bad, but I wasn’t willing to tell him yet. We were on the right track to being friends, and I was sure he liked me. We’d spent too much time together to think otherwise.
I liked him. I wasn’t going to deny that. But none of those feelings were enough to share the one small truth that could change everything—the other active part of the “gifts” I’d been given.
Henri rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, his face watchful. “Most people don’t like Dominic. He’s got a temper, and he’s been used to getting what he wants by talking enough shit. Half the residents here avoid him. But there you were, squaring up to him like you knew there was nothing for you to be afraid of.”
The smile I gave him was so freaking weak, and he knew it.
His nostrils flared, and he stared at me for so long I was sure he was about to lecture me on why he deserved to know what I was hiding. He didn’t though. “You have nothing to prove here, Nina, no matter what anyone says.” His jaw went tight before he lowered his voice. “Has Agnes said anything to you about her parents?”
“Nothing.” I tugged at the collar of my orange T-shirt that said Oregon in block letters. “I’ve wondered , but I haven’t brought it up. We’re still working on our relationship.”
“I should have said something about it to warn you.”
Warn me?
“Dom is Agnes’s dad.” That sounded like it cost him to admit it. “It’s complicated.”
“The blond hair makes sense now, but….”
Somehow, his jaw went even tighter. “He and Agnes’s mom weren’t in a relationship when they had her. Her mom was young and couldn’t raise her. She gave her to Dominic, who….” His palm came up and dragged over his mouth before he palmed his throat. “She’s ours now,” he summarized.
“He gave her up?” I whispered.
“We made him sign away his rights.”
I took a step closer to him, lowering my voice even more. “Does she know?”
“She knows. She can smell it,” he explained. “We’ve never kept it from her.”
“I can’t believe that dickhead is her dad,” I told him even though… I kind of could. Maybe that’s where she got her attitude from. But just as quickly as that thought entered my head, I realized it went deeper than that, maybe to an extent it was genetic, but I’d bet it had to be her reacting to her situation in the first place. Maybe.
What would it be like to see her father around, knowing he would rather she live in a clubhouse by herself than be with him?
Just when I thought I couldn’t dislike that asshole any more, I proved myself wrong.
It was my turn to grit my teeth. “They don’t spend time together? At all?”
“Other than pack runs and the twice a year he had to agree to spend some time with her—if she wants—no.” Henri took the baton for teeth clenching again. “The only reason he goes on the runs is because he’s part of the security for the ranch and it’s mandatory.”
“Doesn’t he have other family here that could’ve taken her?” I thought about the blonde woman who worked at the diner.
Henri’s face clouded over. “They declined.”
Wincing, I wanted to give Agnes a hug so bad it made my throat hurt. “Is that why he’s such an asshole to you? Because you’re more of a dad to her than he is?”
Henri’s body straightened, and I watched his eyes bounce from one of mine to the other. His mouth went a little flat. “That’s….” It looked like he poked at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “That’s not the whole reason why, but I’m sure it’s part of it. He doesn’t agree with a lot of our rules, and he thinks he can run the ranch better than we already do.”
“So he’s always been an asshole?” I muttered.
That got Henri’s mouth to twitch at least. “Basically.”
I smiled a little. “But where is Agnes’s mom now?”
“She’s not from around here. They met when she was visiting. She might be from Denver, I don’t know.” He didn’t care, it didn’t make a difference to him, was what he was implying.
I sighed. “Well, now I feel terrible for her, but that man….” Lifting my hand between us, I shook my fist so he could silently get my point.
He smirked again. “He doesn’t deserve a conditioner bar.”
“He deserves some spit in it, more like,” I snickered.
The corner of his mouth hitched, but just as soon as he did it, the expression disappeared again. “Keep your eye on him. He’s been all bark, and he’s good security, but I’ve broken up him and Ani getting into it. You might not be scared, but I don’t like the idea of somebody getting in your face.”
“I’d be fine, Fluff,” I tried to assure him, but he started shaking his head before I’d even finished my sentence.
“I don’t want you getting hurt, and I don’t mean just physically,” Henri said, looking me right in the eye while he did.
I regretted going into that room with them tonight to begin with. All of this could have been avoided if I’d walked away when Dominic started his BS. If I’d been an even bigger person.
He was being really nice worrying about me.
“I understand. I’ll try to keep my distance from him,” I promised.
His features twisted. He wanted to know what I was . It was one thing not to fear him or Spencer at a distance. One thing to scare a swamp crone, but that moron had been in my face. I could’ve smelled his breath, and that hadn’t been enough to get me to step away.
And that made me mad the more I thought about it because how many people had he intimidated before by doing the same crap he’d done to me?
Those bright orange-brown eyes moved over my face, his forehead furrowing all over again. “You make people fertile, but you also scare the shit out of beings four times bigger than you,” he stated, walking the intrusive line perfectly.
A small part of me wished I could have denied it, but in for a penny, in for a pound. I shrugged to play it off. “Something like that?”
My answer rolled around in his head, and he plucked my words apart, trying to figure out how they fit together. How they could make sense. I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know either.
“I don’t want anyone to be scared of me,” I admitted. I didn’t want him to be scared of me, more like. Matti wasn’t. Neither was Sienna. But they knew me.
Henri, though, didn’t say he was scared. He didn’t say he wasn’t either. The only thing he did was keep watching me. His mouth formed a flat little line after a moment.
“Look.” I hoped I didn’t regret saying what was about to come out of my mouth. “Dominic can think whatever he wants. He can paint runes on his door to make himself feel better, but… I don’t want you to be scared of me, Fluff. That’s all.”
The way his eyes widened, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but for some reason, admitting that to him felt kind of relieving.
I gave him a little smile. “But you probably aren’t scared of a whole lot, huh?” The nerves were there, in my voice, in my skin, in my soul. “I guess there isn’t a whole lot that could scare you or bully you. Agnes, maybe. The way she looks at me sometimes is intimidating. She’s got her glare locked in.”
Look at me trying to change the subject.
Fortunately, he either felt generous or the idea of him being scared of me was so ridiculous he could move on from it that fast.
“I wasn’t bullied when I was young. Now…?” The corner of his mouth gave the world a faint half smile that I liked as much as I liked a full-blown one. “The pups make up for it.”
I hoped the universe would bless him ten lifetimes for letting me move on from talking about myself. “I guess it’s a good thing Duncan can’t talk back yet.”
Henri’s eyes flicked around me to the side of the door, taking a peek at the puppy passed out on the bed. “He’s a good pup.”
“He is,” I agreed. The best one.
He focused back on me, jaw tense. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of everyone, but the elders are going to want to talk to you about the gnomes’ visit tonight.”
Ah. That’s why he was here. “Right.” I stood up straight. “I was planning on talking to you about them, but then all that happened downstairs….”
“They say anything I need to know about?”
“They said so much stuff I didn’t understand, Fluff,” I trailed off, going through the list in my head. “It was two of them today, the oldest of their clan. They said that they were there to be around me?”
He raised his eyebrow that mini amount that was standard for him, and I nodded.
“I might be imagining it, but that sure sounded to me like they thought I could help them have kids or something. Then they brought up my father—my DNA dad, not my werewolf one—and how they thought he was dead but they were happy to hear that he isn’t?” I rambled out in a single breath, feeling as overwhelmed as I had in the moment when the conversation had gone down. “I said that they probably had the wrong person, and they claimed that they didn’t. That the person they’re talking about is him.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and threw out the last part. “Did you know that obsidian doesn’t hide magic from them?”
That dark eyebrow went up another millimeter, and he must have been used to dealing with people on the verge of hysteria because he didn’t seem bothered by my rambling at all. “I didn’t know that,” was what he decided to respond with first.
I remembered something else. “They also mentioned that their ‘brethren’ in the south lived with my DNA mom at some point, and that’s how I understand them. How does that work?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Gnomes have been said to have long memories. There’s a lot we don’t know about.” He paused. “I met a man once who could do things to plants that you wouldn’t believe. I’ve heard of other beings who could do things there aren’t explanations for.” He said that looking me right in the eye. “Do you remember the man who lived across the street from you? With the eye patch?”
“Oh yeah. I know who my parents thought he was.”
Henri nodded slowly. “He’s who they thought he was, Nina.”
That’s what I’d been afraid of. Not actually afraid, but…. “You really think so?”
“I know he was.”
So had I, but it had still been wishful thinking. If that man had done half of what stories said he had, no wonder he’d been feared and revered at the same time. A benevolent god, he was not known for being.
And how or why the man who had once been called Odin had ended up in a tiny town in New Mexico was something I would never understand either.
Henri had already moved on though. “The gnomes didn’t say any names?” He almost sounded hopeful.
“No, but they called him the son of night.” I shrugged.
Henri stayed quiet for a minute before saying, “The elders are going to ask about what you talked about. We’ll have to tell them you saw them, but the rest can wait.”
Was he telling me to lie?
He must have seen the question on my face because he added, “You know what? You told me about it. That’s good enough. If you want to say something, I don’t see how them wanting to be around you would change anything or give anything away.”
I focused on his thick throat, covered in short, dark hair that needed a shaving before he went to work again. “I don’t want to do something that ruins us being here,” I admitted.
“It won’t.” He shook his head. “You’re not lying about anything. I’m telling you it’s fine; if they have a problem, they can talk to me. All right?”
My gaze slid up to meet his again, and I took in every bit of that ruggedly boned face that got better looking the more I saw it. “I don’t want you to get in trouble either.”
“I won’t,” he seemed to promise, his expression so serious. “And you don’t need to put up with other people’s shit. Nobody has a right to pressure you into telling them anything, even them, not if it isn’t their business. You’ll let me know next time there’s a problem.”
He wasn’t asking me. He was telling me I would.
The urge to insist I could handle it was in my mouth, but his offer did something to the part of me that wanted him to like me, so I kept my mouth shut and asked, “You’ll back me up?” Like I couldn’t believe it.
Maybe because I couldn’t.
That muscle in his cheek flexed, and those beautiful irises burned straight through my flesh and into me. “I will,” he confirmed.
I took his offer to heart and nodded.
And then he said the words that were going to get stuck on a loop in my head for probably the rest of my life. “I don’t need to know what you are, because I’m seeing it, and I’m not worried about you, Cricket.” The chest that had stood as a barrier between me and that asshole minutes ago, rose and fell. “There’s nothing scary about you at all,” Henri Blackrock claimed. “Got it?”