Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
T he enormity of how bad an idea this was didn’t hit Rafe until he was standing alone in Ruby’s living room.
She’d crept upstairs to talk to Lena and to find him some blankets and a pillow.
He should have slept outside in the dirt.
He should keep his distance from this woman who looked at him like he could be human, like he could be redeemed.
But Lord knew he was beyond redemption. His father had made sure of that long ago.
The old bastard had never failed to remind his sons of their true selves.
They were animals and he made sure they acted like it.
Even now, with his pack life behind him and his father cold in his grave, Rafe couldn’t shed that truth. What happened to Scarlet couldn’t be undone. But Ruby’s eyes on him in the dark made him long to start over.
Her footsteps on the stairs interrupted that dangerous line of thought.
She stopped in front of him, the exhaustion clear on her face. She worked so damn hard. He’d seen it for weeks, her bone-tired steps through the woods, her weary trek toward home, but now he knew she had been heading home to more work. More caretaking.
“So, I might have made things worse,” she said.
“Worse?”
“Uh, yeah.” Her arms were suspiciously empty of blankets. Good. Outside would be better. “I may have told Lena we’re sleeping together.”
“You what?” He nearly choked on his surprise.
Ruby winced. “I’m a terrible liar! Especially when it comes to Lena. I can’t lie to my twin. She always knows . She was looking at me with those moonbeam eyes of hers and I panicked!”
Moonbeam eyes. That was a perfect description of Lena’s eerily pale eyes, but Rafe didn’t have time to appreciate Ruby’s flowery language right now.
Not when she’d said out loud the thing he had been trying very hard not to think about.
Sleeping with Ruby. A growl started low in his throat, and he couldn’t stop it from spilling out into the quiet of the little house.
“You panicked and the first thing you thought to tell her was that we’re sleeping together?”
Ruby flushed pink. “She already thought that anyway after your surprise naked visit the other day. It was just easier to go with it.” She put her hands on her hips in that way he already liked too much, the way that said she wasn’t backing down.
“So, you told her…”
Ruby sighed like he was the one being difficult.
“I told her we’re seeing each other. I said you might be spending some nights here.
That’s all. No big deal.” She tilted her chin up to look at him and goddamn if he didn’t want to take that ruby-red bottom lip between his teeth and ruin her make-up completely.
“Okay,” he said because he was an idiot who was never finished punishing himself for past sins.
“Okay.” Ruby nodded once and then turned back toward the stairs. “Come with me.”
He followed her up the creaky steps, worn smooth with age. He kept his eyes on her feet instead of her ass. Mostly, anyway. That damn skirt was flapping at him like a red cape to a bull. Upstairs, Ruby led him down a narrow hallway to the second bedroom on the left.
The room was small, like everything else in this house.
It was clearly built by gnomes or something.
Ruby’s bed took up one entire wall. Under the only window sat a desk covered in stacks of books and a small lamp.
Two closet doors filled the other wall. A worn braided rug hid most of the old wood floor.
He leaned against the faded daisy wallpaper next to the door as Ruby’s scent wrapped around his throat like a vice. He would not survive the night.
Ruby’s gaze flitted around the room like she was seeing it for the first time.
“Maybe this was a terrible idea.”
Rafe looked at the thin rug and then at the full-sized bed. Neither option was particularly promising. Not that he would dare to think he could sleep in the bed.
“How light of a sleeper is your sister?”
“She sleeps like the dead.”
“Perfect. Turn around.”
Ruby’s eyes widened but she obeyed. She’d had enough shocks for one week.
The last thing he wanted was for her to see him change.
He closed his eyes, letting his body rearrange itself.
Bones shifted and muscles transformed. Fur sprouted from his skin.
His hearing sharpened. His sense of smell nearly killed him.
But this was better. He’d be more comfortable on the floor as a wolf, and he’d be ready if anything happened to threaten Ruby.
Most importantly, as a wolf he couldn’t do any of the incredibly stupid shit he was thinking of doing right now. With him as a wolf, Ruby was safe.
When he was done, he brushed against Ruby’s hand. She sunk her fingers into the fur at his neck and if wolves could purr he sure as fuck would have.
“Alright, wolf-man, let’s go to bed.”
Rafe woke up to the sound of soft laughter. He lifted his head from where it had been tucked beneath his tail. It was still dark, but a soft glow was emanating from Ruby’s bed. Rafe stretched and rested his chin on the edge of the mattress.
“Sorry,” Ruby whispered. “Did I wake you?”
Rafe huffed and nudged her free hand. Her fingers in his fur was something he was getting far too used to.
“I couldn’t sleep. Bad dream.” She waved her phone at him. “Thought I would watch a little Golden Girls to calm me down.”
Had he been in human form, he would have loved to tease her about that, but as it was he just huffed again. Ruby cocked her head, studying him for a minute before patting the spot beside her.
“Do you want to come up?”
He should not come up. There was no scenario in which coming up was a good idea. And yet…
Rafe glanced over his shoulder to find his damn tail waving like a sail in the wind. Son of a bitch. His own body betrayed him.
Ruby smiled.
He jumped up.
Apparently, being in wolf form was not going to help him as much as he hoped.
He circled twice out of habit and dropped down on the blankets beside her.
She tried to keep her distance at first, as much as she could in the small bed, holding up her phone so they could both watch, laughing quietly at every snarky remark from Sophia and every absurd comment from Rose.
But slowly, her hand began to droop, and she slouched lower into her pillows.
Ruby sighed softly in her sleep and snuggled in closer to him, her body warm and soft against his side.
He could feel every breath she took, every twitch in her sleep, every dreamy murmur.
He lowered his head to his front paws and watched the clouds sweep past the moon out the window, casting shadows on the bed.
Sleep was no longer an option. Not with Ruby’s hand resting on the top of his head, her chest rising and falling against his back. It was the perfect torture. And it gave him far too much time to think, to remember.
Thoughts of Scarlet played on the back of his eyelids like a depressing movie of his past.
He’d met Scarlet when the pack had moved closer to town. Not this town but one just like it, small, insular, protective. He’d gone to get supplies. Wolves lived rough, but they still needed things . They weren’t actually wild animals. Not completely anyway.
And most important to his father were cigarettes. His favorite human invention.
Rafe had been picking up a carton for his old man when he first laid eyes on Scarlet behind the register. She’d smiled at him.
She’d looked at him like he was something other than the Alpha’s son.
She didn’t know anything about that. She didn’t know that he was supposed to fight for his place in the pack. She didn’t know that his father was always pitting him against his brothers, always sizing them up against each other. That Rafe’s life felt like one big battle.
And maybe that was her best quality.
Or it was her smile.
Or her pretty green eyes.
Whatever it was, Rafe returned to the store whenever he could find an excuse.
He went back until Scarlet asked if he wanted to hang out after work.
He went back until she invited him up to her apartment.
He went back so many times he started to believe that he could have that life. A new life, a different one far away from his old man. That he could be human. That he could be with a woman like Scarlet.
And then it had all blown up in his face. His father had found out. He’d lost his shit. Threatened Rafe with every curse in the book. His father demanded complete obedience. Rafe didn’t even realize how much until he defied his father and kept seeing his human girlfriend.
Until she ended up dead.
Attacked in the woods outside her home.
His father never admitted to it, but Rafe knew it’d been him.
Knew it in his smug smile, in his offhanded comments about how weak humans were. His father had taken the one thing that had given him hope, and after that Rafe had felt lost without it. Fighting and scraping to get by because he had to.
Until a year ago when he’d left for good.
But nothing he did now could save Scarlet.
For the second night this week, Rafe was in her bed.
Unfortunately, he was here as a canine and not a man.
“What should we watch tonight?” she asked even though he couldn’t answer. Not really. “How about An American Werewolf in London ?”
Rafe narrowed his eyes.
“No? It’s a classic!” Ruby bit down on a smile. If he could tease her by keeping his distance every night, she could tease him about his?… affliction. “Okay, how about The Howling ?”
Rafe sighed.
“You’re right, too scary.” Ruby kept scrolling through the movie options, her laptop balanced on her knees. “Oooo! Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man !”
The wolf beside her let out a low growl and goosebumps rose along her arms, but she couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her lips. “You know you could have more of a say in the choices if you stayed in human form.”
Rafe laid his head on his front paws, his ears twitching.
Ruby couldn’t help the thoughts that crept into her head about what it would be like to have a human Rafe in her bed.
“Here, I know.” Ruby clicked on Teen Wolf and snuggled down into her pillows.
“You can’t tell me you don’t love this one. Everyone loves this one.”
He moved his body closer to hers in acquiescence.
Ruby smiled, thinking about what her pre-teen self would have done if she’d walked into the room right now to find Ruby snuggling in bed with a gigantic werewolf, her favorite movie playing on the screen.
Ruby had the feeling that she was existing in some space in between, some dream that she would soon wake up from.
She dug her fingers into Rafe’s fur. She didn’t want to wake up.
Rafe rested his head in her lap, and she scratched between his ears.
A growl rumbled low in his throat, the one she’d come to equate with a cat’s purr.
Maybe he was happy here, too. Maybe, after this werewolf attack situation was ironed out, he would stay.
At the moment, it didn’t seem like too much to ask for.