Two – Vail
It was Friday night, but instead of an evening of puzzles and pizza, the Chance house was cold and empty. A single light burned in my bedroom window to give the illusion of someone being home, but that’s what it was. An illusion. Because Darkness was away at his new school and Driftwood had disappeared to the north cabin before I’d arrived. Which left me - Vail with the questionable surname - alone in a house full of memories and secrets.
So, naturally, I was up a tree.
But it wasn’t just the ghosts I was avoiding by perching in a ponderosa pine and freezing my ass off.
I was stalking a wolf.
I’d seen it twice in the week and a half since I’d been back from the academy. The first had been a few days after I arrived, just a glimmer of something sleek and fast-moving against the snow. Twilight wasn’t far off, and it could have just been another patch of sunlight fading into shadow. I’d told myself if it was an animal, it was most likely a mountain lion, or a large bobcat on the hunt for a rabbit. But then I’d seen it again last night, way too close to the Barakat house with its rifles and traps. This time it had turned and looked at me, as if it knew exactly where I was. Maybe even why I was sitting up a tree in the freezing cold.
It was definitely a wolf, not a cat. My heart had jumped, that jittery feeling under my skin nearly knocking me right off the branch. I’d wanted it to be a particular wolf, of course. One with sunshine fur and ice-blue eyes under the shifter silver. But when I went to check its prints by the fading moon, I saw they were too small to belong to the Arras Pack Alpha.
Because that was who Jasper was now. Not the alphason, but the Alpha of his whole pack. I didn’t know how it had happened, or why that cold man in the expensive suit had stood aside for his son. But I’d heard Trey and another guy talking about it the night I left. It hadn’t made much sense to me, but I’d been desperate for any mention of Jasper. Even while the Wolf Fire haze rode me hard all the way to the Horn .
I jammed down on that thought and rubbed my hands together, blowing on my numb fingertips. No more dwelling on that nightmare of the Hunter Moon Formal. I’d made that pledge to myself after I’d spent the first two days pacing holes in Driftwood’s floors, trying to work out how it had gone so wrong.
The academy was behind me. I was where I wanted to be, even if my chest hurt like it had been stabbed with a blood claw. I just had to find a way to make peace with my heartache. Although, if I was honest, the hardest part was living with the shame and regret. At letting down the girls who’d become my friends. And for what I’d done to Baron and Felix. But mostly for the alpha who’d left me floating in the pool without a backward glance.
I squirmed on the branch, almost welcoming the bite of bark through my jeans. Why should Jasper have looked backwards? In his mind, I’d betrayed him. I’d used some kind of wolf aphrodisiac to force a claiming bond, and nearly got his best friends killed in the process. I’d been too out of it to explain – and I still wasn’t sure what I could have said - and then Trey Barakat, the exact last person I expected to see, was scooping me out of the pool and taking me home.
Looking backwards was as pointless as looking to the sky for any kind of help. I’d spent a lot of time thinking on that. On the supposed message from my dad. And I’d finally remembered him saying it when I was little and missing my mom. She’d been gone less than a year, but it had felt like forever, and I’d asked him when I’d see her next. He’d hugged me and told me to look to the sky. For a while I’d imagined her up there, watching over me like an angel. But then he’d died, and I’d realized he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. That, really, we only looked to the sky when the world down here had gone to shit.
“You better come down from there, little V, or I’m gonna have to shake you off your perch.”
Trey hit the tree with the flat of his hand and I grabbed the trunk, my numb fingers scraping on the jagged bark. My heart was knocking harder than a woodpecker and I glowered down at him. “I told you to leave me alone, Trey.”
His eyes were narrowed points in the dark. “You gotta come down soon. You fall asleep up there, you’ll break your neck.”
I snorted. I wasn’t that far gone. Yet. “Where I sleep is none of your business.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say even before I saw the chainsaw in his hand. When he rested it against the trunk, I hugged the branch tight with my thighs. “You cut this tree down, and Driftwood will kick your ass. You know how much he loves it!”
“Old Drifty’s not around.” He tapped the metal teeth against the trunk. “And I’m getting tired of trying to tell you how things are now.”
I bit my lip and looked over to the snowy mound where I’d last seen the pink-gold wolf. “Driftwood will be back soon,” I told him. “You don’t need to keep coming around, Trey.”
He didn’t say anything for a while and I checked to see if he’d slunk off back home. But his eerie yellow eyes were still locked on me. “You come by my place tomorrow night. Eight o’clock. And dress pretty. We’re having a party.”
I didn’t bother answering, even as I felt those jitters under my skin harden into anger. Because unlike back at the academy, I was my own boss out here. With Driftwood away, it fell to me to finish getting the house ready for the winter. And when I wasn’t up the tree, I sure as hell wasn’t dressing up and going to parties. I was stocking the deep freeze and chopping wood and insulating pipes. All things that Trey knew, since when he wasn’t trying to shake me out of the tree, he was peering in my windows like a goddamn stalker.
I watched in silence as he tapped the trunk with his knuckles, before hefting the chainsaw and heading back to his house. He could stick his invitation in the nearest snowdrift. Pulling my stoned ass out of the academy pool didn’t give him the right to tell me what to do. Because out here I wasn’t a dud. And as much as he liked to act it, Trey Barakat was no alpha.
The next day passed in a blur of sealing and cleaning. Driftwood never seemed to mind the little gaps round the windows where the wind snuck in, but they drove me crazy. And every plugged hole was one less log I needed to chop. Then I scrubbed the floors with hot water and vinegar until the house smelled like a pickle factory. After throwing together a pickle-free sandwich, I had a hot shower, and pulled on fresh jeans and one of Darkness’ hoodies. I was standing in his room, looking at all his familiar things, when I heard boots in the hallway.
My heart wanted it to be Driftwood, but I knew without checking my watch it was past eight o’clock. The door slapped back on its hinge and Trey walked straight in, backing me up until my knees hit the edge of Darkness’ bed. His gaze roamed round the room, his mouth hooked down when he met my gaze. “You thinking about him, pretty V?” He reached past me to flick the edge of a picture on Darkness’ nightstand. It was one of us in our early teens, my face scrunched in outrage as he forced a snowball down the back of my jacket. “You missing him? Sleeping in this bed, maybe?”
I tried to push past him, but he didn’t move, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s not like that with him. He’s my brother.”
“Sure, he is.” He grabbed a lock of my hair, still damp from the shower. His hair was slicked back, too, but he still looked like a wild man. I smelled cologne, though, and cinnamon on his breath when he leaned in close. “You still want to see him, right?”
I tried to read the look in his crazy-amber eyes. They were gleaming at me through hooded lids, and I thought of that time back at school, when I’d told him about the party I hadn’t been invited to. Something had slithered over his gaze as he listened to me snitch on those stupid townies. Something oily and dangerous. I’d thought it was just a trick of the light at the time, but that was before I knew there was a whole other world out there. “Are you a wolf, Trey?” I whispered. “Is that why you act like this?”
His lips crooked, and he slung an arm around my shoulder. “I’m just here to take you to a party, V. Nothing big and bad about that.” He gave me a nudge towards the hall. “Move your ass, and go put on a pretty shirt.”
I went into the hall, but headed back towards the kitchen. “It’s too cold to go out. And I’m aching from all the cleaning. I just want to watch some TV.” I didn’t add I’d be in bed as soon as he left, to spend the night chasing all the chaotic might-have-beens through my dreams. “Can we hang out another time?”
He scratched his chin. “Depends. You think Darkness is gonna drive up here again?”
I froze. “He’s at your place?” When he gave me a pointed look, I spun and ran into my bedroom. I didn’t want him following me in, so I grabbed the first shirt that might pass for pretty. It was pink and tight, which I figured was what Trey really meant, especially since his eyes lit up when I came back out. I ground my teeth and pulled my hooded snow coat on, zipping it up tight. “Let’s go.”