Chapter 11
Declan
The sharp stink of vinegar overwhelmed my wolf nose.
I sneezed, shifting with a pop. Ned furiously dug into a pile of wood and mattress feathers.
I pulled Fallon from under the heap of home.
She brushed a cucumber out of her hair, a small army of them littering the floor.
My heart skipped a beat. She took my suggestion despite her sass.
Ned licked her face, uncaring of the vinegar.
Seven hells, I was ready to set my tongue on her cheek too.
“I’m not dead,” she said. “Though I might drown in a minute.”
I dragged Ned off her, wiping off the slobber, and standing her into Momma’s embrace. Love swelled in my heart when she brushed Fallon's curls from her eyes and asked if she was okay.
I couldn't even be mad when Fallon responded with her ‘fuck you’ gesture.
Even Momma just took it as ‘okay’ with a suspicious look of guilt on her features.
Momma turned back to the chaos and clapped her hands.
I edged Fallon out of the way. The rest of the family acted on Momma's orders as she organized our personal pack to find blankets, pick out salvageable items and gather wood for repair.
Now, I was free to make this a little better. I sneezed again.
“I can fix this!” Fallon’s voice rose too high as she scrambled on the floor trying to catch slippery pickles and stuff them back into a broken jar.
One squirted out of her hands and I caught it in midair. “Honey, this is extreme redecorating. If you hated the curtains, you could have just let me know.”
That only twitched a smile so I dropped to the floor and wrangled another slick pickle into her jar, if for no other reason than it was important to her.
“Here, pickle, pickle,” I called, trying to make Fallon laugh.
“There’s one under the loveseat. Or what’s left of it.” Her wobbly voice didn’t clear.
I pointed across the carcass of the room. “That one’s trying to make an escape!”
Fallon dove for the pickle on the burned windowsill, but her hands shook and she froze, tears trembling on her lashes. No amount of good cheer was turning this into something Fallon deserved to handle.
She sat on her heels, her back bowed. “I can’t even make a jar of pickles.”
Oh no. That wouldn’t do. Scooping Fallon into my arms, I left the jar of failure on the floor.
My room sheltered her from the noise of my scrambling family.
No one got hurt other than Fallon, and Momma had complained about that space forever.
She certainly wouldn’t be mad that Fallon now had no other place to sleep. In fact…
Setting her on my side chair, I chafed her arms, covering her with my green, tufted throw. I scanned every inch of skin I could see, my anxiety growing.
“Where are you injured?” Away from the stench of vinegar, I now smelled her blood and it was driving me mad.
She held out her hand with less conviction than I had ever seen from her and that scared me more.
My insides twisted into a mess as she presented the cut on the back of her hand.
It trailed up to her wrist. My wolf instincts shuddered.
I was always more human than wolf in the wider Harrowlands.
The Old Magic, my homecoming, worked through me, demanding I fix this.
Doubt gripped me and I sent up a quick prayer.
Unable to help myself, I licked her wound clean.
Her indecision knocked against my mind, but I tightened my grip. We started this. I would finish it. She wouldn’t pull away. I noted the way her thighs came together with every rasp of my tongue.
“Dec.”
The tremble in her voice vibrated something deep inside me.
Focus was my friend. When she saw the closed wound, she just sighed.
My face twitched to hide my grin. If ever I needed confirmation that we were mates, the fact that I could heal her was it.
Wiping away her tears from her soft skin, my mind worked through my suspicions.
Her splendor threatened to suck me in and make me forget everything else.
She was safe. She was here. I would keep it that way.
I rearranged the blanket to give my hands something to do.
“Was Momma helping you with the fermenting?”
Fallon blinked, her grip tightening on the fabric. “How did you know?”
Momma was a lot of things, but subtle was not one of them. “She might have been more upset than we thought that we didn’t sleep together.”
Momma would make sure the Old Magic stayed by any means necessary. After all, she assumed I came back with a fully bonded mate. One that could break the link to the Old Magic all over again.
She shook her head. “That’s extreme, Declan.”
It was, if you lived in the wider Harrowlands. Here you would do anything and everything for a mate. “In her eyes, it’s unnatural for mates to be that far apart.” I explained quietly, not wanting to burden her with the expectation.
Despite that, her distress was clear. “If she doesn’t trust me, then she won’t teach me. I have to try the pickles again.”
That's what she took from this conversation?
I kept my huff to myself, searching for a sunny response.
Would the woman ever rest? Again, Momma tried to manage Fallon into her worst impulses and I was done with it.
I was finished with Fallon expecting nothing more for herself.
Coming home was supposed to free her from that.
“Sometimes when you’re working too hard at something, it helps to take a break.”
Her nose scrunched up. “A what?”
I loved her, but Honey was as dense as a potato when she got that one-track mind stuck on a thing she cared about. I sighed softly with despair that it would ever be me.
“Where you stop doing things and do something else, that isn’t stressful.”
Fallon scoffed. “You’re talking nonsense.”
She was dead serious, and so was I. “I will kidnap you to the furthest reaches of my territory if I have to. You need a break, Honey!”
Luckily, she didn't notice me saying ‘my territory’ because I wasn't ready for that discussion. She laughed in a short huff but she leaned forward into my space, putting a hand on my arm.
“You know us girls can't resist a light kidnapping. Are you serious or is this a joke?”
My eyes glowing in the room, growling in my wolf voice until I let out a ‘are you kidding?’ yip. “It worked for Ward.”
Our friend had stolen his mate right out of a bar while in the grip of a Goddess’s rage. To give him credit, he had apologized immediately.
“I'll mark that down as serious.” She looked more nervous than she had any right to be. Was taking a break that bad for her? But I had her full attention for once. Even watching her make decisions was captivating. “Okay. Only because it’s you.”
I tried not to do a victory lap around the room. Making a show of sniffing her up and down, I said, “Wash up and the abduction will commence. I eat pickles, I don't kidnap them.”
My annoyance washed away as a blush stained her cheeks.
The color perked my ears and set my internal tail wagging.
What did I say? Wait, was she thinking about me eating her?
I wished, with the depths of my soul, that the mate bond was stronger.
But she hid in the washroom before I could ask, and it didn't seem quite right to question her mentally when I didn't want to blow my chance of actually getting Fallon to take a break.
Clean, I bundled her in as many layers as I could find until she was a wad of winter clothes. She was too cute not to kiss her little upturned nose and she wrinkled it adorably.
“I can’t move, Dec.”
I shrugged, completely unbothered. “Then you can’t run away from the kidnapping.”
Lifting her up as easily as you would a small child, she squawked as I nabbed a blanket or two. I raced to the pantry.
“Pick something easy to eat.” I instructed her before checking on Momma and the milling siblings in the hallway.
“Do you need help?” I grinned into the face of my next words. Sabotage her again and I will leave here and never return.
Momma’s skin paled. The pack froze in response to the calm threat washing over the hall.
No posturing. No growls. These were facts.
The Old Magic could hide forever, as far as I was concerned, if they didn’t treat Honey with respect.
I didn’t enjoy making my point so bluntly, but this had to stop.
Fallon would never be the woman my mother thought she should be and the irony was, they were exactly the same person in so many ways.
Cosomo whined. Eilie showed her neck. Even Ned sat like a good boy and looked at me expectantly.
“Ask the Whitewolfs for help with the clean-up. They need something to do and Briggs should be returning with their son in a few minutes. Okay, have fun!”
I tossed the last behind my shoulder as I collected my mate, her too-full sack of food and the blankets.
Prancing from the house, I inhaled the crisp winter air and shifted.
Fallon arranged herself on my back without too much fuss.
She huddled in the thick clothing, clutching my fur as we raced into the foothills, up into the mountains.
Snow plumed around us as we pushed higher than the treeline.
The wind picked up, but it wasn’t savage.
Just enough to wave the cream and red poinsettias dotting the blanketed land.
I hadn’t slept, but giddiness zipped through my veins. I had Honey in my clutches, away from her troubles, vulnerable in the safest way. Did she need all those layers against the cold? Not really. Was I looking forward to stripping off as many as she would allow? Absolutely.
I padded around boulders, paws connecting with the earth, scenting the path.
Not far now, I told her, tongue lolling with happiness. My inhale gobbled up the crystal clear air.
Unless it’s to a kitchen, it’s too far.
I chuckled and trotted over the rocky terrain, careful not to step on any of the small winter flowers.