Chapter 9 - Bryce
The feeling of being watched never left me all afternoon. The paranoia lingered in every shadowed corner of Jackson’s house, and every noise translated to me being hunted. It was foolish; I was stronger than that.
But it wasn’t just an ifrit I worried about coming face-to-face with, no, but the wolf pack that lived just beyond the front door. Every voice and footstep that got muffled through the walls, every man that walked past, had me cringing, tugging Cassie from the windows.
Her curiosity only grew the more I did that, and soon enough, I had to forcefully stop myself. I was not the same woman who had left Honeycreek. I was strong, and confidence had been hard-won, and sometimes I didn’t always feel it, but it could be there.
It had to be. My own issues would only seep into Cassie otherwise, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Sighing, I knotted the end of her braid as I walked to the kitchen.
“Cass,” I called, only to hear the little stampede as she came running down. My daughter had never been quiet. “You hungry?”
Cass nodded, quiet and engrossed in the screen that I didn’t remember giving her.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Cassie mumbled. “Found it in Uncle Jackson’s room.”
“You want to go put it back where it belongs if it’s not yours?”
“Nope.” Cassie collapsed onto the sofa, her feet curling next to her as she tapped animatedly at the screen, flicking through apps, without ever actually looking at anything.
“Cass.” My tone grew sterner, and I headed over to my daughter. “It's not yours. Don’t snoop. Would you like your uncle to be doing that with your things?”
“No, but… Well—look.”
Cassie swiped off everything on the tablet she held and lifted it to me, showing me the picture on the lock screen.
I froze. I remembered that picture. I sat between two wolves, my hair unbound and catching the sun, so dark it looked navy blue.
My eyes were crinkled almost shut, and my mouth was open in laughter.
I would have thought of myself as pretty had I not noticed the way I’d moved to laugh, without realizing, bunched up my chin, rounding my face.
My arms were hidden well enough by the oversized sports jersey I’d been wearing of Jackson’s, but the skintight jeans clung to my thighs.
In the picture, I perched atop a grassy hill, deep in the woods, and I looked so carefree.
The gray wolf, Jackson, stood next to me, looking up at the black wolf on the other side of me.
Mason.
My stomach clenched, flipping dangerously.
He stood so close to me, his head lowered, as if protective.
I recalled the day that the picture had been taken by June.
At the time, I hadn’t hated how I looked, at least not to the extent it had become, and I had printed the picture out, taping it to my teenage bedroom wall.
There was no way he’d felt protective. At least not now, looking back.
“You grew up around wolves?” Cassie asked, her eyes looking up at me owlishly, taking me out of my younger memories and back into the present. No longer seventeen, in love with the pack alpha, but twenty-five, with his daughter, and a whole lot of explaining to do one day.
I nodded.
“Like the one who rescued us? That’s what this one looks like.” She jabbed a finger at Mason. I pulled it from her grasp, locking the tablet and setting it aside. “Right? So knew him, though. Uncle Jackson made it sound like you did!”
“I… I did know him,” I told her. “But that was a very long time ago.”
“Aren’t you happy to be back here? Why did you leave?” Cassie’s questions came faster and faster, and she scrambled to crouch on the sofa. “Does my daddy live here? Can I meet him? Is he a wolf, too? Will I do that?”
“Calm down, baby,” I laughed, despite my anxiety. I tugged her onto my lap. “You…” I paused, not knowing how much to say. “I can’t explain it all properly, but one day, you will change, similarly to how you saw that man—”
“Mason, Mommy,” she interrupted. “Uncle Jackson told me his name.”
“Yes, Mason. Like him, you’ll change.”
Her eyes rounded. “Will I be as big as him? Do you change?”
I started to feel slightly panicked, unable to smooth my thoughts out against the barrage of questions. “I—”
A knock on the door had me halting my answer. I stiffened.
Cassie’s head whipped around to face the door. She scrambled off my lap. “It’s the wolf! It’s the wolf!”
“Cassie, wait—”
She had already wrenched the door open, and my heart rate skyrocketed as I hurried over to her. But it wasn’t Theo, Boston, or any of the other pack members who I recalled being the worst, and who I dreaded seeing again. It was the alpha himself.
I told myself it was only a matter of time before any of them got too curious and knocked, wanting to taunt me back out of Honeycreek the way they once had. The way the man in my doorway had once let them.
Mason looked good—too good, and my stomach turned. His hair was plastered to his forehead, damp with sweat, and the scent of smoke lingered on him. Ash smudged over his tanned face, and I swore my heart did not swoop. It couldn’t. Not again. I refused to let it.
“Can I come in?”
“We’re busy,” I said, trying not to shiver at the sound of his voice after days of avoiding him. Mason’s eyes flicked behind me.
“Doing…?”
“Stuff,” I snapped, about to close the door, but Cassie leaped up towards him.
“I found you!” she exclaimed.
“Cass—”
But she’d already run off, her excited giggles filling the silence between Mason and me. She came back, tablet in hand, and jabbed the screen with her small hands. Shoving the screen at him, she pointed.
“That’s you!”
Something crossed Mason’s face when he looked at the picture. I noticed when his attention went from himself in the picture to me. He gazed at it long enough that I cleared my throat, my irritation rising.
“I think that’s enough,” I said quietly. “Like I said, we’re busy, so—”
“Please, Bryce. Five minutes, that’s it.”
I would have given you every minute of my life, but you turned me down. I held my words back and shook my head. “Cassie, come on out of the doorway.” I went to close the door in Mason’s face, but he stopped me, a foot jammed into the gap.
“I’m sorry that I scared you earlier today.”
His eyes met mine, and something flared in them—anger, annoyance, maybe. But there was something else. Something I didn’t let myself think about because it felt too close to hope that he was actually the good person that June claimed him to be. That my memories claimed otherwise.
“What are you talking about?”
“The shadows,” he said. “I saw you and June come to the window, looking out. I’m sorry I scared you.”
I opened the door wider, glaring at him. “Come inside.”
Mason blinked, as if surprised at my decision, before hurrying inside. Cassie was already chatting away, setting the tablet down. “Does it hurt changing into a wolf?” she asked. “Mommy says I will do that, too! Are wolves scary? Do you ever get scared in the woods?”
“She’s… chatty today,” he noted at me, and I narrowed my eyes at him, unsure if he was insulting my daughter or not. “If you’re fine with me answering her questions, then I will.”
Ignoring how every nerve in my body surged for me, I was acutely aware of him in a way I had long tried to shut down.
I only nodded and headed back to the kitchen.
I’d been planning on making a grilled cheese each for Cassie and me, but with Mason there, I had no appetite.
I didn’t look too hard as to whether it was because he knotted my stomach the same way he once had, or whether I was still angry with him, or nervous, or if I just didn’t want to be seen eating by him.
Instead, I got to work making Cassie her snack, listening to them as they talked on the sofa.
“See, Cassandra, the thing about becoming a wolf is that it can be painful, but your body knows that being a wolf is a state of comfort, as well, because it’s in your genes.”
“Jeans?” she asked, pinching her own.
Mason loosened a laugh, the sound rough, and I hovered in the doorway, watching him sit next to her.
God, it hurt. In another life, this would have been our life—him, being there for Cassie, raising her with me, the two of us in love and happy, bringing up our daughter around the pack. What would that life have looked like?
“No, genes, as in… what makes you, you.”
“Mommy says dancing makes me, me. That, and my smile, and my…” She frowned, her tongue poking out in thought. “Need to talk to everyone.”
“She’s probably right,” Mason answered, humming. “What sort of dancing is your favorite?”
“Ballet. That’s what Mommy wanted to do.”
Over Cassie’s shoulder, Mason’s eyes lifted to me.
This was too hard—I needed him gone or Cassie to be away from him.
He was her father, and neither of them knew, yet they sat so right together.
I swallowed, turning back to the pan, and flipped the bread over.
It was slightly burnt—too much for Cassie to enjoy, still, but I was sure I’d eat it later once Mason left.
I continued that one and set about preparing another for her.
“Why’d your mom stop?”
“I don’t know. She won’t tell me.”
My chest ached horribly. Focus on the cooking, I told myself. You don’t need to interfere. You know why you’ve never told her why you quit dancing.
“She’s pretty stubborn, huh? She was just like that when I knew her years ago.”
I slammed the frying pan back down on the hob with more force than necessary.
I glanced sideways at Mason, who smirked at me.
I wanted to wipe that smile off his face—to shift and feel the wolf I had trapped away, so he knew I was once part of his pack, too.
That I should have been given his loyalty, no matter if he liked me or not.