Chapter 15 - Soren
Obviously, I should have insisted we go back to town sooner.
There are a lot of reasons we should have left the cabin before now—starting with how pissed off Xeran is, including the fact that Aurela has been missing for days, and ending with Gramps never being home alone for this long—but it’s like I couldn’t help myself.
Every time I looked out at the mudslide, thinking we could get through it, I found a way to convince myself otherwise. It might be too dangerous—the mud could be deeper than we expected.
Another day. Just one more day.
The truth is that we could have made it through the mud—I just didn’t want to.
Being up at the cabin with Aurela has been a break from my real life.
As much as I love Gramps, there is a certain weight to taking care of him, and it’s been lifted from my shoulders the past couple of days.
He’s still sick, and I know I’ll have to return and deal with that, let it back into my mind, soon.
But I like being here with Aurela. I like touching her, breathing her in, pretending she and I could live here forever, just the two of us secluded in the woods, away from the pack politics. Away from her family.
I should have known better than to think that Cambiases wouldn’t catch up with us.
Now, waking up to the early morning light and a thousand shards of wood bursting into the cabin’s small living space, I regret waiting. And I regret sleeping so deeply; I didn’t hear the intruder approaching until it was too late.
In the chaos—the boom of the door breaking in, the growling, Aurela’s scream, and the two of us waking from a deep sleep—it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on.
I roll to the side, grabbing Aurela by her hips and easily maneuvering her behind me, getting up off the bed, preparing myself to fight.
“What the fuck is going on?” someone yells.
Lachlan.
He stands in the center of the small cabin, his gaze flitting between me and his sister, who is wearing nothing but one of my old shirts, which hangs past her hips but sits snugly over them. She’s sitting in the bed, her hair still mussed from what we did the night before.
Her lips are parted and pink, her cheeks slightly flushed. She’s gorgeous, like some sort of fucking goddess.
My mark stands proudly on her neck, my scent surely already starting to mingle with hers.
“You fucker,” Lachlan hisses, stalking toward me, rage sparking in his hazel eyes, so dark now, they might as well be black.
I breathe in and out, my brain desperately trying to muster up an explanation, a strategy for getting out of this.
“I’ll give you three seconds to explain what in the hells is going on before I rip out your fucking throat.”
“Lachlan, don’t—” Aurela starts, but Lachlan bursts out again, spit flying from his lips as he shouts at me.
“You kidnapped my sister? Do you know what it’s done to my family? To my mother, to Val? We’ve all been worried fucking sick, and Xeran thought you died in that fucking fire, man. We thought you had lost your mind. You’d better start fucking talking. Right. Now.”
In true Lachlan fashion, he continues to demand that I tell him what’s going on without actually giving me space to speak. Even with the space, I’m not sure what to tell him.
I marked Aurela, and she seemed to enjoy it. She doesn’t like her fiancé. And she’s been slowly, over the course of our time here, telling me every one of the reasons for that.
But we haven’t talked about what we are, what we’re doing here. She hasn’t even made it clear that she plans to call off the wedding.
In the early morning glow, Lachlan’s golden hair shines just like his sister’s, and I realize what an ass I’ve made of myself. I allowed our fated connection to muddle my brain, to keep me here, and now I’m not the only one who will face the consequences.
Not to mention how delicate I have to be about what really happened. Why I ran to her that first time, and who I found her with.
“We got stuck,” Aurela says, her smooth voice low but confident.
Slowly, she climbs off the bed and stands behind me, but with enough space that we’re not touching.
“I was—I thought I could come out to the woods on my own. I came too far. And Soren found me; he saved me from the fire. But then there was the mudslide, and—”
“You expect me to believe you came all the way up here on your own?” Lachlan cuts her off.
“I did,” Aurela insists.
“But why—” Lachlan takes another step forward, then his nose twitches, his gaze snapping first to me, then sliding over to his sister. I see the moment the mating mark registers in his head, and his gaze shifts to mine, that fury turning into a cold, hard rage.
“Lachlan—” I put my hands up, trying to warn him back from me, but he lunges forward, planting his fist in my jaw. We both stumble to the side as Aurela screams, reaching for me and trying to get between me and her brother.
“Stop!” she shouts.
“You absolute fucker,” Lachlan hisses. “She is engaged—”
“You don’t even like Caspian!” Aurela insists, but her words fall on unhearing ears.
“What kind of friend are you supposed to be?” Lachlan rages. “Worrying my family sick? Bringing her up here and taking advantage of her? Marking her? I’ll kill you before I let you force a bond on my sister—”
I stand, spitting out blood onto the floor, my eyes darting to Aurela’s, the truth building up inside me like a pressure bond.
Not everyone believes in fated mates. Some people act like it’s an old wives’ tale, a silly fable, something like a human soul mate. A cliché little phrase to use when you really like someone, or when you’re in love.
But I know from the way I feel about Aurela that it’s more than that.
I’ve been physically sick for the past fifteen years, having to be away from her.
My body yearning for hers in a way I could never understand.
Like my life couldn’t really begin until I had her in it.
She is—and has always been—as vital to me as one of my own organs.
“We’re fated,” I mutter, spitting out more blood, my eyes raising wretchedly to meet Lachlan’s. “Your sister and I are fated, Lach. She is my mate. I am claiming her now.”
“The fuck you are.”
He doesn’t even give me time to think, lunging toward me again, shifting into his golden wolf. The kettle goes flying from the stove, crashing into the floor and spraying—thankfully cool now—water over the planks. There’s a dent where the thing landed.
But I don’t have time to think about repairs, because I’m focusing on shifting just in time to receive him, our massive bodies flying backward fast enough to shatter the window over the kitchen.
This cabin was not made for a shifter’s wolf form.
Lachlan’s growl fills the space, and we fight, somehow both aware of Aurela, neither of us moving toward her.
I don’t want to be fighting him. But I won’t back down from claiming his sister.
I’ve waited this long, and now that I know she’s not happy in that life, I won’t leave her to it.
She can break off her engagement. Her parents can learn to deal with me—the way they learned to deal with Valerie—and Lachlan could even accept me.
If he’d just give me a fucking second to explain myself.
Instead, I rear back, and he snaps after me.
When he lunges for me again, we go tumbling through the already-fucked doorway, further splintering the wood around the edges as our bodies barrel through.
Something sharp and metal cuts into my side, and as we roll out into the morning light, I realize it’s one of the door hinges, hanging crooked, dripping with my blood.
I just hope Lachlan doesn’t think that was his blow.
My wolf is slightly bigger than his, but he has a bit more training than me. If this were a fight against Xeran, he would take me in an instant. And if it was Felix, I’m confident I could outmaneuver him.
But Lachlan is strong and smart, and he has the added benefit of going for blood while I’m on the defensive, just trying to let him work this out of his system. Trying to let him tire himself out so we can stop and talk about this.
He’s one of my best friends. Surely he might see how I could be good for his sister. Surely Lachlan wouldn’t reject me the same way his parents did, claiming I could never be good enough for Aurela.
In the pack order, there tends to be a clear hierarchy, spoken or unspoken.
Ours is relatively unspoken. As an orphan raised only by my grandfather, lower middle class, and not coming from one of the original bloodlines, my place in that hierarchy is not high.
One redeeming factor is my connection to Xeran.
Another is Gramps’s tireless dedication to the community throughout his life.
His name is known throughout the pack. If not for being rich and influential, then for being a good, solid shifter and a worthy packmate.
I am a good man, a good shifter. And I know Lachlan can see past the superficiality of where and how I was born.
He’s married to Valerie Foley, after all.
A woman who fled town out of shame and was nearly executed when she came back.
She participated in starting that fire back then, and started one again the second she got back into Silverville.
This is just a momentary bout of rage.
Lachlan swipes at me, backing us further and further from the cabin, and still I see the undying flame of hatred burning in his eyes.
This has to be temporary rage.
And all I have to do is wait it out.