Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
“You’re every bit as persuasive as Sophia made you out to be,” Calindra said from behind a massive wood table in a great stone hall.
After coming through the gate, Calindra and her guards had walked me through the village. We’d stopped briefly at Sophia’s house—a charming fairytale cottage that I found far more beautiful than any mansion in the Hollywood hills.
But as lovely as Sophia’s new house was, there were other, far more grandiose residences located in the center of the village. The largest and fanciest seemed closer to a castle than a regular family home.
And of course, it belonged to the Lykaon.
Calindra welcomed me inside, leading me down grand cut-stone corridors and past sweeping staircases. Until eventually, we ended up in this formal hall.
“Thank you…I think,” I replied as I looked around.
The room was massive, made to appear even more cavernous by the dark stone walls that seemed to absorb all the light radiating from the massive fireplace at the front.
There were windows, but being narrow and cut at least twenty feet up the wall, they didn’t let in much sun.
Not even the dozens of oil lanterns hanging at regular intervals helped to brighten the place.
It was a shame, since there seemed to be plenty of interesting things to look at. Finely crafted pottery was displayed on tables and pillars around the room. Beautifully crafted tapestries hung from the walls. Some pieces looked to be centuries old. Some even older.
“You can relax, Felicity,” Calindra assured me. “You’re a guest of the pack now. No one is going to harm you.”
“Really?” I glanced over my shoulder toward the alphas standing guard at the door. “So those guys are just for show?”
Calindra’s smile grew. Now that she was off the wall and in the safety of her own surroundings, she moved with an easy grace that tempted me to lower my defenses.
“They are here for Lash, not you,” she answered honestly. “As long as he resides in the village, every guard will remain on high alert. And if there is any sign of treachery?—“
“There won’t be,” I assured her before she could finish. “We’re not here for that.”
Calindra nodded. “I know you’re not, but you have to understand. Lash doesn’t have a good history with the pack.”
No kidding. “What exactly did he do?”
“He left us,” she said, spreading her palms out flat on the table. “He abandoned the pack to join Nelissa.”
“The way I heard it, you lost a lot of alphas that way,” I said. “Not just Lash.”
“But he was one of her fiercest defenders.”
“Ah, I get it.” I nodded, trailing my finger along the edge of the table, enjoying the slick feel of the polish. “You didn’t like that he disagreed with you.”
“Nothing so shallow,” she insisted. “Lash’s hostility has always gone far deeper than that.”
“How so?” I looked up, challenging her as we locked eyes. “Did he kill someone?”
“No.”
“Maim?”
“Not permanently.”
“A couple of bops on the nose, then?”
Calindra raised her chin, taking a moment to let her gaze assess me fully. For a second, I thought maybe I’d pushed her too far, but the amusement in her eyes only grew.
“You really are his mate, aren’t you?” she asked.
“That’s what he keeps telling me.”
Her laugh filled the room like music.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” she mused. “Lash with a kirre mate. I wish I could have been there to see the look on his face when he realized what the Fates had done. He must have been furious.”
“I’m not sure he had time to process it,” I told her. “We went from dreaming to running for our lives almost immediately, and we haven’t stopped since.”
“But you care for him.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded. “I do.”
“Even though all his life he’s harbored a burning hatred for your kind?”
“To be fair, so do I anytime I’m forced to take the freeway at rush hour.”
“Oh my God, Felicity,” Sophia’s voice rang out from the doorway. I turned to see her walk in with Hannah at her side. “Stop. You know Calindra can’t possibly get that joke.”
“I thought it was funny,” Hannah said.
“Don’t encourage her,” Sophia said, coming over to my side. “Felicity becomes unbearable when she thinks she has an audience.”
“I think you mean awesome,” I corrected her.
Calindra watched all this with her constant approving smile from across the table. “Were you ladies able to gather what Felicity will need for her stay?”
“Yeah,” Sophia said. “Hannah is going to let her borrow a few dresses until Akela and Deryn can sew some new ones, since they’re closer in size. And I asked Helwin to put fresh linens in one of the guest rooms upstairs, as well as draw a hot bath.”
A hot bath?
I nearly swooned. That sounded like heaven.
“And I talked to the cook about serving dinner in their room tonight,” Hannah said. “Sorry, Felicity, but I’m not sure having Lash at the Lykaon’s formal table is good idea.”
“No problem.” I wasn’t sure what kind of idea it might be; I just knew Lash would hate it. “Honestly, I’m just looking forward to eating something that hasn’t been picked off a bush or charred over a campfire.”
Sophia grabbed my hand. “I can’t imagine how hard it was for you out there.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I told her. “Honestly, it was a little nicer than that first apartment we got out of high school.”
“Well, there’s no way it could have had more roaches or rats,” she laughed. “Though seriously, you must have been scared out of your mind.”
“No more than you were,” I said. “Do you know I actually saw you that first night?”
Her face fell, her expression turning serious. “What do you mean?”
“It was right as you met Kyre,” I told her. “I wasn’t all that far away. I was close enough to watch you shoot the gun to scare away the wolves.”
“Why the hell didn’t you call out to me?” she demanded.
“I couldn’t,” I tried to explain. “Lash was there, and I was tied to a tree, and…well, it was complicated.”
“No, I have a feeling it was actually pretty simple.” She stared me dead in the eye. “He threatened you, didn’t he?”
I couldn’t lie to her. “Yes, but?—“
“No buts, Felicity!” Her expression turned tight as her cheeks turned an angry red. “He kidnapped you. He threatened you. Held you captive. Tried to hand you over to Nelissa. Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not,” I said. “The alpha who did all those things was an asshole. No argument here. But Lash isn’t that man anymore.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Why not?” I asked her. “After all, I’m not the same person I was when I came to the Wilds. Are you? How about you, Hannah?”
Neither one said a word. They just stared at me with a mixture of uncertainty and surprise.
Calindra was the one who broke the silence in the room when it stretched on too long.
“It’s been a long, stressful day,” she said. “Perhaps we should show Felicity to her room and let her get some rest. I’m sure there will be plenty of time to catch up tomorrow.”
I kept my gaze on Sophia a second longer before finally nodding.
As much as I hated to admit it, I did need some rest.
And the thought of that hot bath was too good to resist.
“I’ll take her,” Hannah offered, wrapping her arm around mine as she led me out of the hall, leaving Sophia behind.
She waited until we were halfway up the stairs before speaking again.
“She never stopped believing you were alive. Everyone kept trying to convince her you were dead, but she wouldn’t listen.
She said if anyone could survive the Wilds, it was you. ”
My stomach twisted into a knot. “You think I was too harsh back there.”
“No.” Hannah shook her head. “You told the truth. Love changes all of us.”
My eyes went wide. “I never mentioned love.”
“But you meant it,” she said, refusing to let me off the hook. “I love Tauren. Sophia loves Kyre. You love Lash. Face it, between the three of us, we’ve changed the way the whole world works. We’ve taken two separate sides of humanity and sewn them back together again.”
“I think you might be exaggerating just a little bit.”
“I don’t think I am.” She shook her head. “What happened to us was supposed to be impossible. But here we are. Not kirre. Not ferus. But something else entirely. And something tells me we won’t be the last.”
An electric tingle ran up the back of my neck. As much as I hated to admit it, I had a feeling she was right.
“Do you think they’ll have an easier time of it than we did?” I asked.
She chuckled. “I doubt it.”
So did I.
We made it to the top of the stairs and turned into a hallway. Halfway down, two more armed guards were posted at one of the doors.
“I’m guessing that’s mine,” I said.
“Good guess,” Hannah said, before pulling me in for a tight hug. One that, surprisingly, I didn’t mind at all. “It was so good to finally meet you today, and I’m looking forward to getting to know you more tomorrow. But for now, rest up and have a good night.”
I thanked her and tried my best not to shoot dirty looks at the guards as I moved past them and through the door.
The room beyond wasn’t huge, especially not for a house this large.
But what it lacked in square footage, it made up for in luxury.
Against the wall was a four-poster bed topped with a thick mattress.
Laid out over the perfectly tucked linens were three ankle-length dresses—two blue and one butter yellow.
While the size wasn’t perfect, they were bound to be a hell of a lot better than the sack I’d been wearing for a week straight.
But there in the corner underneath the thin stained glass windows was what I’d really been looking forward to—an oversized hammered metal tub filled to the brim with steaming, fragrant water.
Not wasting any time, I pulled off every last dirty rag, chucked them straight into the fireplace to burn, and slipped into the heavenly embrace of a hot bath.
A sigh left my lips as my back slid against the sloped wall behind me. I rested my head on the curved lip and closed my eyes.
Just in time for the door behind me to creak open.
“And just when I was starting to think the day was cursed,” a familiar voice rumbled.
“Lash! You’re back!” Water sloshed over the sides of the tub as I whipped around to face him. Relief washed over me as my eyes locked with his. “I was worried about you.”
From the moment we’d stepped through the gates, he’d been whisked away by Kyre, Tauren, and a handful of other alphas to be interrogated about Nelissa’s operation.
At least, I’d hoped all they’d done was interrogate him.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded, his dark eyes fixed on mine as I hung half in and half out of the bath. His tongue snaked out to wet his lips. “I’m a hell of a lot better now.”
A smile lifted my lips at his flirting, but after the stressful day we’d both had, I doubted that was what he was after.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired?” I asked. “Do you want anything?”
“I do.”
“Great. Calindra said we just needed to tell the guards when we needed something and they’d get it for us.” I wrapped my hands around the side of the tub, ready to pull myself up. “Just let me get out of the tub, and?—“
Splash!
Water flew into the air as Lash’s body collided with mine. His arms wrapped around me tight as we sank back into the water, his lips already pressed hard against mine.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled against my mouth.