23. Juniper
JUNIPER
My irritation with Levi carried over to the next several days. I did my best to keep my distance. After what happened with him and Eugenia, I spent every second trying to figure out exactly why it had set me off.
Part of it was that I had been pissed off at the other woman.
But I had been handling it. Before Levi walked in, I had been about to give her a piece of my mind.
Levi’s appearance had stolen that chance from me.
Yes, he’d been trying to help, but if he’d simply given me another minute, I wouldn’t have needed him at all.
The other part was that it seemed I always needed him to step in and rescue me.
It was all Levi. Consoling me and giving me my first kiss?
Levi. The one person I thought might help me learn to shift?
Levi. Teaching me about seduction to ensure I wasn’t flailing hopelessly?
Levi. Saving me from the Red Maw? Levi. And now saving me from Eugenia’s jibes? Levi. Always Levi.
Having someone like him always there to help me should have made me feel content, protected, and taken care of. And it did, but it also made me feel neutered in a way. Like I couldn’t do anything without him.
That was where most of my anger came from, and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt about my reaction.
It wasn’t his issue, it was mine. I could have told him what I felt, but instead I’d chewed him out and left.
How did I go about apologizing now? It always became exponentially harder to say you were sorry the more time you allowed to go by.
A couple of days later, I decided to ask Linnea her opinion during chores.
I was helping out in the kitchen, and we had been tasked with preparing potatoes for dinner. Linnea sat across from me chopping the ones I’d peeled.
“So,” I said, having worked up the courage to talk. “Did you hear about what happened between me and Levi?”
She paused, her knife halfway through a potato, a wry smile on her lips. “You mean about you two bickering over breakfast the other day? Oh, and the continuation outside? Yeah, I heard.”
Embarrassment burned in my chest. “People saw us outside?” I asked, despair circling in my head like a flushing toilet.
“Sweetie, this is a really small community. I was going to ask you about it, but you’ve been a little out of it the last couple days.”
I tossed down the peeler. “Shit. I guess I should just get it all out, then.”
I told her about my spat with Eugenia and how Levi had jumped in to help. I told her why I’d gotten upset, and how bad I felt about it now.
“How would you go about apologizing?” I said at last.
Linnea continued chopping. “I’d go knock on his door.”
“That simply?” I asked incredulously. “Walk right up like it’s no big deal?”
“Better to tear the Band-Aid off fast than to let it linger,” she explained.
I stewed on that, then she waved at the door with her knife. “Go on. Get to it,” she said.
“What? Now?” I gaped at her.
Linnea rolled her eyes. “What did we just say? Go rip off the Band-Aid.”
With great reluctance, I stood and smoothed down my clothes, then headed out the door.
The entire walk to Levi’s cabin, it felt more like I was trudging a hundred miles rather than a couple hundred yards.
It was unseasonably warm, with the temperature hovering in the low fifties, just enough to give off a hint of spring.
I didn’t even need a jacket. When I got close to his cabin, I saw his door was open.
Frowning, I slowed as I approached. He never left his door open.
Inching up the steps, I glanced in. From my vantage on the porch, I was able to see straight into the living room.
What I saw nearly made me turn around and walk away.
Levi sat on his couch, staring at the painting of the woman.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight of her, and all I could think of was how Levi had yelled when he’d caught me here snooping around.
I took one hesitant step backward before his voice rang out. “You can come in.”
I froze. He hadn’t even glanced in my direction. He was bent over his sketch pad, his hand moving furiously over the paper.
“I smelled you,” he added, eyes still on his paper.
Sighing, I stepped inside. “I came to apologize about the other day. Your door was open,” I said lamely.
“It’s nice out. Decided to get some fresh air,” he said, finally raising his head to meet my eyes. “You don’t need to apologize. You were right.”
The sadness in her eyes made my heart lurch, and I took a few steps forward out of instinct. My gaze landed on the sketch of a wolf’s head hanging low in misery, the moon and mountains in the background.
“I’m not sure about that,” I said. “Either way, I still want to say I’m sorry.”
He smiled sadly. “Fair enough. Apology accepted, and I’m sorry too. I should have let you handle it.”
Now that I’d gotten through that part, I took a seat beside him and asked what I’d been wondering for days. “What happened to her?”
Levi looked at the painting and chewed his lower lip before answering. “Her name was Naphele. She was murdered.”
Whatever I’d been expecting, that most certainly wasn’t it.
“Levi… I’m so sorry. What—” I paused, unsure if it was okay to ask, but he saved me from having to make that decision by continuing.
“She was my mate,” he explained, setting his sketch pad aside. “Someone killed her and framed me for the murder.”
“Oh my god.” I put a hand to my mouth.
He nodded slowly. “I was the alpha of the Idlewild pack back then,” he said.
“The elders and my beta banished me. Everyone, including her parents, thought I did it. It gutted me. You can’t imagine what it was like.
” He turned to look at me, and that sadness was still etched in his features.
“The whole pack you had led and loved and cared for, all believing you would kill the one person you loved more than anything? It broke me in ways I still can’t explain. ”
I thought about how it had felt to be shunned and made fun of as a kid.
Back then, it had felt like the end of the world, but in reality, only around half the pack had treated me poorly.
The rest of the pack had been polite or apathetic toward me.
Yet it had drained me. It had caused my depression and sadness.
I couldn’t imagine having the entire pack turn on me like that. It also brought up another question.
“Why did you stay?” I said. “Here, I mean. In the forest near your old pack. Didn’t that make the pain worse?”
Levi shrugged. “It was home. It always has been.” He opened his mouth to say something else, then shook his head.
He gestured vaguely at the open door. “I didn’t want to leave everything I knew behind.
I lived in the woods as a wolf for a few decades, then decided it would be nice to have a home when I was in my human form.
I built this cabin for myself, and then I started finding folks in the woods.
Rejects, people running from their packs for one reason or another, and I brought them here, and slowly it grew. I guess my reputation did as well.”
He was right about that. Every pack within a hundred miles knew all about Leviathan Cross, the Demon Wolf, the ageless shifter who lurked in the darkest recesses of the wilderness, but no one had ever suspected what was really going on deep in the forest. Instead of some boogeyman who’d snatch unwary children and women, he’d surrounded himself with broken and lost people and become a pack alpha again.
Despite all he’d lost, he’d formed his own community and offered safety and comfort.
“I know what it’s like,” I said at last. “Not being wanted. Nothing as bad as what you went through, but I get it.” Hearing his story made me feel closer to him.
Levi smirked, letting out a low chuckle. “I still remember the way you looked all those years ago in the woods. All alone and crying.” His smile faltered. “Why do you want to be with him?”
“What?” I blinked, confused by the change of subject.
“You know.” He sighed. “Anders. He’s the reason you were crying back then. He’s the reason you almost died in the woods that day I found you. He’s picked on you and shunned you for most of your life.”
“My grandparents, the store—”
“Your friends, all that, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Look me in the eye and tell me you want him.”
My gaze locked on his, and all the bullshit fell away. All my plans and the stories I told myself, the half-assed assumptions and hopes. Deep down, no matter what happened here, whether I learned to shift or not, I would never want Anders. Not in a hundred years. I wanted Levi.
He must have seen something in my eyes, because for the first time since I walked in, there was something other than sadness in his eyes. Hope. Happiness. A grin spread across his lips.
“Why don’t you come back tonight?” he said. “I’ve got to meet up with Rainier about some stuff in ten minutes, but… I’d really like to see you tonight. Is that okay?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. I can come by after dinner.”
“I’d like that a lot,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
When I left, butterflies swirled in my stomach, and I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Linnea obviously noticed it when I got back to the kitchen.
“Looks like things went well?” she said as she wiped down the cutting board she’d been using.
“You could say that,” I said.
I spent the rest of the day waiting for the sun to set. I was eager to see Levi again, eager to have a night with him now that I truly understood what I wanted.