Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Marc
“Jessa Hale.” I feel the name in my mouth, and my lips twitch. “Bad-tempered little thing.”
My wolf, who has been quiet for ten years, stirs at the name.
My lips press together at the reaction.
Why now?
My brother and his mate’s murder broke something fundamental in my animal, a grief that’s kept the animal subdued this past decade. It hasn’t expressed interest in anything so vividly before, so tonight its reaction took me by surprise.
What was it about Jessa Hale that has it so curious?
The rain hasn’t eased since I dropped her at her building, and I have one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the open window. I’ve never seen a woman be so angry at being rescued. My lips twitch as I recall the way she kept snapping at me.
I’m halfway up the connector before I remember something.
Her car is still out there, dead on the shoulder, unlocked, the keys sitting in the ignition where she left them in her hurry to be rid of me.
Tom won’t reach it tonight. Some pileup has him tied up on the main road, so the Ford will stay where it is until morning, and a stranger’s car left open in the dark is asking for trouble even in a town this small.
I turn around at the next break in the trees.
The road’s empty when I pull up behind her, my headlights washing over wet metal.
I leave the umbrella on the passenger seat and step out into it.
Rain has never bothered my kind. We don’t flinch from it like humans do, fumbling with umbrellas and hunched coats.
I’m soaked through within seconds, and I couldn’t care less.
I’ll grab the keys, lock the thing, and leave them at the house for Tom to collect when he hauls it in tomorrow.
Approaching the car, I look at it in disgust before kicking it lightly. “You don’t deserve to be on the road. You belong in the scrap yard.”
I pop the driver’s door and lean in.
That’s when it hits me.
Two scents, layered close in the small space. I caught the edge of one earlier, loading her bags, but my hands were full and my head was somewhere else. Now there’s nothing to pull me off it. I stay there with my head inside the car and cold water running down my collar, and I breathe her in.
Jessa. The warmer of the two, threaded through the seat and the wheel and the door she gripped.
My wolf surges up, alert, straining toward the scent before I can stop it.
The second scent is smaller, fainter, a child’s.
The wolf shifts again, anxious now, pacing, like it wants to chase the trail down.
I pull my head out of the car, unsettled.
First the mother, now the kid. Nothing about tonight is normal.
I snag the keys, back out, and shut the door. The lock thunks. Then I jog to my car, drop in dripping, and shove her keys into my jacket pocket.
I’m distracted throughout the drive, my thoughts returning to a woman who I should’ve forgotten as soon as I dropped her home. Considering how rude she was, it makes even more sense not to think about her.
The image of her flashes in my mind, wariness and attraction wrapped in one foul-tempered but very pretty package.
I don’t pay much attention to women. I can’t afford to, not with a little girl to raise.
But Jessa made me forget my own rules for a moment there.
I didn’t even care if she was married. When my hands were on her waist, her scent surrounding me, all I wanted was to taste that mouth.
I tighten my jaw.
What is wrong with me?
My wolf stirs for a brief second before settling back inside. I let out a gust of air. Maybe I should go for a run tonight. This could be my wolf’s way of saying it’s been cooped up for too long.
The porch light’s on when I pull up the drive. Mrs. Dunn left dinner and went home hours back, so the house should be dark, but blue TV light flickers across the front hall. I push the door open, peeling off my soaked jacket.
A little girl is curled on the couch in her pajamas, fair hair slipping loose from two braids, a blanket kicked half to the floor. She twists around at the sound of the door, blinking up at me with pale green eyes heavy with sleep, then turns back to the cartoon she’s watched a hundred times.
“Hey, Bell.” I drop the jacket over a chair. “What are you doing up? It’s a school night.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She doesn’t look up.
I cross to the couch and crouch in front of her, blocking her view of the screen. “It’s way past your bedtime. Why are you still awake?”
“I was hungry.” She picks at a thread on the blanket, eyes everywhere but on me.
“I left food in the fridge for you. Chicken and potatoes.”
“I don’t like that,” she mumbles.
That earns her a raised brow. “Since when? You go crazy for chicken and potatoes. You ask for it every single week.”
“Well.” One small shoulder lifts. “I don’t know.”
I study her. Bella isn’t a sulky child. She’s the easiest kid I’ve ever known, sweet to a point that worries me some days, so this mood tells me something’s wrong before she says a word.
I lower myself onto the couch and pull her into my lap, blanket and all.
She comes without a fight, tucking her head under my chin.
Small for nine, always has been, she fits against me with room to spare.
“Talk to me, Bell.” I keep my voice low. “What happened?”
For a moment, she stays quiet. Then, in a tiny voice, she says, “Chloe called me about the math homework.”
“Okay.” I rub a slow circle on her back. “And?”
“She was talking about Emma’s party.” Her lip wobbles. “There’s a birthday party this weekend. The whole class is going.” She swallows hard. “Everybody but me.”
Anger heats the back of my throat at a pack of nine-year-olds drawing up a list, deciding who counts and who doesn’t. I keep my face even.
“Maybe your invite just hasn’t come yet,” I offer. “Sometimes they show up late.”
She shakes her head against my chest. “Chloe said Emma made the list at lunch. I’m not on it.”
I’ve faced down men twice my size on the field, and I don’t have a single thing to say to a little girl who found out at bedtime she got left off a list. My niece is a shy little thing.
She’s quiet in class, slow to warm to new kids, and being what she is among human children only widens the gap.
She can’t shift yet, won’t for years, but the human kids feel the difference in her without knowing its name, and they keep their distance.
I’ve watched it happen since kindergarten, helpless to do anything but hold her afterward.
“You know what?” I tilt her chin up so she has to look at me. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”
She sniffles. “What?”
“One day you’re going to have so many friends you won’t know what to do with all of them.
They’ll be lined up at the door. Calling the house at dinner.
Showing up wanting to sit with you at lunch.
” I tap her nose. “You’ll get so sick of them you’ll come hide in here with me for some peace and quiet. ”
A wet little laugh slips out of her. “No I won’t.”
“You will. You’ll be begging me, ‘Uncle Marc, make them go away, there’s way too many.’”
“That’s silly.” She’s smiling now, the gap where her front tooth used to be on full display.
“It’s true. You’ll see.” I give her a squeeze. “Hey. How about this? You and me, this whole weekend. Movies right here in the living room, all the junk food your stomach can hold, sleeping bags on the floor. We’ll build a fort.”
Her eyes go wide. “Really? A fort?”
“A huge one. Couch cushions, every blanket in the house, the works.”
“Can we watch the dog one? With the puppies?”
“We can watch the dog one four times if you want.”
She throws her arms around my neck, fierce and warm, braids whipping into my jaw. The anger in my chest eases at last.
“Thank you, Uncle Marc,” she whispers into my neck.
“Anytime, Bell.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Now. Bed. Forts don’t get built by tired girls.”
She groans the whole way up, but she goes, padding off down the hall with her blanket dragging behind her. I sit alone in the blue light of the paused cartoon, and I should feel settled. The kid’s okay, the weekend’s planned, the house quiet around me.
Instead my thoughts slide straight back to a dead Ford on the connector, to the woman who screamed at me through the rain. The wolf wakes again at the memory of her scent.
Her keys are still in my jacket pocket. I’ll have to return them, which means I’ll have to see her again. The thought shouldn’t please me. She’s married, prickly, and wants nothing to do with me.
I push off the couch and pad down the hall.
Bella’s door sits ajar, her nightlight glowing softly against the wall, and I find her burrowed deep under her blanket with one arm hanging off the edge of the mattress.
She’s out cold, braids half undone on the pillow.
I ease the blanket up over her shoulder and stand there a while, listening to the small, even sound of her breathing.
Whatever Emma’s birthday list took from her tonight, I’ll find a way to hand it back this weekend.
I pull the door to and leave her to sleep.
The house is quiet behind me when I slip out the rear door into the trees.
The rain has thinned to a fine drizzle, and the cold comes off the wet leaves in waves.
I strip my shirt over my head and drape it on a low branch.
The rest I shed and leave hanging on the bark for afterward.
Cold bites at my skin, and I welcome it.
When I let the change take me, bone reshaping under fur, the world drops low and widens, color bleeding out while scent floods in. Then I’m on four legs and gone.
I run.