“Where are we going?” I asked and was surprised that my throat didn’t hurt. I looked in the mirrors on the closet doors and was startled to see nothing. No bruising, not even so much as a red mark on my pale skin.
“You’re healed, you’re wolf-kind now. Now come on, let’s
go
,”
he urged. I came around the bed and followed him, my curiosity winning out. We got to the front door of the loft and he looked me up and down.
“Fuck,” he muttered and tugged on the sleeves of his great big biker jacket, shrugging out of it he put it around my shoulders.
“Put your arms in the sleeves,” he ordered and I obeyed. I went out the door and followed him down the steps, padding along the wood then cement until we stopped at the bottom and he opened the door into a parking garage. He hit the button on a key fob and the lights flashed on a black Range Rover down the line.
“Get in,” he commanded.
“Where are we going?” I asked and shut the passenger door.
“Field trip. Shut the fuck up, you ask too many goddamned questions.”
I shut the fuck up. I didn’t know where we were going but it involved a major freeway and then a wait for a ferry across the water. I huddled in the too-big leather jacket grateful for its warmth. He drove, his disposition agitated but I didn’t care.
I started to care when the highway he turned onto started to tickle my memory. I sat up completely from my miserable slouch, suddenly caring a whole lot when he turned down the driveway.
He let out a curse when he slowed the vehicle and I opened the door without letting it come to a complete stop. I was too excited. I jumped out onto the gravel drive and ran towards the house.
“
William!
”
I screamed and like magic, he appeared in the portal of his front door.
Chapter 17
William
Time is a funny thing. When you’re waiting for something or anticipating something the minutes, hours, and days seem to drag on interminably. Everything just feels like it takes forever, as if time has slowed to a crawl but only you’re aware of this strange distortion of time, of the seeming temporal shift, until whatever you’re anticipating, or dreading, comes closer.
Then, all of a sudden the nearly infinite seeming amount of time that you had stretching out ahead of you like an impossibly long road has been reduced, sliver by sliver, to almost nothing and you feel as if it is hurtling toward you with meteoric speed and the inevitability starts to close in.
There were only two nights left until I would face one of my adopted brothers in the circle. Two nights until my world would center around one thought. To kill, or be killed. Not a pleasant concept, let me tell you. Especially as I had once looked up to Rom and Rem. They had taught me a lot when Father first bit me, after the accident… They helped me adjust to my new life, they helped me to mourn the loss of the parents that had raised me until I was twenty-four. They helped teach me to fight and how to survive in the wilderness, away from the city. Hell, Rem even bought me my first welder which got me started on the path to being independently wealthy as a sculptor… and now I was going to try to kill one of them. It was soul crushing.
I looked up from the tree, nearly completed as I’d had little else to do but work on it. Everything else was just eating, sleeping, or bathing otherwise. Life had lost all its color without Chloe. I’d fallen that hard for her.
I was just about to spark the welder to life when I heard the sound of a car turn down the gravel drive leading down to my house. The engine sounded vaguely familiar, large, like an SUV, and as it slowed I heard a door open before the vehicle could come to a stop and a muffled curse in a voice I recognized all too well.
I set the welder aside and threw my helmet down. I was already moving toward the door when I heard her screaming my name and I practically threw myself the remaining distance, ripping the door open so hard I very nearly tore it from its hinges. There she was, ankle length nightgown snapping around her legs and Rem’s heavy biker jacket swallowing her whole, giving her a sense of modesty with how skimpy the gown was up top. I was barely able to take it all in, scarcely able to believe what I was seeing as she ran across the drive. The gravel must have been digging painfully into her feet but she either didn’t notice or she didn’t care. Either way I ran to meet her, opening my arms and gathered her to my chest as she crashed into me, cradling her with one arm across her shoulders and the other along her lower back, crushing her to me. It felt so
good
to have her back again.
She felt warmer than ever and for a moment I worried she was sick, until I remembered how Rom had bitten her; that image of her fear and pain having been burned into my mind’s eye forever. She was wolf-kind now. She was one of my people and we could be together without the Pack throwing a tantrum over her being human. We could… she was being taken from my arms.
I snarled, a low rumbling sound that would have frozen most creatures in a sense of abject terror but Remus simply kept pulling until Chloe was yanked from my grip with a broken cry of protest. He set her on her feet next to him after backing up a few paces.
“William,” he said in an even tone. There was something in his eyes. Remus had always been the more emotive of the twins. He
felt
where Romulus didn’t. Many people liked to say ‘the lights are on but nobody’s home’ when it came to describing a crazy person. When it came to Romulus, I preferred to say ‘the wheel was spinning but the hamster is dead’ because that man was a corpse inside. A deadened heart incapable of feeling anything that didn’t further his own desires and ambitions. By comparison Remus was, by leaps and bounds, more human.
Still, I needed to be suspicious. Needed to be on my guard. This wasn’t a social call. Remus’ specialty was manipulation. I needed to remember that.
“Remus. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” My voice was tight and my fingers curled and flexed, wanting nothing more than to reach for Chloe again. She didn’t struggle in Remus’ hold. She obviously knew she would never break free if he didn’t want her to, so she stood, a pleading look on her face, in her eyes, as she looked up at him.
“She isn’t yours anymore, you know that, right?” he asked and I frowned, teeth baring themselves in a snarl before I could stop myself and force my lips into a thin line behind my goatee.
“You would come to my home, with my mate, and insult me? Are you trying to get your brother hurt worse before I kill him? Because you know as well as I do, Remus, that Romulus needs to be put down. He is a danger to us all and shouldn’t be Alpha.”
“I just had a moment and thought you might like to know that your mate is
dying
,” he gave me a meaningful look. I stared blankly at him then looked to Chloe. She looked painfully thin, worn, and tired.
“She’s been pining for you,” he snarled and jerked at her arm thrusting her a half step towards me for a better look. “She won’t eat, and Rom has no intention of teaching her anything about the change. He hasn’t told her shit. If she survives her first full moon, it will be a miracle! Not to mention the most agonizing experience of her life,” he added with a vicious grin and a cold look in his eyes that I couldn’t help but find suspicious. My instincts were telling me something wasn’t right here, but my brain and my heart were so busy screaming at me to take her, to grab her and hold her and never let her go that I couldn’t put two and two together. He suddenly shoved her the rest of the way toward me and she stumbled before she caught herself.
“Go,” he said. “Give your mate a last kiss. One or both of you will die in two nights. Him beneath my Brother’s claws, and you by your own stupidity. Or maybe Lucinda will kill you after Rom is officially the Alpha.”
We ignored him. Chloe flew into my arms and I held her close, breathing in her scent as if it was the only thing keeping me alive. She no longer smelled of peaches, but she still smelled bright, like sunlight and clean air, like Chloe, and that was even better. I drew back enough to look into her clear blue eyes, smoothing some of her copper hair from her face. It was clean, but not as bright. She was losing nutrients and I glanced at Rem who was scowling at her back. Things snapped into place for me.
“Listen to Remus,” I whispered into her ear. “He’s trying to help here, I’m not sure why but he knows you won’t trust or listen to him. Well I’m telling you Chloe, to
please
trust Remus. I need you,” I looked into her pained and worried blue eyes, “And I need you to eat something, Sugar. You have to keep up your strength. Listen carefully, anything Remus says around you might be useful so pay attention, even if you don’t understand it.”
She nodded and pressed a kiss to my lips. I kissed her back carefully. She felt so thin, so fragile in my arms. Even more fragile than she had when she’d been human. The kiss was short lived. Too soon Remus was pulling her away, shoving her back into the car. She stared at me through the window, tears staining her cheeks and my hands clenched themselves into fists at my sides. She was still Rom’s progeny. It was still before her first change. I couldn’t keep her with me without violating Pack Law, so I had no choice but to let them go.
Before he got into the car Remus paused and looked at me over the hood of the Range Rover.
“Romulus is insane,” he said, “Even I can see it. But he’s the more powerful.” He stared a moment longer and I saw it in his eyes, clear as day.
Be careful, Little Brother.
With that he pulled open the door to his Rover, jumped in, and backed around so he could drive back the way they’d come. He turned the vehicle, threw it in gear and started up the drive back to the road with Chloe twisted in her seat, staring out the back at me.
I continued to stare up the drive long after they had gone, silently thanking Remus. I had a better chance against Romulus now. I had a renewed resolve to end him. He wasn’t teaching her
anything
. Nothing at all! She hadn’t been listening to Rem, so he’d brought her to me. To try and talk some sense into my beautiful, brave, and entirely too stubborn, girl. I raked a hand back through my hair, holding it back from my face. Both hands on top of my head, resisting the urge to scream my frustration and anger. I needed to hold on to every damned bit of it.
Two days… just two more days!
It couldn’t come fucking fast enough.
Chapter 18
Chloe
We rode in silence and I stared out the window. I’d been so speechless, hadn’t wanted to let him go. I had clung to every word, every touch and glance as if it would be my last and in being so enthralled with just being near William I had completely forgotten to say ‘I love you’. Damn.
“Why did you take me to him?” I asked and turned to look at Remus. His jaw tightened along with his grip on the steering wheel and he remained resolutely silent.
I scoffed. “Whatever,” I muttered and sighed. My stomach burned with hunger and I bit my lower lip.
“Can we stop and get something to eat, please?” I asked grudgingly a few minutes later and he turned to look at me, studying my face.
“Absolutely,” he said, relief evident in his voice.
“I love him,” I said abruptly, staring out the passenger side window as he pulled into a McDonald’s drive through. The ferry terminal was just ahead, waiting to whisk us back across the water, further away from the man I was just
so desperate
to be with.
“I love him and I’m scared that I’ll never see him again, that I’ll lose him.” I turned to stare back at Remus who was as stoic and shuttered as I had ever seen him. He was stopped in front of the metal box where we would place our order.
“Welcome to McDonald’s may I take your order?”
I stared at him and he stared at me and a long silence ensued.
“Hello? I said, welcome to McDonald’s may I take your order?”
Remus spoke but he was looking at me the entire time. He placed an order that would have made William proud and I smiled a little ruefully. God I missed him. The now familiar ache of longing settling back in. Our reprieve had been too short.
“Don’t do that Chloe,” Remus said gently and I looked at him curiously, “Just eat, stay strong, William’s going to depend on it.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked again.
“Why can’t you just accept that I am and go with it?” he shot back.
Touché.
The moment Rem pulled the food through the window and the smell hit my nose, I was
dying
. I mean absolutely starving. The hungriest I had ever been. I think I caught him quirking a hint of a smile but I couldn’t be sure and I didn’t really care. I was too busy ripping into the first cardboard carton containing a burger.
I ate like a dude. No. Seriously. Just like a dude. I went through two burgers, a twenty count of chicken nuggets with sweet and sour sauce and had sucked down about half of my extra-large Coke while we waited in line for the ferry to dock and disembark. Remus just sat there quietly and kept handing me food.
For the first time since I’d been taken I felt like my brain was firing on all cylinders. Like I could
think
rather than just feel and I could almost picture my wolf chasing her own tail in glee over it.
“Is this normal?” I asked, before sucking down more Coke.
“Is what normal?”
“Getting there, had to wash it down. Is it normal to feel and think like I’m me but have like these clashing feelings or whatever at the same time?” He nodded, like an ‘ah-ha’ and fixed me with a look.
“For some Moon Forged, in the beginning, the wolf side of them is almost a separate entity. Like you are you, but another being has taken up residence in your head. At least, that’s how I’ve heard it described.
“They say after the first change that eases up. Once you start to work with your wolf side, and you integrate better, you can’t feel the separation. It becomes more natural.” He fixed me with a somber look.
“You’re defiant,” he stated and I snorted a laugh.
“What was your first clue?” I asked and took a huge bite out of a McChicken sandwich.