Authors: Naomi Clark
My wolf didn’t believe me. She wanted her
mate and her mate wasn’t there. It drove shards of fear into me and
roused my protective instincts. “I have to go,” I told Glenn as he
entered the living room with two cups of tea. “Shannon’s not
answering the phone.”
“
I shouldn’t think she is,
at this ungodly hour,” Glenn sniffed. “I haven’t been awake at this
time for years, personally.”
I ignored the proffered cup. “Can I borrow
some clothes? I can’t stay, Glenn. I’ve got to see her.”
He looked me over. “Darling, you shouldn’t—”
He broke off with a sigh. “Oh, you’re mad, Ayla, do you know that?
Positively insane.” He led me into his bedroom and began rummaging
through his spacious wardrobe. There wasn’t much that I could see
except spandex dresses and hot pants, but I was almost desperate
enough to snatch those and run anyway. Then he produced a lime
green velour tracksuit with a bright smile.
“
Should fit perfectly,” he
announced, bundling it into my arms. “It’s Juicy Couture,” he
added, as if that excused the vile color.
Still, it was better than a pair of hot pink
short-shorts. I threw it on, kissed him on the cheek and took off
as fast as my tired body would go.
***
My sense of foreboding grew as I entered Foxglove. Call it woman’s
intuition. Call it animal instinct. I just knew something was
wrong. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when I saw the police car
outside our house. My heart constricted and my head pounded and I
pushed myself into a run, my mind spinning with dozens of bloody
scenarios as I reached the door.
And then I slowed, seeing
the graffiti scrawled across the front door. Bright red paint, like
fresh blood, gleaming in the early morning sunlight:
Die dyke bitches
.
Beneath the words was a modified anarchy
symbol, Alpha Humans’ insignia.
“
Shit. Oh shit. Fuck.” I
fumbled with the door handle, found it locked—
of course
—and began hammering on the
wood. “Shannon! Shannon!”
The door opened and I stumbled inside,
barely registering the police officer who’d opened it. I flew into
the kitchen. “Shannon! Where are you?”
“
Ayla!” She leapt up from
the kitchen table, rushing into my arms. “Oh God, where have you
been? Are you okay? What happened?” She cupped my face in her
trembling hands, staring at me with tear-filled eyes. “Don’t you
dare ever scare me like that again! Where the hell were you?” Anger
and relief warred on her face.
My throat was dry and I couldn’t speak. So I
kissed her instead, hard and fast, before hugging her so tightly
she yelped in pain.
“
Ms Hammond, I take it?” a
dry voice asked behind me.
I didn’t release Shannon, just swiveled
round so I could see the officer over her shoulder. He was a
middle-aged human, stern face, graying hair. “What’s going on?” I
asked him.
“
Perhaps if you put Ms Ryan
down, we can discuss it,” he suggested.
I didn’t think I could let go of Shannon
yet. Her body against mine was the best feeling I’d had in hours
and her familiar sandalwood scent was the most comforting thing I
could imagine. I buried my face in her sandy hair and inhaled
deeply, closing my eyes. I could have died, I realized with a sick
lurch. I could have drowned and never seen her again. Never held
her again.
The realization hit me hard, a delayed
reaction.
All the way back to the city, in Glenn’s
apartment, I’d kept the thought at bay, concentrating just on
getting back. Now I was home and safe, it was suddenly all I could
think about. The feral could have killed me. I released Shannon and
sat down at the kitchen table, heart in my throat.
“
Ayla?” Shannon sat down
next to me, lacing her fingers with mine. Her voice shook. “Are you
okay?” she asked again.
I glanced at her, taking in her mussed hair
and clothes. She was still in last night’s outfit and she hadn’t
washed her makeup off. Mascara bled down her cheeks, giving her
that panda look that, under other circumstances, I found adorable.
“Have you been up all night?” I asked.
“
Of course I bloody have,”
she cried. “I was waiting for you! Where were you?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I
didn’t want to talk about the feral in front of a human copper.
“What happened to the door?” I asked instead.
“
It was like that when I
got back,” she said. “I was going to call the police when you got
back, but you didn’t get back.” She leveled me with a hard glare, a
silent message that, as happy as she was to have me home, she was
also mightily pissed off. “So I called them this morning instead
and PC Weldon showed up.”
“
Obviously this is an Alpha
Humans attack,” Weldon said, taking the last chair at the
table.
“
Obviously,” I agreed,
unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.
“
I understand you had a
run-in with them a few months back,” he continued as if I hadn’t
spoken, “so I’m assuming this is a revenge attack.”
I’d been arrested for
affray last time we’d
had a run-in
with Alpha Humans, after Adam’s funeral. And
Shannon had ended up in hospital. As far as I was concerned, we
ought to be the ones seeking revenge. I kept that to myself
though.
“
So what do we do?” I
asked, squeezing Shannon’s hand. “Their scents must be all over the
garden—can we get a wolf copper in?”
He smiled patronizingly at me. “Scent
evidence isn’t admissible in court, Ms Hammond, as I’m sure you
know. For now, there’s nothing to do except monitor the situation.
Nobody was hurt and unless they strike again, we don’t have much to
go on.”
“
You are not serious,” I
said.
Shannon cut me short. “PC
Weldon, this is intimidation,” she said, sounding far more sure of
herself. “And a serious threat to our safety.
Die dyke bitches is
a pretty clear
message, don’t you think?”
“
Of course and we take such
matters very seriously,” he said. “But at this stage there is
simply nothing the police can do. We’ll file a report and take
statements from you both and you’ll have an incident number. If
anything else occurs—”
“
What else has to occur
before you can do anything?” Shannon asked. “I take it that when
Alpha Humans are breaking down our front door and smashing the
house up, you’ll do more than give us an incident
number?”
Weldon kept his patient mask fixed in place,
although I could smell his exasperation. I imagined a lifetime of
this, dealing with irate and scared crime victims, trying to assure
them all was well when it clearly wasn’t. I was exhausted just
thinking about it.
Before Weldon could speak again, I jumped
in. “Let’s just leave it, okay? I don’t have the energy for this
now.” Shannon shot me a dark look, but Weldon seemed grateful. I
smiled weakly at the odd role-reversal between me and my mate.
Normally she was the pacifier and I was the one making a scene; the
change made my head ache.
We gave our statements—both brief given that
neither of us had been here at the time of the incident—and Weldon
left, promising to stay in touch. Shannon slammed the door on him,
flipped her hair from her face and rounded on me.
“
I sat up all night for
you, Ayla. What the hell happened?”
She sounded furious, but I caught the edge
of anxiety in her voice. She’d been scared for me after seeing that
graffiti. I’d have felt the same. Drained, I sat down on the bottom
step and held my face in my hands. My stomach stung as I leaned
over and I winced, straightening up again. Seeing me flinch,
Shannon was instantly on her knees beside me.
“
Ayla? Are you hurt? God,
speak to me, will you? I was so worried about you.”
“
Me and Glenn smelled the
feral,” I said, raising my head. “And we followed him and we
fought.” I pulled up the hem of the tracksuit jacket to show the
faint pink scar on my stomach. Shannon touched it
tenderly.
“
Tell me,” she
said.
I did, telling her about smelling Molly and
other city wolves, reliving the feel of the feral’s claws ripping
through my skin, the horrible plunge into the river. I shuddered,
cold again at the thought of it. When I finished, Shannon heaved a
heavy sigh.
“
I can’t believe you did
that,” she muttered. “You could have been killed.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“
You should have just come
home. This is exactly the sort of thing we’re supposed to be
telling Eddie. He’s not bloody paying you to play hero,
Ayla.”
“
He’s not paying me at
all,” I retorted. “He’s paying you.”
“
Don’t say stupid things.”
She stood, pacing the hall. Frustration rolled off her. “Do you
know what I thought when I saw that awful graffiti and then you
didn’t come home? I thought those Alpha Human thugs had found you
and killed you. I thought I’d lost you. I thought all kinds of
crazy things, Ayla, and you were off chasing ferals with Glenn and
getting into fights!” She whirled to face me, tears in her eyes.
“Why didn’t you just come home?”
I wasn’t sure if she was madder at me for
staying out all night or for nearly dying. I did know that whatever
I said would just make her angrier. So as much as I longed to stand
my ground and argue that I’d done what I had to, that it was a Pack
thing, I held my tongue. Maybe I was just too tired to speak.
“
Say something,” Shannon
demanded when I didn’t answer her. “Don’t just look at me, say
something!”
“
I’m sorry,” I said simply.
It was the safest thing I could think of.
She shook her head. “We should never have
moved here.”
“
What?”
“
Ever since we got back
here, it’s been one shitty thing after another. You’re always off
doing
Pack things
and I’m always sitting here wondering where you are, if you’re
safe.” She turned away from me, hugging herself. “I thought you
were dead last night, Ayla. Dead.”
“
I nearly was.” I could
have kicked myself. It was such a stupid thing to say.
“
Exactly!” Shannon thumped
the wall and spun back to me, tears streaming down her face.
“That’s exactly my point, you could have died and I wouldn’t have
known and for what? For a bunch of fucking werewolves who didn’t
want you the first time round!”
I leapt up, righteous anger burning away my
weariness. “Don’t say that!”
“
Well it’s true! This never
happened before, did it?”
“
So it’s my fault? My fault
a feral nearly disemboweled me? My fault a bunch of prejudiced
bastards are scrawling insults on our front door?”
Dammit
. I couldn’t shut
up now. I should, I knew I should, but I couldn’t. She was
overreacting.
“
It never happened before,”
she repeated. “Before we moved here.”
“
Well you didn’t have to
bloody come, did you?”
“
I wish I hadn’t!” she
screamed.
We both fell silent then,
chests heaving, eyes stinging with tears. I stared at her, wetting
my lips and letting her words sink in. She stared back, fists
clenched at her sides like she was restraining herself
from…what?
Hitting me? Surely not. Not
Shannon. Not my Shannon
.
“
Do you mean that?” I asked
quietly. “Do you hate it here that much?”
“
This is your life, your
world,” she replied. “It’s dangerous and it’s cruel and I don’t
belong in it.”
“
You can’t mean that.” I
shook my head. “We never– We’ve always…”
“
Before we moved here,” she
finished my garbled sentence for me. She scrubbed her sleeve across
her eyes. “Oh Ayla, I love you, but I can’t keep this up. How many
more nights am I going to sit up waiting for you and not knowing
where you are?”
“
It was one night,
Shannon.”
“
And it never happened
before.”
We fell silent again, deadlocked. She was
overreacting, I told myself again. A mix of stress and relief
turned to anger. It wasn’t like her, but then it wasn’t like me to
disappear all night, I had to acknowledge. It wasn’t like us to
have hateful graffiti painted on our door. “So,” I said finally.
“What now then?”
“
I’m going to bed,” she
said, stomping past me. “I can’t deal with this right
now.”
I slumped back on the step, listening to our
bedroom door slam. Something inside me cracked. I hoped it wasn’t
my heart.
ELEVEN
Raw and bruised from our
fight, I
couldn’t stay in the house. As much as I wanted to curl up and
sleep, I couldn’t. Shannon needed space—I was sure that once she’d
slept on it, she’d realize how over the top she’d been—and I needed
peace. So I went to my parents. They were a little confused to find
me on the doorstep at eight o’ clock on Saturday morning in someone
else’s clothes, but to their credit, they didn’t ask. And I didn’t
tell them anything except that Shannon and I had argued and
retreated to my old bedroom to sleep the day away.
Once I was up there though, huddled down in
my old bed, I couldn’t relax. The events of the night, the words
Shannon and I had hurled at each other, ate at me. I stared around
my room, trying to drive the thoughts away by cataloguing my
childhood possessions.