The Killing Season (21 page)

“Not like that,” he said, voice fevered. He avoided my eyes as he swept my hands aside and delicately pulled my shirt over my head, sending my hair tumbling over my shoulders. He unhooked my bra and let it fall to his feet. “Not like that,” he repeated, voice mumbling.

I caught a frantic, exhausted desperation in his eyes, a misty sheen to them that made me wonder if he was about to cry. He jerked the covers back on the bed and slipped under them after kicking off his shoes. Muddy snow likely covered our pants, but he eased me alongside of him, until his bare chest pressed against my own, and his warmth swept into me. He arranged himself until his arm pillowed my head but also braced his weight above me. He pulled me under him, shielding my body with his, even though he was the only dangerous thing in the room. He tucked me against him and pressed his nose into my hair.

Only when he’d stilled and had me completely tangled underneath him did I ask quietly, “Luke, what’s wrong?”

“You scared me,” he said. The hitch in his voice terrified me.

“I’m fine.” I rubbed my hand down the arm he’d wrapped around me. I tried to turn to look at his face, but he squeezed me tighter against his chest. “Really,” I tried again. “I’m okay. Just a knock to the head and we all know my head is hard enough to take it.”

“I’m going to send you back to the university. You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”

My heart contracted, stealing my breath. “I’m not going anywhere, Luke,” I said quickly, not caring if my fear made my voice crack. “If you’re staying, then I’m staying.”

“That monster had you. He
had
you. And I was miles away.”

His words were sharp and lashing, but they were for his punishment, not mine. He repeated them over and over until he began to tremble against me.

If the hitch in his voice had terrified me, then Luke Aultstriver trembling paralyzed me.

“Baby,” I said, but the word came out like a croak. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I’m fine. I’m okay. He didn’t get me.”

His shoulders started to shake above me, but I felt none of his weight. He bore it all. His muscles had to be exhausted, the position had to be uncomfortable, but he dealt with it. “I can’t . . . I can’t lose you, Ollie. Do you understand?” His lips found the soft spot behind my ear, where he pressed a tiny kiss. “Something happened to us, you know?”

“I know,” I whispered.

“I don’t belong to myself anymore. You’re all I have. I love you so much, Ollie, and I’ve never been so terrified in all my life.”

I took a deep breath. He had no clue about me. Tears swept over the brim of my eyes and splashed down my cheeks. I should tell him. I had to. It was wrong of me to let him think he loved me like this when he should hate me. It wasn’t right or fair to him.

But a horrible, terrible part of me loved this. Him holding me. Him needing me. Someone just loving me. It felt so amazing, and so unlike anything I’d ever had in my entire life, that when I opened my mouth to tell him the awful truth, I said instead, “Maybe it’s just the saliva making you react like this.”

He shook his head against my neck. “It’s never been like this before, and I’ve been with . . . with others.”

I ignored the rage that flared up at his words. Jealousy wasn’t my right. He should be with anyone but me.

Tell him, Ollie. Do it now.

His hand stroked my bare side, over the ridges of my ribs and down to my hip and back up again. His thumb trailed along the edge of my breast. When he pressed another kiss to my neck, I told myself I would tell him in a minute. Just one. One and then I would tell him the truth. But I could give myself another minute to be loved and held.

Enjoy it. This is probably all you’ll ever get.

The thought struck me hard in the gut, and I started crying harder. Above me, Luke stilled and brought his hand up to wipe away my tears. He leaned back slightly to finally look at me. His cheeks were wet but his eyes were dry. Replaced with a fierceness. Determination. His dark brows lowered, and the chiseled edge of his jaw flexed. “I promised I would protect you, and I failed.”

He thought I was crying over Max, and maybe I was a little, but I was selfish and wretched enough to be crying for myself. For what I told myself I would lose in about fifteen seconds. My minute had nearly passed.

And when this precious, wonderful minute ticked to a close, my life would end too. The Ollie Andrews who had come to Fear University unwillingly but had stayed to find her home, family, and love, would die. All that would be left of me, the deepest, darkest part, would be a cold monster, the ’swang side of me. I would be nothing more than an animal.

“I love you, Luke Aultstriver,” I choked out the words, my last. “You’re all that I’ve ever wanted. But I need to . . .”

Say it. Say it. Say it.

The words were in my mouth, on my tongue, bitter and life-ending, but they were there. I wasn’t going to be a coward and not say them, not with Luke this raw and broken because of his love for me. They were
right
there. I was ready.

But Luke lowered his head and kissed the words from my lips. His tongue swept my damnation out of my mouth and replaced it with
him
. Only him. Forever him. I shifted and put my arms around his neck, pulling him to me. My hand swept through his hair, tugging the ends, and sealing his mouth to mine. Only when I knew he wouldn’t break the kiss did I remove my hand and hook my fingers around the waistband of my pants. Quickly, I shuffled them off, kicking them down to my feet, and wrapped my legs around his waist.

He pulled back, his lips shining in the semi-darkness of the room, and looked at me. I rocked up against him, feeling the hard bulge in his pants.

“I need you too,” I said. “I need you to love me now. Show me, Luke. Show me you love me no matter what.”

He raised up on his knees and undid his pants. As he freed himself, I thought only one thing: that I was indeed a coward. Only a monster would let this good man love her. But then, I’d always known I was a monster.

I bit my lip and arched up against him as he lowered himself to me, rolling his hips so he filled me in one smooth, long thrust. With both hands, he reached up and cradled my head, his fingers carefully shielding my wound. His biceps bulged beside my head, his elbows bearing all his weight so when he moved over me and inside me, he didn’t jostle me one bit.

His eyes watched mine, as if he read my every disgusting secret there. Like the coward I was, I pulled him down to my mouth and kissed him deeply to hide from his gaze, matching the way our tongues swept together to his movements inside me.

As I came, my head falling back in a silent scream, I sent up a prayer.

I prayed if he ever discovered my secret, he wouldn’t kill me before I explained why I hid the truth from him, why I loved him so desperately.

* * *

The next morning meant another quick hunt around the lakes before the storm hit. Luke had already left by the time I woke, but he’d set out some medicine by the bedside table along with a tall glass of water and a note with two simple words.

No Max

A wave of crushing disappointment came over me. Out loud, I’d argued over the hunting party going after Max, but now I wished they’d been successful. I wished Max was dead and gone and far, far away from me forever. Instead, he was still out there, hiding and waiting. It gave me a horrible, chilling feeling.

I downed the water in one gulp and left the pills.

Slowly, I made my way out of bed and into the bathroom, grateful I’d missed the hunters’ departure since Killian and Thad had been there. I couldn’t avoid them forever, but this morning was a start. Though, not even a long, hot shower shook the cobwebs from my brain. I felt hungover, depleted, achy and stiff. I had dug myself a deep hole with no ladder to crawl back out. My only hope was to dig down deeper until I came out the other side.

It seemed like a lifetime ago, but the day before yesterday was when I’d decided to meet with Coldcrow to go through his books for information on the Volkovas. With Killian and Luke’s fight, Hatter’s breakdown, and my run-in with Max, there had simply been no time. But now I had an opportunity to search for my answers, and I refused to allow it to pass by.

I went off in search of Coldcrow, moving slowly down the halls as the wind thrashed against the outer walls of the base, making a howling noise that set my teeth on edge. The snowstorm was moving in.

When I arrived on the third floor, I knocked on Coldcrow’s apartment door. A moment later it swung open, and the burly man himself appeared.

“Took you long enough,” he said, spitting a stream of chewing tobacco into a cup he held.

I scowled at him. “I’ve been a little busy.”

“Let’s not play games here, Ollie.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, ready for a fight. My hackles were up and my fists were balled at my sides.

“Peg told me everything.”

Those four words froze me. My arms went limp at my side. Briefly, I wondered if he would kill me.

“She called me right after you two spoke the night in the ward. She was worried about you and her safety. In case something happened to her,” he said, his voice turning thick and deep, “she wanted to know I would watch out for you. I love her, Ollie.”

“I know.”

“So I’m watching out for you. I know what you are.”

“I—” I snapped my mouth shut, horror making my throat thick. “What? How?”

He held up his hand. “Don’t say anything too loudly around here. You can never be certain the walls don’t have ears. Follow me.”

After I crossed into his apartment, he closed his door behind me and walked us farther into his place. With a sigh, he turned to face me. “I know, Ollie. It’s okay.”

I shook my head, a little frantically. “No, it’s not. How can you say that? How can you not care that I’m everything you hate?”

“You’re a young woman, darlin’. You’re nothing like my enemy.”

“I’m exactly half of your enemy,” I said, keeping my voice level and as calm as possible.

Coldcrow didn’t bother with a response, and when he walked away I took the time to collect myself with a few deep breaths. I glanced around his apartment. His furniture was the wide, overstuffed, leather kind, just like I expected of him. There was a large moose’s head mounted on the wall, and another door led off to what I assumed was his bedroom. Outside, the wind rattled and banged against the walls of the base, and the lights flickered occasionally and the backup generators kicked on for a moment afterward. Coldcrow noticed my wary glance at the lights and said, “Don’t worry about the power. We lose it all the time up here, especially during these kinds of storms.”

“Is it safe for the hunters to be out in this?”

Coldcrow walked over to the back wall and pulled out a key from his pocket. I followed him over to get a closer look, not seeing the door built into the wood paneling until I stood right in front of it. The lock clicked open and he slid the pocket door back into the wall. The room inside was no larger than a pantry closet, but instead of canned food, there were books. Hundreds of books.

“They’ll track the storm and come back before it gets too bad.” Coldcrow thumbed through the books, running his index finger over the old, leather spines like he knew their feel by memory. “I collected books over the years. Eventually they just accumulated, but up here, it’s best to keep the valuable stuff under lock and key.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, watching his face instead of the books. I needed to decide quickly if he was someone I should trust.

“When you’re stuck inside with a small group of people for months at a time, secrets don’t last all that long. And some of these books contain very important secrets.”

“Like my kind of secret?” I asked vaguely. I couldn’t resist glancing back over my shoulder and making sure his apartment door remained shut tight.

“Something along those lines.” He finally selected a few books and pulled them from the shelves.

“What are those?”

“Speaking of secrets being discovered, I overheard what you and Sunny were talking about outside my room the other day. I know the history you want to research is about the Volkova family.”

My spine stiffened. Coldcrow sat down on his leather couch and spread the books out on the coffee table. He turned up a gas lamp beside him, sending warm light spreading across the yellowed pages. “I guess you’re right about secrets. How much did you hear?”

“Pretty much everything,” he said casually, flipping through pages. “That Luke was looking into Olesya Volkova, which I’m assuming is what set you on the Volkova trail, and how Abigail said you resembled a certain woman.”

“We don’t know who she was talking about. She was traumatized and probably just confused.”

“No.” Coldcrow studied my face in the warm flickering light. “She was completely right. You’re a dead ringer for Irena Volkova, the last female hunter of the Volkova family line.”

I gritted my teeth. Abigail had never said who exactly it was that I looked like, but when Coldcrow said it was a Volkova, I wasn’t all that surprised. More like angry. “Are you saying she’s my mother? Because I know who my mother is—”