Dark Refuge (17 page)

The next day, when she’d told Lily what had happened, CGI made a huge donation to the group responsible for managing the herd. It had eased some of Em’s guilt, but not all of it. It still bothered her, to remember how heartless she’d felt over such a stupid mistake. Now she headed northwest, far from the paddock, through areas where the park was wilder, the trees and shrubs closely spaced. She needed to feel the forest around her, even if it was only an urban park. It wasn’t Montana, but anything had to be better than sitting alone in her room, almost within touch of Gabriel Cheval.

• • •

Gabe went straight to Em’s room, but she wasn’t there. He stopped at the kitchen, but she wasn’t there, either. Annie and all six of the young women were celebrating Janine’s shift, which must have happened while he was upstairs with Alex. Gabe hugged Janine and stood by more patiently than he felt while she shifted again so he could see how beautiful her wolf was.

She was definitely gorgeous, and absolutely unique, unlike any other in the pack. Snow white fur with brilliant sapphire blue eyes, but the edges and tips of her ears and the final half of her tail were black. No shade from white to gray—a black so complete it was a startling contrast against the pristine white of her coat.

He stood there, gazing at her, thinking of this small pack Em had led him to, how beautiful and unique each of them were. Even Nina and Lindy, while not Chanku, were good people, but where the hell was Em? He forced himself back to the present. “It looks like it was worth the wait, Janine. You’re unique and beautiful. All of you are. I can’t wait to show you off to the pack. I bet Em absolutely flipped when she saw you.”

Annie gave him an odd glance. “Em left before Janine shifted. About an hour ago. I thought you knew.”

“No. I was with Alex.”

“Ah . . . the male bonding thing, right?”

Gabe nodded his head. “I’ll go find her.”

“I think that’s a very good idea.”

With Annie’s solemn words ringing in his ears, Gabe trotted down Sunset toward the park. Em’s scent was fresh and it was easy to follow her on a relatively quiet night like this. He didn’t search for her mind. He tried to tell himself he didn’t want to frighten her, but the truth was, he didn’t want her to realize he was looking for her.

Obviously, she was trying to get far away from him, something Gabe hadn’t had to deal with before. Women inevitably wanted to get closer. Of course, there’d never before been a woman who mattered.

Em mattered. That was obviously why he’d screwed this up.

He was such an idiot. An idiot and a complete ass, but at least her scent was growing fresher and easier to follow, and with any luck he’d get a chance to make amends, to attempt to fix what he’d broken. Her trail cut through heavy shrubs, away from the bison paddock, and he remembered Lily telling a story about EmyIzzy running too close to the bison herd and causing a stampede. Obviously that lesson stuck, and it made it easier to follow her, knowing she ran in the general direction of Ocean Beach.

As her trail grew stronger, Gabe took more care. Not that he was actually trying to sneak up on her, but . . . He stopped and raised his nose to the air. She was close, but the breeze coming off the Pacific was distorting the direction of her scent, so that he wasn’t quite sure which way she’d gone. North along the coast, or was she circling south to head back home? It was close to one in the morning and he was exhausted. Today had been busy at work, as he’d wanted to finish up some last-minute projects before they all headed north to meet up with the pack, but following Em’s trail had his adrenaline pumping and all his senses on high alert.

Even so, he was hoping she’d chosen the southern route, but he had a feeling she wasn’t going to make it easy on him. And wasn’t he doing it again? Seeing Em’s pain from a perspective that was all about him. Goddess but he hated it when Alex was right.

But he hated even more what he’d done to Emeline.

Then it came to him, the place where she was headed, and he hoped he was right because, with any luck, he should be able to catch up to her. He raced through the park, to the northwest corner where Fulton hits the Great Highway. There was no traffic and he didn’t see Em, but her scent here was strong and he knew she wasn’t all that far ahead.

The walking trail took him along the coastline, above the Cliff House and the Sutro Baths, and then he saw her, trotting along the road that eventually led to Point Lobos. Wolf Point . . . how apropos, and so perfectly Emeline.

He caught up to her above the remnants of the baths. She didn’t acknowledge him, though her ears flattened a bit. She was still pissed off. He didn’t blame her. He was pretty upset with himself as well.

He stayed on her flank, following too close for sanity’s sake. Her wolven scent enveloped him, a rich aphrodisiac that was tying him in knots. He thought she was headed to the lookout at the top of the hill, but she turned off the trail and followed a narrow path that led them down to the rocky beach. The tide was going out and the surf was low, but the natural phosphorescence of the waves leant a ghostly light to the area.

There was no one else around, and the night was cold, though not freezing. The wind had died down and the only sound was the slow rumble of waves against the rocks, a sound almost entirely obscured by the thundering beat of Gabe’s heart. Even the sea lions were quiet tonight.

Em stopped beside a section of old concrete foundation and shifted. She sat on the flat surface and wrapped her arms around her knees, tossed her hair back and shoved it out of her face. She looked so terribly sad that Gabe wanted to wrap his arms around her, but he stayed in his wolf form. Em cocked her head to one side and said, “You can’t hear me, can you? I’ve been trying to speak to you since I first realized you were following me, but you didn’t hear me at all. When you first got here, we could at least communicate with mindspeaking, but even that’s lost. I was trying to tell you to go home, to stop following me. Why are you here?”

Gabe shifted and sat next to her. “I’m here because I love you. Because I’m an ass, and Alex was right.”

She sighed. “I hate to admit it, but he usually is. What was he right about this time?”

He bumped her shoulder with his. “At least we’re agreeing about something.”

She laughed. “That you’re an ass? Yeah, I think we can agree to that. What else?”

“Plenty, I imagine. When I got upset, it was because I’d turned the entire problem around and made it all about me. It’s not about me. Whatever is going on with you, whatever happened to you when you were a kid, is all about you, but it’s something both of us have to fix. And then when I left, it was because I didn’t know what to say, how to fix what I’d screwed up, and rather than crawl and tell you the truth, I chickened out and left. I was wrong, Em, and I’m so damned sorry. I want to be someone you can count on, not the kind of flake that walks away from the woman he loves because he doesn’t know how to fix things. Will you give me a chance? And if I screw up, will you tell me before you order me to get lost?”

This time, she actually leaned against him. “I can do that. I’m sorry, too, Gabe. I do love you, but I get so frustrated when I can mindspeak with anyone else, but not with you. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. It has to be tied in to whatever happened to my memories, but I don’t know how to fix it.”

“I have an idea, but I don’t know if you’ll go along with me or not.” It had come to him while she was talking. It might work.

“What? We won’t know until you tell me.”

“Do you love me, Em? Enough to put up with me even when I’m a jerk, because I can’t promise that I won’t screw up on occasion.”

Laughing softly, she shook her head. “Gabe, I loved you even when you were a rotten teenager who took great pride in being an absolute jerk. Since before that, when you used to carry me around on your shoulders and tell everyone what a big boy you were. That’s what hurt me so much. I thought you were ignoring me, even ridiculing my problem, but it was because I didn’t hear when you were speaking to me. I thought you were . . . oh, hell. I don’t know what I thought.”

He hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. “Do you love me enough to be my mate? To agree to a lifetime with a total jerk? Because I’m afraid that’s what you might be getting. I wish I were a better person, but I’m exactly what you see. I’m never going to be anything like my dad.”

“Thank goodness.”

He sat back, shocked by her answer. Everyone in the pack loved his dad. At least that’s what he’d always thought. “Why? You’re always talking about how much you admire my dad, that you love him.”

“As the pack’s alpha.” She laughed. “I’ve always figured your mother was a saint for not murdering him years ago.”

Now she made sense. “You’re not the only one. Mom’s pretty amazing, but he’s been a wonderful father. Disappointed, I think, because only Lily appears to have inherited his magic, and then she’s so much better than him that his ego has had to take a bit of a backseat to her abilities. Em, all I can do is promise you that I will do my best to be a good mate and a good husband, and hopefully someday, a good father, but you haven’t agreed, and you’re making me nervous. You know, I’ve never told anyone other than my mom and dad that I love them, so, in order not to make this all about me and stay within my comfort zone, I’m really hangin’ it out here.”

Em grabbed both his hands and leaned back, laughing. “Gabe, the moment you walked out of the room, I knew it was too late, that I already loved you so much there was no going back. I think we could be so good together, but how are we going to do this? Mating means a bond, and it’s all mental and emotional. What if we can’t connect?”

Do you hear me now?

Her eyes went wide.
I do! I hear you perfectly.

Let’s go back to the park. To that wild area near Mom’s garden. That’s always felt like a holy place to me. Are you okay with that?

I am. But what if it doesn’t work?

We’re going back to Montana in a couple more days. If our folks can’t help us, we’ll get Lily to take us to talk to Eve.

She can do that?

She can. And so can you, or me, or any of us if it’s important. Eve always listens, and this is important, Em. It’s the most important thing either of us has ever done. C’mon.

He shifted, and so did Em. And then she followed him along the trail, back along the edge of San Francisco to the park. And there, beside a garden Gabe’s mom had designed and built so many years ago, they faced each other as lovers, as friends, as wolves.

Chapter 11

Em was content to follow Gabe back along the walking trail and through the park to the garden his mother had designed. Such a beautiful, peaceful spot, it had been the true birthplace of the pack, bringing together Gabe’s parents and cementing their relationship with Alex’s mom and dad, and later connecting the four of them with Ulrich Mason and the original men of Pack Dynamics.

Then, a few years later, it had brought in six new members, disenfranchised young men and women attracted by the strange grasses Keisha had chosen—the same grasses native to Tibet that had given all of them, at one time or another, the ability to embrace their Chanku genetics and become the shapeshifters they were meant to be.

It seemed only right that she and Gabe would choose this spot to mate, though she still couldn’t believe he actually wanted her. She kept waiting for him to say he’d changed his mind, that she was much too damaged, that he didn’t love her enough to claim her for all time.

Her love for Gabe wasn’t in doubt. She’d loved him forever, but since she’d given up on his ever returning that love, it still didn’t feel real. Right, but not real. Not yet.

Mating wasn’t something anyone took lightly. What if he’d made a mistake? What if whatever had happened, whatever had left that huge blank in her memories, wouldn’t allow the merging of their minds in the connection that was imperative to the mating bond? Wasn’t it all about the memories? About learning everything there was to know about your mate?

She knew so much about Gabe already, and yet so very little. They’d been children together, and yet they’d spent barely a week together as adults. Both of them had changed. She kept thinking this must be a mistake, and then she almost laughed when she realized her anxiety had set up a loop in her head—
we don’t know each other anymore, what if it’s a mistake, what if I’m too damaged, does he love me enough, do I love Gabe enough, and at least that was an unqualified yes, but what if Gabe—
round and round, the same questions stumbling over one another until she was ready to either scream or laugh hysterically.

They reached the garden with the beautiful stones and the bench beneath the trees, and the bronze plaque dedicated to Sherpas who’d died long ago. Gabe sat on his haunches and watched Em as she trotted into the grassy area near the heart of the garden. She stopped a few feet from him, wondering why he looked at her with so much concern.

Can you hear me?

She nodded her head.

Good, because I’ve been listening to you the whole way over here, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It means we’re connecting the way we should, but it also tells me you’re filled with doubts. First of all, I love you. I’ve never felt this way about any woman. Once we’re mated you’ll have full access to what I’m thinking and feeling, and all of your worries are going to be gone. My only concern is that the bond might bring back memories you don’t want. We know you were kidnapped, that you were probably raped. We know your kidnapper died a horrible death, and the killer was most likely your wolf. That the memories have been hidden is a given. That they have been totally erased is not as clear. I love you so much, Em. I don’t want our mating bond to bring you pain. What if everything comes back? What if it’s more than you want to know? There might have been a perfectly good reason for locking those memories away.