Heart Of The Wolf (26 page)

But that
wasn't the worst bit.

No.

“
We're not
sure how it happened, because as far as we know, it's an
impossibility, but scent doesn't lie. Your case is unique – The
Trident mustn't find out. If you want Hendrickson to monitor you,
he will. You'll have our protection whenever you need it.”

“
Protection,” she repeated, numb all over.

“
Yes. For
both you, and the baby.”

~*~

Leaving Lydia's
side had been bloody difficult this morning. Insanely
difficult.

Taylor smiled
as he dried off, and stepped into his clothes, underwear first. He
put his jeans on next, and fastened the button. At his core, was a
completion he'd never felt before. Since Lydia had shifted,
something among the four of them – some dynamic he couldn't name –
had also shifted; clicked into place. There was a strength, a
solidity, that hadn't been there before and it felt fucking
good.

He picked up
his T-shirt.

There was a
knock on his door.

“Come in.”

The door swung
open to reveal Ryan's bulk on the other side. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Can I come
in?”

“Already said
yes.”

“Right.” He
stepped inside, swinging the door half shut. “We haven't really had
a proper chance to talk since the shit hit the fan. I wanted to
make sure you were all right.”

“I'm … feeling
okay. Things are good. I mean, not for everyone. Poor Richard…”

Ryan's face
darkened and he took a step closer. “Taylor … did she hurt
you?”

Ah … he meant
Selena. Inside, something deflated, although he didn't really want
Ryan seeing it. “Just my ego.”

He looked up,
met Ryan's eyes, then looked away again. “I trusted her, and I
shouldn't have.”

“Fuck it, you
didn't do anything wrong. If you can't trust your pack, who can you
trust?”

“I ignored my
instincts; I ignored my wolf. If I had just—”

“Don't stop
being human, Taylor.”

Surprised, he
looked up again, this time holding his gaze.

“It's hard for
wolves to break away from the entrapment of need. And it's
important to be reminded it's possible. We live closed lives,
always inside our own pack, almost never integrating … it can blind
us to the options that
are
out there for us.”

“Are there
many options for unmated, twenty-five year old females?”

Ryan exhaled
sharply. “Not many, I'm afraid. Or none. Shit – none of us knew the
extent to which Selena was…” He faltered.

“Desperate.
She was desperate. I despise her for hurting Lydia, but I can't
find it in my heart to hate her. Not after…”

That sentence
clung to air, unfinished. No one needed to finish it. The image of
the Trident running off with her over his shoulder was bold
enough.

“She hurt all
of us, not just Lydia.”

“Yeah.”

“What about
Sarah?”

“What about
her?”

“She was here.
She knows everything now, and,” Ryan studied him, carefully, “we
all noticed her scent.”

Taylor sighed,
and dropped his shirt on the bed. “I hear Lawrence offered her our
help if she needs or wants it.”

Ryan nodded.
“Yes, he has.”

“Good, because
she deserves the best. But she's a strong woman – she'll deal. I
loved Sarah. A part of me will always love Sarah, but I'm with
Lydia now – I'm
with
her, one hundred percent. I'm with all
three of you. It's like you said: everything's different now.”

The air
thickened between them, the meaning of his words clear, and Taylor
had to finally acknowledge it – this
thing
that was taking
place between them; between all four of them: they were
all
mated. Lydia wasn't the only one he … felt for.

Ryan cleared
his throat. “You've come a long way.”

“All four of
us have. A bunch of unexpected things happened. I stopped trying to
analyse them; stopped trying to get over them, and learned to let
go instead.”

Ryan's mouth
curved up in a half-smile. “Sounds like good advice.”

“It was.
Delivery left a lot to be desired, though.”

“Hey.”

Taylor
laughed.

“Right then,”
he turned to leave, “as long as you're fine.”

“Hang on a
sec.”

Ryan turned
back.

“You going to
tell us about those werewolves in white?” Much to Taylor's
annoyance, he hadn't divulged much, if any, information about those
white-robed dudes he'd brought back with him.

“They're my
old pack – some of them.”

Taylor nodded,
waiting for him to continue.

Ryan paused,
giving his chin a rub. “They're … Druids.”

That's … not
exactly what he had expected to hear, although he wasn't sure what
he
had
expected. “Druids? You come from a pack of … Druid
werewolves?”

“Something
like that.”

“You gonna let
me in a bit more than that?”

“No.”

Shit. That
wounded him more than he'd been prepared for. What happened to
'there are four Alphas in this pack'? “Fine.” He made his way back
to the bed, picked up his shirt and put it on.

“Taylor—”

“Everything's
fine.”

“I love this
pack. There's nothing I wouldn't do to ensure its safety.”

Collecting
himself, he turned back to Ryan and smiled in understanding. “I
know that.”

Another pause
stretched out between them in which Taylor refused to lower his
stare.

Ryan broke it
first. “Good.” He turned and walked out the room, his words
carrying down the hall after him. “'Cause that goes double for my
mates.”

Chapter Eighteen

Freshly
showered, and having reluctantly prised herself away from Ryan and
Taylor, Lydia glanced out of the hallway window, phone to ear,
waiting for him to pick up.

Seeing
Selena's father in tatters had pressed her button. A big one. What
did you have, if you didn't have family? It had been a wake-up
call, and while the woman in her screamed in rage for her dad's
silence all these years, the child in her just wanted to be his
little girl once more.

Answering
machine.

Damn.

She held her
breath and waited for the beep.

“Dad … hi.
It's me, Lydia.” Pause. “Are you still coming over this
afternoon?”

Oh.
Idiot.
He's not there to answer. “I mean, I'm looking
forward to seeing you. I … I want to see you. And I wanted to say,
I'm sorry about how I was on the phone yesterday. You caught me at
a bad time, and … I shouldn't have let stuff get to me.”

It was weird
how the silence always sort of echoed back at you on the phone,
like putting your ear against a sea shell…

“Okay, so, see
you later.”

She hung up
and placed her mobile on the sideboard under the window, feeling
oddly sad.

Making her way
to the bottom of the stairs on the second floor, she looked up
towards Lawrence's room. Ryan and Taylor had said Lawrence wanted
to see her. She wanted to see him, too.

But his door
was open, and it was never open. She didn't know if she ought to be
nervous about that.

She climbed
the stairs. That scent of his seeped into her, as it always did,
driving her need to be with him to new heights, perhaps also
pronounced having just spent much required bonding time with Ryan
and Taylor. Lawrence had sorely been missed.

Today, his
scent was combined with the rather more feminine hint of roses.

Intrigued, she
took each step faster until she stood outside the open door and
gaped at what she saw: a trail of rose petals leading into his
room, and a note on the floor a few steps in. An arrow was boldly
drawn on it, along with Lawrence's scrawled writing:

More corny
shit this way

A laugh erupted
from her. With her pulse racing, she went to where the arrow
pointed, towards the bed. More petals were scattered across the
duvet and here she found the photo frame that she'd dropped. The
glass inside had been replaced, but that wasn't all. The photograph
of Lawrence and his sister had been swapped for one of Lydia. She
recognised it – Taylor had taken it two weeks back when they had
been larking about, trying to get her to feel more at home at the
mansion.

Tears sprang
to her eyes.

She picked it
up and spied another note underneath it.

Some things
are supposed to break

so you can
learn to let them go.

Another arrow
pointed upwards. Her eyes followed the rose petals until they
landed on…

“Oh …
Lawrence…”

There was no
longer one pillow taking up the top centre of the mattress – there
were two, side by side. Yet more petals decorated the one on the
right with note number three resting on top of them all.

She swallowed
back the lump in her throat, collected herself, and reached for
it.

Our home,

our bed,

our pack.

I won't shut
the door again.

Look in the
wardrobe.

Leaving the
photo frame on the bed, she went to the wardrobe and pulled the
door open. At her feet on the floor, lay a shoe box with a pink
ribbon around it. Like a kid at Christmas, she fell to her knees,
cradled the box and tugged at the ribbon as fast as her fingers
would allow.

It was padded
full of white tissue, and on the very top was a key with a tag
attached. She carefully picked it up and read the tag:
The Dance
Studio, Erika Gunvald Theatre.

“Oh, my
god!”

This was the
key to the dance studio –
the
dance studio – at the theatre,
and … he was giving it to her?

Her heart
hammered in her chest as she looked back down at the box – way too
big for just a key. Fingers trembling at the force of her emotion,
she pulled out the wads of tissue and there, underneath them all,
were…

A small sob
tumbled from her lips. She could no longer hold the tears back.

Reaching into
the box, she took out the pair of ballet slippers and cradled them
to her chest, sobs becoming quiet wails, ten years of loss
hammering at her own shut door, demanding it be thrown wide
open.

A final note
lay at the bottom of the box.

You're not
allowed to have legs and not use them.

Dance.

(P.T.O.)

She turned it
over.

Run to me.

She had shifted
before she even knew it, her wolf and her, one entity, and riding
on the urgency in her heart to connect with her mate – he who
infuriated her; he who had been cut; who had cut her; the one to
whom she'd given all of herself on an act of faith; who had risen
to the challenge and given her back much more.

She raced out
of the open door, down the stairs, out the house and into the wood
towards the lake – that's where he'd be – that was his safe
place.

She couldn't
get there fast enough.

Left at the
oak tree, through the hedge … she could smell the lake, and it
smelled like Lawrence. He smelled like home.

The field
dropped away at the end of the path and she knew that she'd reached
it. Another small path to the left, heading downwards, carried his
scent.

She hurried
down it, going slower this time as it was so steep, keeping nose to
ground so she wouldn't veer away from her destination. It took
fucking forever, but eventually, the path petered out onto level
ground and widened until she was standing at the foot of what
looked like a quarry, pine trees rising up along its steep walls at
every angle she looked.

A pair of
prosthetic legs lay to her left, high up on the bank. Murky green
water stretched out in front of her and … there he was.

Lawrence
front-crawled towards a rock, where he finally stopped, using it as
support.

Riding that
split-second, euphoric pain she was getting used to fast, she
shifted back into her human body and jumped into the lake from the
shallow bank, using her legs to propel her forward until the lake
bed grew deep enough for swimming.

She dove, and
swam towards Lawrence.

He greeted her
with a small smile, and a slightly pensive look.

Oh, no you
don't – no more crappy smiles.

She launched
herself into his one free arm, careful not to dislodge the other
from its hold on the rock; her lips found his and she wrapped her
legs around his hips.

He moaned into
her mouth.

“Thank you,”
she whispered.

“I meant it. I
meant every word I wrote.”

“I know. Thank
you.” Her kisses landed on his cheeks, his chin, his brow… “So,
this is your safe place?”

His smile
widened. “It's the one thing I can do better as a man than a wolf –
even as half a man.”

“Swim?”

“Yeah.”

“Not the only
thing…” They both groaned when she squeezed his growing erection
between her thighs.

“I need you,
Lawrence … I need you inside me.” Simple words, but they carried a
truth too deep to articulate. They hadn't joined for days. “I
missed you last night.”

“I wanted to
be with you – by god, I did – but I had to make sure the pack was
all right, as well as our impromptu visitors, and Pete, then the
clean-up operation … and I knew you had Ryan and Taylor. Last
night's full moon was the last thing I wanted for your first
change. I'd already taken down four Tridents after I told you to
run, and then I saw the storm and I knew you were in trouble. I
wanted nothing more than to spend last night with you – I was—”

“You were
being a good king.” She nibbled the side of his jaw. Shadows lay
under his eyes, giving away the extent of his exhaustion;
everything he'd had to take care of; every loose end he'd had to
tie up… “Do I have you now?”