Red (22 page)

“
What about the short fuse
and uncontrollable aggression?” he continued.

Oh, like it took a genius to figure out I’d
wanted to kill Amber.

“
If I’d been closer to my
first transition when my mother was killed, I’d have completely
lost it. As it was I nearly killed a guy at school for making a
smart ass remark about my mother leaving. Because we couldn’t
release the truth, that she’d been shot as a wolf. That’s why I was
expelled. Because I put the guy in the hospital. In traction. I was
lucky to avoid prison.”

If he was a wolf, he was doing nothing but
proving my point. If he was a wolf, as I was, then we
were
violent, we
were
dangerous. There was every reason to cut
things off before they ever got to that point, before I could lose
control.

“
Look, Elodie, I don’t know
what kind of fucked up information you’ve been living with, but
there’s no reason to kill yourself because of this. What you’re
experiencing is perfectly
normal
for a werewolf. You’ll go
through transition and then you
learn to control it
. You
won’t be a danger.”

It was almost like he was in my head,
reading my jumbled thoughts. A frightening prospect in and of
itself. But what he was saying, what he was offering . . .

“
It can’t be true,” I
whispered.

“
Why is it so hard for you
to just accept this?” He actually shook me, his voice snapping with
frustration.

“
Because it invalidates my
entire family history! It makes every goddamned piece senseless and
horrible,” I shouted. “Because it means that eighteen bright,
vivacious women
died
for nothing. Suffered for
nothing.
”

The frustration left his face, replaced with
a dawning realization. “Not just them, but you.”

I jerked free of his hands and spun to pace.
“Yes, me. If I believe you, then everything I’ve done, everything
I’ve sacrificed and denied myself meant nothing. I’ve lived this
way for
nothing
. My whole life, I’ve tortured myself for
nothing
. I might have
killed myself for nothing.
” Oh
my head ached. I shoved both hands in my hair, gripping, pulling, I
didn’t know which. I just wanted the pain to go away. All of
it.

“
Just believe what I’m
telling you, and all that stops. Just believe me and put all that
behind you.” The calm, reasonable tone cut like a knife, through my
beliefs, through my fears. And just like the knife, I shied away
from it.

It’s not that simple.

“
Yes, it
is
that
simple.”

Something burst inside me. Whatever dam I’d
built to hold back the tide of emotion so I could keep moving, keep
functioning, simply shattered. My legs buckled. I started to fall,
but Sawyer caught me, taking my weight, tucking me close as the
full body quakes hit. I shook so hard in his embrace I wondered
that I didn’t break. My chest felt tight, my throat raw, and I
couldn’t
breathe
. I realized I was crying. Great, wracking
sobs, without making a sound. A silent sort of scream while my
world completely imploded.

In a nuclear explosion, after the blinding
flash of light, there is a shock wave that wipes out everything in
its path before the accompanying sound ever catches up. For that
span of time, it’s like the world is deaf because the shock travels
faster than the speed of sound. Silent destruction. I don’t know
how long I was caught up in my own shock wave before I realized
that Sawyer, currently the only solid thing in my reality, was
speaking.

I couldn’t understand words at first. Didn’t
try. It was easier to focus on his tone and stay curled into a ball
around the center of my pain. The rumble of his voice vibrated into
my cheek, my side, everywhere I pressed against his chest, until
degree by bare degree, my body began to unknot. The shaking began
to ease. And my ears started to work again.

“
You’re not alone anymore,”
he whispered into my hair. “I’m here.”

I lay still against him. Listening.

He kept saying it, over and over. And it was
the most beautiful, wonderful thing I’d ever heard. Screw
poetry.

I opened my eyes. We were on the floor, with
me cradled in Sawyer’s lap. Somewhere along the way I’d dropped the
flashlight. It was pointed off toward the back of the cave, so when
I lifted my head, his face was in shadow. The eyes that studied me
now were brown, no longer wolfish. He ran a hand down the length of
my hair.

“
Hey,” he said softly. One
corner of his mouth crooked in a smile. “Welcome back.”

My hand shook when I reached out to touch
his cheek. I was so far beyond exhaustion it wasn’t even funny. But
I feathered my fingers along his jaw, brushing the unsmiling corner
of his mouth, which curved in response.

I wanted to say something to express my
gratitude for what he’d done, for his persistence and his belief in
me. For changing my life. For
saving
my life. But I couldn’t
think of the words. So I kissed him instead.

Just the barest brush of lips. Almost as if
part of me was afraid he would disappear if I pressed too hard. As
if I’d find out this was all a dream. But his hand slid up my back
and into my hair and he pressed closer. Not a demand, just . . .
solid and real. His mouth slanted over mine and I lost myself,
happy, for once, not to have a plan or know what comes next. Just
content to be here, with him.

Eventually he broke away, brushing the hair
back from my face, tracing his thumb over my lower lip. “One of
these days I’m going to kiss you when you’re not crying.”

I choked out a laugh. “I’m sorry.”

He pressed another kiss to my temple and ran
a hand down the length of my back. I found myself arching into his
touch, comforted.

“
I propose we get more
comfortable for the Q and A portion of this program.”

It occurred to me then that he was sitting
on the floor of the cave with no back support.

“
Oh! Yeah.”

I wish I could say I scrambled up, but the
truth was my legs were wobbly as a newborn foal’s. It took a couple
of attempts. Sawyer was the one who grabbed the sleeping bags and
headed for the alcove in the back. He was already unzipping his
when I picked up and redirected the flash light

“
What are you
doing?”

“
While you had the good
sense to bring a mid-weight sleeping bag in which you will not
roast alive, I grabbed what was immediately available. I’m from
Montana, remember? This puppy is for sub-zero temps. Which kind of
sucks in Tennessee, except that it means more padding.”

“
Oh.”

He flipped it out, then reached for mine to
do the same. Crawling to the middle, he stretched out and patted
the space beside him. “C’mon. I don’t bite. Usually.” He flashed a
cheeky smile.

I really should not have had the mental
energy left for the thoughts that remark conjured. To hide my
embarrassment, I knelt to untie my boots. I stepped out of them and
stripped off my socks, wincing as my bare feet hit the hard floor.
With luck this miraculous sped up healing would clear up those
stone bruises and cuts by the time I woke up tomorrow. Today.
Whatever.

I tried not to think too hard as I crawled
across the sleeping bags into Sawyer’s open arms. Too much had
passed between us tonight for this to be awkward. If he was okay
with the fact that I’d just totally fallen apart, I wasn’t going to
question it. So I snuggled in, as I’d often dreamed of doing, and
he tugged me even closer, tangling our legs. It felt so freaking
good to be off my feet, I nearly moaned. His chest was warm beneath
my cheek and surprisingly smooth. I totally would have expected a
werewolf boy to be really hairy. Thankfully I had enough brain
cells left to prevent myself from voicing that observation out
loud.

“
So you’re . . . ” I didn’t
even know how to ask the question.

“
A wolf. Like you.
Yes.”

More mental implosions. Sawyer was my wolf.
The wolf who had risked his life to save me last night. The wolf
who had bled in my kitchen. As billboards for interest and
affection go, those were pretty damned big ones.

“
I never . . . I didn’t
even think . . . ”

“
Don’t tell me that
brilliant brain of yours rejected the notion of a curse in favor of
genetics and never went beyond that to think that there were more
of us.”

“
More?” I said faintly, my
brain drawn back to the impossible situation in which I found
myself. Not the last. After all the isolation, the notion that
there were more just didn’t seem possible.

“
Sure. I mean, we’re not,
like, rampant, but there are pockets of us here and there. At least
a few hundred across North America.”

The rumble of his voice against my cheek
tied pleasant knots in my belly.

“
A few
hundred?
” I
squeaked.

“
Sure. Dad could tell you
more about it than I can. He’s always been more interested than
me.”

“
Wait, your
dad?
Then you didn’t inherit this from your mother?”

“
From both of them. Which
is the
normal
way of things. The fact that you come from a
lengthy matrilineal line with human fathers is nothing short of . .
. miraculous. I’ve never actually heard of that before. And it
probably explains some of your quirks.”

“
Quirks?”

“
Why I didn’t know right
off what you were. I should’ve been able to smell you. Though that
may be because you haven’t shifted yet. The thing is, when we met
there was nothing about you that tipped me off. Except for—” He cut
himself off.

“
Except for what?” I
asked.

“
You calm the beast,” he
muttered. “My beast, I mean. The wolf inside me. It’s restless. And
when I first came here, it was angry. But even that first time I
talked to you it . . . calmed. A—another wolf might have been able
to do that. But a human? No.”

It felt like there was something else there,
something he left out, but he was still talking.

“
By rights I should have
stayed away from you. Far away. But I just couldn’t. And then I
started seeing signs here and there. Little things. Nothing I could
definitively say yes or no about. So I . . . Don’t get
mad.”

“
After what you’ve done for
me, I think you get some latitude,” I observed.

“
I followed
you.”

My body went immediately tense, as if he’d
plucked a bow. “Oh.” I couldn’t think what else to say to that. It
explained how he’d found this place. “So that whole conversation we
had about me feeling like I was being stalked?”

He was stroking down my back again, trying
to soothe. “Some of that was probably me. But not all of it. Not
after last night.”

I groaned. “Okay I vote the topic of who’s
trying to kill me gets tabled until tomorrow. I don’t have enough
brain cells left for that.”

“
Fine with me.”

I relaxed again. “When did you know for
sure?”

“
Your confrontation with
what’s-her-name. You’re not normally aggressive. That on its own
would have been evidence that the wolf was ascending, but your eyes
were the clincher. I was planning to talk to you about it this
afternoon before . . . well before your dad showed up and things
got out of hand.”

I tried to imagine what that conversation
would have been like and failed.

“
Do you think he’d really
have shot me?” Sawyer asked.

“
I wish I could say no, but
I don’t know for sure. I haven’t ever seen him like that before.
Ever.”

“
I thought he was going to
hurt you.” Now he was the one with tension thrumming under his
skin. “You got in the truck and I couldn’t
do anything
. I
thought I was going to be too late. And then when I got there and I
heard—” He shuddered. “I can’t . . . lose you.”

I was too tired to process the implications
of that, to think about ramifications or what it meant for us
beyond this moment. So I said the only thing I could. “You
won’t.”

~*~

Sawyer

I heard the growling before I was even fully
awake. A low, menacing rumble that had me rolling, covering Elodie
with my body as I answered in kind, looking around for the
threat.

Then I realized that the rumbling was my
stomach.

I blinked, pushing the wolf back, and looked
down at Elodie. She lay very still beneath me, eyes now very wide
and awake, fixed on me. I could feel the shallow rise and fall of
her chest against mine and the wolf came back for entirely
different reasons. I wanted her mouth, to drown in the taste of
her. I wanted my hands on that lithe, lean body, to lose myself in
the feel and scent of it. I just plain wanted her. My mate.

Too soon.
I shoved it back again.
“Sorry. False alarm.” I rolled off her and waited for the
backpedaling and awkwardness.

She exhaled. “Nice to know you’re on guard.”
She sat up and did some kind of yoga shoulder stretch that
plastered her t-shirt against her breasts.

I looked away.

My stomach lodged another protest.

“
I was going to ask if you
were hungry, but your stomach is speaking for you, it
seems.”

I widened my nose to read her. No fear, no
discomfort. She just smelled sleepy and comfortable. And my scent
was on her from head to foot. My mouth curved in smug satisfaction
at that. Didn’t matter that nothing had happened but sleep. She was
mine. And apparently she was okay with it. Would she be if she knew
what that actually meant?