Rivals (Shifter Island #2) (3 page)

“The wolves have been here as far back as anyone can remember,” Granny Sara said with a small, pensive smile. “Whether there was just one in the beginning, or a whole community, no one knows. There aren’t any records. No stories. And no one honestly knows how shifters came to be. One day, they simply
were
.”

She’d made cups of tea for herself and Abby, and looked somewhat wistful as she sipped hers. Abby was silent for a minute, drinking her tea, letting her host lead the conversation as she took in as much of the little house as she could from where she was sitting. There was more bright, vibrant color here than in Aaron’s parents’ house: the quilt on the bed, a knitted blanket folded up on the hearth, a framed picture on the wall over the fireplace, several pots of flowers. The blooms made the place very fragrant.

A woman’s house, Abby thought. She saw no sign of a husband.

“How did you come here?” Abby ventured finally.

“From the mainland.” Something passed through Sara’s eyes, but it was gone too quickly for Abby to put a name to it. “We were out ‘adventuring’ and came across this place.”

“We?”

“My sister and I, and her boyfriend.”

“Are they here?”

“No,” Sara said with a sigh. “We camped here for a few days and had a grand old time. We saw no sign of anyone; we thought the place was deserted. There weren’t many people living on these islands at that point, so we thought nothing of it. We had our fun and we went home. But there was something…”

She paused, turning her teacup around in her hands. “Something that kept me awake at night. The feeling that there
was
something here, something important. Something I needed to find out about. So, a few weeks later, I took the boat and came out here alone. Again, I didn’t find anyone, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. I made camp, and the next day he showed up.”

Abby remembered her first glimpse of Aaron, standing outside his cabin, watching her in silence.

“Your… soulmate,” she whispered.

Sara nodded. “His name was Paul. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I told myself I ought to be afraid, out here all alone, but I wasn’t. I knew he’d been watching me while I was out here with my sister, even though we’d seen absolutely no sign of him, and I… Well.” Light twinkled in her pale blue eyes, and she seemed to come close to laughing. “Within a couple of hours we’d done things I’d never even imagined. And I promised never to leave him.”

Paul was gone now, Abby guessed. He’d been the one to leave. No; he was the one who’d died. Without asking the question, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“We had a long life together.”

“Did you go back? Tell your family what you were going to do?”

“Briefly.”

More than asking to be polite, or simply to get to know this woman who had taken her in, Abby wanted a blueprint for what she should do. Sara too had had a life and a family on the mainland, one she’d left behind. Abby thought about her father, her brothers, her job. The apartment she’d been so proud to make her own. None of that seemed to matter now, not when it was stacked up against staying with Aaron.

Even though Aaron wasn’t… human.

“I never—” she said abruptly, then cut herself off for a moment. “I never believed in any of this. In shifters. I’ve heard about them. All my life, I guess. But I never thought it was real.”

Sara asked pointedly, “Didn’t you?”

The question stopped Abby in her tracks. Her first instinct was to say,
No, of course not
, but there was an intensity in Granny Sara’s eyes that made her reconsider. She thought of Sera’s websites, of the stories they contained. Most of them seemed to have been written by people who were outright crazy, or like they’d been posted as a joke, but there were others that sounded genuine. Heartfelt.

Then there were those eyes. Those golden eyes that seemed so familiar.

A distant memory prodded at her, something from a long time ago. She tried to tell herself that she couldn’t get hold of it, that it was too elusive, just a wisp of a thought, but the more she looked at Sara, the closer it came.

“I had dreams,” she said. “When I was little. Before my mother died.”

“About—?” Sara prompted.

“Someone watching me. Not in a creepy way. More like… they were watching over me.”

“Maybe they were.”

The teacup quivered in Abby’s grasp. “I think—there was a night when we were out camping. I got up to go to the bathroom. There seemed to be a lot of light. The moon, you know?” Sara nodded, so Abby stammered ahead. “I felt like someone was watching me, but I couldn’t find anyone. I didn’t want to tell my parents, because I was afraid they’d say we had to go home. So I went back to bed. I’m not even sure it actually happened.”

Sara was smiling wistfully, running a finger around the rim of her teacup.

“Was that—no. That couldn’t have been Aaron,” Abby said. “I was only a little girl. It was almost twenty years ago.”

“Probably not Aaron,” Sara agreed. “But a wolf, almost certainly.”

Abby’s breath left her lungs in a whoosh. “I can’t—I mean—I want to be scared out of my wits. Shouldn’t I be scared out of my wits?”

“Probably.”

“All I can think is that I want him so much. That I’d die without him.”

“It’s the bond,” Sara said.

“So, even if I wanted to leave, even if I
needed
to leave, I’d feel like this? Like if I left, it would feel like someone tore my heart out of my chest?” The cup shivered again. “This is completely crazy. It’s absolutely insane. But I feel like I’m just telling myself it’s insane because I ought to. What I actually feel like is that I’ve come home. That all along, I was supposed to be here, and not… there. On the mainland.”

Sara rested a thin, long-fingered hand on top of Abby’s trembling one. “The best I can tell you is to trust your instincts. Not what you think you’re supposed to do. This has been happening since the beginning of time, in one way or another. Listen to it. It won’t mislead you.”

“Then, I should stay here? Give up everything I have back home?”

“People do it all the time,” Sara said. “They move to other states, other countries. This is no different from, say, moving to Australia. And it’s certainly not as far. You can reach the mainland in less than an hour. But you’ll come to feel that you don’t want to. I sent letters to my family for a while, mostly so they wouldn’t feel driven to come looking for me, but after a couple of years that stopped. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose you’d say. Their lives were too different from mine for us to go on being interested in each other.”

“You just… forgot?”

“Not forgetting, exactly. I loved my family. But I loved Paul more. This place. This life.”

When they fell silent for a minute to finish drinking their tea, Abby could hear voices outside. That seemed odd, because Sara’s house was set far enough back from what passed for a road that they shouldn’t be able to hear anyone who wasn’t shouting. Which meant that whoever it was, was coming close to the house.

To confirm that, someone began to thump on the door.

“Granny Sara!” an unfamiliar voice called out.

Sara looked at the door, then at Abby, and set her teacup down. “Well,” she said as she began to rise to her feet. “Here we go.”

She opened the door to admit someone Abby hadn’t seen before. He had the most stunning eyes she’d ever seen: a deep, crystalline blue. His hair was a deep, rich black, and his shoulders were so massive she thought he might be able to toss her over one of them and swim her all the way to the mainland without even breathing hard. His clothing, dark trousers and a pale green shirt, fit him a little snugly, as if it had shrunk in the wash, but that didn’t seem wrong; instead, it seemed appealing. Sexy.

Now that she stopped to think about it, there wasn’t a single man on this island who wasn’t mind-bendingly sexy—even the older ones.

“This is my grandson, Micah,” Sara said.

Micah dipped his head in greeting, an almost dismissive acknowledgment that Abby was there. “I saw Daniel,” he told his grandmother, a frown deeply etched into his features. His voice was surprisingly soft and tentative for such a big man. “I came to make sure everything is all right. He’s been… more Daniel than usual.”

“With reason, I suppose. Someone has attacked Luca. He’s very badly hurt.”

Micah huffed out a breath. He seemed restless, ill at ease. Like an animal in a cage, Abby thought. “I know,” he muttered.

“Have you been searching with the others?” Sara asked.

It took him a moment to respond. He covered his eyes with his fingers, a gesture that flexed those enormous shoulders. When he lowered his hands, he seemed exhausted and distracted. “It’s crowded in the woods,” he said to the floor. “They don’t need my help.”

“Why don’t you rest, then?”

To the astonishment of Abby, who had gotten up from her chair when he came in, he strode over to her, walked right into her personal space, and began to sniff at her, mouth open, breathing through both his mouth and his nose.

“Hey!” she yelped, and tried to take a step back, but Micah grasped her arm and held her in place. His grip was tight but not painful, and she decided it was something he’d had a lot of practice at doing. He went on sniffing, mostly around her neck, nose all but pressed to her skin. Finally, to Abby’s great relief, he let go of her and stepped back. She had to fight the urge to fling herself under the bed to hide.

He scowled. Then he announced, “You reek of Aaron.”

“I do—”

She’d meant to say
I do NOT
, but… well. She supposed she did. Still, he’d stepped way over the line, and what was even more astonishing, Sara had said nothing to stop him.

When she scowled at Sara, the older woman explained, “When I came here, I got the full investigative treatment. Every single wolf in the pack licked me. Face, neck, arms. One of them was especially interested in my armpits. When I could finally peel myself down off the ceiling, I decided I was lucky they hadn’t all decided to check out my nether regions.”

That weakened Abby’s legs so much that she dropped back down into her chair hard enough to make it creak.

“They
are
wolves, after all,” Sara said mildly. “They’ll sniff you like a dog, every chance they get.”

Abby gaped at her. “Not—no. Not really? They can’t.”

Sara kept the joke going for another few seconds before she shrugged. “It only happens once in a while. But your mate—that’s another story. Not that I imagine you’ll object to it very strenuously.”

She was chuckling again as she moved into her kitchen. When she returned to the hearthside, she was carrying a pair of plates. One of them was heaped with sliced fruit: pears, some melon, and some of the blueberries that seemed to be everywhere on the island. She handed it to Abby, then held out the other plate to Micah. That one was stacked with meat and bread.

“Sit,” she told him. “Eat. And no more sniffing my guest.”

Micah’s eyebrows knit together. “There’s danger in the settlement, Grandmother. I’m ensuring your safety.”

“Even so. No more sniffing.”

Grandmother
, Abby thought. That meant that Sara had given birth to Micah’s mother or father. Unless she was an honorary grandparent?

Uneasy under Micah’s continued scrutiny, she began to nibble at the fruit, half-expecting the door to be flung open again. Heaven only knew who might show up next, and the thought that it might be Daniel made her fumble the plate, sending several of the blueberries skittering to the floor. She watched them roll across the hearth and again wished she could hide under the bed. It would be quiet there, if a little dusty.

“Daniel,” she managed to say. “Who is Daniel? What is he?”

“The watcher,” Sara replied. “I suppose you’d think of him as a constable of sorts.”

“Like… a cop?”

“He’s charged with helping to ensure that everything runs smoothly. He oversees everyday things, most of the time. Tracks down things that go missing. Finds animals that have escaped from the pen. Once in a while he… let’s call it ‘persuades’ an unwanted visitor to leave the island before they can snoop around too much. On the mainland they’d call him our muscle. He’d probably have a job as a bodyguard for someone important. He’d protect any of us to his dying breath. But he does like to throw his weight around.”

He’d done a lot more than that, Abby thought. “He’s the big, bad wolf,” she muttered.

“You could say that.”

Abby hadn’t said it as a joke, and Sara didn’t seem to accept it that way. Neither did Micah.

A while ago, she’d thought this was a simple place. Now it felt anything but simple.

WHO?

The question wouldn’t leave Aaron’s mind. Who would have done something like this? A sharp knife wasn’t difficult to find; nearly all the adults in the pack used them on a daily basis. And poisons could be found readily, out in the woods. It was the combination that was hard to conceive of. Who could possibly be that enraged with Luca?

At the moment, he could be grateful only that his parents were resting, and Abby was safe. But the rest of the settlement—he could only imagine that Daniel’s outrage was making things worse instead of better. More than likely, Daniel had insisting that the young ones all be hidden away, along with the pregnant females and the elderly.

Except for the circle of elders, of course. None of them was likely to allow Daniel to hide them anywhere.

Who?

It could only be an outsider. Had to be an outsider.

A gentle knock broke Aaron out of his thoughts. He didn’t much feel like being interrupted, although all he was really doing was watching Luca lie there as still and cold as if he had already died, but he struggled to his feet and went to the door.

“Aaron,” his visitor said when he opened it.

“Katrin,” he murmured.

“May I—I wanted to know—”

He stepped aside to let her come in, but she ventured only a few steps past the door.

“Is he awake?” she asked in a small voice.

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“No. He hasn’t come around since it happened.”

She looked past him into the bedroom. She didn’t seem surprised by what she saw—maybe she’d prepared herself for it, had conjured up pictures in her mind after she was told what had happened—but it rattled her visibly nonetheless. Aaron gestured toward a chair, but she shook her head.

“Kat—”

Her eyes brimmed with tears, even though she tried to blink them away.
She still cares
, Aaron thought.
Even after all this time.

Born just a few months before he was, Katrin had been a near-constant presence in his life and Luca’s. The three of them had been practically inseparable as children, playing together, attending school together, working together in the fields and with the animals. They’d whispered secrets together, and had explored the island side by side—in fact, it had been Katrin who had first discovered the deep pool in the stream where Aaron had bathed with Abby just this morning.

Later on, it had seemed inevitable—to the three of them, and to most of the rest of the pack—that Luca and Kat would one day become mates. Two or three of the other males had expressed an interest in her, Granny Sara’s grandson among them, and they had pursued her as best they could, but Katrin had always had an eye only for Luca.

For a while, he seemed to reciprocate, enough so that she’d begun to make plans.

Then, somewhere along the line, Luca’s interest in Kat had cooled.

No; Aaron knew exactly when that had happened: when Luca returned from the mainland.

After he’d spent time with the human girl, Allison.

At first, Katrin had tried over and over to rebuild their relationship, but Luca would have no part of that, and finally she had been reduced to being brittlely polite to him and the rest of Aaron’s family whenever they met. The best Aaron could get out of her these days was a few casual words about the weather or the state of the gardens.

Now, here she was, pale and trembling.

He took a closer look and saw lines around her eyes and smudges of deep purple underneath them. Surely Luca, despite how stubborn he was, would appreciate her loyalty and concern in the time to come, as he struggled to recover. Because Luca
would
recover; Aaron told himself that very firmly. His brother was not going to die.

“He lost a lot of blood,” he told Kat, careful to keep any hesitation out of his voice. “The healer has put poultices on his wounds, and stitched some of them. His life signs aren’t steady, but he’s still alive. He’ll recover. It will take time, but he’ll survive.”

The healer had said nothing of the sort. What she’d actually said was, “All we have left is hope.”

Kat grimaced and looked away, hugging herself tightly on a day that was exceptionally warm for this time of year.

“If you’d like to sit with him,” Aaron offered, “I don’t think Mother and Father would object to that.”

“No,” she stammered.

“He might respond to the sound of your voice.”

“Have you forgotten the last four years, Aaron? He’s not interested in the sound of my voice.”

“You may be wrong.”

Behind her lay the rest of the settlement, the place Aaron had lived for all but a few months of his life. It had always felt safe to him, even during the worst of storms, a place of strength and support. As a child, he’d felt free to explore and play, to sniff out small prey, to gather wildflowers for his mother, to chase his brother and Katrin and the other young ones through the woods and up and down the paths between the houses. This was a good place.

He had to do what he could to ensure it stayed that way.

“Did you see anything?” he asked Katrin. “At the time Luca was attacked. Did you hear anything? Anything at all?”

“Nothing.”

“Where were you?”

That seemed to startle her. “At home. Why does it matter?”

“Because you were his friend, Kat. I would think you’d want to help find the one who did this.”

Katrin’s shoulders stiffened. The muscles of her face moved a little, as if her wolf had come close enough to the surface to begin a shift. “I was his friend until he threw me aside,” she said bitterly. “Why should I worry about him now? Half the pack is searching the woods for clues. You don’t need me. Leave me alone, Aaron. Don’t drag me into this.”

But here she was, desperately staring toward Luca’s bedroom.

“Come in, Kat,” Aaron said. “Don’t be stubborn. Your strength will help him heal. He needs that now.”

“I can’t.”

“Katrin—”

But her answer was still
no
. Instead of coming farther into the house, she jerked her head. “I didn’t come for this,” she said stiffly. “The elders sent me with a message. They want to see you at Caleb’s house. And—” Her voice caught. “You should be wary of Daniel. His wolf has broken through three times.”

Before Aaron could respond, she turned and left the house.

He watched until she was gone from sight, annoyed with his brother in a way that was both new and old. How many times had they quarreled over what Luca had done to Katrin? And this morning, Luca had had the nerve to tell Aaron what he ought to do about his own mating bond. He wanted badly to shake his brother awake, argue with him all over again, then strike him unconscious.

Wake up, you stubborn heap of stench
, he thought furiously.

Then something broke inside his chest and he could barely stand. In that place that only Aaron could reach, his wolf was baying in mourning and fear. It wanted comfort, the presence of their mate.

But there was no time for that now. They had responsibilities: to Luca, to their family, to the pack.

Barely aware of what was going on around him, he made his way to the alpha’s house, the largest in the settlement, where some of the elders’ meetings took place. He knew without asking that although many of the younger wolves were out combing the woods for clues, Caleb would be at home, and he wasn’t wrong. In fact, Caleb was there with Mason, the other elder who had come to confront Aaron and Abby at the edge of the woods.

The two aging but still powerful and virile men had Aaron sit down with them at the meeting table and spent the next couple of minutes studying him. What they were looking for, Aaron wasn’t sure. He did his best to remain calm and quiet.

“We’ve found nothing,” Caleb said finally.

We
, Aaron thought. As if Caleb and Mason had done the searching themselves. That was the way of the elders, taking credit for things the younger wolves had done and thinking nothing of it.

“He must have faced his attacker,” Aaron said quietly. “The worst of the wounds are in his chest.”

“Does someone have reason to challenge him?” Mason asked.

Me
, Aaron thought, but he was careful to keep that idea deeply buried. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“He’s–”

“Rude and stubborn. Sometimes. I know.”

“There’s been no conflict over a female?”

That same question again—and it was one that Aaron still hadn’t answered to his own satisfaction. It was one of the few things that brought wolves together in battle. Over the years, it had been fairly common for more than one male to be attracted to a female, and the other way around. The fights were seldom life-threatening; only one wolf had ever died as a result, years ago, and that had been largely an accident. But a good many had walked away with wounds that took weeks or months to heal—and many more had walked away with a badly damaged ego.

This? This went beyond anything Aaron had ever seen before. This was no struggle over a female.

“I was with my brother a few hours ago,” Aaron admitted. “Up at the stream, near the place of Separation. He said nothing about a female. He was annoyed and blustering, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Annoyed about your human?” Caleb guessed.

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“With Granny Sara. My father suggested that she go there, and Daniel agreed. She’ll stay there until the danger has passed.”

Caleb’s nostrils flared a little. “You have her scent all over you. You’ve mated, not long ago.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never taken you to be a fool, Aaron,” the alpha said, rising from his chair. “I assume you won’t suddenly become one. You know the safety of the pack is paramount, no matter what the threat is. Whether it’s a lone human woman or an army of invaders, a shortage of water or a failed crop, the pack comes first. That’s the only way we survive.”

Aaron drifted a hand over the scarred tabletop, a surface that had seen claws come out many a time, and had had innumerable objects slammed down on it. “I wouldn’t have brought her here if I thought she was a threat to the pack. We both feel the pull of the bond, Alpha. She would do nothing to hurt me. My mate would do nothing to hurt me.”

He stressed the word
mate
, thinking it might have an effect—and it did.

Caleb’s own mate had died years ago, in his arms. It was a subject that still tugged at the alpha’s heart; everyone in the pack was aware of that. They broached the subject of Lisabeth only in the gentlest of ways, unless they wanted Caleb’s fangs to make an appearance.

Lisabeth would have thrown herself into the sea rather than hurt Caleb. She’d been the tenderest of mates, the most devoted. Abby, he was sure, would be the same—given the chance.

Certainly Caleb had seen that in her, had picked that up in her scent.

Caleb stared at the closed front door for a while, fingernails lightly scratching across the tabletop. “I can’t help but think it’s not a coincidence, Aaron,” he said distractedly. “For this human to come here, and your brother being attacked at virtually the same time. That doesn’t seem coincidental to me.”

“Humans have come here before,” Aaron said.

“But not–”

“That would make sense only if someone had come after her, someone who thought she was in danger. That Luca was a threat to her. How would they think that? He was only with her for a few minutes, and I was there the entire time. It would make more sense for someone like that to come after
me
.”

Mason interrupted crossly, “Humans make irrational judgments.”

“And we don’t?”

Both elders bristled at that, but Aaron didn’t let it cow him. He shook his head firmly.

“We’ll talk to her,” Caleb said.

“With me,” Aaron replied. “If you speak to her, I need to be there. She’s not on trial.”

Mason reminded him, “She’ll need to come before us anyway. You both will. We will need to make a determination, young wolf. There’ll be no joining of the two of you unless we approve. After your brother’s attacker has been found and dealt with, you’ll come before us for examination, and we’ll decide whether this human can remain among us.”

Aaron took a slow, deep breath. “Yes. I’m aware.”

“There is procedure for a reason, Aaron.”

“I’m aware of that too.”

Slowly, he got up from the table, giving the two elders a chance to object. To his great relief, neither of them did, so he took a couple of steps toward the door.

“Both of us will cooperate,” he said. “I know you have only the best interests of the pack at heart.”

He spent the next couple of hours searching the woods himself, occasionally crossing paths with other members of the pack—some of them in human form, and some of them shifted into their wolves. None of them had found anything helpful, a situation that had made some of them angry enough to squabble among themselves.