Rivals (Shifter Island #2) (6 page)

“I won’t,” Aaron said. “She’s not threatening me, Daniel. She’s not threatening anyone.”

Something had changed, Abby saw. The elders had been stern before; now they were angry. Threatening. And Daniel—the very sight of him made her flesh crawl.

She’d seen enough movies and TV shows, and had witnessed enough real-life encounters, to know that if Aaron didn’t obey Daniel’s instructions quickly, there’d be hell to pay.

Almost holding her breath, she turned toward Aaron to see what he’d do, hoping she was misunderstanding the whole situation.

“Leave her,” Caleb said.

“And what happens to her then?” Aaron demanded. “What do you intend to do with her?”

He moved to his haunches, taking a position between her and the elders, so that she was looking at his back. She blinked a couple of times, unsure of what she was seeing: an odd movement of the muscles of his shoulders and back, something that made his neck look both shorter and longer.

He was going to turn into a wolf again.

And that couldn’t end well, if he intended to threaten or even attack the elders. Daniel might very well tear him to pieces.

No; Daniel
would
tear him to pieces.

“We mean her no harm,” Caleb replied, his voice almost emotionless. “She’ll be looked after, until we can return her to the mainland.”

Abby couldn’t bring herself to look at any of them. Certainly not at Daniel. She tried not to think about what they really intended to do with her, now that she knew they were all wolves.

I’ve seen TV!
she wanted to scream.
You’re just telling him that so he’ll cooperate!

“You said you’d remain at your father’s home,” Daniel said in a voice honed as sharp as a razor blade. “And that this human would remain at Granny Sara’s. Yet here you are. You’re untrustworthy, Aaron. You cannot be relied upon to keep your word. You need to be confined.”

“I’m no more guilty than any of you,” Aaron told him. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t be confined, Daniel.”

“Come NOW!” Daniel bellowed.

The sound seemed to make the entire landscape around them reverberate. Abby, who had experienced a small earthquake during a vacation trip out West, thought this felt almost the same—like the ground was shuddering underneath them. As if to bear that out, a shower of leaves fluttered down from the trees, and she heard a sharp cry of protest from a bird.

Slowly, Aaron got to his feet. He didn’t take all of his attention away from Daniel and the elders as he extended a hand toward Abby, an offer to help her stand up. She grasped his hand tightly, but not because she needed the help; it was the contact she wanted, the comfort of his touch.

“I’ll go with you,” he told the elders, turning away from Daniel. “As long as you give me your word as elders of the pack that she’ll be taken care of… and that you won’t take her anywhere off the island.”

“She has no place here,” said Mason.

“Yesterday, you were willing to consider the question. Yesterday, you were going to give her a chance.”

The two elders did nothing but blink.

“Swear it,” Aaron insisted. “I’ll go nowhere with you unless you give me your word that Abby won’t be taken off the island.”

Finally, Caleb offered him a small, curt nod.

Aaron sucked in a breath that Abby could hear as he turned to her and cupped her cheek with his free hand. “Go back to Granny Sara’s and stay there,” he said quietly. “Don’t go any farther than the toilet house, no matter how much you think you need to. I know Micah is a nuisance, but he won’t harm you. Stay there in Granny’s care until we straighten this out.”

Though he didn’t address them, he was clearly talking to the elders when he said, “We
will
straighten this out, because this is absurd, and you well know that. I didn’t attack my brother. I would never attack my brother. Each time you bother accusing me, you’re ignoring the one who did attack him.”

Then he leaned in and brushed a kiss across Abby’s lips. “Tell Sara what’s happened. If she doesn’t already know.”

He gave her a look of great regret as he followed the elders away from the little clearing.

After he had disappeared from sight, her head began to spin.

For a moment, she was unsure how much time had passed. A minute? An hour? When she focused on listening, she thought she could still hear Aaron’s voice, but was that her imagination? Something inside her told her to run after him—that without him, she wouldn’t even be able to breathe—but he’d instructed her otherwise.

This was a thousand times worse than yesterday. Yesterday, she’d felt more or less all right at Granny Sara’s, until Micah had gotten on her nerves. But today, knowing that Aaron was really in trouble…

“Come with me,” a voice said.

It was someone she didn’t know, a young woman with dark hair woven into two thick braids. The newcomer didn’t seem either friendly or hostile, but she was the last person Abby wanted to follow anywhere. She had no idea where the girl would take her. To Granny Sara’s? Or to a boat, to be taken off the island?

Or to be dumped into the middle of the ocean?

“Why should I?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“My name is Katrin. I’m Aaron’s friend. Come. You can’t stay here alone.”

Abby shook her head.

The young woman frowned at her, nostrils flaring, clearly distressed. Abby wanted to say something to the effect of,
You’re not the boss of me!
—but she realized that would sound incredibly childish. They had their own rules here. The rules of behavior that she was used to, things like civil liberties and freedom of speech, might not fly here. Being so close to the coast, the island was certainly part of the United States… wasn’t it? But maybe the wolves didn’t see it that way.

For all she knew, they were allowed to
eat
her if she broke too many of their rules.

“I’m supposed to go back to Granny Sara’s,” she said as firmly as she could, hoping that Katrin would believe that was something the elders had said. “I can find my own way back there.”

Katrin made a face. “Follow me,” she said sharply, then turned on her heel and stalked off through the woods.

Abby couldn’t have said exactly why she caved in, but she followed.

“You can’t honestly believe this,” Aaron said.

They’d brought him to the gathering house, the only place in the settlement with locks. The place that mainlanders would identify as a jail. There, he was surrounded not only by elders, but by a good many of the younger wolves, both male and female. From the way they were looking at him, it was clear that most of them had already convinced themselves that he was guilty.

“We’ve searched the entire area,” said Angus, one of the younger ones. “There are no signs of another attacker.”

“Which doesn’t make me guilty!”

The place was full of strong scents: anger, a sense of betrayal, the need to fight. More than anything, it made Aaron feel a surge of despair, because this was the kind of rush to judgment that was so common among the humans—and almost unheard of among the wolves.

“You fought with him,” said someone at the rear of the group.

“It was a quarrel,” Aaron insisted. “Nothing more than a quarrel. I don’t think a moon has gone by since we were born that we haven’t quarreled about something. It’s the way we are.”

“Then give us another name. Tell us who
is
guilty.”

Aaron’s gaze moved a little to the left, to fall on the wolf who’d all but dragged him here. The wolf who’d terrorized Abby, who’d stormed into Aaron’s family home as if he owned the place.

“Your anger will undo you, Daniel,” he said quietly.

Before his eyes, Daniel grew taller, wider. His wolf was just below the surface, moving beneath Daniel’s skin. “You dare accuse me,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “You risk a great deal, young wolf.”

“You’re the only one I’ve seen consumed with rage today.”

And it was burning white-hot now.

“Enough of that,” Caleb said. “We will not hear—”

“You won’t let me criticize the watcher?” Aaron scoffed. “You know his temper, Alpha. These last few months, it’s grown worse and worse. Luca may have done something as simple as ignore him when they crossed paths.”

“He is the watcher,” Mason announced. “His instructions are to be obeyed without question.”

“Even if he—”

The persistent Angus cut Aaron off. “That human has made you stupid. You’re so caught up in the lust of the bond that you’ve lost control of your senses—and your anger. When your brother stood in between you and that female, and said he’d go to the elders, you became enraged.”

Murmurs threaded through the crowd. Sounds of agreement.

None of them were agreeing with Aaron.

Aaron’s stomach did a slow roll. He had to force himself to speak, to continue to stand up for himself, since no one else was willing to do it.

“Since you weren’t there when I was
talking
with my brother,” he snarled at Angus, “and I find it unlikely that he told you what happened, how is it that you know what was said? Are you clairvoyant, now? Or is your hearing so acute that you can hear what’s being said on the other side of the island?”

“You protest too much,” said another voice.

“The pack can’t have this,” said yet another. “Whether Luca lives or dies, Aaron can’t be allowed to remain here, presenting an active threat to all of us. What about everyone else who’s opposed to adding more humans to this population? It’s thinning our bloodline by the day! Will you attack all of us, Aaron? Will you be happy if no one remains alive here except you and that human?”

There was a moment of near silence, then a voice said, “Colorado.”

“Yes, Colorado!”

“Colorado!”

Aaron fought the urge to cower. Colorado was the worst punishment the pack could bestow, other than death; it meant he would never see his family or any of his packmates again, would never be allowed to return to the island. And certainly, they would see to it that he never saw Abby again, no matter what lengths they had to go to in order to ensure that the separation was permanent.

To his knowledge, banishment to Colorado had only happened twice in the long history of the pack, and neither of those wolves had lived very long afterwards.

“I wouldn’t harm my brother,” he insisted. “I love my brother.”

“Perhaps you thought you would be a better head of family than he would,” Angus said.

“That’s absurd.”

“Is it? He has no mate. He quarrels with everything you say.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Who else would do this?” asked another young wolf. “Who else has reason to attack your brother? Name them!”

He could feel their blood lust rising, their need to avenge a terrible wrong. He felt the same need, but they weren’t interested in that; they’d already made up their minds. He groped for something to say that would appease them, at least for the moment, but could think of nothing.

Dear gods. Colorado?

He jammed his eyes shut, mainly to give himself a small sense of privacy so that he could focus his thoughts, but it only made the muttering around the room grow louder, more intense.

After a minute, he heard Caleb say, “We’ll discuss this in council.”

Then Aaron was shoved into a small, windowless room, and the door was locked, leaving him entirely alone.

Abby could barely drink the cup of tea Granny Sara had handed her.

She was only distantly aware of Micah wandering nearby, then sinking again into a crouch in front of the fireplace. All she could think of was Aaron, being led away by Daniel and the two elders, looking more upset than she’d ever seen him.

She almost thought she could sense his feelings, that somehow his emotions were inside of her.

She heard doors open and close, heard things creak and groan, but couldn’t bother to wonder what was happening around her.

None of this would be happening if she’d bothered to ask that old man at Dolphin Cove to point her toward the mainland—if she hadn’t assumed she knew exactly where she was going. If she’d used even a lick of common sense. Luca might not have been attacked, and if that hadn’t happened, Aaron wouldn’t be in trouble now. He’d still be up at the cabin, safe and sound.

Things had been so quiet there. Almost dreamlike.

She tried her best to fall asleep in her chair, hoping she’d wake up in that strange other world again, surrounded by flowers, with Aaron standing there smiling in front of her. But sleep—and that other world—seemed as far away and untouchable as the life she’d left behind on the mainland.

As far away as her former boyfriend, Lane Palmer, who was as unreal to her now as something her imagination had invented.

“How can they believe something like that?” she mumbled. “I don’t know how they could ever think–”

Her hands wobbled badly, and she had to set the teacup down on the floor to avoid spilling tea all over herself.

Micah was little more than arm’s reach away, sitting on the floor with his knees brought up to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs. To Abby he looked like a very withdrawn child, someone who’d never had a very solid grasp on the world. That didn’t mesh at all with the size of him, how tall and muscular he was. If Micah was anything, he wasn’t helpless.

Why don’t you
DO
something??
she wanted to shout at him.

Of course, she could make the same demand of herself. Of Granny Sara. Of Aaron’s grieving parents—and of the unconscious Luca. If Luca would only wake up, she thought furiously, he could answer everyone’s questions. He could tell the elders that his brother wasn’t guilty of anything.

At home, there were lawyers. Was there such a thing here?

She remembered Aaron saying something about an arbitrator, which seemed to mean that some things were discussed logically. That evidence was gathered and presented in some way. That these people didn’t indulge in frontier justice.

If that was true, who should she appeal to?

Who should she beg to help her?

When Sara moved into her line of sight to pick up the teacup off the floor, Abby said in a choked voice, “I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I don’t understand how this is happening. How they can–”

Head still bent, Micah made a grumbling sound.

Granny Sara glanced at him, then shook her head. She took the cup into her little kitchen area and puttered around there, moving some things from place to place, none of it seeming very useful or necessary.

After a couple of minutes Abby struggled to her feet and went to join the older woman; she felt that if she sat in the chair for even a few seconds longer, her brain would explode. But before she could say anything, her eyes filled with tears.

Sara held out a small towel, indicating that Abby could wipe her eyes with it.

“The bond is a complicated thing,” Sara said quietly. “It’s like–” She smiled, then lowered her voice a bit. “Like the surge of hormones when you’re pregnant. The men would laugh about it, except that it happens to them too. It can be overwhelming. Hard to understand. Harder to accept.”

She meant that as a comfort, Abby understood, but the words had an entirely different effect.

“Overwhelming?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Overwhelming in a way that would cause you to attack someone that you wouldn’t normally hurt?”

Sara grimaced.

“Well?” Abby pressed.

“I suppose it’s possible. If the wolf felt that there was a serious threat to his—or her—mate. I don’t know that it’s ever happened.”

“But it’s possible.”

Sara didn’t answer—but that was answer enough.

This time, when she finally managed to surrender to sleep, Abby wasn’t sure she wanted Aaron to show up. Her conversation with Sara had shaken her badly, and she wasn’t sure what she would say to him, how she could ask him if it was true—that the strong emotions of the bond had driven him to attack his brother.

Luca was still alive, according to Sara, but that was really no better than if Aaron had killed him outright.

Who else could he hurt? Sara? Abby herself?

Their children?

One of her co-workers at home was stuck in an abusive marriage, one that forced her to come to work from time to time with bruises on her arms, her face, her legs. On one occasion, Abby had seen the woman with a badly cut lip that she claimed was the result of tripping on the stairs. The thing was, Abby had met the woman’s husband at the company holiday party and had thought he was very charming and funny. For all that she’d tried not to think anything positive about him, he seemed like a nice guy, one she might enjoy being friends with.

Remembering him made her stomach turn.

Could she do that to herself? Stay here with Aaron knowing that he was capable of hurting even a member of his own family, someone he was supposed to love? And just because of an argument?

The flowers around her looked different this time. Darker, smaller. The mist in the distance looked like a cold March fog.

“Abby.”

She didn’t turn toward the sound of his voice. She kept her back to it, and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Abby, what’s wrong?”

“They locked you up. That’s what’s wrong,” she said without turning.

“I’m all right. It’s just a room. We’ll get this straightened out. Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

“Is it?”

“It will. My father won’t let this happen.”

“Is he protecting the family name?”

Aaron was silent for a moment. She could sense him there, though, not far from her, watching her. She wondered if she could make him go away simply by wanting it to happen, but when she tried thinking
GO AWAY!
as loudly as she could, that didn’t happen. He was still there behind her… but the emotion drifting her way had changed. He seemed to feel sad. Disappointed.

“You can’t believe them,” he told her quietly. “You know better.”

“Do I?”

“Of course you do. Everything we have–”

Finally, she turned to face him. “I’ve only known you for a few days. That’s not anywhere near long enough to really know someone. These people have all known you a lot longer than I have. Why shouldn’t I believe what they’re saying? Why shouldn’t I at least consider it?”

“Because you
know
me, Abby.”

He looked as if his heart was close to breaking.

She half-expected that to change to anger, that he’d lash out at her for not taking his side. Her co-worker had confided in a few people that her husband had a hair trigger, that the smallest thing could set him off, particularly if he felt betrayed or embarrassed.

Abby waited, almost holding her breath, but Aaron’s expression didn’t change, nor did the emotion spilling out of him.

“You know me,” he whispered.

She tried to turn away again, but she couldn’t; her heart wouldn’t let her. As foolish as it seemed, she felt as if she
did
know him. Maybe not the small things they hadn’t experienced yet, or talked about—Did he like children? Did he want a lot of them? What were his favorite foods, when he wasn’t at the mercy of his Separation? Who were his best friends?—but she knew what kind of man he was. What he was capable of, and what he wasn’t.

“Come back with me,” she blurted.

He frowned and moved his head a little, as if he meant to shake it.

“Back home,” she said. “If they won’t believe you here, we can leave. We could go anywhere.”

He grimaced.

“If you don’t like where I live,” she pressed, “we’ll pick somewhere else. There are a lot of really beautiful places. We could find something near the woods, so you could… do what you have to do.”

“This is my home, Abby.”

“So, it’s okay for me to sacrifice everything, give up my whole life, to be with you, but you wouldn’t do the same thing for me?”

“It’s different.”

“How is it different? Because I’m not a wolf? Isn’t being together the most important thing? Not where we are?”

She stood her ground for a minute, arms still tightly wrapped around herself although it wasn’t cold here and there was no wind. Aaron looked past her, first to one side, then the other. He was starting to look as lost as a very disappointed child, but she could tell his feelings went far deeper than that. Clearly, there was something about the outside world that made it impossible for him to go there.

“What is it?” she asked.

This time he did shake his head, and he looked so miserable that she had to go to him. When he didn’t object, she slipped her arms around his waist and held him close to her. He leaned his head against hers as he embraced her, each exhale sounding like a sigh.

“We lost someone,” he said. “Someone who fell in love. His name was Jonathan.”

“That won’t happen to you.”

“Some of the younger ones talk about him as if he’s nothing more than a story. But I knew him. Luca and I both did. He was a good friend.”

“Tell me.”

Aaron moved his head to look off into the distance again. “He had a habit of going over to that place you came from. The island with the hotel. He would let his wolf run free and slip around in the bushes to watch the people there. He fell in love with a girl who worked there. The elders forbade him to go back, but he kept doing it. One night a groundskeeper saw him… and shot him.”

“Oh, no. Aaron…”

“The man left him to go get the others, and Jonathan was able to get away, to come back to the island, even though he was dying. He told Luca what had happened. Luca sat with him, out in the woods, until his spirit returned to the beyond.”

“That won’t happen to you. It won’t.”

“The elders use his story to warn us of the dangers of the mainland. Of becoming involved with humans.”

That made Abby bristle. She moved back half a step so she could look at him. “That is just so… so bigoted! That man probably shot Jonathan to protect the guests. A
wolf
, Aaron. Of course he was scared. There are children there. Old people. You can’t condemn every single person in the world because one man got scared.
Oh
,” she blustered, and stomped a couple of steps away from him. “They’re just like my father. And all the other old men in the world. They’re so damned judgmental. You don’t listen to that, do you? Why do you let them decide things like that?”

“Because they’re right.”

“They’re not
right
.”

“What would any human do if they saw me coming close? In my wolf form? The wolves who live on the mainland have to hide, Abby. They live their entire lives in fear of being discovered.”

Before she could get any farther away, he had wrapped her up in his arms again and held her close. Being confined like that made her shake with anger, even though his hold was loose and gentle.

Just like every other…

Then Aaron tipped her head back carefully and kissed her. It was light at first, a gesture of affection and reassurance, but after a few seconds the stress of having been apart took control of both of them and they began to kiss more urgently, as if they were in danger of being torn apart forever. Abby had to force herself not to think of that possibility as she clutched at Aaron’s arms and the back of his shirt. They were both clothed this time, she realized, but that needed to change, and quickly.

She fumbled for the hem of his shirt and pulled it up, struggling with it until he withdrew just enough to help her tug the fabric up over his head. They made short work of getting rid of the rest of their clothing, throwing each piece aside, not caring where any of it landed or whether they could find it again.

That feeling she’d had that he was fragile and wounded was gone now; now he seemed more solid than a mountain, something that could stand up in the face of the most powerful storm.

Together
, she thought.
This is us, together.

They came together urgently, swiftly, Aaron’s hands moving over her soft curves as her hands pressed the hard, muscular planes of his back and shoulders. He gripped her backside tightly, a cheek in each hand, as she stroked the length of his cock, the kiss still not broken. Then he lifted her up, urging her legs to circle him, and thrust inside her with a gasp. Later she would wonder how he managed to thrust without anything to brace her against, without ever losing his hold, but in the moment all she was aware of was that he was
there
, filling her in every way possible, humming deep inside his chest, a noise that sounded like a mixture of a laugh and a purr and a growl.