Seduction (The Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (3 page)

I couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry with me or what he was feeling and I suddenly found myself wishing that Griff were here in the room with us. He had left the room to make a couple of phone calls and for the first time in my life, I felt uncomfortable being alone with Caver after all the things he’d said to me back at the house. I had always viewed Caver as a big brother and he’d really hurt me deeply.

When Griff reappeared a few minutes later, he looked at me and said, “I called your mom, Aspen, and she’s on her way here now.”
I thought he’d already called my mom in the truck on the way here? Who had he been talking to then as he relayed what had taken place as I howled in the front seat?

The confusing thought left my head as quickly as it came and joined the rest of the confusing thoughts that made up the rest of this god-awful day. Either way, I was so relieved that my mom was coming, that I started to sniffle again while silent tears streamed down my face.
 

I needed someone here at the hospital that cared about me instead of being stuck here with these two. I had always considered both of them family but I was obviously sadly mistaken in that long held belief. They didn’t care about me, no one in the pack did. And now Caver and Griff were obviously no different than anyone else who’d treated me with such contempt ever since Roan had left town.

I was floating on a cloud, my head fuzzy and confused from the muscle relaxants and painkillers that they’d pumped into my iv for my dislocated shoulder. The doctor had said that I was going to have to spend the night for observation because he was concerned that I might have a concussion from falling down the stairs.
 

I could hear Griff’s phone, beeping softly in the background. He was getting a lot of text messages from someone.

“I got a text message here for you, Caver,” he said as he grinned wickedly.

“Yeah, and what’s the message?”

“Well, it’s hard to tell because of all the swearing, but from what I can gather, it says, “
You’re going to pay for this, I’m on leave. See you tonight
,” Griff snickered as he read from his cell phone screen.

“Are you freaking serious? Jesus, it was an accident for fuck sake!”

“Yup, afraid so, my friend. Wanna read it yourself?”

The doctor rapped softly on the door and briefly poked his head in to announce that the x-rays were back and my wrist was indeed fractured from the fall. He left the examining room to notify the nurse that I was to be sent down to have a cast put on and then admitted to one of the medical floors for the night.
 

Caver stood up and punched the solid door as soon as the doctor left the room.
 

“Jesus, Fuck!” he ground out.

“Hey don’t look at me, this is all on you buddy. You should have handled this way differently. She’s only a kid for fuck sake. This whole thing isn’t her fault; stop treating her like it is. I realize that you’re upset but you crossed the line today. And now someone’s going to pay you a little visit,” Griff said with glee.

“Could you maybe try and be a little less happy about it, you asshole.” Caver growled as he looked down at me.

 
I was alone, my mom had come and stayed with me until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore but I didn’t mind her absence, as I was high as a kite on narcotics and feeling no pain.

Everything was right in my world, for the moment anyway. I had a nifty pink cast from my knuckles to midway down my forearm and my shoulder didn’t hurt anymore.
 

While it was far from a desirable situation, the drugs gave me a much needed reprieve from my grief over Caver’s cruel words and my realization that Roan was never coming home. I was much too stoned to care about much of anything right now. Time wasn’t a concept that applied to me as I easily drifted back into sleep.
 

I woke up sometime after my mother had left for the night to find Caver, Griff and someone else whose face I couldn’t make out in the shadows at the foot of my bed. I could have been asleep for an hour, five minutes or an entire day. I had no idea.
 

“Hi Aspen, how are you feeling,” Griff said, his voice strained.

“Okay,” I said drowsily.

The person, whose face I couldn’t see, shoved Caver hard towards the head of the bed. He went flying and grabbed my bed rail to keep from knocking over the bedside table. I looked up at him and was surprised to see that he wasn’t perfectly put together like he normally was. His hair was all ratty and sticking up, the front of his t-shirt was ripped with the collar completely torn off but still around his neck. His face didn’t look much better either. He had a deep, bloodied scratch from his nose to his left ear, a swollen black eye and a nasty split in his swollen upper lip.

“Wow, what happened to you? You don’t look very good, Caver,” I giggled dopily, as I tried to turn on my left side to get a better look at him.

Caver didn’t answer but instead he just glared at the two people standing at the end of the bed. One of them, either Griff or the other person, growled a warning at him. It was a low and menacing sound that permeated the space between them.

Caver sighed heavily and immediately turned back towards me and said, “Umm, Aspen, I just wanted to apologize for the things I said at the house today. I was just upset. I didn’t really mean it and I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.”

I smiled at him, the drugs making me feel magnanimous and peaceful inside. “It’s okay, Caver. You’re like my big brother and I love you,” I said as I reached out for his hand on the railing.

He looked down at me, his eyes wide and full of surprise? Regret? Sadness? I couldn’t really tell which as I yawned widely and promptly fell back into a drug-induced stupor.

Things were much different between Griff, Caver and me after that entire “falling down the stairs” incident. I’m not sure what changed for them but they were once again good to me, just as they had been before Roan had left town.
 

I was overjoyed about their sudden change of heart because I had missed them both desperately.
 

Once again they started waiting for me after school and would make time to sit and talk with me for a few minutes before my bus got to the bus stop in front of the auto body shop. They would also come by the house once or twice a month and we would all have a big family meal together.
 

But, other than those times, it was just mom and I. Everyone else in the pack avoided me like the plague.

Chapter 3

~Aspen~

The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but I was wide awake and unable to sleep. Today was the day I was supposed to meet with the lawyer and I was dreading it. My chest felt tight just thinking about it. There seemed to be such an element of finality associated with settling my mother’s will. And that made me uncomfortable.

Intelligently, I knew in my head that my mother was gone but I guess my heart was another matter entirely. I mean, my mother was a Were. A supernatural being with an abnormally long lifespan and healing abilities.

Were
. Now there was a word that turned my stomach. I found that the older I got, just thinking about anything Were related made me feel like barfing. Everything in Spruce Hollow was so abnormal and screwed up but I never really realized it until I moved away from it all. I mean, who wants to live in a town where secrets, packs, mates, Alpha’s and Beta’s are the norm?
Not me, that’s for sure
.
 

I used to think that I loved being part of the pack but then Roan left and everyone shunned me, like I was personally responsible for driving him away.
 

It was an eye opening experience, that’s for sure, because I finally understood that I was never truly part of the pack. I was just some kid that Valerie had adopted in an attempt to fill the void of her lost mate.

I had been in Springbay for a couple of years now, but I was still just as lonely as I had been back home. I had very few friends and no matter how hard I tried, I still hadn’t managed to convince Sorcha to leave her parents farm and move out there with me. While she would visit frequently and sometimes stay for weeks at a time, she was unwilling to make the move permanent. I begged her constantly to come and move into my apartment with me but she wouldn’t budge. She called me a “daredevil” and said I was brave for moving so far from home by myself. Ha! I didn’t feel terribly brave. I felt like a scared girl running away from a past that haunted her.
 

And then my mother got sick three months ago and died. Just like that. Three months from diagnosis to death. It barely seemed like enough time to say goodbye. It was tragic but I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. Everyone that I had ever loved always left me in the end.

Overwhelmed and overcome with grief, I sat in the dark and let the tears roll down my face.
I had no one left.

“Now, Miss Greystone, if you could sign here and here, that would conclude our meeting and discharge your mother’s estate.”
 

The lawyer, a brand new graduate from the looks of him, pointed to two lines on the legal document and smiled at me. He was lucky; he was still shiny and new. Life hadn’t chewed him up and spit him out yet.
 

I picked up the pen, smoothed out the paper and carefully signed my name. I took my time. My mother had touched this document, once upon a time, and thought about me as she left all her worldly possessions in my care.
 

I put the pen down and looked up at him with empty eyes as I plastered a fake half smile my face.
 

“On behalf of McQuade and Stevenson, let me offer you our sincere condolences on your mother’s passing,” he said as he held out his hand to me.
 

“Thank you,” I mumbled as I grabbed my purse and walked out of his office. I felt dazed. My mother had left me everything in her will.
The house, the car and her lifesavings.

But I didn’t want it. Any of it.
 

I just wanted her.
 

The park near my mother’s house was finally deserted. I had parked my car on the side of the road and waited until all the kids had gone home for the evening. When the last straggler gathered up their dump trucks from the sandbox and lumbered off for supper, I got out and made my way to the swings.
 

God, I used to spend so many hours here when I was a kid.
 

I sat on my favorite swing, the second one from the end, and swung my legs to get started. When I was a kid, I was convinced that this swing swung the highest out of all of them.
 

And I would know as all the pack kids would have “contests” to see who could swing the highest.
 

This swing had always been my lucky one. I used to swing so high in it, I’d felt like I could spread my arms and fly like a bird.
 

Roan used to push me on the swing for hours, giving me “under ducks” and making me squeal with excitement.

Roan.

Get out of my head asshole.

I jumped off the swing, suddenly irritated and sick to my stomach from the rush of memories associated with this park.

God, I hated this place, I hated all of it. There wasn’t one single place that I could go in Spruce Hollow that didn’t have Roan imprinted on it somehow.

I sat crossed legged on my bed, in my bedroom at my mother’s house with a box full of letters in front of me.
 

Roan’s letters.
 

I figured since I couldn’t stop thinking about him, that I might as well take out the
Box of Pain
and really immerse myself in misery.
 

In for a penny, in for a pound.
 

Roan had written to me every week or two for the first two years after he’d left Spruce Hollow. I would read the letters and then fume about it for a week or so and then toss the letter into a box in the back of the closet.
 

I’d hated him for how he’d betrayed me and left so suddenly…and yet I still saved every single letter he’d sent.
 

His bold penmanship was unmistakable and his letters were typically filled with tales of his new life in the military. He mostly wrote about the people or what they served to eat that day or the places he got to see. It was like he wanted me to be present in his life in some small way. He would ask me how school was going and what the pack members in Spruce Hollow were up to. His letters sounded lonely but I would harden my heart to the surge of caring and concern for his welfare.
 

The problem was that Roan had never once told me that he was sorry for leaving and that burned me raw.
God, how I wanted him to be sorry.
 

Something inside me desperately wanted to hear the words. I wanted him to say that he’d made a mistake and shouldn’t have left home but now he was stuck in the military for the next four years. At least I could have sort of understood that.