Silver Wolf Clan (6 page)

“So, listen,” Francine said, unwrapping her hands. “My son is your age and I’ve told him all about you, and he would love to meet up for drinks.”

Uh oh. How did she explain she was completely unavailable for blind dates for the rest of her life in as polite a way as possible? She didn’t have many friends after the meltdown of the year before, and Francine was nice to talk to. If she hid her crazy well enough, maybe she could keep her.

Morgan zipped the bag up and took a long drink of cool water from the fountain. Such a little staller she’d become. Water dribbled down her chin and she wiped it with the back of her forearm. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I have way too much on my plate right now to date anyone. It wouldn’t be fair to them.”

Francine sighed and searched her steadily with her dark eyes. “Don’t wait forever, child. You deserve happiness. Your sister would want that for you.” She waved and left without another word.

Morgan’s stomach went cold, like a patch of ice in some frozen Arctic tundra. How did Francine know what her sister would want? How unfair, that she would assume the thoughts of the dead.

She should have died that night, not Marianna, who had a daughter to live for. No, she couldn’t just go happily on. Her self-inflicted punishment for the unfairness of Marianna’s death would be loneliness.

Rage turned into a scalding ember in her soul, and she reared back and blasted the nearest bag with a clenched fist. It rocked and sprung back, but Morgan was already gone.

“You okay?” Todd asked as she bolted for the door.

It was kinder not to turn around. He didn’t deserve her anger.

She walked crisply for the parking lot around the side of the building, head down, as if the cracks in the battered pavement held a roadmap for how to ease a tormented heart.

“You got a light?” a man asked from behind.

She searched the gym bag for her keys. “No,” she replied in a clipped tone without turning. She’d never smoked a cigarette in her life.

As she reached for the door to the truck, she was launched backward. She would have screamed, if it weren’t for the shock of hitting concrete riddled with broken glass. The keys splashed into a puddle of rainwater beside the truck and the tiny pocket knife on the keychain beckoned in the dim light. Salvation, if only she could reach them.

The man dragged her toward the darkest alleyway. She kicked and fought, loosening his grip only to have him replace it with one more determined. His fingers dug into her ankles, and the gravel scraped skin from her back where the shirt slid up. She dragged air into her lungs to scream but the large man was on her. His foul breath skittered across her face as he clamped a dirty hand over her mouth, found her throat with his relentless fingers. She couldn’t breathe, and thrashed as he yanked her behind a blue metal Dumpster. What air molecules she managed to drag through her nose stank of garbage and waste.

This wasn’t happening, this wasn’t happening! Muffled sounds screeched from her throat but they would never be enough. His belt jingled as he tried to remove it with one hand, and she clawed at his face and arms and desperately sought purchase with her knees.

And then he was gone.

The man flew backward into the brick of the next building. His body made a dull thud as it hit, but he recovered and crouched defensively. Morgan followed his fear filled stare. A man stood, tensed and aggressive, back to her. He was tall, over six foot, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist. The most inhuman snarl ripped from his throat, and she gasped and sank as far as the brick against her bleeding back would allow. That sound. She’d heard that sound before. It visited her nightmares.

The attacker ran, and her rescuer tensed to follow. He stopped and glanced to the side, as if he couldn’t leave. His barely offered profile could never hide all of who he was. Not from her.

She was hallucinating. She had to be! He’d died in the woods. Search parties had looked for his body for weeks, and found nothing. They’d thought she was crazy. Said she’d made him up, but here he was in a dark alleyway, the man who had saved her all those hours and days and weeks of mourning ago.

Her voice caught. “Greyson?” she whispered. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

His hair was the same, sandy blond and chin length, but he was skinnier than she remembered, and his face had morphed into something fearsome. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, but even facing the ground, an unnatural sliver of color exuded from them. He was a beautifully dangerous hellion come to earth.

He spun and took off at a clipped pace, and she ran after him, holding a hand to her throat as if it would make her crushed neck better. “Greyson, is that you?”

He plucked the keys from the puddle and opened the door to her truck without a word. She had to see his eyes. For her continued existence, she needed to know without a shadow of a doubt it was him, alive and well and not just some sick figment she’d created to ease her guilt. That she wasn’t just imagining him. “Please, look at me.”

“Best if I don’t,” he murmured in a voice rich and deep, like velvet. His nostrils flared slightly. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m okay, please—”

“Get in!” he yelled. “Can’t you see I need you to get in?” His voice tapered into a low, rumbling noise that sent a chill up her spine.

Fear an overwhelming motivator, she scrambled into the cab of her truck. Her heart galloped like a runaway horse, and he jerked his head to the side.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured before he slammed the door. And then into the shadowed parking lot, he disappeared like he’d never existed at all.

A sob escaped, and she wiped unshed tears from her eyes with the back of her shaking hand. With the truck in drive, she peeled out of the parking lot. The tires screeched as she slammed on the brakes at a pile-up on the main road. Her attacker lay lifeless in the middle of the street, near the front tire of a car, and a crowd slowly gathered around the scene of the accident. Should she stop? What would she tell the police? The man was probably dead already. Did she file a report about his attack and the manimal who saved her? She’d been down that road before and no one had believed her.
Hysterical
, they’d called her. Jaw clenched, she pulled around the scene.

Lesson learned the first time.

* * * *

Seeing her again was out of the question. He was too dangerous and she hated him anyway. He’d given her a second glimpse of the monster. And what if she had called the cops and they were waiting for him? There were a hundred reasons he couldn’t see her again and all of them were imperative to his continuing survival.

An everlasting week passed, and this early Tuesday morning brought a rainstorm which pelted down unyieldingly. It suited his mood, and he went for a run in it, regardless. Tiny, painful raindrop grenades motivated him to run faster than his usual pace. Then he showered and grabbed breakfast to go so he could take it home and eat it there. The apartment was a nice far walk from the gym. He’d eat inside today and skip the stalk.

Keys jangled in his shaking hands as he unlocked the door to his apartment and went inside. His seating options were limited to the worn couch or one of the mismatched chairs scooted under the small, scuffed up kitchen table. Reckless, he pulled one of the dining chairs and it screeched against the tile. He slumped into it, then ran his hands through his hair and watched a beetle’s slow progress across the grout near his shoe. Only the most self-indulgent creature would go back after scaring her that badly. Fear had wafted from her skin in waves, and he was the reason. What right did he have to flaunt what he was in front of someone who’d lost so much to his kind? He stabbed a bite of scrambled eggs and closed his eyes against the repressed pain.

His weekly Morgan stalking was the one thing he looked forward to in this life. Every single thing had fallen apart, but for that hour a week, he was happy. He got to see her. Now, there would be no happiness. No break from the suck. Rain came down harder on the window, encouraging him to stay inside, and he threw an angry glance at it.

Who was he kidding? Wolf was already talking him into going down there. It was only a matter of time. Her classes started in three minutes, and he would miss it if he didn’t shake a leg. He grabbed a hoodie and a pair of sunglasses, locked the door behind him and started off at a run. By the time he was even close, his clothes were soaked clean through.

He loved rain, but new instincts howled for him to be more cautious. Rain muffled the scents and sounds of his surroundings. Everything smelled like ozone, water, and moist earth. With the gym only a couple blocks away, he slowed to a walk. If she’d called the cops, a charging man would look suspicious.

Morgan didn’t even bother dressing in gym clothes. What was the point? She wasn’t there for the workout this time. Greyson had been watching her for a while, of that she was certain. She just had to figure out which way he’d be coming from. That man was a ghost. If he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be. Unless she was clever about it.

Rain barreled down on her position in the doorway of a small market. From that vantage point, she could see the boxing gym and down both side streets. Afraid she’d miss him, she hadn’t sought shelter of an overhanging doorway that would limit her view. She had to know he existed, that all those police officers, detectives, and friends who’d successfully convinced her she was crazy had been wrong.

Upon further thought, a white t-shirt hadn’t been the wisest choice when dressing this morning. The black lacy bra underneath was an even bigger regret. Rain drops dripped from her hair and eyelashes as she squinted at people rushing by.

There. Her heart beat in rhythm with the steady pounding rain. His long strides were hard to miss. He wore jeans that sagged just a little on his tapered waist, and a hoodie hid his downturned face, but it had to be him. Who else would be wearing sunglasses in the middle of a rare torrential Texas downpour?

She launched at him as soon as he was close enough. She’d imagined a reunion with the man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about, dreaming about, obsessing about for the past year. He was the only anchor to the life she’d known. He’d tried his best to stop the horrors from eating her alive and had done it at the risk of his own well-being. He’d sacrificed his humanity for her. Oh, she knew what he was.

Memories, hurt, and anger overwhelmed her at the sight of him. She pounded against his chest over and over again, her fists making wet sounds against the thin cotton of his sweatshirt. She’d meant to talk to him in a calm, collected manner, introduce herself to the secondary player in her nightmares.

It had to be him. The vision of his face had been forever burned into her memory along with everything else that night in the woods. When the happy Morgan had died and sadness had been born. She’d never forget the sharp angles of his jaw. It was him, it just had to be!

He hesitated, glanced around, and led her by the hand toward an alleyway. A shopkeeper gave them the wonky eye from a nearby window, but no one called the cops in that part of town. The touch of his hand against hers was electric. Could he feel the zinging, pulsing currents washing between them? She stared, surprised sparks weren’t flying from their clasped palms. Around the corner and into a dark alley he pulled her, and when they’d reached a dead end, he finally turned. She searched his face with a wanting that bordered on desperation. Then pushed him against the solid planes of a brick wall, and he let her.

Why was she crying?

Maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell with all the rain, but a traitorous hitch in her breathing threatened to give her away entirely. Giving into the rawness his reappearance had created in her soul, she sobbed and threw her fists against his chest. Broken. She was utterly broken.

He wrapped his fingers around her clenched hands and held them there as if he didn’t want to lose the touch.

“Why did you leave like that?” she asked, looking up at his sunglass-covered eyes. “It’s you. Tell me it’s you! Tell me you’re Greyson.”

A slight tremor sounded through the rich, deep tones of his voice. “It’s me. I’m Grey. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave. I thought you hated me.”

What was he talking about? Of course she didn’t hate him! She barely knew him. He’d saved her and then left her. She didn’t know how she felt about the almost stranger but it wasn’t hate. “You saved us, and then you left me and Lana there with my sister’s body, thinking that thing was going to come back to finish us off.”

His expression cooled behind the sunglasses as soon as she uttered the words. Because of her, he was
that thing
now. She instantly regretted her thoughtless tongue.

He looked as if he wanted to say something but pursed his lips against it. Would he lie about what he was, try to convince her she was insane, just like everybody else?

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “I was in so much pain, and I don’t remember much. I don’t remember getting up or leaving you. I remember seeing your sister’s face and your lips and then nothing. Flashes of running through the woods come back every now and then, but I can’t tell you why I left. I woke up… I don’t even know where I woke up. It took me two days to get ahold of myself and find help. I’m still messed up from it, Morgan. I’m still really messed up.”

She had to see the face behind the glasses. All of it. Irrationally, she wanted to see every inch of his skin to assure herself she wasn’t imagining him. “Take off your glasses.”

A long, low rumble sounded from his chest and vibrated against her fists. It wasn’t thunder. The bone chilling sound, the haunting melody to her nightmares, reached for her from under the impossibly hard planes of his chest. A warning, but her fear stayed cowered in the dark corners where she’d shoved it all these long months. “Why’d you do that?”

Sternly, he shook his head. “I can’t answer all the questions you have.”

She reached up and pulled the glasses from his face. He kept his grip on her wrists but made no attempt to stop her. His eyes were closed tightly under the hood he wore. The angles of his face were sharper than she remembered, more fearsome somehow, and he hadn’t shaved this morning. She ran a finger across the sandy blond scruff that decorated his strong jaw, as if touch made him more real. “Open your eyes,” she whispered.