Wild Heat (Wilding Pack Wolves 3) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (9 page)

And
that
was the only thing that mattered.

It had been over an hour, and Terra could still feel the burn of Kaden’s rejection.

Locking herself in her darkroom, stewing about it, certainly hadn’t helped.

Kaden.
He wanted her, at least physically, she could tell that much. She could scent his arousal, and the blazing look in his eyes was unmistakable… and then there had been the hard bulge in his pants that she’d only caught a glimpse of, but it had driven her wolf insane with want. But he apparently had this idea about doing his job, and somehow that meant not getting any closer, even though he wanted to.

It was driving her crazy.

She wasn’t angry at him—she was pissed off at herself. The embarrassment was almost too much, and she was drowning in the dark pain of rejection after having thrown herself at him. Rejection wasn’t something she often experienced or took well, to say the very least. Yet it seemed like there was nothing but rejection in her life lately.

First, there had been Jaxson—the one alpha she thought might finally be
the one
for her, but the truth was he had never been interested, even before his mate came along and broke the spell that was holding him prisoner. Then she had shamed herself by going after his brother, Jace, as if he were some kind of consolation prize. It was just some embarrassingly desperate part of her that wanted to make Jaxson jealous.

But Jace had rejected her too.

Even her little sister had found a better mother figure, a better family, and was off on a new life without her. Never mind that Terra wanted exactly that to happen—it kept Cassie safe. But it still felt like a stinging rebuke of all the years she’d spent trying to be a mother for Cassie… and obviously failing.

And now… now even a
human male
was rejecting her. Kaden was no ordinary man, but wolf pheromones were supposed to be irresistible to members of the human race. She’d never had trouble bedding male wolves, when the itch needed to be scratched, but now she wondered if even that allure was gone…

It was like there was something broken in her.

With that dark thought, she sloshed more prints from the developer into the stop solution and then into the rinse. She had barely been paying attention to what she was doing, lost in her thoughts. When she pulled the print and turned it over, it was a complete disaster.

It was a picture of one of Marco’s wolves, only washed out and bleak. Almost reversed, like a negative that put dark spots where light should be, and light had poisoned the dark.

Fuck.

She hung up the monstrous print and turned on the lights, giving up. Then she climbed up on her bed and opened her laptop—maybe there was a message from Cassie or some other distraction she could lose herself in for a while. She craned her neck, trying to work the tension from her shoulders. The heat of Kaden’s rejection was still burning inside her.

A pop-up directed her to the news, so she clicked through.

What a mistake.

Her tailored news feed gave her highlights of Seattle’s local news, and apparently the headlines were all about
her.

Latest Wolf Hunter Video Attacks Local Celebrity Terra Wilding.

Jesus Lord, what now? She hesitated a long five seconds, her finger hovering over the screen, needing to know and yet dreading. This wasn’t the distraction she needed. She should watch cat videos or some damn thing that would brighten her day, but no… the pull of the darkness was too much.

She clicked on it.

A new window opened with the video. It was the Wolf Hunter hiding behind his mask—this time he was wearing a Salvador Dali-esque mask, where the face was half melted on one side while still concealing the Wolf Hunter’s identity. The misshapen face leered at the camera, tilting one way and then the other, then finally settling on a steady stare. The face was close enough to the camera that Terra realized for the first time—or perhaps this was the first time she could get a good luck—that his eyes were blue. Dark blue. A deep sapphire blue that was not unlike Kaden’s eyes.

That thought made her shudder.

But it was nothing compared to what the Wolf Hunter did next. He leaned back and held up a large photographic print—it was one of hers. She didn’t know where he got it from, probably pulled it off the Internet, but it was oversized, almost like a gallery exhibit. He ripped it in half with a long tearing sound that felt like it was pulling her apart.

“Terra Wilding.”
He was looking straight at her, or at least so it seemed, staring directly into the camera and right into her face. “She’s the darling of Seattle, but why? Because of her photos of people in our city—
real people.
Humans! What kind of outrage is this?” He reached for another photograph and held it up to the camera—this one was an older homeless man she had photographed at the edge of dusk. He had been shivering in the cold dampness that was Seattle with nowhere to go.

“Is this how she sees humans?” the Wolf Hunter sneered. “Or maybe this is how she would
like
humans to be—downtrodden, left out in the cold, at the mercy of shifters who will prey on them in the dark alleys of our city.”

He dramatically tore the photograph again and again and again, ripping it into tiny shreds and throwing them into the air as confetti. “We don’t need animals like this to tell us who we are. We need to purge our city of this animal infestation.” He gestured to the confetti that had fallen around him. “And Terra Wilding is a good place to start.”

He leered at the camera, pulling close, and it felt like he might lurch out of the screen and grab her. She slammed the laptop shut and threw it across the room, then curled up in a ball on her bed so tight it hurt. All of her hurt, inside and out. She folded in on her stomach, which was heaving uselessly—she hadn’t eaten all day, or she would be throwing it up.

Terra squeezed her eyes shut and held herself together, arms wrapped with an iron grip around her knees. It felt dangerously like she was sinking into the blackness again.

The Wolf Hunter was going to find her. And when he did, he was going to rip her into shreds just like her photographs. She’d seen the videos he made before—she didn’t have to imagine what he planned to do to her. The worst was that this horror, this terror he inspired, was hollowing out everything good that happened today. All she was trying to do with her photographs. How could she hope to battle the Wolf Hunter’s vile hate with a few pictures and a few stories? A child and his meager toys were nothing against that level of terror.

Minutes ticked by, then longer… she didn’t know how long she sat there, curled up on the bed, but suddenly there was a buzzing sound that pulled her out of the nightmarish swirl of thoughts that had captured her mind.

She creaked open her eyes. The room was the same, of course—it could be the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon. She wouldn’t be able to tell with the window blocked.

It took her a moment to realize the buzzing was coming from her pocket.
Her phone.
She fished it out—it was a text. A small flame of hope surged in her heart… maybe it was Cassie rescuing her again, as she usually did with her life and her energy.

But it wasn’t Cassie. In fact, it wasn’t any number she recognized.

Hello, Terra.

It’s Julius. Sally gave me your number.

If it’s not too inconvenient, I would like to meet and talk about something—not in front of the others. Something a little more private.

Can you meet me?

There was no way Kaden would let her go. He wouldn’t let her one step outside the safehouse, at least not today. Maybe not ever again.

But she knew a meeting with Julius was safe. And more than that, he was the one person in her life at the moment who really understood her art. She could bring some of the prints she had from this morning. Whatever he wanted to talk about didn’t matter. She just desperately needed to talk to
someone
about art. About life. About something positive and growing and good—Julius was the perfect person for that.

She curled up to sitting on her bed and quickly texted him back.

Yes. Can we meet now?

Yes! Excellent.

He sent her directions to a small café in downtown Seattle. It wasn’t far from the safehouse, although he couldn’t possibly know where she was. She checked Google Maps and, even though it was past rush hour and close to dusk, it looked like she could take a bus from where she was and get there within twenty minutes. She texted him the time she could meet, then hurried to pluck the finished prints off the line and choose which one to bring. She didn’t like showing unfinished work, so in the end, she selected only two, tucking them in a portfolio carrying case. Now… how to sneak out without Kaden stopping her? He had to be out in the living room, as he always was.

There was only one other way out…
through the window.
It was completely blocked off, but that could be undone. It might make a racket, but that would just reassure Kaden that she was still in the room—and probably keep him away, if she was tearing up her room in a fit of embarrassment or anger or whatever.

None of that mattered.

She was going to see her patron saint.

The bus ride was surprisingly quick—she was pretty familiar with all the lines from her time scouring the city for material—and she arrived downtown at the café even before her appointed time.

Julius was already there. His blue eyes were bright with shining excitement, and the fact that she was alone seemed to enchant him.

He took her hands in his. “My dear, I am so excited to see you without your keeper. I very much appreciate you taking the time to see me, especially on such short notice.”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “And I have something to show you. But you said you wanted to discuss something first—is it about my work?”

He dropped her hands, smiled, and gestured to her seat across the small table from him. It was an upscale place with white tablecloths and fresh flowers, and he seemed entirely at home. He signaled to the waiter, who quickly brought over some water. Julius instructed him to bring a bottle of red wine that Terra didn’t recognize, but the waiter clearly did. He rushed off.

Then Julius folded his hands and propped his chin on them, gazing at her with a look of delight on his face. “The thing I wanted to discuss absolutely concerns your work, but that takes a backseat, if you have something to show me. I must see whatever you have!”

The glow rose up inside her again, banishing the darkness just as she knew it would. She brought the portfolio up on the table and quickly unzipped it, revealing the two prints—one of the child, the pup, and the other of an elderly woman, whose shaggy fur had silver tips like a halo all around her body.

Julius’s eyes raked hungrily over the prints. “You must tell me what these are.
Please.”
The enthusiasm in his voice just fed her, loosening the tension in her body and letting the work absorb her.

“The child was born in the shelter,” Terra said. “They have very little, almost nothing, but he’s being raised in a pack that loves him tremendously. It’s as if he has twenty fathers and a dozen mothers, in addition to the one halfling who is his actual mother.”

Julius’s face lit up. “A halfling?”

“Yes, someone whose parentage isn’t a hundred percent wolf on both sides. It’s more common than you might think. Sometimes the child will express its wolf and be able to shift; sometimes not. There are no set rules about these things, but the halfling mother mated with a full-blooded wolf, and it looks like their son is able to shift already. This brought great joy to the mother and the rest of the pack. He’s a treasure. He’s also apparently quite a handful.”

Julius gave a small chuckle. “I can only imagine that raising a child who also can shift, complete with claws and fangs, might present a slightly different parenting challenge than normal.”

Terra smiled. “Not as much as you might think—kids are kids. It’s the human side that gives the most trouble.”

Julius nodded and pointed to the silver tipped shaggy wolf. “And this one?”

“She’s been at the shelter for many years, more than most of the residents. Her mate was killed in some kind of violent gang rivalry several years ago. She’s like the grandma for the pack now. She stays with them, helps care for the pups, and greets each new halfling or straggler or lost soul that comes through the door.”

Julius was nodding again. “This is even more fantastic than I could possibly have imagined, Terra. Your work is just phenomenal here. I cannot wait until you’ve finished your curation.”

Terra beamed. “I can’t thank you enough for the idea. You’ve literally saved me from… well, from a darkness that’s becoming more difficult as time goes on.”

He frowned. “You’re not talking about that monster, the Wolf Hunter, are you? Because I would hate to think that anything that maniac said was in any way influencing you.”

Terra felt the darkness grabbing at her again. “Let’s not talk about it, shall we? Besides, I want to hear about the mysterious thing you wish to discuss.”