When we got back the rain was starting to pick up. Levi pulled a black tarp over the boat while I ran to the house to tie another one down over the firewood.
Derek was tending to the fire when I stumbled inside.
“There you are.” He zipped to me and shook his head. “Get those off and I’ll toss them in the dryer for you. You can have a bath in my bathroom if you want?”
“I’ll shower off. Really, I’m fine.”
He put a hand to my forehead, then nodded. “Weres always run a little higher than humans. Still, it doesn’t mean you can’t freeze,” he added. “How do you feel about pizza?”
“How do you feel about true love?”
He snickered while I pulled my hair out of its ponytail.
“I knew we were meant to be. Just don’t tell Elliot,” he teased.
“He’s here?” I asked, anxiety swelling in me.
Derek shook his head, walking back to the kitchen. “In a week or so. I’ll get you some extra towels.”
I gave him a mock salute then scurried to my bathroom.
When I closed the door, I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead; I didn’t think I felt warmer, but then again I wasn’t freezing, which I realized was crazy considering what I had been doing.
After I showered, I threw on some leggings and a sweatshirt. The rain was picking up outside, tapping on the window like it wanted me to sneak out. I found myself staring into the mess while I ran a comb through my hair. There were a few hidden blond streaks in it that I must have missed when I’d dyed it in a rush. I tried to tuck them away, but with my new short cut, there was no longer a long curtain for them to hide behind.
Lightning flashed across the sky. The window of my room looked out into the storm that was whipping the forest into a tornado. Silver eyes cut right through the rain and beamed at me through the glass. I shook my head but they were still there, behind the thick brush where I couldn’t see who they belonged to.
My hand froze. I felt cold as the eyes held my gaze, trying to creep into the deepest parts of my soul. A part that had me wondering if the eyes I saw were really hazel instead of silver.
Another flash of lightning, another blink, and they were gone. I rushed to the window. The sound of Nate laughing echoed in the back of my mind. I shook my head, trying to banish his sour memory. What was Levi even doing out there?!
“Holy hell!” Levi’s voice grumbled.
My feet carried me to the bedroom door. I flung it open, and there was Levi, soaking wet in his clothes. He couldn’t have been out there by my window and fully clothed. If he shifted, then he would have been butt-ass naked.
Levi cocked his head at me. “Can I help you?”
I looked back to my window, the rain pounding harder at the glass. A cold finger ran up my spine. There was nothing in the bushes but darkness, but I was sure of what I’d seen.
Was it the rogues? Had they come back for me? Were they stalking me?
“Charlotte?” My head whipped around to Levi. I looked back again at the dark window that was playing games with my mind. “Where?”
His voice was low and quiet. I turned and he was a few feet from me, taking another step toward my bedroom. I swallowed the fear creeping up and pointed outside.
He nodded then turned back to the kitchen. “Get some socks on. It’s cold.”
“Levi? What—what was outside?”
His eyes were glowing when he looked back to me, blacker than silver. “Just get some socks on.”
Derek was chopping some basil in the kitchen, once again trying to avoid the elephant in the room. I looked back to my room then at him. “What was that?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Derek replied. He put the knife down then walked to the cabinet and pulled out a stemless wineglass.
“It was watching me in my bedroom, Derek.” He paused, eyes meeting mine. “Was it the rogues? Do you think they came back?”
“There’s no rogues to come back. We tore them to shreds.”
“What if they have friends?”
“You saw their eyes?” he asked. I nodded. “Any redness?
Looks like pink eye or someone who’s been scratching their eyes incessantly.”
I shook my head. “Silver.”
“Rogues always have redness in their eyes, it’s one way to spot them,” he explained. “Levi will find out. Why don’t you help me with the pizzas? No use fretting over what we don’t know.”
I wanted to push the topic further. This thing in me wanted to push harder, but I knew I would have to wait for a better moment to climb over the wall that Derek was building. I took the glass from him then took a long sip, the wine calming my nerves as lightning flickered across the sky again. I looked back at my room—to the window—but there was nothing. In the back of my mind I could see him shaking his head at me and my “wild imagination.”
I yanked those thoughts back, letting this thing in my brain tear at them while I chopped cherry tomatoes with Derek. The thunder cracked again while this small fire built in me. She ripped at the memory of Nate, ripped at the memory of the eyes watching us.
Levi walked back into the kitchen wearing dry clothes and his normal scowl. He opened the cabinet where the wineglasses were and pulled one out. He grumbled to himself, letting out a string of curses, before he walked back to his room.
When he returned, he put socks on the counter in front of me. “You don’t need to walk around barefoot when it’s this cold outside,” he told me.
“Who was it?” I asked.
Levi paused, looking at me then Derek. Derek’s eyes widened and he hissed. Levi ran a hand through his hair.
“My fucking nephew.” He looked back at my feet. “Get some damn socks on.”
I slid onto a barstool and shoved the socks on while she crept forward. I could feel her frustration. Her need to protect. Her irritation with so many half-truths—I’d heard enough of those for a lifetime.
Levi opened another wine bottle.
“This isn’t nothing. He was watching me. In. My. Room.
Has he been watching me? What does he want?!”
My chest felt like it was going to start vibrating.
Levi paused his pour and looked over his shoulder at me, his pupils dilating when his eyes met mine. He grabbed his glass and turned to face me, and the reflection in it of my own eyes glowing made my heart skip a beat.
“The moon-blood. He smelled it and got nosy.”
I bit my lip with a nod. “So is the rest of this pack going to be nosy?” The last thing I wanted was to be secretly watched as I stumbled through this whole fucking thing.
He shook his head. “No. Lander has something from the local witches to throw them off your scent.”
I cocked my head. “He went to witches about me?”
Levi sighed. “He wanted to see if anything could help if you—”
“Went rogue,” I finished.
Derek tapped the counter. “Look, regardless, Charlotte deserves her privacy. Liam needs to mind his own business.”
“I don’t think he’ll come around here for a while,” Levi answered darkly.
The beast in me calmed at his tone, although my mind was racing, which was only going to lead to anxiety-fueled dreams.
That night in my dream Nate kept telling me that he would keep me safe. He told me this as he slowly started to strangle me—sweet words with sinister hands that squeezed the air out of my lungs.
When I woke up, daylight was breaking through the clouds. I peeked through the blinds, and could have sworn I saw the bushes move.
• • •
The next morning Levi had me running on a path that he had marked earlier that morning with white spray paint on trees. It wasn’t a big loop, but it was enough that eventually the jogging started to ease my mind. I felt her come closer while I pushed along the winding path, this desire to truly run coursing through me.
My feet picked up, racing along while this new energy sizzled through my veins. I came along a turn, curling around a tree with a white X on it. Unfortunately, I hit the turn too fast. My feet lost traction and I found myself falling face-first into a pile of leaves.
“Shit,” I groaned.
Slowly pushing myself up, I spat out the foliage that had found its way into my mouth and sat up. Wiping the dirt off my face, I let out a long breath as a prickling crawled over my neck.
I felt her race forward so fast it almost knocked me over.
Carefully, I stood up and looked around. Only lonely trees and bushes looked back at me, but the feeling of someone’s eyes crawling over me grew. My head turned toward the path I was supposed to follow, but I felt her almost snap at the thought. Like she was trying to yank me away from a trap.
A sharp breath escaped my lips. I turned the way I had come, but the sight of that path left a sour feeling in my gut.
So I did what seemed reasonable. I bolted off the path and into forest.
Branches and bushes slapped my skin as an all-too-familiar feeling of terror swept over me. The beast in me pushed me to run harder. I was close to the creek, and if I could find it, I could jump in and swim home. I had swum it enough to know how to get back.
My head turned just in time to catch the shape of a black wolf with blazing silver eyes racing neck and neck with me.
“Fuck!” I hissed.
I tried to turn but realized that I needed Levi or Derek. I wasn’t going to outrun this thing on my own.
I slowed enough to suck in a breath so I could scream, when something grabbed my leg, yanking me down to the ground.
The cold ground felt as hard as concrete. It scraped my skin as I skidded across the dirt until the base of a tree stopped me. Panic danced over my spine. Looking around, I couldn’t see anyone, until some bushes rustling nearby caught my attention.
Standing, I readied myself to scream, praying that I wasn’t too far away for someone to hear me. Although screaming had never really saved me in the past.
“Please don’t!” The plea came, causing my throat to catch.
A young man stood before me. He had both hands up, a nervous look on his boyish face. Silver eyes like Levi’s and Lander’s looked back at me. A mop of white-blond hair sat on top of his head. He was tall, at least as tall as Levi but built just like Lander—lean, toned, and at the moment, completely shirtless.
“Please don’t scream. I swear I’m not going to hurt you.
Please?”
I cocked my head. I had trusted a good-looking man before when he begged me not to panic, not to be scared, and that had only led to more pain. Even now, the familiar feeling of my shaking hands reminded me that those days were not all that far behind me.
“What do you want?” I asked. The courage I had built up over the weeks that I had been here cracked easily as fear tumbled through me.
“I just—” He paused. His hands slowly fell to his sides.
“I wanted to see if you were real. Dad . . . I could smell you on him. I guess I was just curious?” he added with a shrug, tossing in a smile that showed off his dimples.
My brows rose. A familiar feeling of sweat was building on the back of my neck. I swallowed back the panic and tried to stay calm as the beast in me paced. Her irritation started to seep into me, chasing my fear away with a new feeling of agitation. “You were watching me in my room.”
“Yeah . . .”
“That’s fucking weird,” I snapped. An angry breath rolled out of my nose as my fingers curled into my palm.
He bit his lip, nodding. “It is. I’m sorry.” His fingers scratched his hair. “Honestly, I thought Levi had finally lost it and was making it up.”
I felt the beast inside me move, like she was snapping her teeth at him, as if she wanted to show him how real we both were. “Do I look made-up to you?”
He let out a nervous laugh and shook his head. “No, I think you’re really real and really pissed. Fair. I am—look, I’m really sorry. Really fucking sorry.”
Nate rarely said sorry. Usually everything was always my fault. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“So, what do you want?”
He shrugged. “Well, I mean, if you make it, you’ll be pack. It might be good to know someone other than my crazy uncle and my dad.”
“And Derek.”
He nodded. “And Derek.”
The beast in me pushed closer. I could feel her curiosity as she looked him over. I felt heat rush to my cheeks and swatted it away.
“Look, I’m really sorry. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you were real or if any of the rumors were true and . . . I wasn’t trying to be nosy. But, I mean, look, I can take a hike—I’m sorry,” he rambled, stepping back toward the brush.
“Wait,” I found myself saying, stepping toward him. He paused, cocking his head at me. “What rumors?”
He walked to a nearby tree and leaned against it. “Just things floating around the pack. They love to talk.”
I rolled my eyes. “Awesome. And what are they saying?”
“Honestly, you shouldn’t worry about it. They just like to speculate.”
“I would like to know,” I pushed, rooting myself in place.
He sighed and looked at the ground. “The first is that you’re a baby rogue that Levi is trying to save. Some people think when you turn you’ll lose it—be a danger to the pack.
There are whispers about you being moon-blood—which honestly is why I snooped. It’s like, unbelievable.”
“It’s all pretty wild,” I murmured.
His eyes snapped to mine. They grew wide, like he finally understood a mistake. “I’m sorry. I forgot . . . this must really fucking suck.”
A laugh escaped my lips. I nodded. “Yeah, this is all not what I had in mind.”
He gave me a small smile. “People like to talk. They’ll get past it. Honestly, the rogues on our land were the biggest issue.”
“I’m sure they were,” I replied. “I would rather not run into any again.”
His smile fell. “I’m sorry. We haven’t heard of any more sightings, if it makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t, but that’s good,” I admitted. I sighed and looked over my shoulder. “I should get back. You should go before Levi comes looking for me.”
“Shit, you’re right,” he agreed.
He pushed off the tree and slowly walked toward me, his hand extended. “I’m Liam.”
He paused in front of me, his eyes watching my hand meet his.
“I’m Charlotte,” I answered, shaking his hand. “You’re Lander’s youngest son?”
He rolled his eyes. “No, that would be my brother. I’m the oldest. Wise and well aged at twenty-one years if I do say so myself.”
A laugh danced out of my lips. “Enjoy your youth while you can.”
His smiled, dimples showing. “Let me know if you need anything,” he told me as he stepped away.
“How would I do that?” I asked.
He tossed his hands up. “I don’t know. Put a candle in your window or something?”
“Is this an excuse to watch me in my room again?”
He rolled his eyes in a way that, for a moment, made him look like Levi must have in his younger years. “You’re never going to let that go.”
I arched a brow. “Nope.”
“Well, wild one, you can’t leave something where your two mother hens will find it.”
I narrowed my gaze, only to find his playfully narrowing at mine. “Fine,” I grumbled. “I’m keeping my blinds shut.”
“Fine,” he teased back. “What is your S.O.S. object going to be?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? We’ll see what I dig up.”
He nodded, pausing in front of the brush. “So, can we hang out again?”
“Tomorrow is the next full—” I shrugged. “Let’s see if I make it first.”
He nodded, a grim look on his face. “I hope you do.”
“I hope I do too,” I answered, stepping back toward the path.
He was gone in a flash. I heard the snapping of twigs and crunching of leaves echoing as he blazed through the forest.
The breath I felt like I was holding escaped my lungs. I leaned back against a tree, looking at the spot where the boy with blazing silver eyes had smiled at me and for a moment had made everything feel like it was going to be slightly better.
But I knew better than to trust sweet smiles and pretty eyes. That had only got me a black eye of my own.
When I made it back to the house, Levi was gone but Derek was in the house working on bread rolls. He paused to smile at me. “How was the run?”
“Fine, not too muddy,” I answered.
“You were out for a while,” Derek said.
I nodded. “It felt good to run.”
Derek smiled as the lights started to flicker. The hair on my arms stood upright as the lights went off entirely. Derek groaned. “I’ll get some candles. Levi will have to see about the generator. The house,” he said as we walked to the cellar,
“is solar powered. Panels on the roof. But every now and then we have a shortage. Go on and change clothes. I’ll start a fire.”
Derek tossed me a flashlight that I took to my room.
Before even changing my clothes I closed the blinds tight, double-checking them to make sure no cracks could allow my new friend to spy on me. I found myself laughing at the notion while my cheeks heated, a feeling I hadn’t felt in so long.
Immediately, I banished the feeling. I didn’t need that right now. I didn’t need another man to control me and leave his mark on me like the last one had.
After I changed, I came out and Derek whisked me to the kitchen to help him finish the rolls. “Is it frothy?” I asked as I eyed the yeast in the water. Derek said it had to be frothy, although I wasn’t sure if this muted brown was what we were going for. It was hard to tell, even with all the light from the candles Derek had littered around the kitchen.
Derek looked over his shoulder. “Almost there—” He paused as his phone vibrated. He reached for it, and I found my own heart twisting. It had been weeks since I’d talked to Nate. If it wasn’t for my dreams, I would have forgotten what his voice sounded like. I don’t know why that thought made me sad. I couldn’t be sure what part of me wanted to hear his voice again. I hated that part of me.
Derek’s laughter broke my trance. I looked over at him as he typed away on his phone. He put it down then caught me looking back at him. “Sorry, my mate, Elliot, finds the best GIFs.”
“Your mate?”
“Husband, partner, soul mate—”
“Soul mate?”
“Oh my, we are going to have to have the talk.”
“The talk?”
“Do you want some wine?”
My mouth was hanging open, so Derek took that as a yes. I kept cutting the rolls out of the dough we had made in a batch earlier, while he dug around in a cabinet. “So, you know how we’re on pack lands?”
“Yes?”
“Well, wolves, similar to vampires, are very bond-oriented creatures.”
“Bond what?”
Derek chuckled and set a bottle of merlot on the counter.
“A pack isn’t just important to a wolf because of the resources or protection it provides, but because wolves inherently feel a bond to the pack—like a kinsmanship. It’s like being on a team, so to speak,” he explained, while he fished out some glasses.
“And vampires are that way?” I asked as I cut out another roll from the dough.
He wiggled his head back and forth as he poured the wine into the glasses. “We have covens and not packs. But the bonds we feel toward each other are quite strong.”
“Okay, so a pack bond is like an automatic loyalty or draw to a group of people.”
“Pretty much,” he said as he put the cork back in the bottle. “But mates are probably the most important bond you have besides the one you have with your inner beast. Neither of our kinds would have made it very far without mates.”
“Okay . . .”
“Your mate,” he said while I dried my hands off, “is your other half. The other half of your soul.”
I reached for my glass as my inner voice started laughing. “Your soul? Real y?”
Derek looked over at the fire. His eyes glowed slightly, almost an amber in the brown. I’d never really thought Derek looked like a monster before now, in the dark, when you could see how unnatural his pale skin was and how hungry his eyes with the flames dancing in them looked. “You can’t live without them, literally. Not like you would want to.
They help to tame your demons. In your case, a beast, and you theirs. It’s fate in its purest form.”
“You can’t live without them?” I asked. “Real y?” In the back of my mind I could hear Nate snickering at the idea while also subtly asking me what I would do without him.
Derek turned slightly to me while I cut away the last bits of dough to make the rolls. His face was more serious than I had seen, a seriousness that made me pause in my task.
I’d never noticed how sharp his cheekbones were before or how his pupils would expand and contract in an animalistic nature of their own. “If a wolf loses its mate, then it’s very serious. Wolves, like vampires, mate for life. So when they die, it’s like half of you is ripped away. Like a quilt that’s had all the stitching torn out. Without them, a wolf’s mind can go mad and their body can start to quit. They go rogue.
Similar for us. It’s incredibly rare that a wolf makes it without their mate.”
“That is insane,” I replied as I wiped my hands off. It was rare that animals mated for life—hell, humans half of the time went through one-point-five husbands before they found the right one. “Just one. You just get one?”
He nodded. “Just one. Of course, you can mate with another wolf if you want. But you only get one true mate. It’s very hard to find your true mate. Some Weres and vampires never find their true mates, some find them early on. So many of them settle down with someone they have a connection with. It’s still healthy and keeps your beast at peace.
But they are not the other half of your soul. You’ll always feel that missing until you find your true mate.”
“And you find these people how?”
“Usually you smell them,” Derek said with a softness in his voice. It was so soft though, so unnatural. He turned, and the light from the candle danced along his skin, creating an alluring honeypot for flies to become trapped in. “For us, it’s the smell of their blood, but for wolves it’s usually their scent.”
I leaned back against the counter and took a long sip of wine, unease filling me from the conversation. “And Elliot?”
I asked him.
His cheeks started to blush, making him look more human and less vicious. “We’ve been together almost three hundred years. Well, two hundred and fifty-three, but close enough.
We’re very lucky we found each other.”
I started to laugh because it was so crazy to think that Derek had been around for that long. “Can I see a picture?”
“’Course,” Derek said proudly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone and scrolled a bit before handing it to me.
The man was devilishly attractive. He was probably the best-looking redhead that I had ever seen. His hair was bright red, not orange, not fake, but bright natural red. In the picture, it looked like they were in a photo booth. Derek was laughing hard at something and Elliot was doing a monkey face. I laughed at the sight. “Can I?”
“Sure, I keep all the naked pictures somewhere else,”
Derek teased.
I felt my cheeks redden while Derek just chuckled. I shook my head as I scrolled to the next picture. They were in the car taking a selfie. Derek was in the driver’s seat, in a chambray shirt and Ray-Bans, while Elliot, who was taking the photo, had his aviators pulled up on top of his head. He had bright-green eyes and tons of freckles covering his pale skin. He had defined cheeks like Derek, but there was something almost regal about him.
“He looks wonderful,” I said.
“He is.”
I handed Derek his phone back and started to put the rolls we were baking on a cookie sheet. “He’s doing research on some species of birds a few hours north of here, he should be back fairly soon.”
“Birds?”
Derek shrugged. “He’s a bit of a conservationist. He works for a university right now as a professor but does a lot of research with the conservation groups here. It could be any animal, really. He did a whole study on polar bears not long ago.”
“Three hundred years?”
“It has been long and also not long at all,” he added. “It’s honestly hard to think of how I functioned before without him.”
“So does he live here?” I took a sip of my wine.
Derek put the rolls in a drawer under the oven to proof.
“When he is not working, yes, he is here with me.”
“So. . . but humans don’t have soul mates?”
“You don’t?” Derek asked with an arched brow. “Clearly fooled me,” he added with a chuckle. “Legend says the Moon Goddess gifted us with mates so we could find our inner peace and thus find peace between our species.”
“This Moon Goddess.” I paused and moved a bowl to the sink. “She sounds very—”
“Fictional?” I laughed a little with a nod. Derek shrugged.
“I guess at times she can seem that way.”
I grabbed my glass right as the lights came on. Levi walked inside the house. He was dripping wet and furious.
Derek eyed him. “It’s wet outside.”
“No shit.” He walked to the island, opened a drawer, pulled out a dishrag, and started to dry his face off. “What have you two been yapping about?”
“Derek was telling me about mates.” I immediately took a sip of wine so I wouldn’t have to answer whatever question was coming next.
Levi froze and eyed Derek, who just rolled his eyes and looked back at the fire. He scratched at his neck while Levi muttered something under his breath then stormed into his room. I was opening my mouth to say something but the door slamming made me close it. Derek sighed and looked back at me, his eyes almost black. “There’s a blood bag in the refrigerator, mind grabbing it for me?”
