CHAPTER FIVE
Liv spent the day in an anxious fog, worrying about her sanity. She sat through her classes, the professors’ words white noise humming in the background of her rapid and frightened thoughts.
There had been semen on her leg. There was nothing else that it could have been.
So how did it get there? She had thought she was dreaming that she had made love to her ex-boyfriend, who was missing. She supposed it was possible that he could have returned, but it wasn’t possible that he could have changed from a wolf to a naked man in front of her eyes.
Maybe she had still been dreaming at that point, but afterwards…maybe that had been real?
But he hadn’t been there when she woke up.
And she didn’t know what was real anymore.
Just that as she sat through endless lecture after lecture on hard chair after hard chair, she was in fact post-sex sore between her legs, a maddening reminder that something had happened, though she wasn’t sure what.
Mary Fran called her as she was driving home, grateful it wasn’t her day for clinicals. In no way should she be responsible for the care of patients when she was feeling as anxious as she was. Gripping the wheel tightly with her left hand, she answered the phone with her right.
“Hey, want to meet me for a drink? It’s Friday night, and I for one am thrilled. My classes were endless this week.”
Liv blinked hard in the dark, her headlights splayed out over a black road that seemed to be undulating in front of her. She normally loved fall, but it got dark early now and she was suddenly having trouble focusing on the road. “I can’t. I’m not feeling good.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, what’s wrong?”
“I think…I think I’m having a panic attack.”
“What! Where are you?”
“Driving home.”
“Pull over. Put your head between your legs.”
Hearing Mary Fran take charge, not freaking out or judging her, somehow calmed her down. “No, it’s okay, I’m pulling in Scarborough’s driveway. I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.”
There was a gigantic pause, where they both knew what Mary Fran was dying to say.
Cancel the wedding.
Liv knew she had to. Something was not right in her head, in her heart. She had to at least postpone it until she got a grip.
“I will,” she told her friend.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know what you were thinking. Don’t worry. As soon as Scarborough gets back, I’ll talk to him.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah.” Liv swallowed the bile that was crawling up her throat as she hit the door opener and pulled into the garage.
“Are you home yet?”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Call me if you want to chat. I’ll be around.”
“Thanks.”
When she went in the house, Liv stood in the middle of its quiet elegance, a house she had wanted to make her home. But it wasn’t her home. There was still no real place for Liv to call her own. No home, no family, no happiness.
After three glasses of wine, she fell into a restless sleep in bed in front of the TV, wearing a soft T-shirt and PJ pants. When she saw the bride in her dreams, she almost sighed at the inevitability of her presence.
But the bride only briefly appeared before the scene shifted to the woods. Sebastian and Scarborough and their cousins were drinking beers and fishing on the edge of the river. The serenity of the scene, the good-natured joking dissolved almost immediately. There was a sharp movement, Scar over Sebastian, a knife in his shoulder, a shove into the river—the cousins shouting and waving arms and a general hysteria.
While Scarborough stood calm on the riverbank, his face a cool mask of satisfaction as he leaned down and wiped the blood off the blade in the grass.
The bride shifted back to human, and suddenly, Liv realized she was in the woods herself, in the body of a wolf.
Sebastian had been prepared for Liv to shift on the full moon a week later given what Nick had told him, but he hadn’t really expected she would shift earlier. Yet he still found himself poised outside Scar’s house in human form, watching, waiting. He told himself it was to ensure her safety, and that was true, but it was also the undeniable urge to be near her. He was here as a man so that he wouldn’t smell her, so that he could resist the urge to enter the room and touch her the way he had the night before.
Now that he knew the whole truth, he was torn over how to handle it. He needed to deal with his brother, and he would as soon as Scar came back to Wisconsin. That wasn’t worrying him. What was causing him to pace the edge of the woods behind the house as he watched the bedroom window was how to explain everything to Liv. She deserved to know the full truth, but he wasn’t sure how to deliver that, knowing that her trust had been compromised.
He didn’t know how to convince her that what they had shared was real, and that he wanted nothing more than to be with her.
Forever.
As her husband.
Preoccupied with his thoughts, he was unprepared for Liv to leap out of the open window and race down the stairs, so fast she actually stumbled on the bottom few steps before recovering her balance.
She was in wolf form.
Sebastian stared, astonished. She was beautiful. Petite and long-legged, her fur a soft auburn, snout small and delicate. It was exactly what he would have imagined she would look like, and the wolf in him growled low in his throat in appreciation.
This was his mate.
He knew that as both man and wolf.
Her hesitation as she moved across the grass gave him a clear view of her crystalline green eyes, and he sensed the uncertainty, the anxiety there. After shedding his clothes, he shifted, his plan to follow her.
But she had heard his movement and she was ten feet away, paused in her intention to enter the woods, staring at him, and snarling a warning.
It was fear, not menace he heard and he stood still, hoping she would take off running.
She did, and he followed, allowing distance between them so she wouldn’t feel threatened, but wanting to make sure she was safe. Only she realized he was in pursuit and she ran faster, forcing him to keep pace. Her maneuvers became a clear effort to confuse him, as she dodged in multiple directions, leaping over logs, her behavior frantic and frightened.
Sebastian wasn’t about to let her out of his sight though, whether he was scaring her or not. Liv didn’t even remember her nights in wolf form, and he couldn’t have her out there alone. Eventually she would get tired from her efforts and either return to the safety of the house or approach him.
Finally, after an extended chase that had them circling back around closer to the house, she drew up short, panting, and turned to confront him. Her teeth snapped and she growled in warning.
Clearly she didn’t understand who he was. Or hell, maybe she did, given what Scarborough had told her.
He remained loose, nonthreatening, even resting on his haunches to show her he had no interest in fighting.
She eyed him for a second, wary, then she launched herself at him, baring her teeth. Sebastian stood his ground. He wasn’t going to leave, but neither was he going to fight back if she chose to attack him. This was Liv, and he would defend himself only as necessary, but he wouldn’t harm her. In a wild lunge, she snapped at his neck. He dodged her, but she managed to clip his shoulder, digging into the flesh beneath the fur.
The pain was minimal, but an involuntary growl came out on instinct.
Liv yelped, backed up, and shifted.
Astonished, Sebastian realized she had frightened herself right back into human form, and she was crumpled on a pile of leaves, naked, eyes glassy and confused.
She spotted him and opened her mouth to scream.
Sebastian shifted too, and the scream he expected never arrived. Her eyes widened in astonishment and she lifted her head slightly for a better view.
“I’m dreaming again,” she murmured. “Dreaming, nothing more. Crazy, crazy dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming. This is real,” he told her, moving carefully toward her, wanting to offer some kind of comfort. “It’s okay.”
“It can’t be real. You were a werewolf a second ago. I think I was a werewolf…none of that makes any sense. Those things aren’t real.”
“Do you feel awake?” he asked her, squatting down to the ground so he wasn’t towering over her.
She hesitated, but then she nodded as she sat up. “I feel awake. I’m cold and damp and my nose is running. It feels sharp, like reality. But it can’t be. I’m naked in the woods with you. This can’t be real.”
“I promise you it’s real,” he said softly. “And I promise you that I didn’t leave you.” Maybe he should explain other things first, like her shape-shifting heritage, but he couldn’t help himself, and he didn’t want her to stand up and bolt either. He reached out and brushed her hair off her forehead. “God, I’ve missed you, Liv.”
“Now I know I’m dreaming.” She swallowed visibly and shivered.
“Come on, let’s go back to the house. It’s cold out.”
But Liv was staring at his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”
He glanced down. The wound wasn’t deep, but without a shirt on, there was blood chugging slowly down his arm. “It’s not bad. Don’t worry about it.”
“I did that, didn’t I?” she asked in a whisper, her green eyes enormous. Her finger came out to point at it, then quickly she drew it back, crossing her arms over her chest with a shiver.
“Yes. But it’s not a big deal. I startled you.”
“I bit you,” she said, hand flying up to her mouth and scrubbing at her lips and chin. When it came away with a thin smear of blood on her flesh, her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Liv!”
Sebastian reached out and caught her as she slumped into a dead faint.
Gathering her in his arms, he headed for the house, scooping up his clothes on the way. Ten minutes later he had her tucked into bed, wearing a T-shirt he’d dug out of the dresser, the covers pulled up over her. She had woken up in his arms as he was carrying her back to the house, but she hadn’t spoken. She had just looked up at him, then screwed her eyes shut again, her fingers squeezing his arms tightly.
Even when he had pulled the shirt on over her head after laying her down on the bed she hadn’t spoken. She just stared up at him, eyes glassy, unblinking.
Unsure of what to do or say, Sebastian brushed his lips across her forehead. “It’s okay. Do you need a glass of water or anything?”
Finally she spoke. “Did we have sex last night?”
Sebastian hesitated for a split second, then nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t resist when I saw you…. I missed you so much, sweetheart.”
“I thought I was dreaming.”
Stupidly that hurt him. He’d thought she was groggy, but he had still thought she’d known what she was doing. That she was well aware it was him in the flesh she was being intimate with.
He dropped his gaze to the bed so she wouldn’t see the pain there.
“No,” he said, his tone harsher than he intended it to be. “Sorry. No dream. This is real and last night was real.”
Her eyes darkened and her tone was suddenly feisty. “I want my money back.”
“What money?”
“The money you stole.”
“I didn’t steal your money!” He was going to kill his goddamn brother for putting that expression on Liv’s face. “Do you want to know what happened? Six months ago I went on a fishing trip with my brother and my cousins…you remember that, right?”
“Yes, I remember.” She sat up and held the sheet in front of her. “You decided not to come back, leaving me with no explanation other than you’re an asshole and a user.”
“I didn’t come back because my brother, my dear, loving brother, stabbed me in the fucking shoulder then tossed my body into the river to drown.”
Expecting Liv to scoff or argue or roll her eyes, Sebastian was surprised when she went very still, her fingers relaxing their hold on the sheet.
“Ohmigod. That’s what the bride wanted me to see.”