Chapter Twenty
Sonya
The distance the sunlight had traveled across my bed told me it was hours past dawn when I finally woke. Little surprise considering how late we had stayed up dealing with the fire department, Ty’s truck, and talking to the cops. Having been raised with a deep-seated distrust for law enforcement, I’d been more than happy to let Ty do all the talking. He was good at it. Too good. It made me think he’d had to do that kind of thing a lot. But then, he had belonged to a speed-hungry group. Umbrella pack, whatever. The story he fed them about an irate student who was failing summer school and in jeopardy of losing his scholarship appeased the cops. But, they had only left after Ty promised to come down to the station in a few days to give a more formal statement.
Sadly, we had fallen into our separate beds after all the chaos settled. As much as I had wanted to spend the night in his arms, we were both too shaken up. The desire was still there, but the timing was off. He seemed more worried about watching the security monitors and windows than jumping my bones. Disappointing as that was, it helped me sleep soundly knowing he watched over me.
Having already showered before going to bed, I rushed through my morning routine. The desperate need to see Ty, to make sure he was all right, sped each movement. It was silly, I know. Clearly the man was more than capable of taking care of himself, but knowing that didn’t make the need go away. After running a brush through my long black hair and putting on a pair of cutoff blue jeans and a yellow tank top, I made my way to the kitchen.
Gaze going every which way, I checked the hall, the open floor plan of the living room. The second I stepped into the kitchen I knew something wasn’t right. The air smelled like that coarse, orange soap mechanics liked so much when it should have smelled like breakfast. Then there was the guy bending over and digging around in the fridge. He was muscular enough to be Ty. But he didn’t smell or feel like Ty. The feel of his power told me he was a varúlfur.
I lunged for the counter and snatched the biggest knife from the knife block that I could. The man in the fridge stood up so fast he smacked his head on the freezer.
“Ouch, shit!”
He turned toward me, rubbing his head with one hand and holding a beer in the other. Overly long, wild blond hair stuck up in every direction, stuck in a few places with something dark, grease maybe. His stance remained relaxed, so he didn’t exactly look threatening. Still, I wasn’t about to let go of the knife. My fighting skills were progressing at a snail’s pace so I needed every advantage I could get.
“Whoa, easy there, little wolf. I’m a friend of Ty’s,” he said.
“A friend? To an outcast, lone wolf?”
The man’s brows bunched together. “Helheimr yes. We lone wolves have to stick together.”
Pace and stance casual as could be, he walked from the kitchen and planted himself on a bar seat. The fact that I held a knife as long as my forearm apparently didn’t faze him. That, or he was really good at hiding it. He popped the top off his beer with one thumb and took a long drink.
“Lone wolves sticking together. You seriously expect me to swallow that?”
The man grinned. “I don’t care if you spit or swallow, darling. Gorgeous as you are, I’m not one to mess with a friend’s woman.”
Whoever he was, his quick wit made me like him a bit despite my caution. I sat the knife on the counter, but didn’t let go of it. “So you’re a friend of Raul’s?”
One side of the man’s lips rose to bare a fang. “Never. I didn’t mean him, because clearly, you aren’t his.”
My eyes widened. “Oh.” I gathered myself and cleared my throat. “Why are you here?”
“I brought Ty some parts for your Jeep. Those bastards did a number on it.” One eye remaining on me, he took another drink of his beer. “I like that you’re cautious, means you’re smart. No wonder you’ve brought him out of his hiatus.”
“Hiatus?”
“On women.”
It was a good thing I didn’t blush easily.
“Really, little wolf, you can relax. I’m one of the many that left the Draupnir pack with Ty. You won’t find more loyal wolves to him than us.”
I sat down on the stool farthest from him. “Left with him?”
Blond eyebrows rose until they disappeared into his unruly hair. “He didn’t tell you. Of course he didn’t. He’s too damn modest.” He sat his beer down and leaned his elbows on the bar top. “Almost half the pack left with Ty in a show of support. Helheimr, we’d even follow him if he wanted to start a new pack, but he has no taste for leading. Can’t say that I blame him with all the shitty politics.”
The shock made me take a moment before responding. “Half the pack? Even though he didn’t fight?”
“Because he didn’t fight. Our Alpha wouldn’t have wanted him to fight, and he respected that, honored his memory by not doing it.”
It took a special kind of man to walk away from a fight. I respected the hell out of that. “That’s pretty amazing.”
“It is. I’m Lars, by the way.” He extended his hand and I accepted it. As much as I didn’t want a stranger touching my hand, it was better than sniffing my ass. Okay, that wasn’t fair. But I had only met a handful of varúlfur and I really didn’t know what the norm was.
“Sonya.”
“I know.”
I groaned. “Guess everyone knows.”
Lars shrugged off my discomfort. “People don’t know shit. I know what Ty’s told me, not bullshit rumors. And you’ve nothing to worry about. He says only good things about you. Incessantly.” He rolled his eyes at the last part.
Heat rushed up my neck to my face. The impulse to ask what he’d said about me swelled, but I clamped my teeth together, determined not to embarrass myself.
The gentle pull of Ty’s power pulled at me a second before he walked in the front door. His eyes widened as they went from me to Lars. In the next stride, his muscles relaxed so much his shoulders dropped and he managed to put on a casual smile. Concern lingered in his eyes and tinged the feel of his power.
“Well, Lars is still upright, which means you two meeting could not have gone too badly.”
I smiled, partly because I liked Lars, but mostly to ease that look of worry from Ty’s eyes.
Lars clapped Ty on the shoulder as he walked by. “Don’t worry, félagi, I told her nothing but good things.”
I looked to Ty. “Fél…” I stopped because I couldn’t get the word to come out sounding right.
At the sink, Ty squeezed some of the coarse orange soap beside the faucet onto his greasy hands. “It roughly translates to ‘mate’, as in packmate, which he should get out of the habit of calling me seeing how we are no longer packmates,” Ty said, glaring at Lars as he said the last.
Since he was turned sideways to me, it was hard to tell, but I thought I saw Ty smile.
Head back, Lars downed the rest of his beer in one drink. Bottle in hand, he stood. Rather than go for the trash, he took it to the cabinet where Ty kept his recycling. “Oh, before I go, I heard from Vidar yesterday, said he tried to get a hold of you.”
As Ty turned around Lars handed him the towel from the fridge door. The guy knew his way around so well it was clear he hung out here a lot. Yet, I hadn’t met him. It made me wonder how much of his life Ty had put on hold for me.
“Really? Damn. I have not been checking my messages since I brought Sonya here. We could not risk the distraction.”
Lars gave him a crooked grin. “Riiight. Well, anyway, he said there’s something he has to talk to you about. He’s coming back to do it.”
Ty’s eyes popped open wide. “From Iceland? I thought he was studying at the temple and could not leave. All because I did not answer my phone? Did you tell him I was all right?”
“Of course. That’s not why. He said it’s something he has to talk to you about in person, before you go to Hemlock Hollow again.”
“Meaning, before I take Sonya there.”
Some of the color drained from Ty’s face.
“Obviously he didn’t want to say that, but yeah, that’s the impression I got. He said he’d meet you here and ride up with you for the trial.”
Face going blank, Ty folded the towel neatly and hung it back on the handle of the fridge. Though he grinned and tried to look casual, tension sang through his power like a tuning fork being plucked. The two men exchanged a look and Lars shook his head. “He said don’t call him, he wouldn’t be able to talk about it on the phone.”
Ty nodded.
Grinning, Lars slugged Ty in the arm. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” His brows wiggled as his gaze darted between Ty and me.
“There is not much you would not do,” Ty said.
“Exactly! I’m off while the trail’s still lukewarm.” He tipped his head to me. “Sonya, a true pleasure meeting you.” With that, he strode out the door.
I stared after him, needing a moment to process all the info he dropped in my lap.
Dishes clanked as Ty began to prepare breakfast.
“Should I be worried about that?” I asked.
“No. Vidar probably has information about who bit in Candice. That is all, I imagine.” He sounded sincere enough, but the way he kept preparing and didn’t turn around made me think there was more to it.
I had the sudden urge to call Candice and make sure she was all right. “I’ll be right back.”
Turned out Candice was fine, a bit bored, but that was it. I picked her brain about Hemlock Hollow. Sleepy and boring was the length of her description. Her kennari was an older man, who she also described as stuffy and boring. But, she was having fun with her new abilities. I grilled her a bit on how she was adjusting and decided she was probably doing better than I was. I should have known. Kids always adjusted to change fast. For a bit, I grilled her on the description of the guy who bit her. Tall, wiry, and creepy. No she hadn’t come across him in Hemlock Hollow. With promises to call back soon, I hung up and headed for the kitchen.
The delicious aromas of crackling bacon and browning pancakes drew me in. I yawned long and deep. Nightmares about Ty having been in the truck when it blew up plagued me all last night. I hated the idea of him getting hurt because of me. Suddenly I wanted to get to Hemlock Hollow to put an end to people trying to make me a pawn in their politics. But first things first. In a pair of cargo shorts tight enough to accentuate his fit ass and a brown flannel that set off his blond hair, Ty looked so amazing he made me forget anyone existed but him.
“I am sorry breakfast was not ready when you woke. Did you sleep okay?” he asked without even turning around.
His deep voice both soothed and thrilled me. “Not bad,” I lied.
He made a short grunt/laugh sound that clearly expressed his disbelief. When he turned to set a coffee cup in front of me my breath caught in my throat. The brown flannel hung open, not a single button done up to hide his sculpted chest. The only thing breaking up the perfection was the triple triangle pendant that he always wore. Desire burned right through my hunger and anxiety, igniting an entirely different kind of hunger. A thin trail of light blond hair led from his belly button into the low-slung waistband of his shorts, dragging my eyes with it. Reaching for the ceramic brown coffee cup, I pretended my gaze had gone to it instead of Ty’s goods.
“I was able to fix your Jeep, thanks to Lars,” he said as he turned back to the stove.
Guilt helped dampen my desire. How could I have gone all night without wondering what they had done to disable my Jeep? Another thing I would have to make those bastards pay for.
“What’d they do to it?” I asked.
The coffee was perfect. Just enough flavored creamer sweetened it to take off the edge. Ty impressed me by how quickly he had come to know my likes and dislikes. Most guys took years for that kind of thing, if they ever got it.
“Removed the battery, messed with a few other things, nothing permanent,” he said.
Heat coursed through me at the thought of him elbow deep in the hood of my Jeep. Dear Gods I was going to need another set of panties. “Thanks, but you didn’t have to go to all that trouble.”
He set a plate of bacon, hash browns, and eggs before me. The mingled aromas made my mouth water almost as much as his bare chest did.
“No trouble. I needed to talk to Lars anyway, or he needed to talk to me rather, it seems. And he was coming over to help me with my new security system anyway, so it worked out.”
Carrying a plate of his own, he walked around to my side of the bar and sat beside me.
“Security system?” I asked.
He nodded as he chewed and swallowed a bite of food. “Twice rival pack members have come onto my property threatening you. It will not happen again.”
I was almost afraid to ask. Was violence really the answer? “What kind of security system?”
“If you want to go for a run after breakfast, I will show you.”
Taking the time to chew a bite of perfectly peppered hash browns, I nodded. “That’d be great.”
I had a lot of pent-up energy that I needed to run off. Only one other thing sounded better, and I wasn’t about to indulge in that on a whim. The timing needed to be right, and distracted as we both were, now was not the time. For the most part we ate in silence. Attention on my food, I tried to think of anything but Ty. Halfway through breakfast I realized I wasn’t as hungry as I normally was. It seemed shifting had fixed the ravenous hunger. We finished breakfast, cleaned up, and went outside. The scorched portion of gravel where Ty’s truck had sat made my stomach turn. He’d had it towed last night to a local shop. The dark spot served to remind me of all I had brought down on this man.
“Why are you still helping me after all that has happened?” I asked as we walked.
The corner of his mouth I could see turned up, but he didn’t look at me as I was hoping he would. “Is it not obvious?”
Maybe it should have been, but it wasn’t, partly because I refused to see it. “No.”
We reached the back deck and he turned around to lean back against it, arms crossed over his chest, those blue eyes boring into me. “I care about you, Sonya.”
I tried to make light of it, I had to because the alternative kind of scared the hell out of me. “Well you may not survive long if you care this much about all the new varúlfur you have to train.”
Smiling, he shook his head. “I will not feel this way about any other new varúlfur, of that you can be certain. They will not be you.” With that, he turned and leaped over the railing to the grass below.
All those mesmerizing tattoos winding across his shoulders and down his spine captured my attention as he took his flannel off. I remained frozen in place for a heartbeat as he pushed his shorts down over his perfect ass. The man was going commando. Knowing he had been sitting next to me, facing me at times, his legs propped up on the bar at the base of the stool, with no underwear on, drove me a little mad. If I hadn’t had such an iron grip on my control, I could have caught a glimpse of his dangly parts earlier. Shaking my head to get it out of the gutter, I leaped over the railing and landed next to him.
“I thought we were going running,” I said.
I may have sneaked a peek and he may or may not have been sporting a partial hard-on. The lapse in control over my eyes had been too short to know whether he was really excited or whether my imagination made him look that way.
“We are, as wolves.” His voice dropped so low on the last two words that anyone without varúlfur souped-up hearing wouldn’t have heard it.
When his voice dropped like that it became deeper, rumbling on the edge of a growl that made muscles in my pelvis clench. Dammit. So much for my control. The idea of a run as a wolf sounded even more appealing. Problem was, running wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore. It seemed wrestling for control of my libido would be taking place of wrestling for control of my emotions. Great. I couldn’t get away from the whole internal struggle crap. I looked down and fumbled with the button on my cutoff shorts.
“Two runs in two days, aren’t you worried the neighbors might report a wolf sighting?” I asked.
“We are on over a hundred private acres. Besides, wolf sightings are not that unusual in Montana,” he said.
That logic was hard to argue with. Not that I wanted to. All night I’d had to fight the desire to shift again, not from a deep-rooted need, but simply because I wanted to. Touching that wildness within had been so thrilling that, second only to Ty, it was all I could think about. But I was afraid of people seeing me, or more to the point, I was afraid of seeing people while I was in wolf form. I wasn’t sure what I would do. Eating them wasn’t an issue. At least I didn’t think it was. But if they threatened me I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fight the instinct to hurt them. Ty’s hands came to rest on my shoulders, pulling me from my thoughts. Knowing he was naked and only a step away made it incredibly hard not to look down.
“We will be fine. We will not come across anyone, and if we do they will never even see us,” he said.
The heat of his body teased me, making me want to step into him. Before I could cave in and do just that, I stepped back, turned half away from him, and pulled my tank top off. Using the excuse to place my tank on one of the lounge chairs, I walked several feet away. The rest of my clothes quickly joined it, bra and underwear included. Ty’s gaze was so heavy on my ass it may as well have been a caress. My eyes slid closed and I had to repress an indulgent sigh. If I didn’t make this quick, we would end up entangled in each other instead of running.
Thrills of an entirely different kind—yet no less powerful—raced through me at the thought of shifting. The desire to shift strengthened until I felt the vibrations begin beneath my skin. All fear of madness was gone now, leaving me feeling only free and excited. Unlike before, the vibrations now brought pleasure instead of burning, anticipation instead of fear. A quick glance around and I moved beneath the covered deck where I would be blocked from the sight of any distant neighbors who might be nosy. From deep inside I called up the wildness, and set it free. Turning back to Ty, I reached for the ground, shifting as I did so. Fur covered my nakedness but did little to banish the feeling of exposure. At eye-level to Ty’s crotch I got a perfect view of his hard-on. The attraction was still there, but it was different, subdued as if part of me knew mating wasn’t an option with us in different forms. Mating. Oh God, had I really just thought of sex as mating?
When I was ready to turn away, Ty’s body shimmered and flowed into that of a huge blond wolf. He seemed to smile at me, canines flashing. With a shake of my head, I took off running across the lawn. In only a few strides Ty caught up to me and we ran into the forest together, paws eating up the path in an effortless gait. Soon after entering the shade of the trees, we left the path behind for the deeper forest. After a little less than a quarter of an hour of running we came to a post and rail fence like the kind wealthy ranchers liked to put around the entrance to their driveway. The difference was, this fence was slightly taller at five feet and went as far as I could see in both directions, stretching for acres and acres.
Unable to speak my surprise, I looked at Ty with wide eyes. His nose lifted, gaze going to a tree not more than three feet from the fence. I followed. My ears found the device before my eyes did. A slight buzzing emitted from a little pan tilt zoom camera mounted over twenty feet up in the tree. Impressed, I cocked my head and nodded. For a while we ran along the fence line, checking cameras that were mounted high in trees every fifty feet or so. Such a system had to have cost a small fortune, but then, if this fence surrounded Ty’s property, it seemed his family likely had much more than a small fortune.
Soon we cut back into the heart of the property, starting back for the house. Though the trees and valleys all looked alike, I knew we were headed back toward the house as surely as I knew from which direction the sun rose. Not only could I smell the trail we had both left and the lake to our left, it was an instinctual thing. Instead of taking us back to the main pathway, Ty turned into the forest. He stopped inside a familiar ring of huge spruce trees, the very ones I had been drawn to my first day here. The ground beneath my feet pulsed ever so slightly, kind of like the air at a loud concert or movie. It didn’t smell and I couldn’t hear it, but it energized me in a way I couldn’t understand.
The overcast day made the shadows thick beneath the boughs of so many huge trees but it was still warm enough to be pleasant. Which was crazy considering it couldn’t be barely sixty degrees, a temperature that normally would have had me reaching for a jacket. The fur coat I now wore helped, sure, but that wasn’t it. Deep inside heat roared within me from a well that felt as though it would warm me in the coldest of climates. Part of being a varúlfur, I guessed.
A very human-sounding sigh issued from Ty. The moment I saw him in human form, naked and magnificent, I shifted on instinct. It took me until I was rising to my feet to realize I had done so because I wanted to speak to him, touch him, and so much more. Naked and not caring beyond placing a hand casually over the birthmark on my hip, I approached him. The stone altar blocked my path to him, which I took as a good thing. My long hair hung down past my breasts, covering them for the most part. Not that I wanted to hide them from his roaming eyes, but a little mystery can be a very good thing. Judging by the way he couldn’t take his eyes off me, it was working well in my favor.
“That fence, does it go all the way around your property?” I asked.
“It does.”
“How much property do you actually have here?”
“A little over a hundred acres.” As he spoke he stalked around the stone altar until it no longer stood between us.
The words stunned me into silence for a moment. I had known it was a lot, but I had no idea it was that much. No wonder he didn’t worry so much about shifting around here. All this talk of property couldn’t keep my mind off his naked body. It called to me, driving out all other distractions until my feet moved closer to him seemingly on their own. I made one last attempt.
“Why come here?” I indicated the rune-carved trees with a wave of my hand.
My mind plummeted as the word come left my lips, drawing my gaze down with it. Already he stood at attention, impressive, and oh so tempting. Only a few feet from him, I forced myself to stop. Slowly, my eyes worked their way back up to his face, enjoying every hard mountain and valley of the journey. The man could have been carved from the very same steel as his Norse gods. I couldn’t imagine Thor or even Odin himself being built better. Maybe it was a sacrilege to think that, but surely they’d forgive one as naive as myself. My eyes locked onto his and in them, for a moment, I swore I could see the glaciers of his ancestral homeland.
Moving slowly, giving me all the time in the world to pull away, he reached up and cupped my chin. But I could no more move away from him than a compass needle could move away from true north. I leaned into his hand, craving the heat, the feel of his rough palm, and something more. The splattered shadows of spruce boughs cloaked us, crisscrossing over our skin in patterns that hid much, but not enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to see me. No, it was more that I didn’t want to see him. He was too much of a temptation for me, especially now that I knew my desire wasn’t a result of the verða. It had been so much easier when I’d had something to blame it on. I closed my eyes to try and block out the thoughts of all the things I wanted to do to him, and let him do to me.
“This is a mistake. I’m trouble. You shouldn’t get involved with me,” I said.
Deep laughter rumbled from Ty. The sheer masculinity of the sound, the way it pulled at something deep inside me, forced my eyes to open, to look at him.
“Trouble and I have been bedfellows for as long as I can remember,” he said.
Despite my inner struggle, I smiled. “You’re my kennari, you said there is some kind of teacher/student code against having sex with me, didn’t you? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“I do not care, not now that we know your sanity is safe, and that our mutual attraction was not caused by the verða.”
His hand moved down my neck, around the outside of my breast, and to my waist.
“Are you sure?” I asked in a breathy voice.
That hand moved around to rest on the small of my back. “Very sure. If the Council disapproves that much, I will give up being a kennari to be with you.”
The depth of commitment in his eyes frightened me a little, and excited me. “You’ve barely known me for three weeks. You can’t be serious.” Though I kept my tone light and joking, even I could hear the hope in it. Damn.
Gentle pressure on my back moved my body against his. “Sonya, I felt something for you the first moment I saw you, and I would give up the world to be with you,” he said, lips hovering over mine.
The emotion in both his voice and his eyes should have scared me, but it didn’t. Just under three weeks shouldn’t have been long enough. You couldn’t even really get to know a person in that short amount of time. But then I thought of our nights on the couch laughing and jumping at horror movies, our days meditating, and the long afternoons talking about history and Norse mythology.
“How can you know that already?” I whispered.
Unable to pull my eyes from his, I simply stared into their light blue depths, caught like a moth. His arms worked their way around me until he cradled me against him, secure and gentle as though he’d never let go.
“I think you know,” he whispered.
And I did, oh how I did. The double meaning wasn’t lost on me at all. His lips descended to mine and all resistance melted away in an inferno that ensured it would never return.