CHAPTER TWO
“Do you believe in past lives?” Liv asked Mary Fran as she shoved lettuce around on her plate at lunch the next day. The cafeteria at the University of Wisconsin wasn’t the reason for her lack of appetite. Nursing school and the food they served were both fine. It was everything else in her life that made her stomach churn.
“Excuse me?” Mary Fran raised an eyebrow, her glass of iced tea on pause halfway to her lips. “What is going on with you?”
Liv didn’t know. That was the frightening problem. “It’s just a question. I keep having these dreams…they’re very realistic. The clothing everyone is wearing looks nineteenth century and they’re not here in Madison. The setting seems…European to me for some reason.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, I just thought maybe there is such a thing as past lives.”
Plunking her iced tea glass down, amber droplets splashing onto the pristine tablecloth, Mary Fran eyed her. “Why are they different than any other dreams? What happens in them?”
“The woman falls off a sleigh and, well, gets eaten by wolves.” Liv jabbed a cherry tomato and studied it. “It’s her wedding night.”
“Oh, my God.”
When Liv glanced up at her best friend, she saw the concern she could already hear in her voice.
“Liv. You’ve got to call this wedding off.”
She sat silent, unable to tell even her best friend that she wanted to do just that. But she couldn’t. How could she? Scarborough had been there for her. Been there in that terrible dark hysterical time when she had learned that Sebastian had betrayed her, disappearing with the little money she had accumulated. Gone. All their nights together, all those words of love, nothing.
“I know you feel grateful to him, but you can’t build a marriage on gratitude. He can’t possibly want that. Won’t want that if you’re honest with him.”
The little food she’d eaten burned in her stomach. “I care about him.”
“And you’re dreaming about being eaten by wolves on your wedding night. Look, if you can’t call it off altogether, just postpone it. Indefinitely. Tell him you’re not ready. Just go on dating or whatever and give yourself time to figure it out.”
“Do you think he’ll be okay with that?” Liv asked, grasping on to hope. That seemed possible. Workable. It would buy her a reprieve.
But not from sex.
She should want to have sex. It had been six months since she had, and her body should be eager, primed, on fire, yet she chilled out and dried up every time she contemplated it.
“I honestly don’t know. Scarborough doesn’t exactly seem like a patient kind of guy to me. He’s…brisk.” Mary Fran made a face, her hand checking the back of her gold hoop earring. “But it’s worth a shot when the alternative is a marriage you don’t want.”
Liv wanted to protest, but she couldn’t even dredge up a convincing enough voice, so she let her silence speak for her.
Then Mary Fran spoke the words she couldn’t stand to hear. “Just because you don’t have family doesn’t mean you’re alone. Remember that. You have friends who love you. You’re not alone.”
Yes, she was. She knew Mary Fran meant well, and she knew her friends cared about her. But it wasn’t the same. Since that horrible night twenty years ago when her parents had been murdered, she was alone. Growing up, some of her teachers, one couple out of the many foster parents, and a few close friends had all cared about her, but she didn’t have family. Someone who was biologically or legally tied to her.
“Orphan” was a word she’d hated growing up, and Sebastian and Scarborough understood that, owning the lonely label themselves.
“Are you sleeping with him yet? How is that going?”
Looking uneasily around the crowded room, Liv pulled her dove-gray crew sweater closer around her. “No, we haven’t.”
“Why does he even want to marry you?”
The words were like a slap. “Probably guilt because his brother not only wouldn’t commit to me, he stole what little money I had and left without a word. I mean, why else would anyone marry me? I don’t bring a lot to the table, dead broke and emotionally stunted. It’s pity, that’s why he proposed. Hello.” Saying it out loud was like taking a bullet, even as she hid behind sarcasm, but it was the truth. It wasn’t like Scarborough was marrying her for true love either.
God, what a mess.
Mary Fran’s voice softened. “That’s not what I meant. Of course you bring a lot to the table. You’re generous and smart and compassionate, and you’re beautiful. Any man would be lucky to have you. But with everything that’s happened, I don’t understand the push for marriage…if Scar has feelings for you it would make more sense for the two of you to explore that slowly.”
“I think we both want security.”
For that reason, maybe more than any other, Liv would marry him.
He was giving her a home, a family, the possibility of children, a life she craved to the very marrow of her bones, and had since she was eight years old and had lost her parents in one swift brutal act of violence.
Scarborough was loyal and stable and motivated.
And he was the one man alive she trusted to keep her safe during her frightening all-night blackouts.
The October night was crisp and quiet as Sebastian raced through the woods, enjoying the freedom of his wolf form as he approached his brother’s house from the south side, downwind. He had followed Scarborough to the airport that morning to be sure he really was flying to New York on business and not retreating into the woods north of his house to join the pack. Having been reassured his brother really was en route to the Big Apple, Sebastian couldn’t resist the opportunity to check on Liv, to peer through the windows and engage in the sadistic self-torture of seeing the woman he loved, alive and well, yet living in his brother’s house as his brother’s girlfriend.
As he reached the property, he slowed down, cautiously picking his way over the perfectly manicured front lawn, listening, smelling, for any signs of the others or of danger. Sebastian couldn’t chance being spotted by any of the four remaining werewolves of the pack, even with his brother gone.
He wasn’t ready to fight, not yet, not until he knew Liv was safe.
And there would be a fight if he encountered Scarborough or the others, a fight to the death. They thought he was already dead, having left him bleeding out and caught in the rushing downstream river on the edge of their territory. But Sebastian had lived and had spent the last six months recovering from his wounds, struggling to survive and not be discovered, the whole time planning his return, his takeover.
He had never cared about being pack leader, had never appreciated his heritage as werewolf, had never wanted to make decisions and guide the others, or mate for the health of the pack. His leadership had been errant, his attitude nonchalant, his relationship with Liv solely for selfish reasons, because he loved her and wanted to be with her. He had wanted to protect her and shield her from the truth about who they both were. She’d known nothing of werewolves, and he’d wanted to keep it that way, knowing that for whatever reason, Liv had never shifted, despite the heritage Sebastian knew she possessed. It had been selfish, and naïve, but he had just wanted to live in quiet normalcy in love with a sweet beautiful woman.
It was different now. It was time to take his place, be the leader he should have been, but it would take careful planning and patience.
The house was a mini-mansion, a great, hulking, contemporary glass structure of concrete and steel, on the cusp of the thick forest behind it. There had been changes since he had last risked cruising by the house to check on Liv. Now there were giant pots filled with yellow and purple flowers and four pumpkins resting on the stoop in front of a bale of straw. A cheerful scarecrow sat on the straw, holding up a sign that read TRICK OR TREAT STOP. If Sebastian could have laughed in wolf form he would have.
There had been nothing funny at all about the fact that his brother had tried to kill him, then had stolen his girlfriend, yet seeing that goofy grinning scarecrow in front of his brother’s expensive, architecturally award-winning contemporary house struck him as hilarious. Big bad wolf goes suburban. For a man as determined to control everything and everyone as Scarborough was, it was good to see he’d let Liv express her own decorative opinion.
Then the amusement was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
The thought of his brother with the woman he loved was infuriating, sickening.
It dredged up a jealousy so ugly, so black, that he sometimes felt like it had eaten him alive, consuming all the good parts of him and leaving nothing but the anger, the pain, the frustration, the burning, agonizing loneliness. It had only been two weeks since he had realized Liv was living with Scarborough, but in those fourteen days, Sebastian had changed. He had gone into the very bowels of emotional hell, had known an anger so sharp it dripped blood, a pain so severe it took his legs out from under him.
And with it had come the ability to shift into wolf at will. His entire life he had fought the shift, which had only come for him at the full moon, unlike his brother, who had been able to shift whenever he chose since his teen years.
Now Sebastian could do the same.
Which meant it was almost time to confront his brother and take back his life, his place in the pack.
And the woman he loved.
Sebastian padded around the back of the house and up the steps that led to the second-story deck off the master suite. The metal was cool beneath his paws, the three-quarter moon casting a pale glow across the floor. The exterior bedroom wall was all glass, the windows pushed open and unencumbered by screens. Scarborough and his architect had thought screens interfered with the view of the woods and disrupted the clean lines of the house.
Sebastian had thought it made for a hell of a lot of flies and mosquitoes in your bedroom, but he never claimed to be classy, just practical.
Yet no matter how stupid he’d thought it was two years ago when the house was built, it now allowed him to put his head through the window and watch Liv sleeping.
She was sprawled nearly sideways on the bed, the covers half off and bunched up, damp tendrils of her rich auburn hair stuck to her forehead and cheek. It was clearly a restless sleep, her breathing labored, hand twitching, the scent of her sweat and body lotion intermingling in his sensitive nostrils. There was another scent too, a subtle undertone to the first two, the sweet tangy allure of arousal.
Whatever dreams she was having, they were clearly sexual to coax that kind of response from her body, and Sebastian leaned forward and breathed deeply. He had missed her, longed for the touch and taste of her soft skin, the look of love in her eyes as he had moved over her, buried deep inside her.
Sebastian moved restlessly back and forth, the animal and the man in him overwhelmed by her presence, her femininity, her obvious need and desire for a mating.
Unable to stop himself, Sebastian backed up and soared through the open window.