Werewolves in Love 2: Yours, Mine and Howls (32 page)

“I don’t care about that right now, Cade,” Ally cut in. He sat up, adrenaline instantly triggered by the fear in her voice. “You need to get back here
now.
”

Michael kept his eyes on the road but attended every word.

“Ally, what happened? Are you okay? Is Becca, or Dylan, or—”

“No one’s hurt, but it’s creepy as hell, Cade.” She sounded breathless, unsteady, but she wasn’t crying. “It’s Lind.”

“Lind showed up there?” He could feel the change coming on again. His self-control was near tatters.

“His body did.”

“His—what? He’s dead? Who killed him?”

“How the hell should I know?” she shrieked. Both wolves winced. “I’m sorry, Cade, I didn’t mean to do that, but I’m really freaked out. I have no idea what happened. I walked outside five minutes ago. He was there on the porch, all trussed up. No one saw a damn thing! We didn’t hear anyone, smell anyone, nothing.”

“What do you mean trussed up, baby?”

“I mean trussed up! Okay, not technically trussed—his feet are bound together and his hands are tied behind his back. And that’s not the really fucking disturbing part!”

By now he knew her well enough to know that “fuck” meant she was on edge. He tried to keep the tension out of his own voice. “What else is there?”

“His neck is broken and his eyes were plucked out.”

“Whoa. Shit,” muttered Michael.

“Whoa shit is right,” Ally snapped.

“What, she can hear like a wolf too?” Michael asked. When Cade waved his hand irritably, he sighed. “Never mind, not important right now.”

“Ally, you say the body just turned up? Ally? Baby, answer me!”

After another few seconds of silence, she exhaled loudly. “Okay. I’ve got it under control now. I didn’t mean to go all girly on you but—damn, that scared the hell out of me. Yes, out of nowhere! I walked out on the porch to go for a run and I nearly fell over him. The porch light’s on, the guys are all up and around, and none of us heard or smelled
anything!
Who could get all the way to the house, dump a corpse and then disappear without me or a bunch of werewolves noticing?”

Michael and Cade’s eyes met. He knew both of them were thinking
a Fae.

“If Becca had seen this I don’t know what I would’ve done. Thank God I’d put her back to bed.”

Shame, love and a sweet, fierce pride washed over him as he heard the concern for Becca in her voice. He’d lost control tonight, let his anger and fear and confusion overrule him. He had a feeling he might even have accidentally struck her while he was going after MacSorley. The thought was too disgusting to contemplate right now.

An alpha of his strength was expected to use violence deliberately, judiciously, with control and purpose. He wasn’t supposed to strike out like a wounded animal when his emotions got the better of him. He wasn’t an animal, and he wasn’t a human. He was a werewolf, and he was supposed to be the last one in his pack to lose control.

And in spite of his behavior tonight, she was worried about his child.

“Cade? Cade, say something! When will you be home?”

He smiled at the irritated tone of voice, so much more welcome to him than her fear. “We’ll be there in another twenty minutes. I’m going to figure this out, I swear.”

“There’s one more thing. Whoever dumped Jakob on the porch left a note with the body. Which would be helpful, except that it’s in a language I don’t recognize. Looks almost like runes.”

Seth and some others had done something with the body—she didn’t know and she didn’t want to know. They were freaking a little at the way she had freaked. She would have to get a firmer handle on her emotions if she was going to live with a bunch of werewolves. But even an alpha chick got disconcerted at finding her erstwhile ex-boyfriend dead, bound, neck broken and eyes missing on her front porch in the middle of the night.

After conferring with Dylan about the note, and then Googling matters of high Fae etiquette on her laptop, sleep was out of the question, so she took a hot shower. She got into bed with a book, gave up trying to read after five minutes, and ended up sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, staring at the door and waiting for Cade to walk in.

She heard him enter the house, climb the stairs to check on Becca, then come back down. When he walked into the bedroom he started in surprise, like he hadn’t expected to find her sitting there on high alert.

Finally he said, “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” she replied softly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. Fuck.” He sighed and ran both hands through his hair. “No. Probably not.”

A painful silence settled as she wondered what to say next. Maybe he was as uncomfortable as she was, but if so, it wouldn’t show. He watched her in the big dresser mirror as he emptied his pockets and took off his watch.

She cleared her throat. “Something really weird happened tonight.”

Their eyes met in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow.

She smiled and shrugged. “Okay, yeah. I mean besides jail, and the Fae, and Dec, and Jakob’s corpse on the front porch.” She fidgeted for a minute and cleared her throat again. “Tonight Dylan found out he could speak whatever language Dec and Sindri were speaking. And he could read the note left on Jakob’s body.”

He spun to face her. “What the hell?”

“Swear to God. How can something like that happen? I mean, when we moved to Texas, he seemed to pick up Spanish in like a day, but he was five years old. He’s always made straight A’s in French. But he hasn’t been studying whatever this language is!”

“Where’s the note?”

“Here.”

She picked it up from the bedside table and held it out. He crossed the room to take it from her. Staring at the paper, he nodded.

“I don’t think it’s Icelandic, but it’s similar.”

He looked up at her but didn’t come any nearer. “Where’s Dylan now?”

“In bed. He was exhausted. It upset him when he realized what he was doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t even know they were speaking another language. He said he heard it as English.”

Cade didn’t seem as shocked as she’d expected, or had been herself. “This happened tonight? While I was here?”

“Yes. He did it one other time I know of, the day we took Baby Girl to get her hair cut.”

He finally smiled at her, a warm, tender grin that erased all the worry in his face and the tension in his body.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing.” He stared at her another minute, then sat down on the bed. She scooted out of his way, sitting back against the headboard with her knees drawn up. He didn’t seem angry with her, just distant.

“So?”

“So what?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “So what did the note say, Ally?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, reddening. “It’s an apology. To your mother. He regretted what the human—Jakob—did to her son. He thinks your mom’s alive, and he thinks Dylan is you.”

“He ran off before—before Mama went into the sea. She cut him with the knife and he ran.” He was silent for a minute. “Still doesn’t explain why he thinks I’m a teenager thirty-three years later.”

It seemed like he was going to say something else. When he didn’t, she continued, “Well, he’d told Jakob—he says
the human
, he never uses Jakob’s name—not to have any contact with the boy again, and the human’s disobedience shames him. Shames Adnar, I mean. He presents the human’s body as atonement for the offense.”

“Shit.”

“I know. I’m not an expert on the Fae, so I got on Google. Sure enough, there’s a huge Wikipedia entry on high Fae rituals. It’s a shame and honor culture. Giving unintended offense is a big deal. They don’t think much of humans—or werewolves, or the non-high Fae, really. When a high Fae’s inferior, like an employee or someone under their command, commits some kind of grievous offense, killing the offender and offering the body to the offended party—the way he left Jakob with the eyes and the bonds and everything—that’s an ancient way of apologizing.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. I’m surprised he apologized to my mother, but the whole killing thing—they’re a barbaric bunch. And Dylan had no trouble reading this? He was sure he understood it?”

”Yes.”

“Well,” he grunted as he pulled off his boots, “it’s weird, but no weirder than everything else that’s been happening around here.”

He told her that when he’d fought Courtlandt, he’d had a sudden flash of genuine, honest-to-God telepathy.

“You’ve never experienced that before?”

“No. And it only lasted a few minutes.”

She started to ask him why the hell he hadn’t mentioned that before but realized she’d sound like a hypocritical bitch.

“Shit,” he groaned, flopping back on the bed and throwing an arm across his eyes. “I’m tired. I’m just so fucking tired.”

Working up her nerve, she crawled down the bed to run her fingers through his hair. “Hey,” she said against his ear.

“What?” He lifted his arm and turned his head to her. The wariness in his eyes made her heart hurt.

“Take off your shirt and stretch out on your stomach.”

He gazed at her as if trying to figure out what she was up to. Then he stood, stripped off his T-shirt and lay down in his normal spot. When she straddled his back and began to knead his neck and shoulders, he groaned again.

“God, that feels good.”

She leaned down to plant a quick kiss on his neck and resumed the massage.

“You’re gonna put me to sleep.”

“You need it.”

“But I should go talk to Sindri.” His voice was muffled, his head buried in his folded arms. “I got so angry at him. I need to make sure he’s okay, and ask him…damn. Everything.”

His warm skin felt good beneath her hands, smooth and solid and safe. In her head she pictured all her love and remorse flowing out of her fingers and into him.

Stupid. Silly, romantic and stupid.

“Sindri’s been in his nook since Dec and Sarah Jane left. I’m pretty sure he’s hiding.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Only to Dec, but it was in Icelandic.”

“That’s the worst part of all this.”

Something in his words made her pause. His voice sounded normal, his usual mellow baritone, if a little raspy from stress and exhaustion. It was something behind the words—something a little wistful, a little sad.

“What’s the worst part, baby?”

He turned his head to lay his cheek on his arm. “Sindri. All of a sudden, I don’t know him. He’s the only person left who’s known me all my life, and he’s kept secrets from me. Like the way he was with MacSorley.”

“The way he ran to Dec and not to you?”

“Yeah. And another time, something I’d forgotten about. When I was recovering, I was asleep most of the time, but once in a while I’d come to for just a few minutes…”

“And? Cade, what happened?”

He gestured with his chin to the green suede sofa. “One time when I woke up, they were over there, on Mama’s couch. Sindri was asleep with his head in MacSorley’s lap, and MacSorley was petting him, like I would do to Becca. When he saw me looking at him, he told me I was dreaming. I knew I wasn’t, but I couldn’t answer.”

She didn’t pause in her work as she thought about that. Her nerves needed the feel of his skin as much as his cramped muscles needed the massage. “You know, tonight he was hugging Sindri like you would a child. Right before he left, I swear Dec called Sindri
barn.
Doesn’t that mean child?”

“Yeah. But Sindri’s four hundred years old.”

“Maybe Dec’s protective of him? It would make sense for them to be close, if Sindri was with your mom for so many years, right?”

“Okay, wait.”

“What?”

“Stop. Get off.” He sat up, sending her sprawling onto the mattress beside him. She started to sit up, but he pressed her back down with one hand and stared, hard, into her eyes. “Tell me everything you know about MacSorley. Now.”

“But…” She paused, confused until she realized he thought she was still holding out on him. With the strength she normally kept in reserve, she pushed him off.

“I’m sorry.” She brushed his face with her fingertips. “Okay? I’m sorry. I kept hoping he’d tell you himself and— The longer it went on, the harder it got. I know he cares about you, Cade, I know he’s a good guy because I’ve lived with him for four years. But I swear, I don’t know any more about him now than you do.”

“How do you know he’s a good guy if you don’t know anything about him? His past, his family—my family, if he’s even telling the truth about that?”

“Because, I just—” She sighed in frustration and sat up all the way, turning to face him as she leaned across his long, outstretched legs. “You’re right—I don’t really know anything about him. I didn’t know anything about him when I let him move in with us, and that sounds stupid. It
is
stupid. But in four years he’s been a good friend. I know he’s telling the truth about who he is because one, he looks so much like you and Dylan—I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before—and two, he talked a little about your mom and Carson, and, I mean…it just
sounded
like the truth, okay?”

“What did he say about them?”

“He said your mom was kind and loving, but reckless. Heedless, he said. And that Carson was like her, but you were like your dad, and that’s why Carson fell apart and you didn’t.”

He didn’t close his eyes to hide the haunted misery in them. “There’s nothing else you know about MacSorley that you haven’t told me?”

“No. Nothing. I swear. I can’t lie to you, can I?”

“No. It’s just— I thought everything was finally working out.” She heard anguish in his voice, and it made her ache for him. “I lost my brother but found my nephew. My pack’s growing, we’re getting recognized. I found out I had a mate, and I liked her. I was even okay with having Sarah Jane around. Then this happens—MacSorley, the Fae, Sindri and Sarah Jane. Ally, I don’t know who my own family is, who my enemies are. And now I don’t know if I can trust my mate. I can’t read you like I can read most people.”

Almost roughly, he took her chin in his hand and tilted her head back, staring at her eyes. It sure as hell felt like he could read her, like he could see straight through her. When they were like this, skin to skin but without the distraction of passion or tenderness—that was when the force of him nearly overwhelmed her, that was when she realized just what she’d gotten herself into. Yes, she’d lived with wolves for years, but not grown alphas, and not as a mate.