Werewolves in Love 2: Yours, Mine and Howls (39 page)

“That doesn’t explain why
you
didn’t like him,” Michael pointed out. “Unless you’re Fae yourself. Which would explain all your weirdness, right?” He looked at her expectantly. Dylan raised an eyebrow and smirked, looking exactly like Cade.

Ally quickly changed the subject.

“Now I have a question for you,” Dec announced.

“What is it?”

“Did Ally die? Did Eir resurrect her?”

He’d thought nothing could ever surprise him again, but this did. “Yeah. Dylan’s stepfather killed her. How’d you know that?”

“The wee fella guessed it. Or perhaps Eir told him. I think she visits him just for company sometimes. Bitch is probably lonely.”

Cade sat down on the bottom porch step and patted his chest, where his front pocket should’ve been. Then he remembered he wasn’t wearing a shirt. A cigarillo would’ve been very welcome.

“I always knew there was a—how should I put it?—an unnatural explanation for the Wendy’s oddities.” Dec looked down at Cade. “You’ve had a hell of a couple of months, pup. And now I’ve loaded all this on you at once. I am truly sorry, if that helps any.”

“It doesn’t.”

His uncle smiled sadly. “All right then. Well, I’m in need of another drop.”

He started up the steps. Cade put a hand out to stop him.

“No. We’re not done. I don’t want to talk about this in there, with them.”

“Don’t want to talk about what?”

“What Sindri feels so goddamned guilty about. If you’re going to tell me something that changes the way I feel about the old man, I need to hear it alone.”

“Ah, hell, pup. I don’t think it’ll do that.” He sat down next to Cade. “You have to promise me something, though.”

“No. I don’t.”

Dec fixed him with a penetrating, appraising stare. Cade didn’t like the proximity, the two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder.

“Cade. You and Becca are Sindri’s whole life. You have to find a way to let him know you don’t blame him for what happened. And you can’t blame him for never telling you about this, either. You just—you can’t. The wee fella’s done the best he could. He’s suffered like you can’t understand, and I’ll not see him suffer anymore, you hear me?”

“You tell me what fucking happened and then I’ll decide how to feel about it.”

They stared at each other for a moment, nearly nose to nose. Dec made an exasperated noise and turned away to look out at the woods again.

“All right. Here comes the bad part.”

Dec dropped his head with a sigh and started plucking at some blades of grass.

“I wasn’t thrilled when Eirny decided to run off to America with Louis MacDougall five days after meetin’ him. It was that kind of impetuousness that lost her coat to Adnar, see? Always rushin’ about on a whim and a giggle, never thinking things through. And I was worried, because Louis had no idea what she was and I didn’t see how she could spend thirty or forty years with him and him not notice she wasn’t aging at all. Remember, we assumed they wouldn’t have children.

“But Eirny was in love, and the wee fella was glad they were gettin’ away from Europe. He was always afraid Adnar would escape, y’see. He didn’t trust the eejits in Keflavík to keep the bastard locked up, even though Adnar had been there almost two hundred years by then. Well. Louis takes Eirny—and Sindri—off to Georgia. And Savannah’s on the sea, so that was all right, y’know? Then his uncle leaves him the land, so they moved here, and Louis took over the pack. And then you pups came. Even though we were shocked to learn Louis carried the gene, and we were worried about Eirny bein’ landlocked, we were still excited about possible Vargalfs bein’ born for the first time in centuries. And Eirny was in heaven.”

He paused, turning to look at Cade again. “She loved you pups more than her own life.”

Cade nodded once, abruptly.

“Well, and that’s what worried her. A selkie, thousands of miles from the ocean… As old as she was, she didn’t
have
to shift, but she was afraid she’d grow to miss the sea, afraid that eventually she’d miss it so much she’d leave the three of you in spite of herself, and she didn’t want to do that. She had your da build her the swimming pool, and Sindri said it helped, but still she feared the sea’s pull would be too strong. So she decided to burn her coat.”

“Goddamn,” replied Cade, stunned. “What happens to a—” it was still weird to say it out loud “—a selkie when that happens?”

“According to the lore, she’d go crazy. I don’t know if anyone alive had ever known a selkie who did it. She’d be stuck in her human form forever, at the cost of half her nature. Sindri was terrified when he found out she was thinkin’ about it. So he hid the coat.”

He stopped talking and stared at the grass. Cade let him be.

“And everything was okay for a while, until the day Carson found the coat, and took it to his mother, and asked her what it was.”

“Carson never said anything,” Cade said hollowly. “Why wouldn’t he mention something like that?”

“I don’t know, pup. I hope he never knew what it was, or what it led to.” Dec swallowed hard. Cade heard the almost silent, surely involuntary, whimper of misery.

“And then she did burn it, before Sindri could stop her. And a few months after that, he got word to me that she was growin’ melancholy, unstable, withdrawn. She was pesterin’ Louis to take them all to feckin’ Scotland.”

Cade tensed.

“And Louis did it, no doubt thinkin’ it would make her happy, bring her back to you all, but it didn’t, of course, it couldn’t, and…”

His no-longer-quite-Irish accent had grown thicker. His restless fingers still pulled at the grass between his boots, a small bare patch of dirt growing steadily bigger under his hand. “And the goddamn useless pricks in Iceland had already turned their backs on Adnar, and who knows how long he’d been looking for Eirny. He was haunting Scarista Beach, and she went there too, and I wasn’t there, and Sindri wasn’t there…”

He turned to look up at Cade. His eyes were dry, his voice filled with unshed tears. “It was just you and your brother and father, pup, and Christ, there was nothing Louis could’ve done, he had no way of knowin’… If I’d come out here sooner, if I’d met them in Scotland, if I’d just done
something…
”

Dec shook his head, blinked and looked away. Cade had a sudden urge to throw an arm around his uncle’s neck and comfort him, cry with him.

He resisted it.

Both wolves stood at the approach of an SUV. A second later, Becca began to cry.

“Oh thank God, she shifted.”

“Of course she did. It’s completely natural. You’ll get used to it.”

They stepped apart, each suddenly self-conscious, uncomfortable, avoiding the other’s eyes.

Ally dashed out. “I thought I heard the Expedition.”

“You did,” replied Cade.

“Good. Becca just shifted.”

“Why’s she crying?”

“She sat up under the chair and bumped her head.” She looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You tell me—”

“Shh, baby, please.” He grabbed her, held her close, inhaling the scent of her, and she didn’t ask again, and he loved her for that.

The Expedition screeched to a halt a few feet from the porch. Roman jumped out.

“Hey. Seth and Jesse brought a tow. Y’all okay?” He eyed the rest of the group filing out onto the porch. “So, anybody gonna tell me what happened?”

“No.” Michael cupped a hand. “Keys.”

Roman tossed them.

“Go help the guys. When y’all get the cars hooked up, take care of Stapkis’ body.”

“That’s Stapkis I smell? Cool.”

“Move,” Michael growled over his shoulder.

“I’m going, I’m going. Damn. Three bodies in two months. Maybe we should open a morgue next to the woodshop.”

It was long past sunset when everyone fell out of the SUV, dirty, cranky and relieved. Becca, incoherent with exhaustion, had fallen asleep halfway home.

“I can’t believe I’m putting her to bed like this.”

“It’s just dirt, baby. Bathe her in the morning when she’s conscious.”

“Fine. But I’m burning the sheets.”

He almost smiled at that.

“You should run around shirtless more often,” she murmured, running a hand across his stomach.

“Yeah? You too.”

They helped each other kind of stagger down the stairs.

“Hey, you know…I could carry you. Wanna see?”

He gave her a squeeze and kissed the top of her head. “Sure. Right after I cut off my balls, since I wouldn’t need ’em anymore.”

“God. The macho shit.”

He pulled up short as they passed the kitchen.

“Ooh, great idea. I’m starving.”

“Huh? Oh yeah, me too, but—no, I need to do something.”

She shrugged. “All right. How about a sandwich?”

“Good. Make me two. No, three. And see what else is in there.”

“Got it. What are you up to?”

They hadn’t bothered to turn on the light. He walked over to the corner by the back door, stopping next to the hatch in the floor that led to Sindri’s nook beneath the house.

“Cade. It’s late, maybe you should just—”

“He’s awake. He would’ve heard us come home.” He tapped his bootheel firmly on the hatch once, then crouched on his haunches and rapped with his knuckles a couple more times.

“Vacation’s over, old man,” he said to the floor in a loud voice. “The house is dirty, we’re exhausted and Ally can’t cook.”

“Hey! That’s just mean!”

But it was worth it to see the grin he flashed her.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“
Tomorrow?
”

“That’s what he said. Day after, at the latest.”

“And he just told you this morning.”

“Yep. I said ‘thanks for the fucking notice, Declan’, and he gave me that cocky grin and said ‘But I’m givin’ you notice now’.”

Michael smirked. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Me neither. From now on, nothing he does can surprise me.” She rested her chin on her hands and sighed. “I guess when you’re six hundred years old, saying goodbye to someone you’ve known for four years isn’t such a big deal.”

He gave her a brotherly shoulder bump and leaned back on his hands. “He loves you. It’s just…he feels like you’ve all got new lives and now he can move on.”

“I guess so.”

What Dec had actually said was,
“The three of you belong here now, Ally girl. You’ll take care of Cade and Becca, he’ll take care of you and Dylan, Seth’s happier than he’s ever been. And I’ve got things I need to do.”

They were sitting on the front porch, watching Becca wander about as she chattered to a furry Aaron, following close on her heels.

He’d awakened from his coma a few days after their adventure in the woods. Doctors hadn’t yet determined if he’d suffered any permanent brain damage, but he wasn’t the same wolf. Since coming home, he’d gone four-footed more often than not. Cade was determined to give him whatever he needed to heal. Becca seemed to help.

“Hey, Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“Is it true that if a wolf stays furry long enough, he’ll forget how to change back?”

“Eh. It’s one of those things that only seems to happen to someone’s cousin’s best friend’s boyfriend. Nothing’s on the record, far as I know.”

They watched Aaron and Becca for a few more minutes.

“When do you think y’all will tell him about his father?”

He shrugged. “We’ll keep an eye on him, see where his head’s at. He hasn’t mentioned Rufus since he woke up, though, so I think he might be relieved.”

“Michael! Even if their relationship was already ruined, losing his father like that was devastating. Aaron’s never going to have any closure.”

“Fuck closure. Sometimes a dead father’s the best thing that can happen to a wolf.”

Matching his deadpan attitude, she replied, “Is there something you’d like to talk about, Michael?”

He twisted his mouth like he was trying not to smile. “No. No, there’s not.”

“Okay, then. Just checking.”

He didn’t answer, and she didn’t press. She’d grown comfortable with the silences that were a part of any conversation with Michael.

“I’m just disappointed,” she said after a few minutes.

“He’s a good friend of yours. You’ll miss him for a while.”

“That’s part of it, but I was just hoping…you know. That he’d stick around for a while and Cade would get to like having a father figure.”

He wasn’t trying not to smile anymore.

“And Sarah Jane would come back, and Dec could rekindle his romance with her, and we’d have this big extended—hey! Stop it!” She punched him in the upper arm.

He didn’t say anything because he was rocking back and forth in silent laughter.

“All right,” she grumbled with a blush. “Maybe it’s a fantasy.”

“
Maybe?
” he hooted.

“Why couldn’t something like that happen?”

“Because this is life, not Lifetime!”

“I don’t want a Lifetime movie,” she shot back. Gazing at Becca and Aaron, she tucked her hair behind an ear. “I want a Hallmark Channel movie. Something warm and uplifting and happily ever after.”
We’re almost there.

“Well, your ever after’s gonna last a really long time, so it could still end happily, I suppose.”

Her heart clenched when she remembered her question to Dec last night.

“Have you had any kids?”

“Several.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re dead, love. I outlived
’
em all.”

With an exaggerated carelessness that proved he’d noted her discomfort, Michael said, “Besides, there’s nothing to rekindle with Sarah Jane. Dec says they’ve been friends for a hundred years, and he decided a long time ago to stay away from Fae chicks, even the sane ones like Sarah Jane.”

“Ooh! That’s it!” she exclaimed, slapping him on the knee with enthusiasm at the change of subject. “Crazy Fae chicks. Tell me about Mary Ann.”

“Oh hell no. You talk to Cade about that.”

“I can’t!” she whined. “He’ll think I’m being nosy.”

“Ya think?”

“She’s my fiancé’s baby’s mama, Michael. That’s not being nosy.”

He muttered something nasty and turned away with a grin, pretending to watch the guys working on one of the cabins.