Wolf Ties (A Rue Darrow Novel Book 2) (15 page)

Either way, before the panther and the wolf met, a third party entered the room. None of us had noticed his approach because we were too distracted by Ella’s tale and Nathan too enraged.

A streak of fur flew at Ella, ramming Nathan aside. When he stilled, Hyatt stood with one clawed hand at Ella’s throat, and he held her pressed against the wall.

Nathan shifted, ripping out of his clothes. He ran at Hyatt, but I grabbed him and was almost dragged over the floor for my pains. Fingers throbbing, I wrapped my arms around his thick neck and called to him in his ear. “Wait, Nathan, wait.”

He snapped and growled at both Ella and Hyatt. I knew if I let go there would be no stopping him from destroying them both. Having seen him in action as he razed demon after demon, I didn’t doubt his strength. I worried about Hyatt’s death starting the war I had worked so hard to avoid.

“This is where you’ve been?” Hyatt demanded of Ella. “With the wolves?”

She gasped for breath.

“Hyatt, let her go,” I shouted. He ignored me, and Ella tugged at his hand.

“Y-you heard everything?” Ella rasped.

“Yeah, I heard. You laid with a werewolf. What were you going to do after that? Come to us? We don’t want you. I would never let you back.”

Her eyes widened, and I felt her pain. “I’m having your baby.”

“No.” He shook his head slowly side to side. I flung my senses wide and tried to concentrate to gain access to his thoughts. Holding onto Nathan made it impossible. I shut my eyes and strained.
Hearing is easy, because it’s in my nature. Come on, Rue. Listen.

“Mew was right. She was never one of us.”
The thread to his thoughts dissolved and rematerialized in my mind.
“Now she thinks she’s going to bring that thing into this world and humiliate me even more? Not in this lifetime!”

“Hyatt, don’t do it!” When I let go of Nathan to try to stop Hyatt, the werewolf moved before I did. He leaped through the air and sank razor sharp teeth into Hyatt’s shoulder. A beat behind Nathan, I reached Hyatt and snatched his hand from around Ella’s throat. I tugged too hard and sent the lanky panther shifter crashing into the opposite wall. Nathan flew with him, refusing to release his hold. I spun from watching them to Ella and discovered with all my speed, I wasn’t fast enough.

Ella lay on her back, eyes staring at the ceiling but glazed. I sank to my knees, wanting to help her, but the scent of blood brought my fangs down. I shimmied in reverse across the floor and stood to press my back against the wall. She didn’t move, and I couldn’t help her. I swallowed and forced my gaze away from the woman.

“N-Nathan,” I whispered.

He didn’t respond. Hyatt and Nathan were going at each other, both shifted and tumbling head over paws. Growls punctuated the air, splintering of wood, and cracking of plaster. Each time they banged into a wall, I wondered how close we were to the entire roof caving in on us.

I tried again to call Nathan’s name. He looked up for one instant, and Hyatt used the distraction to land on Nathan’s back and drive him into the floor. I lost patience and zipped across to them. One hand disentangled the panther from Nathan, and I threw him toward the open doorway. Hyatt yelped as he rolled down the stairs in the hall.

I spun back to Nathan and pointed. “Help…her.”

He barked at me. Who knew what that meant, but from where I stood, I knew her heart wasn’t beating. I took a step toward Ella, but Nathan blocked my path. I was past my tolerance level. No more waiting.

I left them there because if I didn’t I might feed from a shifter, which was not conducive to my health. By the time my hunger was sated, it was close to dawn. Rather than return to the empty house, I headed home. The second I shut the door, a scratching at the panel made me open it again. Nathan in his wolf form trotted in and took up a spot on the carpet by my bed. I locked the door and laid down to rest. With hope, tomorrow night things would look better.

Chapter Fourteen

“Just let me talk to them, Nathan,” I asked him for the hundredth time as we sat in a restaurant where Nathan wolfed down his meal and I was actually able to drink wine. Go figure. After all I had been through, this ability was what I had taken from the turmoil—a cast iron stomach.

“No.” He aimed his knife at me while he chewed and swallowed. “They’re still holding what you did against you, Rue.”

“You know I meant well, Nathan!”

“Yes, but you don’t understand what it means to us to be able to let go. Now we’ll have to wait another month to get that freedom. There’s also no guarantee Trace won’t lead the others to fight the cats.”

“Why should he? Ella’s dead. Hyatt killed her. You said yourself with her betrayal, she wouldn’t remain a member of the pack either way.”

“It was their right to kill her.”

He didn’t say, but I had already heard it in his thoughts for myself. Nathan believed it was his right as well, and he would have killed Ella if Hyatt and I hadn’t gotten in his way. I didn’t know what to think of that. Truly, it shouldn’t have surprised me. The world we lived in wasn’t the moral and simplistic one that I had come from.

I stared into my glass and swirled the contents. “Are you holding it against me, too?”

“No,” he answered right away, and he sounded sincere. “How can I hold anything against my girlfriend.”

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “When did we become girlfriend and boyfriend?”

My dead heart may have stirred when he flashed his boyish grin at me. This was the Nathan I knew. “When we made love.”

“You’re a romantic, Nathan Harris.”

“Are you saying you don’t love me?”

We were doing that? Making declarations? I shifted in my seat. Of course I loved Nathan and had told him so, but loving left me vulnerable as well as those I cared about. “You know how I feel about you, but I’d like to keep it quiet.”

He frowned and laid his silverware down. “Are you ashamed of me?”

“I’m not.” I reached across the table to stroke a hand along his cheek. He captured my hand and ran the pad of his thumb over my palm. “Just a little bit of time, okay? I need to sort things out and learn more about what I’m dealing with as a vampire and with dating a werewolf. Someone told me recently that I’ve been clomping about ignorant of the trouble I’ve caused.”

“So?”

“Nathan, I don’t want to put you in danger. Do it for me, okay? Let’s pretend we’re still just friends. It’s not forever.”

He released my hand and finished his meal. I drained the last of the wine from my glass. When I would have paid the bill, he nabbed the check and settled it himself. Out on the street, we walked side by side, each lost in our thoughts. Now that I could read them and it seemed Nathan didn’t try to keep me out of his head, I was tempted to poke. I resisted. He had a right to his privacy.

“Trace is alpha now?” I asked.

“Hm.”

“Does that mean yes?”

He glanced at me. “Yes.”

“What about you, Nathan? Where will you live? And don’t try to tell me you have the apartment because I happen to know you haven’t been back there since Dalton died.”

“I’ll figure it out. Violet told me you glamoured a few people for me, and she called in a few favors to make some paperwork disappear. Thanks.”

“Can’t have you being a wanted man.”

“I doubt I’m out of the system. Somewhere deep, there’s a file or video of a crazed man that’s a lot stronger than any human should be.”

“If there is, we’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

He grinned at me. “You’ve grown stronger, Rue.”

“Well my stomach certainly has.”

He chuckled. I liked that Nathan could laugh again and do it so easily. No doubt he still grieved for Dalton, but the fractured emotions had healed a lot in the last week or so after the moon’s influence had eased. That was all he had needed anyway—time.

We came to an alleyway, and Nathan stopped walking. He moved in front of me, and I gazed up at him in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“Unacceptable,” he said.

I frowned. “Huh? What’s unacceptable?”

“Keeping us a secret.”

He scooped me off my feet with a hand on either side of my waist and ducked into he alley. The next thing I knew Nathan had me pinned against a wall and claimed my lips in a searing kiss. I gave into him in an instant and wound my arms around his neck. When I was good and dizzy and my lips tingling, he raised his head and met my gaze.

“You are mine now, Rue, until you say you don’t want to see me anymore. I’m not hiding it or pretending. I’m alpha, and I’m sick of pretending to be less! So decide now if you can handle it—if you can handle
me
.”

I smirked and pushed at his chest until he let me down to my feet. “Are you kidding? I’ve been handling you since the day I met you, and don’t you forget it.”

A happy howl rose in the air and echoed across the night.

* * * *

“Bill?” I called as I entered the library.

He strode from the kitchen holding a plate of tacos and munching on one. Seconds after Lily appeared, floating near him. “Good evening, Rue. It’s good to see you again.”

“Rue,” Lily chirped with excitement, “you’re here for your lesson?”

“Not yet. How’s it going, Lily? Still not tired of this one and his obsession?” I teased.

“Bill is very intelligent, and he knows everything about everything.” The ghost was in love. Who knew that was possible?

“Do you know what Almonester is, Bill?” I had a feeling he wouldn’t answer, but I posed the question to him anyway, just in case.

He pretended to be fascinated by the juices dripping from his taco. Perhaps he was.

“Well?” I demanded, hands on my hips. “I came early just so we could chat about it.”

Bill did an about face. “Hm, I think I didn’t heat this one enough. Come on, Lily. I’ll describe the flavors to you again.”

“Okay.” She floated off after him while I glared holes at the back of his head.

Well, it didn’t matter because now I knew the library could provide me with anything I wanted. Bill liked to tell me he couldn’t be partial, but I knew it wasn’t against his job to tell me about Almonester. That meant he wouldn’t tell me because it was me.

I walked over to a stack and spoke my desire aloud. Just as before, the entire shelf disappeared, and when it returned, new books were lined up on each row. I skimmed the selection and before long found what I was looking for.

“Encyclopedia of Monsters.”

I flipped the book open, wondering if I was listed and if so annoyed that someone dared call me a monster. Cute little innocent thing like myself, absurd. I scanned the table of contents to find a host of creatures—fae, dwarves, demons, shifters, and more. This wouldn’t help me because I would need to know what Almonester was already.

At the back of the book, an index presented itself. Qualities of monsters jumped out at me, and I investigated further. Almonester was evil, money hungry, conniving, angry, unfriendly… This wasn’t helping at all. Too many other nonhumans fit the bill. Then I got the idea to check to see if scents were listed, and they were. I recalled Almonester smelled of dank earth, not pleasant in the least. With a shorter list that I cross-referenced with qualities, I decided Almonester had to be a goblin, another name for him being a Redcap. Both words sounded ominous.

My gut was telling me I was on the right track, so I flipped to the section of the book that gave more details about him and read aloud. “Goblins are powerful magic users. They are greedy with a deep-seated hunger for gold. No matter how much they already possess, they crave more.”

Gold? I thought of the safe I had seen once in Almonester’s office, and I would be willing to bet it didn’t contain the whole of his stash.

“Goblins are very lazy.” Lazy? That one took me by surprise. I wouldn’t have thought of Almonester as lazy, but then again, he did stay in his office all night at the bar. I had no idea what he did back there. Orin, Pammie, and I were the ones to serve customers and clean the bar. Still, he was a business owner. Wasn’t it his job to keep the books and let the staff do the menial work? “Since they are lazy, goblins will use various conniving ways to enslave others.”

My blood ran cold. Uh,
colder
. I didn’t want to read any more, but I forced myself to continue.

“The goblin’s enslavement spell is very powerful and unbreakable because the victim has to
will
to give in to it.”

What did that mean? Why would anyone in their right mind will to be enslaved? The next line was even worse.

“The enslavement lasts for the victim’s entire lifetime.”

All at once, I knew without a doubt Almonester was a goblin and that he had used this particular spell on Orin and Pammie. However, I refused to believe the spell couldn’t be broken. Just look how many I had destroyed without trying. I determined I would continue to work for Almonster and learn as much as possible about him and about his magic. Then the day would come when I would set the two fae free once and for all.

“Just you wait, Almonester. Rue Darrow is coming for you.”

The End

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