Rivals (Shifter Island #2) Page 6

  The elders would ask questions like that, and wouldn’t be swayed by her assurances that she’d be fine.

  “Where was that place?” she asked.

  He almost didn’t hear the question, he was so lost in his own thoughts. He had to blink them away and clear his head with a couple of deep breaths. He almost asked her what place she meant, but understood when he looked into her eyes. She meant the dream place, that field of flowers.

  “Your imagination, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t really know.”

  “It was beautiful.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “It was… Everything seemed so simple there. Just you and me. It’s like that at the cabin. Everything’s so basic. I love it there. I don’t understand why it’s used as a punishment. It didn’t seem like a punishment to me.”

  The bond, Aaron thought. She wouldn’t have felt like she was being punished if they’d been stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean, without food or fresh water, being constantly battered by the waves. The bond made everything feel not only tolerable, but extraordinary. Remarkable. Special.

  You should take her home, he thought. Let her be back among her people for a few days, then ask her again where she wants to be.

  She reached for him, and he wanted nothing more than to make love with her again, to ignore the rest of the world as if it were no more real than that field of flowers in the dreamland.

  “Will you do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Do… what you do. Turn into a wolf. Show me.”

  “Abby, this… this isn’t a good time.”

  But when the right time might be, he couldn’t decide, so, nodding, he pulled off his jeans and shirt and shoes and set them aside. He crouched down, low to the ground, hands splayed open in front of him. He took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, then lowered the walls that held the wolf at bay.

  The shift was never painless. This time was worst than most, because he was afraid he’d open his eyes to find that Abby had run away.

  His bones and muscles contorted and reshaped themselves. Fur emerged from his skin.

  He was a beautiful animal, he’d been told. Graceful, powerful, golden-eyed. Only the fur on his back and head was dark; the rest of it was blond, almost white. He was long-legged, for a wolf, with a thick, expressive tail. He’d never been injured, had no ragged ear, no scars, no missing toes. Most of the time, he was proud and confident. He had no reason not to be.

  He opened his eyes, thinking he would find himself alone, but Abby was kneeling on the ground only a few steps away. She seemed ready to coax him to come closer.

  I’m not a dog, Abby, he thought.

  “Can you understand me now?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “You just can’t speak.”

  He shook his head. Then he flared his nostrils, searching for her scent. There was no fear in it. No arousal, either. Just… curiosity.

  After a minute he padded over to her and gave her a warning look, a sternly cocked brow. He supposed her natural instinct was to pet him, to scratch him behind the ears. That would feel good to the wolf, because he trusted her, had bonded with her, but it would be a mistake to relax like that now, to let down his guard.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she sighed. “This is—I keep thinking I’ll wake up, and I’ll be back in bed at Dolphin Cove.”

  Aaron stepped back and pulled in a deep breath. A minute later, he was a man again.

  “Dolphins?” he said. “There are no dolphins here.”

  Abby sighed. “It’s the resort I was at. Maybe they figured they wouldn’t get as many customers if they called it Shark Cove, or Funny Ugly Fish Cove. I don’t know. I live on a street called Elm Crest, and there aren’t any elms there. All the elms died fifty years ago. People do stupid things. They give things stupid names. It’s all about the PR.” Shaking her head, she looked past him in the direction of the settlement. “Are you still you?” she asked. “When you’re… like that? The wolf?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Do you still…”

  She cut herself off. Suddenly, she looked wistful, like the little girl who’d been told long ago that there would be no more car trips with her mother.

  “Do I what?” Aaron asked.

  “Do you care about me? When you’re that… other?”

  “With every beat of my heart,” Aaron said.

  He listened for the beat of her heart, the sound of her breathing. No, she wasn’t afraid. She truly wasn’t afraid—not here, now, with him. Grateful for that beyond words, Aaron leaned in to her and kissed her softly.

  Then, so suddenly that it made Aaron’s heart leap in his chest, Daniel’s voice interrupted them.

  Daniel, saying Aaron’s name in a growl.

  When Aaron looked up, the watcher was standing there, with Caleb and Mason behind him, and several of the younger wolves behind them.

  There was no mistaking their intentions.

  “Come away from the human,” Daniel said. “Do it now.”

  Nine

  “I won’t,” Aaron said. “She’s not threatening me, Daniel. She’s not threatening anyone.”

  Something had changed, Abby saw. The elders had been stern before; now they were angry. Threatening. And Daniel—the very sight of him made her flesh crawl.

  She’d seen enough movies and TV shows, and had witnessed enough real-life encounters, to know that if Aaron didn’t obey Daniel’s instructions quickly, there’d be hell to pay.

  Almost holding her breath, she turned toward Aaron to see what he’d do, hoping she was misunderstanding the whole situation.

  “Leave her,” Caleb said.

  “And what happens to her then?” Aaron demanded. “What do you intend to do with her?”

  He moved to his haunches, taking a position between her and the elders, so that she was looking at his back. She blinked a couple of times, unsure of what she was seeing: an odd movement of the muscles of his shoulders and back, something that made his neck look both shorter and longer.

  He was going to turn into a wolf again.

  And that couldn’t end well, if he intended to threaten or even attack the elders. Daniel might very well tear him to pieces.

  No; Daniel would tear him to pieces.

  “We mean her no harm,” Caleb replied, his voice almost emotionless. “She’ll be looked after, until we can return her to the mainland.”

  Abby couldn’t bring herself to look at any of them. Certainly not at Daniel. She tried not to think about what they really intended to do with her, now that she knew they were all wolves.

  I’ve seen TV! she wanted to scream. You’re just telling him that so he’ll cooperate!

  “You said you’d remain at your father’s home,” Daniel said in a voice honed as sharp as a razor blade. “And that this human would remain at Granny Sara’s. Yet here you are. You’re untrustworthy, Aaron. You cannot be relied upon to keep your word. You need to be confined.”

  “I’m no more guilty than any of you,” Aaron told him. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t be confined, Daniel.”

  “Come NOW!” Daniel bellowed.

  The sound seemed to make the entire landscape around them reverberate. Abby, who had experienced a small earthquake during a vacation trip out West, thought this felt almost the same—like the ground was shuddering underneath them. As if to bear that out, a shower of leaves fluttered down from the trees, and she heard a sharp cry of protest from a bird.

  Slowly, Aaron got to his feet. He didn’t take all of his attention away from Daniel and the elders as he extended a hand toward Abby, an offer to help her stand up. She grasped his hand tightly, but not because she needed the help; it was the contact she wanted, the comfort of his touch.

  “I’ll go with you,” he told the elders, turning away from Daniel. “As long as you give me your word as elders of the pack that she’ll be taken care of… and that you won’t take her anywhere off the isla
nd.”

  “She has no place here,” said Mason.

  “Yesterday, you were willing to consider the question. Yesterday, you were going to give her a chance.”

  The two elders did nothing but blink.

  “Swear it,” Aaron insisted. “I’ll go nowhere with you unless you give me your word that Abby won’t be taken off the island.”

  Finally, Caleb offered him a small, curt nod.

  Aaron sucked in a breath that Abby could hear as he turned to her and cupped her cheek with his free hand. “Go back to Granny Sara’s and stay there,” he said quietly. “Don’t go any farther than the toilet house, no matter how much you think you need to. I know Micah is a nuisance, but he won’t harm you. Stay there in Granny’s care until we straighten this out.”

  Though he didn’t address them, he was clearly talking to the elders when he said, “We will straighten this out, because this is absurd, and you well know that. I didn’t attack my brother. I would never attack my brother. Each time you bother accusing me, you’re ignoring the one who did attack him.”

  Then he leaned in and brushed a kiss across Abby’s lips. “Tell Sara what’s happened. If she doesn’t already know.”

  He gave her a look of great regret as he followed the elders away from the little clearing.

  After he had disappeared from sight, her head began to spin.

  For a moment, she was unsure how much time had passed. A minute? An hour? When she focused on listening, she thought she could still hear Aaron’s voice, but was that her imagination? Something inside her told her to run after him—that without him, she wouldn’t even be able to breathe—but he’d instructed her otherwise.

  This was a thousand times worse than yesterday. Yesterday, she’d felt more or less all right at Granny Sara’s, until Micah had gotten on her nerves. But today, knowing that Aaron was really in trouble…

  “Come with me,” a voice said.

  It was someone she didn’t know, a young woman with dark hair woven into two thick braids. The newcomer didn’t seem either friendly or hostile, but she was the last person Abby wanted to follow anywhere. She had no idea where the girl would take her. To Granny Sara’s? Or to a boat, to be taken off the island?

  Or to be dumped into the middle of the ocean?

  “Why should I?” she asked. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Katrin. I’m Aaron’s friend. Come. You can’t stay here alone.”

  Abby shook her head.

  The young woman frowned at her, nostrils flaring, clearly distressed. Abby wanted to say something to the effect of, You’re not the boss of me!—but she realized that would sound incredibly childish. They had their own rules here. The rules of behavior that she was used to, things like civil liberties and freedom of speech, might not fly here. Being so close to the coast, the island was certainly part of the United States… wasn’t it? But maybe the wolves didn’t see it that way.

  For all she knew, they were allowed to eat her if she broke too many of their rules.

  “I’m supposed to go back to Granny Sara’s,” she said as firmly as she could, hoping that Katrin would believe that was something the elders had said. “I can find my own way back there.”

  Katrin made a face. “Follow me,” she said sharply, then turned on her heel and stalked off through the woods.

  Abby couldn’t have said exactly why she caved in, but she followed.

  Ten

  “You can’t honestly believe this,” Aaron said.

  They’d brought him to the gathering house, the only place in the settlement with locks. The place that mainlanders would identify as a jail. There, he was surrounded not only by elders, but by a good many of the younger wolves, both male and female. From the way they were looking at him, it was clear that most of them had already convinced themselves that he was guilty.

  “We’ve searched the entire area,” said Angus, one of the younger ones. “There are no signs of another attacker.”

  “Which doesn’t make me guilty!”

  The place was full of strong scents: anger, a sense of betrayal, the need to fight. More than anything, it made Aaron feel a surge of despair, because this was the kind of rush to judgment that was so common among the humans—and almost unheard of among the wolves.

  “You fought with him,” said someone at the rear of the group.

  “It was a quarrel,” Aaron insisted. “Nothing more than a quarrel. I don’t think a moon has gone by since we were born that we haven’t quarreled about something. It’s the way we are.”

  “Then give us another name. Tell us who is guilty.”

  Aaron’s gaze moved a little to the left, to fall on the wolf who’d all but dragged him here. The wolf who’d terrorized Abby, who’d stormed into Aaron’s family home as if he owned the place.

  “Your anger will undo you, Daniel,” he said quietly.

  Before his eyes, Daniel grew taller, wider. His wolf was just below the surface, moving beneath Daniel’s skin. “You dare accuse me,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “You risk a great deal, young wolf.”

  “You’re the only one I’ve seen consumed with rage today.”

  And it was burning white-hot now.

  “Enough of that,” Caleb said. “We will not hear—”

  “You won’t let me criticize the watcher?” Aaron scoffed. “You know his temper, Alpha. These last few months, it’s grown worse and worse. Luca may have done something as simple as ignore him when they crossed paths.”

  “He is the watcher,” Mason announced. “His instructions are to be obeyed without question.”

  “Even if he—”

  The persistent Angus cut Aaron off. “That human has made you stupid. You’re so caught up in the lust of the bond that you’ve lost control of your senses—and your anger. When your brother stood in between you and that female, and said he’d go to the elders, you became enraged.”

  Murmurs threaded through the crowd. Sounds of agreement.

  None of them were agreeing with Aaron.

  Aaron’s stomach did a slow roll. He had to force himself to speak, to continue to stand up for himself, since no one else was willing to do it.

  “Since you weren’t there when I was talking with my brother,” he snarled at Angus, “and I find it unlikely that he told you what happened, how is it that you know what was said? Are you clairvoyant, now? Or is your hearing so acute that you can hear what’s being said on the other side of the island?”

  “You protest too much,” said another voice.

  “The pack can’t have this,” said yet another. “Whether Luca lives or dies, Aaron can’t be allowed to remain here, presenting an active threat to all of us. What about everyone else who’s opposed to adding more humans to this population? It’s thinning our bloodline by the day! Will you attack all of us, Aaron? Will you be happy if no one remains alive here except you and that human?”

  There was a moment of near silence, then a voice said, “Colorado.”

  “Yes, Colorado!”

  “Colorado!”

  Aaron fought the urge to cower. Colorado was the worst punishment the pack could bestow, other than death; it meant he would never see his family or any of his packmates again, would never be allowed to return to the island. And certainly, they would see to it that he never saw Abby again, no matter what lengths they had to go to in order to ensure that the separation was permanent.

  To his knowledge, banishment to Colorado had only happened twice in the long history of the pack, and neither of those wolves had lived very long afterwards.

  “I wouldn’t harm my brother,” he insisted. “I love my brother.”

  “Perhaps you thought you would be a better head of family than he would,” Angus said.

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? He has no mate. He quarrels with everything you say.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Who else would do this?” asked another young wolf. “Who else has reason to attack you
r brother? Name them!”

  He could feel their blood lust rising, their need to avenge a terrible wrong. He felt the same need, but they weren’t interested in that; they’d already made up their minds. He groped for something to say that would appease them, at least for the moment, but could think of nothing.

  Dear gods. Colorado?

  He jammed his eyes shut, mainly to give himself a small sense of privacy so that he could focus his thoughts, but it only made the muttering around the room grow louder, more intense.

  After a minute, he heard Caleb say, “We’ll discuss this in council.”

  Then Aaron was shoved into a small, windowless room, and the door was locked, leaving him entirely alone.

  Eleven

  Abby could barely drink the cup of tea Granny Sara had handed her.

  She was only distantly aware of Micah wandering nearby, then sinking again into a crouch in front of the fireplace. All she could think of was Aaron, being led away by Daniel and the two elders, looking more upset than she’d ever seen him.

  She almost thought she could sense his feelings, that somehow his emotions were inside of her.

  She heard doors open and close, heard things creak and groan, but couldn’t bother to wonder what was happening around her.

  None of this would be happening if she’d bothered to ask that old man at Dolphin Cove to point her toward the mainland—if she hadn’t assumed she knew exactly where she was going. If she’d used even a lick of common sense. Luca might not have been attacked, and if that hadn’t happened, Aaron wouldn’t be in trouble now. He’d still be up at the cabin, safe and sound.

  Things had been so quiet there. Almost dreamlike.

  She tried her best to fall asleep in her chair, hoping she’d wake up in that strange other world again, surrounded by flowers, with Aaron standing there smiling in front of her. But sleep—and that other world—seemed as far away and untouchable as the life she’d left behind on the mainland.

  As far away as her former boyfriend, Lane Palmer, who was as unreal to her now as something her imagination had invented.