Chapter 10: Gavin

Chapter 10: Gavin

Once Billie was inside, I could finally think clearly. She’d given me too much to think about, so much that there were a hundred things I wanted to say to her, to ask her, but nothing I could articulate without risking sounding too interested. I tried not to be interested in her—her smell, her lean little frame, her morose eyes—but I couldn’t help wanting to know more about the enigma of my girlfriend’s baby sister hiding right under my nose all these years. Because now, that enigma was my fated mate. David didn’t even let her go outside. He was hiding the world from her. Or… hiding her from the world. There had to be more to the story than Billie just being David’s runt of a late-blooming daughter.

Fatigue made David’s face look heavy as he stood before me, hands in his jean pockets, withdrawing a cigarette. I’d only known him to smoke when he was stressed. “How’d you find her?” he asked, flicking a lighter.

“I smelled the dragons first. Called my pack to let them know and followed the smell into your territory,” I said.

“You trespassed,” David pointed out.

“I came to chase off dragons from your territory and protect your daughter,” I countered.

“Did you do it for Billie?”

I stumbled over my thoughts. “No, I didn’t even know she was there.”

“Why was she close to our shared borders?”

“I don’t fucking know, David. She said she’s never let outside. Maybe she didn’t know where the perimeter is.”

David crinkled his face in annoyance, puffing on his cigarette. The acrid smell stung my nose. “She’s just being a melodramatic brat. I grounded her is all. She should know better.”

“She fought the dragons because she wanted to prove herself to you.”

“Yes. Like I said, melodramatic.” David tapped ash off the end of the cigarette. “Don’t trouble yourself over what else she might have told you.”

“I’m more troubled over why you aren’t worried about the dragons being in Dalesbloom.”

“I am,” said David. “A man can only deal with one problem at a time. What were the dragons doing aside from harassing my daughter?”

“They were hunting someone,” I divulged too easily. “A unicorn. She’d wandered into your territory.”

David stiffened and looked me straight in the eyes. “Where’s the unicorn now?”

“We rescued her along with Billie.”

“Can I speak with her?”

This time I paused to think. Exposing Muriel to more people would just endanger her further. Not that I didn’t trust David to keep the unicorn secret from the dragons, but every person who knew was another person who could reveal where she was hiding. “I don’t think that’s necessary. She’s recovering from the attack; I don’t want to stress her any worse.”

“I only have a few questions for her, Gavin.”

“I’ll pass them on.”

“How long do you intend to hide her away in your territory?”

“Until you clear out the dragons,” I said, then narrowed my eyes. “You are clearing them out, right?”

“We are. It sounds like they’d only come in to hunt that unicorn; it shouldn’t take too much manpower to chase them off.”

“We’ll transport the unicorn once they’re gone.”

“Where?” asked David. “And who’s we?”

“Away from here.” I kept it vague. “We as in my pack.”

David tapped the cigarette again. “You haven’t told Everett about this yet, have you?”

“No, but we should. The Mythguard should know there are dragons in the area.”

“On the contrary,” growled David, “I think it would be in our best interest not to get the Mythguard involved. They’ll want to take that unicorn off your hands and who knows where she’ll end up from there.”

He had a point, especially if the Mythguard were who leaked Muriel’s location in the first place. Besides, when did Everett ever actually want to aid Grandbay and Dalesbloom? The Eastpeak Alpha was only concerned with guarding his mountain from strangers and spying on the wolves for the Mythguard. I considered all this while watching David burn through his cigarette. “If you take care of the dragons, I won’t reach out to Everett.”

“Fine by me,” said David. “Though really, your best bet of keeping this unicorn safe is to send her home with me.”

“My packmates are capable of protecting her.”

“You don’t know how many dragons are out there.”

“I’d rather keep the number of people in contact with her to a minimum.” We both knew how valuable unicorns were as a commodity to other shifters.  The magic they possessed was unlike what most shifters were capable of when alive. And dead, their bodies were harvested for nearly every organ, every scrap of meat—especially their opalescent horns, a crucial ingredient in magic-based rituals. I didn’t know much about them except that their horns were a conduit of magic. I wasn’t about to let Muriel slip into some trafficking scheme through David, which I didn’t doubt he would have turned to in order to make some money. Maybe I didn’t trust him as much as I claimed. I stared at him hard and he seemed to understand my unspoken accusations.

David smiled thinly. “Very well. I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.” He stepped closer, flicking his cigarette butt into the grass and stamping it out before craning his neck to me. “Of course, upholding your end of our arrangement would expedite that.”

Did he seriously try to bargain the packs’ safety for me handing Grandbay over? I sizzled with anger at him, pulling away. “Don’t bring the merge into this. This is about keeping us safe from the dragons.”

“I have no obligation toward Grandbay’s safety while you’re outside of my jurisdiction,” said David.

Before I could snap back at him, the door opened and Colt and Billie reappeared from inside. Billie was ensconced in her black sweats and a light blue t-shirt already dotted with blood from her open wound. I noticed how she didn’t meet David’s gaze, only hovered in front of him, awaiting his verdict.

“You ignorant little mutt,” he hissed under his breath at her. “Apologize to Mr. Steele for inconveniencing him.”

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” she said without life or colour in her voice. “Thank you for helping me tonight.”

I grunted. “Yeah.”

Expecting her to revert back to the meek runt I knew from Hexen Manor, she caught me off guard by glancing at me, meeting my eyes—holding my stare, like somehow a barrier between us had been toppled. When David pushed her toward the truck, she hid that small courage with a downcast gaze, but I knew it existed. I had glimpsed what Billie Jesper was capable of when she wasn’t being brushed aside by the Hexens. There was a valiant wolf hiding inside that timid human girl. That was the Billie Jesper they had never allowed me to see.

Colt climbed into the passenger seat, leaving David the last one to enter the truck. He stood beside it and turned hollow. “I suggest you don’t trespass again until you can call the Dalesbloom territory your home. You aren’t one of us, Gavin. Not yet.”

It was a warning to keep my nose out of his business, let him deal with the dragons, and stay away from Billie. But I was growing less and less inclined to abide by his warnings.

Once he got into the truck and slammed his door, I watched the truck pull away, vanishing into the darkness in a puff of smoky exhaust. I made sure to lock the door behind me once I got back into the house.

Aislin had been lurking in the kitchen, eavesdropping. “He’s really pushing the merge on you. He didn’t actually threaten to keep the dragons around if you don’t agree to it, did he?”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“And to keep it from Everett?”

I grumbled. “We may have to. I don’t want the Mythguard snooping around for Muriel.”

“Fine, but this means we’re on our own in case those dragons turn up here.”

“We can handle them.”

“Are you sure?”

The odds were in our favor if we were facing off against three dragons. Up to five or six, we could handle. I just had to hope there weren’t more of them stalking around the Gunnison area. “I’m sure.”

“Alright. My dad’s going to be here soon, we’ll join Niko on the patrol. You just keep an eye on Muriel,” suggested Aislin.

“Yeah.” I was beat to shit. As hard as it was to admit, I needed to rest too.

Aislin chewed her lip. “That Jesper girl…”

My heart fluttered. “What about her?”

“She acts a bit like a beaten dog, doesn’t she? I heard the reason why David’s such a dick to her is because she’s from a different woman than Catrina and Colt’s mom. She’s why he and Rebecca got divorced. You think that’s true?”

“It’s none of my business,” I dismissed.

“She doesn’t look a thing like Colt and Catrina.”

“I don’t care, Ais.”

“You sure looked at her a lot for someone who doesn’t care.”

Frowning, I feared briefly that she picked up on my fated bond with Billie, but Aislin just shrugged in nonchalance like it was no concern of hers who I looked at. “Just never saw her outside of Hexen Manor before. That’s all.”

“Yeah, it was quite the sight. You see Colt walking around like he owned the joint? What an entitled snob.”

That little asshole got on my nerves too. “I gotta take care of this,” I said, wiping a smear of blood from the cuts across my chest. Besides, I wasn’t in the mood to gossip anymore. I wanted to get the Hexens out of my mind. That was easier said than done once I made it to the bathroom and found myself dwelling on my interactions with the runt, revisiting Aislin’s observations of her.

I was told years ago that Billie Jesper was David’s youngest daughter and nothing more. She didn’t share their last name because she’d been born after he and his ex-wife Rebecca split up. Rebecca Jesper gave Billie her maternal surname on the birth certificate as a final insult, and then she left all three kids with David. I didn’t question it. I never saw Billie, barely even knew she existed until I’d started dating Catrina but even then, had no reason to question Billie’s place in the Hexen family. But Aislin raised a point. She didn’t look anything like the black-haired, blue-eyed Hexens with their sharp facial features and pompous attitudes. She was soft and diminutive and held in a cage, and I wondered what I’d be told if I asked who Billie’s real mother was.

Not that it mattered. I was just curious.

With a hot washcloth, I wiped blood out of my chest hair and off the tracts of skin not gouged open, scrubbing myself clean so I could apply bandages to my injuries. The phantom smell of Billie haunted me until I realized where it was coming from: she’d left my t-shirt in the bathroom. I set the cloth down for the t-shirt, unfolding and holding it open, examining where her blood encrusted the collar. Her scent saturated the fabric under the arms and neck. I didn’t think before burying my face in the t-shirt, like a dog drinking in a delicious foreign smell; her perfume was a subtle shot of ecstasy balming my anger and turning my nerves into butter. This was only the effect of our bond; everything about her was engineered to attract me, but while it had been easier to ignore before I met her, now it seemed I couldn’t get enough of her. It was refreshing when she’d spoken to me without flinching; I wanted more of her voice. I craved to unravel the mystery behind her evasive green eyes and feel her muscles tense under my hand. I hated that just my t-shirt with her smell on it aroused me and there was nothing I could do but fantasize wrongly about someone I couldn’t have.

I’d laid claim to her before the dragons just to protect her. Now I wanted to do it again, this time to take her from David. And even though I knew it was better for both our packs if I stayed away from her, she’d wormed her way into my head and populated the rest of my night with curious, hungry thoughts. I gave in to the thoughts, preferring them over the dozen other troubles that awaited me.