Chapter 5: Billie

Chapter 5: Billie

For the second time in little more than twelve hours, I cried in my room after facing Gavin Steele. This time, I was convinced there was nobody he hated more than me, and it was inevitable that I’d soon face worse consequences than cruel words. He wanted me dead. I didn’t blame him.

The moment I recognized what was happening in my Moondream, I knew I was screwed. It should have been cause for celebration that I’d finally gotten my wolf. Instead, it felt like the end of my life.

The dream had led me to him. I soared through the forest on four paws, lighter and faster than ever before, finally free. My body was no longer bound in a human shell, but liberated into the wilderness; my senses primed, I could smell everything, hear everything, feel everything that the forest called me into it. My wolf was alive.

And then I saw… him. Wreathed in firelight, stinking of blood and sweat and oils, was the timber brown pelt of Gavin Steele. He snarled as he snapped his teeth at the shadows of humans. He ripped apart a campsite and shattered the forest’s peace with the rage that I feared so much. I hesitated to go any closer but he heard me, and when he looked up at me, I met his dark hazel eyes and felt like he’d seen me right through the dream. Fated mates always saw one another’s true selves in the Moondream. He saw me as I was: curled up and afraid, and I saw him: savage and destructive.

Colt’s hands on my shoulder brought me back to the real world last night. He found me as a wolf, shuddering and whimpering in my sleep. The pain in my body was unimaginable; all my bones and flesh had mutated in the transformation, and after seeing Gavin, I only wanted to be human again. The freedom I felt in my dream was just an illusion. I could have no freedom knowing that Gavin was supposed to be my fated mate. I shifted back and cried in my brother’s arms before we went back to Hexen Manor, where Catrina and David were already home. Catrina looked at me with annoyance. David was angry I’d left the house, then curious that I’d found my wolf. But when I uttered the name of my fated mate, they both turned to disgust.

Ever since then, the weight of their disappointment crushed any sense of joy I might have found in my Moondream. I didn’t feel like a wolf. I didn’t feel free; I felt like I was worth even less to the Hexens now, and I would never be whole with my fated mate by my side. The catastrophic events of this morning played back in my mind as I hid my face in my knees and sobbed, wishing I could just wink out of existence.

When a knock sounded at my door, I held my breath. “Billie?” Colt spoke softly, “Can I come in?”

“Leave me alone,” I mumbled.

Colt hesitated. “I’m sorry for what happened back there. It wasn’t fair to you.”

Hoping my silence would ward him off, instead it inspired him to turn the doorknob.

“Can I sit with you?” he asked again.

I rubbed my tears on my wrists and sat up on my bed, wishing he would just let me cry in solitude, but grateful he knew me well enough to comfort me anyway. “Okay.”

The door opened and Colt stepped inside, bags under his eyes reflecting the long, sleepless night he’d suffered on my behalf. I wrapped my arms around my knees as he sat  beside me on the edge of the bed. We shared the silence for a few minutes before he pulled his leg up onto the bed, scooting closer so he could wrap his arm around my shoulders. “I understand why you wanted to go into the forest so badly,” he said.

My one shoulder throbbed. My teeth ached, but I thought it was residual pain from clenching my jaw so hard. The warmth of his cheek against my head soothed all that. “I could barely even control it… Like something pulled me out there.”

“That’s what happens when you get your wolf. You feel restless and hot. Your senses become stronger. Instincts start to take over,” explained Colt.

I breathed in, reminded of the strange influx of smells I’d encountered by the piney notes surrounding my brother. That must be his natural musk—his scent. “I could smell so much.”

Colt laughed. “That’s why the elk carcass made you sick, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed slowly and dwelled on his thoughts. “I was so worried about you last night. You didn’t even close the porch door when you left. I thought you were running away.”

I didn’t want to tell him how I’d been considering it.

“Then when I found you after you’d transformed, I almost couldn’t believe it was you. You were a wolf. Curled up like a little puppy… You were really a wolf, just like us.”

I heard the smile in his voice without looking up at him.

“What did it feel like?”

A tear dribbled down my cheek. I wiped it away again and sniffed. “I don’t remember much. I think I tripped while I was still human, then I blacked out. I don’t remember anything in the dream except running and seeing Gavin.” Just speaking his name left a sour taste in my mouth, tugging my lips into a frown. “The transformation back to human was a blur, the whole night, it was… confusing. I barely remember anything.”

“It happened pretty fast, didn’t it?”

“Most people experience this life-changing, magical moment when their wolf is revealed to them, or when they find their fated mate. I don’t… I don’t remember any of it except for the dread.”

Colt mulled on my words, hugging me tighter. “You have a lot of anxiety, you know. A lot of trauma from what Dad and Cat put you through. It’s not surprising you’d block out an emotionally and physically intense moment like discovering your wolf.”

He was one of the few people who understood the effects living with the Hexens had on me. As grateful as I was for him, I did wonder sometimes why he didn’t try harder to defend me, but it wasn’t my place to expect that. I was just lucky Colt cared about me at all. “Do you think I’ll be able to transform again?”

Colt looked down at me, still smiling. “Of course you will. Once things calm down and you have a moment to yourself, you’ll find your inner peace, your confidence, and you’ll channel your wolf. You’ll rememb er it, too. You’ll have a proper introduction to your wolf rather than what happened last night.”

That was reassuring. I leaned into Colt, slowly untangling the complicated web of fears and memories in my head. Last night was terrifying. I couldn’t place all the smells I’d crossed, I was still trying to remember everything I’d experienced for the first time. All the animal scents. The acidic odor that enveloped me in the trees. And then the blood and sweat that permeated my dream, the same scent that hit me when Gavin walked into the dinette after yesterday’s hunt. Recalling his fury from earlier this morning made my mood crash.

“I can’t believe Gavin’s supposed to be my fated mate,” I muttered.

Colt’s smile faded. “Anyone would have been better than him,” he agreed.

“He hates me. He wants me dead.” Tears bubbled up in my eyes. “He’s not going to have me killed, is he?”

Pulling away from me, Colt gripped my arms and urged my gaze up to his, his stare firm. “I won’t let him, Billie. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I’ll protect you from Gavin, and from Catrina if she tries to take matters into her own hands. David too, if any of them think you’ll get in the way of merging Grandbay and Dalesbloom. If we need to, we’ll leave. I’ll take care of us both, okay?”

My lip trembled at the way he said we. “We’d leave?”

“Yeah, me and you.”

Because it wasn’t like Colt was the Alpha heir. Catrina and Gavin would lead the pack once David stepped down. Colt had nothing, like me, so maybe that meant he valued me more than he valued Catrina and David. I was desperate for that to be the truth. “Do you promise?”

He nodded, embracing me again. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

My shoulders quaked with tremors, sobs lodging in my throat from a hundred emotions. “I’ll never be marked by my fated mate,” I grieved.

“You don’t need one,” said Colt.

“But I’ll never be whole…”

“You don’t need a mate to be whole.”

“But I…” I wanted one, even if I thought I didn’t deserve one.

“If I wasn’t still waiting for mine, I’d mark you,” he said.

I laughed sadly. “That’s weird. You’re my brother.”

“It’s not like we have to be romantic. It’s just another way to keep you safe.”

“I know, but… but you like that Aislin Mundy girl from Grandbay.”

This time he laughed. “So?”

“So even if she isn’t your fated mate, wouldn’t you want to be with her?”

“She’d have to want to be with me too.”

It didn’t occur to me that Aislin might not reciprocate my adoptive brother’s crush on her. I couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t. Colt was sweet and intelligent, and Aislin was the Grandbay Betas’ daughter; they would make the perfect Beta pair under Catrina and Gavin. “She’d be crazy not to.”

Colt grinned and mussed up my hair. “Okay, let’s stop talking about our love lives. Now it’s weirding me out too.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t just rejected in front of everyone,” I mumbled.

“Gavin’s an idiot. He’s all brawn and no brain. He and Catrina are so far up each other’s asses they don’t think about anybody but themselves, so don’t worry about him,” said Colt. He rose from the bed and stretched his legs. “Hey, let’s you and I do a speed dating thing or something. That’ll take your mind off shithead Gavin, right?”

Sitting up, I chuckled dimly and tried to imagine what speed dating would be like. That made me anxious too. “Isn’t that with humans? I don’t want a human mate.”

“It’s not forever. You can dump him when you feel better about yourself.”

“Colt!” I laughed harder.

“Or her, I won’t judge.”

“I’m not speed dating! As if David would even let me.”

Colt blinked. “You have your wolf now. There’s no reason for Dad to keep you locked up here anymore.”

My laughter waned as I considered this. Being wolfless was the sole reason why David didn’t let me run free in the forest—I wouldn’t have been able to flee or defend myself, but now I could. The dangers were still present in the forest but that didn’t mean I couldn’t adapt to them. Study them. I could learn to fight and figure out what every scent meant, like the pungent odor belonging to the shadows that surrounded me. “I thought I saw things out in the forest last night,” I said suddenly.

Colt hovered by my window, looking outside. “What kinds of things?”

“Like bodies. I smelled them too, sort of like burning and sulfur.”

His eyes snapped back to me. There was a half-second where his stare went cold, then he smiled it away. “You probably just hallucinated it as part of your dream.”

“It happened before my dream.” At least I thought it did. It was what scared me into running and tripping in the first place.

Colt shrugged. “You see a lot of weird stuff at night. Maybe you should only go out during the day.” He made his way toward my door, then paused. “Actually, maybe I should go with you if you’re going into the forest to transform. I can show you how to be a proper wolf.”

“Oh. Yeah, I’d like that.”

His smile beamed even brighter. “Let me see if Gavin’s gone yet. I bet you’re hungry, too. I’ll get you something to eat.”

He was right. I’d been so wrapped up in my sorrow and pain that I hadn’t had a chance to acknowledge the hunger gnawing away at me. “Thanks, Colt.”

After the door closed, I was left alone with my thoughts. It was easy for me to sink back into a pattern of self-deprecation, but I tried to distract myself with the view out my window to the front of the manor. If only I still had my binoculars. I knelt on my bed and peered across the glimmering sea of green treetops, following tiny dots of birds flitting among them, until I noticed someone walking out of the manor. They were heading for the dark grey sedan parked beside David’s truck.

Gavin had his head down, and even from far away I could tell how tightly his muscles were wound, how he skulked with the heaviness of his anger. The sight of him made me burn.

He stopped and looked back at the house. Then his gaze tracked up—to me in the window, watching him.

I gasped and ducked out of sight.

The last thing I needed now was Gavin’s attention.