Chapter 16: Everett

Chapter 16: Everett

There was so much running through my mind that night, falling asleep had been a mercy. Even asleep, my thoughts were riddled with glimpses of red hair and flashes of fire.

Being with Aislin afflicted me with feelings I hadn’t expected. It was like all the loneliness I’d felt was suddenly soothed when she let me get close to her, but the immense comfort was too good to be true—I feared leaping headfirst into something that would disappoint me in the end. It was the same distrust that kept me from forming bonds with anyone, expecting that they would ultimately fail to meet my high standards and leave me feeling like the fool. Aislin was… amazing, to be honest. She was attractive and her body moved in all the right ways around me. Her smile and laughter made me feel stronger. My mind and heart ached to fall in love with her, but… was I merely being blinded by the fated mate bond?

I couldn’t bring myself to kiss her, as much as I wanted to, or else I would have fallen more deeply for her than I was ready to. But I replayed our sexual encounter in my mind after I closed my eyes. I imagined her chest bouncing with each thrust, her half-lidded eyes gazing up at me, her pink lips parted just enough to let her moans escape. Her slender hands drifting over her own curves… touching me, too. I wanted to acquaint myself with all the little freckles scattered across her skin, kissing each one.

In the morning, what I wanted most was to crawl into bed with her and savor her warmth. Even if her fire ended up singing me, I’d fight through it. For the sake of our fated bond, I wanted to make it work, smother my uncertainties and let myself love her, and I decided I would try to do just that. But as my eyes adjusted to the dim light in the bedroom, I identified the lump on my bed not as a dozing body, but rumpled bedsheets.

Confused, I tipped out of the chair and staggered to the bed. “Aislin?” I called, glancing at the washroom attached to my bedroom, thinking she was in there. The door was open. Peering inside, I found the washroom empty, and when I returned to the bed, Aislin’s smell was already a few hours old. There was no warmth left in the sheets, just stale evidence of who used to lay there.

“Aislin!” I called, pushing down the hallway. Only silence followed. The spare bedroom where she had kept her duffle bag and other belongings was empty. As my feet crashed down the stairs and into the living room, my mind ran over everything we said to each other last night. Her saying that she wouldn’t run away—except she never explicitly said she wouldn’t, did she? Just that she wanted me to prove that I wanted her. Her terms were that she could pick up items from her apartment, go to work, and that I wouldn’t talk down to her, and I thought I had fulfilled all of that. She was supposed to stay, everything she did and said suggested she would, so why would she so abruptly change her mind and take off? Unless it had never been her intention to give me a chance?

The glass doors leading to my yard were unlocked. As I stepped outside, I noticed imprints in the dirt shaped like paws. They smelled like her.

She left me.

So maybe I had kept my walls up for a good reason. She would have left me even if I did yield to my love and kissed her and became vulnerable with her. Aislin just wanted to see me suffer in ways that our fated bond couldn’t satisfy. It wasn’t enough to give me this tightness in the chest, to break an arm. She wanted to rub it in my face that she fucking hated me.

Rare anger swelled up in my throat. I marched back upstairs, battling with the knife of betrayal she’d sunk into my heart. Bursting back into the bedroom, I was smacked with the smell of our sex, another reminder of my mistake in trying to please Aislin. Her disappearance tainted what had been sweet memories of last night—now all I felt was humility. I was made the fool. Her scent was woven into my bedsheets, impressed in the folds and creases, and I just wanted to rip them off my mattress and set them ablaze.

On the bedside table, my phone screen lit up. I’d completely forgotten about my phone when I fell asleep. A flicker of hope was that it was Aislin, somehow explaining her absence, but I quickly spied the name attached to the text message: Sebastian, sending me nothing more than a ‘?’.

Confused, I unlocked my phone and opened up our text conversation. I hadn’t seen the last texts he sent me, otherwise I would have answered. He’d asked if I’d gotten Muriel’s location from Aislin yet.

Last night, I’d left my phone on the bed… right where she could see Sebastian’s message.

If I had to guess, I’d think that Aislin had seen the message and made her own assumptions. I was still livid, but now logic was trying to coax my temper down. I tapped out a text to Aislin, ‘Come back. Whatever you’re mad about, I can explain.’ Not that I would sit around and wait all day for her to answer me.

I could barely focus on anything else, but as the day wore on, it was easier to distract myself with business around the lumber mill. Aislin still hadn’t replied to my text by the afternoon, so once back home, I settled in my office and listened to the audio recordings saved from Hexen Manor. As usual, most of it was footsteps echoing through their parlor, or mutterings of David, Colt, Lothair, and their followers. There was very little of interest until I caught a conversation transpiring between two Dalesbloom wolves around 10 p.m. last night. I didn’t recognize their voices and had no way of identifying them, but it seemed they had come inside to share words away from the prying ears of their leader.

“Grandbay must be getting really desperate to stop David,” said one hushed male voice. “They even sent Aislin Mundy to come talk to Colt.”

“I know. It’s sorta making me second-guess this whole approach,” said another male voice.

“Well, at least a quarter of us disagree with David’s decision to become Lycan, and I can’t imagine he’s bluffing about eliminating all of Grandbay. If we already disagree with him on that, does he really expect us to just… go and slaughter all those people? I mean, we know them, they know us. Some of those people we’ve known all our lives. It feels so real now, seeing Grandbay start to take these desperate measures. They really think they’re going to die.”

“It’s sad, yeah. I feel bad for them, I really do. I don’t know if I can bring myself to kill someone. Catrina killing Joseph was just… unreal.”

“So what do we do? Is there anything we can do?”

“I don’t know if we should do anything. If David catches wind that some of us oppose his plans, we’ll go the same way Joseph did.”

“He’s at no loss for murderous followers, that’s for sure. Those dragons will eat whoever Lothair tells them to. We’re just killing ourselves if we stand against him. He’ll still be able to carry out his plan even without the ten or eleven of us that feel this way.”

“Exactly. But there has to be something we can do… even if it’s just warning Grandbay about when to expect us.”

“That’s a huge risk. Would you be willing to?”

“I don’t know if I want to take the chance going into Grandbay.”

“It has to be soon… David’s getting impatient. We’ve already missed one full moon, and the next is coming up in a few days.”

“Maybe we’ll—ah shit, someone’s coming.”

There was a shuffle of footsteps, the sound of a door opening and slamming.

“What are you two doing?” demanded David. “The border patrol’s waiting for you. Get going.”

“Yes sir. Sorry,” said the first male voice.

And just as quickly, the two Dalesbloom dissenters vanished from the audio recording, leaving behind the ominous grumbling of David in their wake.

My mind churned with a fresh set of ideas. Aislin still burned away in the background, but with this new information, I sensed there was action I could take rather than sitting around simmering and doubting myself. David intended to attack Grandbay soon—within the next few days if they wanted to make the upcoming full moon for the Lycan ritual. That likely meant they would swarm the town, searching all possible locations for Muriel and slaying whoever they came across. But I needed more information. I couldn’t just warn off Gavin with ambiguous murmurings I’d caught on the bug. What if I was wrong, and I sent them into a panic over nothing?

Next, I called up Taylor. “Hey. I just heard something really concerning on the audio.”

“What is it?”

“You need to come here and listen. I don’t know exactly what to make of it.”

“Sure, man. I’ll be right there.”

And true to his word, Taylor appeared not ten minutes later at my door. The sight of my friend balmed the sudden loneliness afflicted by Aislin’s absence. “She ran off,” I said when he asked if the redhead was here. “I’m not entirely surprised,” I added, sheathing my dismay with rigid, unaffected words.

Taylor didn’t know the extent of my feelings. Nobody did. For that I was grateful, even if the shrug he gave me seemed all too dismissive.

Up in the office, I repeated the audio recording for him. I watched his expressions unfold, his eyes darting to mine, widening, then narrowing, a merry-go-round of thoughts passing across his face. “I knew some of his pack wouldn’t be okay with what he was doing,” said Taylor after. “Seemed impossible that they’d all just accept David leading a killing spree.”

“This means Grandbay’s plan of replacing David is viable.”

“Yeah. At least one person has to be ready and willing to take over, or at least they could be convinced.”

“We need to get in contact with them. Do you recognize either of those voices?”

Taylor played the audio back again. “I think I do, actually. The second voice… That has to be Garett Roydon. He was an electrician who did some work on Eastpeak Lanes, the bowling alley. Remember? We gave him clearance to come into town.”

“I remember.”

“We can get a copy of the work invoice from Dirk—” the owner of Eastpeak Lanes, coincidentally, one of our shifters, “and figure out his mailing address from there. I can go pay him a little visit.”

“You should let me go,” I said.

Taylor shook his head. “No, we can’t afford to send you to Dalesbloom again. I can handle it.”

“Bree’s gonna have my head if she finds out I sent you there.”

He grinned. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

I didn’t quite approve of sneaking around behind my own packmates’ backs, but this was important. It could be critical to saving Grandbay, and even better—we may actually find somebody willing to step in and take out David from within. “I appreciate everything you do for me, Taylor. This is a huge risk.”

“I know, but you’re my best friend,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I’ve never failed you before, have I?”

“No, you have not.” I mustered a smile for my Beta.

“Leave it to me. I’ll let you know when I have the address and when I’m going.”

We walked together to the front door and I watched him slip into his car. Even after he was gone, I was left ruminating on how he must perceive me if he was so willing to risk his life for the sake of these audacious plans we made over and over again. I couldn’t be that despicable if I had somebody who was so steadfastly loyal to me. Were the problems between Aislin and I even my fault, or was I running myself aground trying to please somebody who would never compromise?

Or maybe that train of thought was what kept me isolated in the first place.

I was thinking too much. Prone to overthinking as I was, I finally realized that perhaps I shouldn’t just sit and dwell this time. Doing so would get me nowhere. I knew that Aislin was working again today, and she wasn’t going to miss her shift just to avoid me.

Waiting until twenty minutes before the stores in the strip mall closed, I ventured inside and spotted her immediately. Her gleaming red hair was hard to miss. Starting an argument with her while she was working would earn me no points, so I sat myself on a bench out of sight of the store, checking my phone until Taylor informed me he’d found the address. ‘I’m going to his place now. If he’s not there, I’ll leave a note.’

‘Be safe. And thanks,’ I replied.

‘Will do.’

I wasn’t sure if the sincerity of my thanks really made it through in text. When he returned, I’d have to tell him how grateful I truly was. Consider it an exercise in emotional honesty.

Five minutes before the stores were set to close, a security guard approached me. “I’m sorry sir, but we’ve received a complaint from somebody in the mall about you loitering. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

A flash of annoyance lit up my eyes before I glanced in the direction of Aislin’s store. There she was, peeking out at me with a glower.

“Mm. Very well,” I muttered, not so much to the guard as it was to Aislin. Thinking I could just wait for her outside, it annoyed me further when the guard accompanied me all the way to my car, waiting for me to get inside. Waiting, even, until I had pulled out of my parking spot and driven away.

Fine. I wasn’t going to waste my night waiting around for her. She could text me if she wanted to talk. Don’t say I didn’t try to prove my feelings, then.

It was only after I’d returned back home when I realized the constricting pain in my chest was gone. I couldn’t even remember feeling it that day. With a deep breath in and pleasant surprise, there was no rasping tightness transmitted through the fated mate bond.

She must have really wanted nothing more to do with me.