Chapter 5

Billie

My cheeks burned. Mortification prickled over me as Gavin stormed away. Catrina shouted out, following him. Distantly, I felt Colt's grip on my shoulder, but it was as though I were underwater. I couldn't breathe. My skin crawled as if with a hundred thousand tiny insects. My eyes watered. The urge to get out of sight lashed through me. I darted away past David, running through the manor and upstairs.

My mind was a whirlwind of confusion and disbelief as Gavin's hurtful words stung, "I don't want you." A visceral pain tore through me as I threw myself on the bed, smothering my face into the pillow. His haughty face flashed through my thoughts. I grimaced, replaying his look of disgust.

I could understand that the Grandbay Alpha wouldn't be thrilled by the prospect of me as his fated mate. I wasn't like Catrina, confident and the actual daughter of an Alpha, but … I had feelings.

My chin quivered, and then my face crumpled. Angry tears streamed down my cheeks, and I sobbed into the pillow. I stifled my cries into the fabric. My adoptive family had already been an audience to Gavin's rejection of me, and I didn't want them to witness the ugly aftermath. As silent cries racked me, I rolled onto my side, curling into a ball. My shoulders shook, and my insides twisted as if knotted.

Ordinarily, when Catrina or David's cold indifference toward me made me ache, I prayed to Vana, asking her for strength. But the image of Gavin's brown-hazel eyes filled with desire as he stared up at me felt like a knife in my gut. I felt as if Vana had lied to me. If he was my fated mate, why had he spurned me so cruelly?

With shock, I also remembered my wolf's reflection in the pool. I remembered the look of her beautiful sandy coat and bright green eyes—the slant of her graceful muzzle and the tilt of her alert ears. I knew that Vana had granted me access to my wolf, but feeling as if all my organs had been eviscerated, I couldn't even feel any joy about that. I didn't have the energy or interest to look inwardly enough to explore that new facet of myself.

Vana had always been a source of consolation in moments like this, but she couldn't help me now. I sobbed my heart out, feeling more alone than I'd ever felt in my life.

The only solace I found was that after I'd cried, exhaustion washed over me, and sleep took me. After having been up all night, my slumber was deep.

It wasn't until midday that I awoke to the sound of knocking on my bedroom door. I blinked sleep from my eyes and then felt the hollow in my chest, and instantly, the events of last night pulverized me. My shoulders tensed as someone pushed the door open. I wondered if it was Colt. I knew he'd be the only one who'd come to find me and offer me any comfort. My lungs seemed to harden like concrete, as I didn't think I could take Colt's being nice to me. If he was nice to me, I knew I was going to fall apart again.

Catrina's smooth face and black curtain of silky hair peered around my door. "Dad wants to know if you're going to lie in bed all day or do your chores?"

I shuffled into an upright position, blinking my adoptive sister in.

Well, at least in the Hexen household I'm not in danger of being killed by kindness.

"I'll be down soon," I said, my voice sounding hollow and washed out from all the crying. I imagined that my face must look puffy and red, too, but I couldn't find it in myself to care. I'd wash before I went downstairs.

I thought Catrina would leave with her message delivered. Her interactions with me were only ever transactional. Most of the time, I was beneath her notice. So, when she came over and sat down on the end of my bed, I held my breath and I met her bold blue stare with surprise. She was dressed in a tight T-shirt and leggings and I knew she must have been doing her Pilates workout as she smelled ever so faintly of perspiration.

"Now, Billie, I can't believe I'm having to say this to you, but I don't want you getting any wild ideas." She stared at me, seeming to wait as if she thought I was a simpleton and she needed to go slowly. "As last night showed, Gavin will never see you as anything but a silly little girl. So, stay away from him. He's mine."

I felt as if I'd had the breath knocked out of me. Her haughty look recalled Gavin's own. Again, his words spun around my head like a torturous carousel ride, "I don't want you."

Catrina's cool, composed demeanor and the confidence with which she spoke made me think of a queen. Nothing fazed her, and she believed she was entitled to everything the world had to offer, Gavin included, it would seem. As usual, my adoptive sister didn't seem to require an answer, and once she'd delivered her warning, she left the room.

Soon, I washed and dressed. I cleaned up the small bit of dried blood on my temple, too. The memory of how I'd gotten it by falling and hitting my head in the forest whipped through me. I remembered the two monstrous glimmering eyes that had terrified me and caused me to run last night.

Realizing this wasn't the time to think about it, I buried the worries for another time and soon lost myself in the washing up that had stacked up from the family and the pack. I vacuumed the manor, too, and then cleaned the bathrooms. But there was some semblance of comfort in this. Fading into the background, where Catrina and David wanted me, was what I'd always been used to.

I didn't see Colt or David all day until I heard my adoptive father return from his shed. He was washing up in one of the huge sinks in the utility area by the back door. The smell of chemicals from the taxidermy he'd been doing was thick in the air.

Coming from the main kitchen, I went to the doorway, trying not to be intimidated by his presence.

My skin itched with restlessness. Now that I'd done all my chores, I ventured to request what I knew both me and my wolf needed. "David, I wondered if I could go to the woods and practice channeling my wolf?"

My heartbeat doubled in time as if I were about to ask for the Earth, but it was natural for any shifter who'd just come into their power to want to venture outside into nature and the wild to use it.

My adoptive father took his time washing his hands and, only then, turned around to fix his blue stare on me. He knew I'd have come into my wolf since I'd had my Moondream. But far from looking remotely interested in me transforming, he only deigned to ask, "Have you done all your chores?"

I nodded, adding, "There's a stew in the slow cooker for dinner later."

He gave me a curt nod.

I was used to David being cold, but I had believed that things would be different after I'd come into my wolf. In my head, I'd excused his indifference to me as being because I wasn't truly one of the pack without my wolf.

I held my breath, not wanting to do anything that might take away the little bit of freedom that the outside promised me.

Finally, David said, "You can go to the woods, Billie, but make sure you don't go far and stay away from Gavin."

Frustration zipped through me. It wasn't me who'd gone to find Gavin after the Moondream. He'd come here. Both David and Catrina were acting as if I were to blame for what had happened last night. But the more I thought about it, it was the Grandbay Alpha who had caused this mess. He'd come here and caused a scene and tore me down in front of my entire adoptive family.

You're not enough.

But none of that mattered, I reminded myself. My heart thumped wildly. David had allowed me out. I nodded in understanding to David, and then I turned quickly to the door, hurrying out into the cool evening. I wandered into the meadow, stopping to admire the larkspur and phlox that were getting even more fragrant as spring sprung. Dipping my nose into their centers, my spirits lifted a little. Vana's blooms were always a balm to my soul.

But despite the clear evening, the beauty of the springtime meadow was clouded. Longing to turn back the clock, to retreat to the safety of the world as it had been yesterday, caught me up. I kept seeing the disgust edging Gavin's hazel eyes. I was used to having Catrina and David look at me like that, but … Gavin was supposed to be my fated mate. He was supposed to look at me as he had done in the moon pool: withdesire and consideration.

I wandered into the woods but knew deep down that I didn't have the energy necessary to unleash my wolf. I called to her, but it was as if she had her tail between her legs. She slunk deep into me instead, refusing to surface as if she wanted to curl up deep in her den.

I get you.

She was as blue as I felt. It figured. The memory of Gavin's hand on her sandy-colored shoulder went through me. He'd rejected her, too. Instead of practicing, I sat down on the edge of the meadow and breathed in the perfume of the wildflowers in the air.

That's where Colt found me. He strode toward me, his long legs quickly eating up the distance between us, and threw himself down beside me.

"Sorry, I've not been around all day," he said. "Dad had me take three orders up to folks in Denver."

I nodded, looking out at the frothy flowers dappling the grasses. David sold some of his taxidermy to the public, and clearly, he'd thought Colt acting as his delivery boy was more important than him being around to comfort me. I wasn't surprised. But I really could have done with a friendly face about the place today.

"How are you doing?" he asked. I felt his eyes on me, but I stared out ahead at the meadow. I shrugged, unsure of where to even begin in trying to untie the snarled and tangled knots that I was made of at the moment. So, I focused on other people. "Catrina's been giving me daggers all day, and David's not in the least bit interested that I can channel my wolf now."

"That's great—" Colt began. When my eyes raked him in confusion, he chuckled. "Not that those two are as hideous as ever, but that you've transformed," he said, the huge, easy-going smile on his face making me feel both lighter and stupid for what I'd said.

I quickly explained, "Well, I haven't actually transformed, but I can feel my wolf there, now, you know." My shoulders sagged as I let out a sigh. "She's just not in the mood to come out today."

Colt's expression grew earnest. "That's understandable, Billie. But tomorrow or soon at least, you'll meet her for real. And if you need any help, I'm here, okay?"

Colt's kindness made me tear up, and I looked at him through watery eyes, hoping he knew how grateful I was to him for always being here for me. He was only a year older than me, but Colt had been like a big brother to me. I remembered once when I'd fallen out of a tree as a kid, he carried me back in his arms so gently and caringly. A flash of him and me, lying out on the chasm rocks above the canyon, watching for the nesting peregrine falcons, came to me. For years, we'd done that every spring. And, I realized, it would soon be time to steal out in the early hours of the morning onto the canyon and look for them.

Colt had been my only real friend over the years. As we'd all been home-schooled, there hadn't been any scope for me to make friends outside of the Hexens and the Dalesbloom Pack. And as Catrina and the rest of the pack had made it abundantly clear, I wasn't a real member of the pack.

As my tears brimmed over, Colt pulled me into him. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I've got you." He squeezed me to him, and I breathed in the ginger and lime body gel and the scent of fresh air from him. I felt as if I could be that five-year-old little girl again, with the broken bone, except this time it was my heart. I thought of the pack healer and how quickly he reset the bone and put it in a sling back then. Why couldn't life now be as simple?

"I wish I'd never gotten my wolf," I confessed to Colt. "I wish I could go back to before the Moondream."

Colt ran his hand up and down my arm, and then he said gently, "I'd never have rejected you if we were fated mates, Billie."

One of the knots in my chest loosened. Why couldn't everyone be as kind as Colt? A prickle of warmth went through me as part of me wished that Vana could have made my life simpler and showed me Colt in that Moondream.

But as I hugged him, breathing in his comforting scent, I knew we really were too much like brother and sister. Neither Catrina nor David had treated me like part of the family, but Colt always had. He'd had time to listen to my fears and insecurities, just as he was doing now.

I drew back from him a little so that I could look him in the eye. "But that would mean that Aislin couldn't appear in your Moondream," I said with a suggestive smile.

Color stole over his cheeks. "Billie, you know I haven't seen my fated mate."

I shrugged. "Well, I'm praying to Vana that it's Aislin. With the way the goddess has messed me around, I figure she owes me one."

Colt ran his hand up the back of his short black hair, fidgeting. I knew he had a crush on Aislin, the Grandbay Betas' daughter, even if he wouldn't admit it. It was obvious that he always wanted to go with Catrina and Gavin on runs whenever Aislin was around.

Aislin was a stunning redhead with bold dark eyes and an equally frank and outspoken personality. I'd seen her running in the woods, her fur like fall leaves. I knew she was Gavin's best friend. He'd probably expected his fated mate to be as fiery as Aislin or as determined as Catrina. Instead, he'd been lumped with me.

But anger simmered through me. How did he think I felt about all this? I hadn't even had a boyfriend at all, and I'd been lumbered with the arrogant Alpha of Grandbay as my mate. I'd have much preferred someone sweet and understanding like Cole. With the confusing feelings warring through me, I decided to change the subject from the current chaos of my internal track.

Instead, I broached something else that had been on my mind and been eclipsed by everything that had happened with the Moondream.

"Colt," I said, "You once told me that there are other shifters in the woods besides us werewolves."

He stared at me, his black brows furrowing. "Uh-huh, but why do you want to know about them?"

I thought of the monster I'd seen in the woods, its glowing eyes, snout, and shimmering scales. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I cast a wary look behind me into the undergrowth and past the tree trunks.

"Last night before I fell," I confided. "I swear I saw some sort of monster. It was bigger than a wolf, but I swear it had shimmering scales and a snout."

Panic thumped through me at the memory, and a prickle of apprehension crawled over my skin.

Colt scowled. "Some things aren't meant to be investigated, Billie." He paused, and I wondered if he knew something about the monster I'd seen. Then he said, "If you'd been hurt, I don't know what I'd have done. Promise me you won't go getting all adventurous now that you've gotten your wolf, okay?"

I laughed in spite of everything. I was the last person who would put herself in danger. That was what the likes of headstrong Catrina or fiery Aislin might do.

"I promise not to do anything daring," I granted willingly, knowing that despite coming into my wolf, I was hardly the adventurous type— was I?

A surge of warmth wound through me in spite of my disappointment lately as Colt laid an arm around my shoulder, and we sat watching the sun go down over the meadow. We may not be fated mates or family by blood, but I would be forever grateful to have this man in my life.