1. Willow

ONE

Willow

“I think I need to have sex with my husband.”

Coughing on my water, I sprayed my canvas as I choked out a laugh. “Lorna!” I looked at the older woman, who was frowning at the canvas in front of her. I quickly dabbed at my canvas before the water did too much damage.

Lorna glanced up at me and then at Peter, who seemed to be eager for an explanation. I saw her blush and then, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, I watched her shake off her doubts.

“What do you see on the table?” she demanded of Peter, my other art student.

“Um…” He cast a quick look at me before he answered. “Fruit.”

Lorna nodded triumphantly, her expression one of someone who just won a major argument. “Fruit. Exactly .” She frowned at me. Motioning for me to come over, she pointed at her canvas in accusation. “I painted a cock and balls.”

Peter got off his stool, and the three of us gathered around her easel. I tried to hold back my laughter because I was her teacher, not her humiliator, but it was very hard because she had indeed painted something very close to resembling male genitalia.

Moving closer, I looked around her easel to the small table with the offending fruit in the center—some apples, a couple of bananas, and an orange. They were arranged innocuously. Standing back, I met her expectant look. “Well…it seems that your subconscious is telling you something.”

Lorna’s hands flew to her cheeks, and Peter narrowly missed getting her paintbrush in his eye. Seeing his overly dramatic jerk of his head away from her, I started giggling.

“Oh my,” Lorna murmured, her eyes still glued to her artistic offering. Leaning forward, she let out a grunt of dissatisfaction. “I didn’t even use artistic license,” she grumbled. “That looks to scale.”

I automatically looked again, and then I cracked up when I saw her impish smile.

My watch vibrated against my wrist, and I lost my smile a little. “Okay, you two, lesson’s over.” With a mock scowl at Lorna, I shook my finger. “You’re lucky I don’t give out detention.”

Lorna huffed as she got off her stool. “I’m old enough to be your mother,” she reminded me.

“Who paints pornography.” Peter chuckled, packing his paints away.

Lorna, who was on her way to the sink to wash her brushes, gave a small curtsy in acknowledgement. “I didn’t get two boys delivered from the stork, you know.”

The petite mother of two and Peter fell into easy, familiar banter as they tidied up their workstations. I half listened to them as I covered my own easel and watched the seconds tick past on my watch.

After a few more minutes, they both hugged me—Peter’s lasting a bit longer than it should, as usual—and left with a promise to see me on Thursday. Once they were gone, I tidied up their tidying up, a small smile on my face as I did so.

When I checked my watch again, I lost any humor I may have had. Walking over to the small sales counter, I waited.

Right on time, they both walked into my store. One russet-haired and brawny, the other leaner but just as fierce.

“Willow,” Royce greeted me with a warm smile. “How are you?” His gaze darted over my face, seeing things that makeup failed to hide from someone like him. “You look tired,” he added sympathetically.

“Hi, Royce. Hi, Ned.” Ned gave me a simple nod. He was usually quiet, although today I saw his attention land on Lorna’s piece, and his lips twitched.

That small smile relaxed me, even if it wasn’t for me. It reinforced my belief that Ned was just stern and I shouldn’t take his grim demeanor personally. He saw me watching him, and I tried not to bristle as his gaze swept over me, his frown returning.

“You look like shit.”

My smile was as brittle as I felt. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”

I heard Royce’s huff of laughter from the other side of the room, where he was admiring the new art on my walls.

“My wife would love that,” he told me, pointing to the painting. It was of a messy coffee table, littered with an open journal, a coffee mug, and some fresh-cut flowers lying beside them waiting for a vase, or maybe waiting to be hand-tied with the length of pink ribbon lying over the table, twisting and turning as it lay strewn across the contents and the lightly checked tablecloth. A simple wooden spindle-backed chair sat half pulled away from the table, giving the impression that the person dealing with the flowers had just left their seat.

“You like it?” I asked him, walking to stand beside him.

“I like the way you use light,” Royce told me, and I could hear the sincerity of his words. “It’s clever. It’s more than just adding shadow or using light to draw the eye to the main focus; it’s the way you add depth and emotion to your work.” He pointed at one of the fatter curls of the ribbon. “See, here, the light is skimming along the edge. The source of the light is directional, but if you don’t look closer, you won’t see the shadow on the same piece where the edge is frayed and worn. You highlight the superficial but see the depth when you look closer.” He gave me an appreciative glance. “As I said, clever. You tell a story with it and what the overall piece is.”

Wow. I had expected a “yes,” maybe a follow-up, generic comment. Instead, I got an in-depth compliment, which I hadn’t been expecting.

“Thank you,” I told him honestly. “That means a lot.” I knew I was blushing furiously, and Royce patted my shoulder as he saw my struggle to accept the compliment.

“We done bonding?” Ned asked from behind us.

I probably wouldn’t have heard the low huff of displeasure if I hadn’t been beside Royce.

“Don’t be an ass,” Royce said with a hard look. He turned to me once more. “But he is right, we should move.” His eyes flicked to the storage cupboard. “Anything new?”

I almost laughed. Instead, I went and opened the door. I heard someone’s mutter, but it was too low to make out.

“All of this?” Ned asked doubtfully.

“Yup.” I stepped back as Ned moved in front to start lifting out the artwork.

“You’ve been busy,” he told me, and had I not gotten accustomed to him over these last weeks, I may have said his look was one of concern.

“Willow?” Royce, on the other hand, was looking at me with concern. “This is too much.” His hand gestured to the pile. “You need to rest. Your illness…”

“Is my illness,” I spoke quickly. “I’m fine.” I watched Ned flicking through my work. They would check whatever I had created and then filter through the ones that had anything related to their world. They’d been doing this every week since I met them, and so far, they’d only ever handed me one sketch back. Everything else, they took, their frowns becoming deeper every visit.

It had been three weeks since that day Caleb walked away and never looked back. I’d been left in the town on Blackridge Peak with a pissed-off alpha, a shaman, and a doctor who was more interested in studying me than the fact that Caleb had vanished off the face of the earth…mountain…whatever.

“Thirty,” Ned said with a grunt, his look assessing. “I think you need to rethink the offer of being with us.”

I was already shaking my head. “No, I don’t need to move to your pack .” I saw the flat look. “I’m not part of your…community. I already put you at risk by this.” I waved my hand over th e pile. “I think that’s enough. I don’t need to be closer to you.” I gave them both a self-deprecating look. “I still need to sleep sometime after all.”

“You think you would see more if you were amongst us?” Royce said with understanding.

“I do.” I saw their looks and felt the panic building. “Please don’t tell Cannon this,” I asked them both. I saw the look they shared, but they both nodded their agreement. However, I only believed Royce would keep quiet. Ned would tell Cannon. I also saw the younger man knew exactly what I was thinking, and for the first time, I saw him break our stare as he looked away with, if I didn’t know better, what would’ve appeared to be guilt.

“This is…”

I looked over at Royce, and I knew which sketch he was focused on. Walking over, I looked at what he was holding.

“I wish I knew what caused him this pain,” I admitted quietly. The sketch was of Caleb—when was it not?—sitting in front of that large log cabin I’d drawn months ago, a place now as familiar to me as my own home. He was looking to the left, his chin in his hand as he stared at some point in the landscape beyond my vision.

What caught our attention wasn’t where he was or what he was looking at, but how he looked. His jeans were ripped and torn, his chest bare, with three long scratches barely visible—just enough to leave us wondering how bad they were. His hair was longer, unkept, strands falling over his face and obscuring his features, though bruises and scratches still peeked through. And yet, despite the clear signs of violence on his body, the overall impression of him could only be described as tortured .

I felt Ned as he looked over my shoulder. “Looks like he fought a bear,” he said with interest.

“A bear?” I asked with alarm.

“It’s not the bear he’s fighting,” Royce said with a sad shake of his head. He exchanged a look with Ned. “Cannon needs to try again.”

Ned snorted. “He would if he could find him.”

“Find him?” I looked between them both. “He’s right there.” I pointed at the cabin. “He’s always there,” I added softly.

“Until a shifter takes a step onto Shadowridge Peak,” Ned corrected me gruffly. “Then he’s gone.”

“Then find him,” I demanded, my exasperation seeping through. “You are supposed to be hunters. Go hunt.”

Royce gave a low chuckle. “We are hunters, but it’s a different game when the prey knows how to hunt as well.”

“Or better,” Ned conceded.

“So what you’re saying is…you can’t find him because he’s hiding from you too well?” I asked incredulously.

Royce gave me an indecipherable look. “I don’t think he’s hiding,” he told me. “He’s just not ready to be found.”

Which sounded like hiding to me. I returned my attention to the picture of Caleb. “Stalk his ass until you get him,” I demanded. Reaching for my artwork, I flipped through them. “You have all the locations—stake him out.”

“Stake?” Royce asked curiously. He made a stabbing motion with his hand. “Stake him with a knife or with binoculars like a spy?”

“Yes! Have someone there until the stubborn bastard turns up. ”

They both looked at me with sympathy. “It’s not that easy,” Royce reminded me, for what felt like the ten thousandth time.

“He’s dangerous,” Ned added, as if I needed reminding—which I didn’t. I just had a hard time believing it.

Or if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe it, it was that I didn’t accept it.

“I think you both underestimate him,” I grumbled, busying myself with bundling up my work.

“And I think you should trust our judgment on this,” Ned snapped back. “You’re seeing it through emotion, and we’re seeing it through experience.”

I clenched my jaw to stop myself from having the same old argument. The fact that I was used to arguing with this man should have been a sharp reminder of how bizarre my life had become.

Royce was also used to us and had already taken the bundled items off me. “Ned, get the truck,” he ordered, and I saw the conspiratorial wink he gave me. When Ned left, I mumbled my thanks, which Royce waved off. “Got two kids at home; I’m used to the squabbling.” He looked around my store, checking he hadn’t missed anything. “I’d prefer it if I only heard the squabbling at home.”

“Then stop bringing Ned,” I suggested without thinking and was grateful when Royce laughed. “Sorry.” Pushing my hair behind my ear, I looked away from Royce as I struggled to try to find words. “He doesn’t know him. He’s not the person Ned thinks he is.”

Royce said nothing, but the sympathy in his eyes told me he was on the same page as Ned—just not as vocal about it. He left soon after, and once again, I was alone in my shop with the familiar feeling of frustration that surfaced every time they came.

With a sigh, I forced myself to resume cleaning up. I could dwell or I could try to be productive. Easier said than done. Several times, I caught myself motionless as I stared into nothing, thinking about the last few months.

Nothing was the same after Caleb came into my life, yet as I looked around my gallery and teaching area of my store, somehow everything was the same.

Except me.

And possibly my friendship with Lily. She was still unforgiving in my “vanishing act” as she called it. It didn’t help that when I returned, I was reluctant to talk about where I had been or what had happened. I refused to discuss Caleb, so Lily, being Lily, had firmly settled on the incorrect assumption that he had his wicked way with me, and then once he got what he wanted, he left.

Lily and I were still close, but the speculative look in her eye when she thought I wasn’t looking was an unwelcome one. We’d agreed to not talk about it, which is where the crack between us was slowly widening into a wedge, and I feared it may grow bigger still as we drifted apart.

She knew nothing about my visits from Royce or the others. Now that she worked out at her dad’s lumber mill, the only time I would see her through the day was the occasional lunch hour. Those that we could work around, and by we, I meant me and the shifters who frequented my store to remove the paintings or drawings that I had created of Caleb or their world.

Their world .

The world where men and women shifted into wolves. Into animals. Animals that hunted like the wolves in nature, only there was nothing natural about shifters. Supernatural beings that were infused with magic from their Goddess Luna.

I still felt guilty when I thought of another being that wasn’t God. It could be the Catholic in me, or it could be the fact that my human brain wasn’t equipped to deal with the whole theological argument. How was Luna any different from Buddha, or the teachings of Hinduism or Jainism? Their religion wasn’t the religion that my foster parents had instilled in me, but who was I to say it was wrong?

“They change into animals,” I grumbled to myself. “So?” It was the same old argument I kept replaying, and the fact that it was always with myself didn’t make it any easier. “You change into a zombie when the ME is bad.”

Yeah, it wasn’t the same and I knew it. While I may feel like death during an ME episode, I wasn’t an actual animated corpse. I thought about when Caleb had to carry me up the mountain. Perhaps the jury was still out on that, I joked to myself, but no matter how much I tried to lighten my thoughts, the fact was that I was human.

And Caleb was not.

Caleb… It all came back to Caleb. I kept going back to Caleb, only I hadn’t seen him since he walked out on all of us. I hadn’t heard a word from him. All I had was the gnawing feeling of doubt and failure.

The feeling that I had somehow failed him .