26. Willow

TWENTY-SIX

Willow

“I will never get down from here,” I told him as I lay half-collapsed against the face of the peak. “The fact you can carry me, the backpack, and yourself up this horrid, inhospitable, evil mountain is beyond me.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Caleb murmured.

“I’m dying.”

“You’re being very loud for someone dying,” he told me, dropping the pack to the ground. It had taken two days to get to the peak. Well, the peak part where we stopped. Even if his packlands were further up, he’d have to cart my dead body there. I wasn’t taking one more step up .

“Every part of me hurts.”

“Mm-hmm. For someone who’s been carried for the last day, I don’t know how.”

Narrowing my eyes on him, I made a face. “You’re not human. This mountain is humanly impossible to climb. Do not speak,” I snapped, breathing in short pants. “Why can’t I breathe? ”

“Because you’re panicking and being completely unreasonable?” Caleb deadpanned.

Wide-eyed with panic, I felt my chest tighten. “Caleb!”

He was in front of me, his hands cupping my cheeks as he tilted my head back slightly. “Hey now, come on, why are you being silly?” he teased softly, dropping a kiss on my nose. It was the first kiss he’d given me since we stepped onto this hellish mountain. “Breathe with me, Willow. You remember how we did it last time? Breathe in,” he said soothingly, inhaling with me. “And out.” We exhaled together. “Good girl, one more time.”

We did it again and again until I was plastered to his chest, our mouths a hairsbreadth from each other. By the time Caleb declared me calm, I was hot and bothered for another reason.

“Better?”

I almost said no, but I was very much aware that I had overreacted and been ridiculous. “The air’s so thin up here,” I mumbled. I took a breath, the crisp, sharp air filling my lungs. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. You’re not used to it.” Caleb stretched and I wanted to wrap my arms around him and not let go.

Because we were up a very steep mountain, and I was scared the whole rock face was ready to slide me right back down to the bottom. Despite my fear that the mountain had sinister intentions towards me, I couldn’t deny it was breathtaking.

Literally in places.

We’d stopped late last night, and had I known how narrow the ledge he made me sleep on was, I would have died of fright. However, that particular treat had been what I woke up to .

Caleb had wanted to stop so I could reach his packlands in the morning. I’d been useless since yesterday morning. My legs weren’t built for hardcore mountain climbing. No ropes. No tools. Just Caleb and his shifter strength and intimate knowledge of this mountain.

Once or twice, when he’d left me, I’d caught sight of a gray-furred wolf as he went to get water or food. I’d never tried rabbit before it was handed to me on a skewer made from a stick, and I’d been too hungry to refuse.

I lost my sleeping bag after I’d slipped and started skidding down the mountain. Caleb had thrown the bag for me to grab onto, and I’d grabbed the sleeping bag, only for it to snap and both of us careen down the way we’d come. He’d caught me, but the bag was gone, and last night, I’d spent the night curled up into his wolf’s side. One huge paw had stayed on my thigh, and weirdly, I’d slept like a baby.

But the air was thin here, so it could be that.

“You okay?”

Nodding, I looked over at him, and whatever I had been about to say died on my lips. The sun was resting low in the morning sky, the sky one of burning oranges and purples, casting differing shades of light and shadow over the peak. I felt like I was in a painting. It was so surreal, standing here, this high and breathing.

“Good lord, it’s beautiful.”

“Yeah.” His tone was wistful. “Worth the climb?” I saw his quick smile, and had my limbs not been sore from hanging onto him for almost twenty-four hours, I would have punched him, but I had no energy.

“No. Maybe… Don’t talk to me. ”

At that, Caleb laughed out loud, the sound echoing around us. “Come on, grumpy, it’s just over this ridge.”

“What is?” I asked stupidly, my gaze still facing east.

“The heart of the packlands.” The longing and sorrow in his voice made me turn away from the view and look at the man in front of me.

I crossed gingerly to him, because his offhanded comment the other day about the mountain playing a game of “is it stable or not?” wasn’t a joke. Rubble and debris just went from under your feet at any given time. My hands may never recover from the scrapes.

“I’m ready,” I told him, looping my arm into his. “Lead on.”

Caleb disentangled us, his hand slipping down my arm to lace our fingers together. It was the best we could do with no rope. When he packed for this climb, he must’ve forgotten how fragile I was. Or maybe he doubted I would ever be this close to his home.

As we walked, I marveled at the scenery, but it wasn’t long before I noticed that the beauty of the view wasn’t holding Caleb’s attention. His dark eyes scanned the horizon, tense and alert, like he was waiting for something to spring from the morning shadows.

A rocky formation that looked completely uninviting loomed ahead of us. “This is it,” Caleb declared, and I could hear his reluctance, but he still held his hand out to help me.

Of course this was it. Jagged teeth of a gaping jaw ready to munch me if I fell. “Welcoming,” I mumbled as he helped me climb over it. I could feel the tension in him, in the way his muscles coiled as if he was ready to snap at any moment. Even as he helped me, his attention was everywhere else, checking every shadow, tree and rock.

It looked like he didn’t trust his surroundings.

“Are you okay?” I asked when he lifted me over the last of the rocks. His unease was infectious, and I could feel it too—the tension in the air, as if the very mountain itself was holding its breath.

“No.” He gave me a tight smile. “It’s okay, they won’t hurt you.”

“They?”

“You’ll feel them soon enough,” he explained, his voice low, gravelly, and for the first time since I met him, uncertain. “This place isn’t what it used to be, just remember that.”

He stepped aside, and I saw the place he had called home for the first time, for real. Not in a drawing. I’d seen it so many times in my visions that it felt like I was the one coming home. Trees surrounded it, as I knew they did. Tall, towering pines circled the clearing. The ground dipped down, a basin of sorts, shallow, but I could see the bowl of the ground when we approached. In the corner stood the imposing log cabin. I’d seen so much of it when I drew, but I had never appreciated how big it was.

“The hall,” Caleb murmured beside me.

“It looks bigger than I thought,” I told him, reaching for his hand to steady myself. A light covering of snow lay on the ground, and I told myself I was holding onto him in case I fell.

“The hall was the heart of the pack,” he spoke softly, almost robotically. “One of my ancestors thought it would be a good idea to shield it but still have it out in the open.” Caleb pointed to the tallest trees. “They shield it from most aircraft, but the authorities know we’re here.”

“They do?” I asked in surprise. “They know about shifters?”

Caleb was shaking his head. “No, we stay away from humans as much as possible. They think we’re some eccentric cult.”

Who was to say they were wrong?

“I don’t see any houses?” I told him, looking around. “I’ve never seen any residences,” I clarified, “when I drew. It was always this lodge and this circle of ground.”

“Some of the homes were lost,” he told me, leading me into the trees away from the hall. As we walked, I saw the simple log cabins scattered amongst the trees. They were hidden, blending into their surroundings.

As we walked, I noticed how many were in a state of disrepair, and the more he showed me, the more I realized something.

“You haven’t been inside these since the day it happened, have you?”

“Once.” His jaw was tight, his eyes haunted with a darkness I could never imagine. “The day I picked up pieces of my pack and burned them.”

“I’m so sorry.” It didn’t feel like it was enough, and I knew it could never be enough. “I’m sorry that you had to do that alone.”

“I’m just pleased there was someone left to do it.”

“They all died?” It was the first time that I’d asked for clarification of what he’d told me before.

Caleb looked away, his eyes back screening the trees. “Not all.”

“So you still have a pack?” I asked him excitedly.

The look he gave me was full of scorn. “Shadowridge Peak died the day my father did.”

“But the others?”

“You think they wanted to stay on this peak? You think they wanted to sleep in their beds, knowing it’s where the rest of their kin were murdered?” Caleb scowled at the homes that lay empty and neglected. “You think that I was fit to lead them?” His voice dripped with acid as he spoke. “My pack needed time to grieve, and they wouldn’t get that with me.”

“You made them leave?” I asked in disbelief. Surely then was the very time he needed his pack around him? Surely they needed him, their alpha? “When they needed you?” I couldn’t hide my shock from my voice, or my face it seemed, as Caleb’s scowl grew darker when he looked down at me.

“You think we should have gathered around the fire and toasted to the dead?” he asked disdainfully.

“ Yes !”

He stepped away from me, arms folding across his chest. “My parents were betrayed.” The pain radiated through every word he spoke. “You think I had any trust left? You think, after I killed all those shifters, that my pack wanted me to lead? Trust is earned, Willow. Every single one of them was in doubt. How could I know they were loyal? How did they know I wouldn’t kill them? My pack was weakened. We were ripe for attack. Had they stayed, they would have died.”

“You don’t know that.” My voice sounded as fragile as his control when I spoke.

“I wasn’t willing to test it,” he snapped angrily .

“You left them?” My voice was incredulous. “After all that, you walked away?”

“My presence here would have brought more harm than good. I went to the Pack Council and I disbanded my pack, as I had failed them. I had failed to protect them and my family.” His head was held high. “I told them of my revenge, and they gave me their punishment.”

“You didn’t fail them!” I was almost shouting. “You weren’t here !”

Caleb moved so quickly I stepped back when he towered over me. “ Exactly ! I wasn’t here, Willow. I failed them.”

“Oh my God, that’s not how it works, Caleb!”

“I don’t give a fuck how it works in your world. This is how it works in mine!”

“You complete idiot.” I was seething. “I can’t believe you walked away and left them. They were hurting. They needed to heal, just like you did!”

“They healed in their new packs. They flourished elsewhere.”

He didn’t sound like he believed it, and I didn’t either. “You mentioned punishment. What happened to you?”

Caleb didn’t look at me as he spoke. “I walked away from my pack. I wasn’t fit to lead, but the Pack Council are cruel bastards. They would not let me give up the mountain. Shadowridge Peak is still the home of the Shadowridge Peak Pack.” He looked at me, eyes full of self-loathing. “Pack members: one.”

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hold him and never let go. “You are the most stubborn, unreasonable man I have ever met.” Pushing my hood back, not caring that it was snowing, I clutched my hands in my hair. “No wonder this place haunts you. You left the living and the dead on it.”

Caleb huffed out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. What the hell did he have to laugh about?

“You’re laughing?” I asked incredulously.

“Don’t you see, the joke’s on them!” When he saw that I didn’t know, he carried on. “You want to know why we’re here? The Pack Council! They asked a shaman to decree what our Goddess Luna wanted from such a dangerous alpha.” An ugly sneer twisted his features as he spoke, his eyes housing a darkness I hadn’t seen before. “To be a packless pack,” he spat out. “But a pack has to have a home,” he continued furiously. “And this peak is my pack’s home. No other can claim this peak while I still live.” He leaned forward, madness in his eyes. “ That’s what they want from me. They want my mountain.”

“Wha-what?”

He turned to look back towards the main hall. “When I left, I thought that was it, an alpha with no pack. It’s what I asked for. I thought, if I stayed away, the dead would rest. But they’ve done something. They’ve worked some magic and linked you to me. They weren’t ready to lose this mountain. They want it, they’ve always wanted it.”

He was insane. He was definitely talking like a madman. “Why would they want it?”

Caleb blinked as if he didn’t understand the question. “Why? Isn’t it obvious?” When he saw that I didn’t think it was, he threw his hands up in exasperation. “Look at its position! Shadowridge Peak sits in a strategic position to Blackridge Peak. The cliff face, the ascent, the way the packlands are positioned for the best vantage points? If you have Shadowridge in your control, then you have a strategic advantage.”

I felt a cold chill creep up my spine. “That makes no sense, Caleb.”

He gave me a look of pity. “It’s not the mountain itself,” he explained, reining in his anger. “It’s the control—t he power. You look at us and you see what? Superhumans? We think we’ve evolved, that we’re civilized…” He grunted. “But the truth is, Luna graced us with the essence of the wolf, and we’ve never evolved from a pack mentality. It doesn’t go away. Our shes go into heat. Our males fight the aggression that comes with maturity. An alpha needs a mate. We fight for territory and dominance. And it’s the same old story.”

I was almost too scared to ask. “What’s the same old story?”

He blew out a breath, his hands slipping into his pockets. “Whoever controls the packlands controls the region.”

He looked at me then, his gaze sharp and piercing. “When I left, while I grieved , they saw weakness. They saw an opportunity to take what is mine . And now I’m back…”

“You think they want to take it from you?” My mind was racing. “But…if they wanted to take it from you, wouldn’t they have done so ten years ago?”

“Too obvious.”

Right . “And how do I fit in?” I was genuinely curious. I mean, obviously, the altitude had gone to his head, or he was completely mad, and I refused to accept the latter.

His jaw was clenching, and he spoke through gritted teeth. “They’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I don’t stand in their way.”

The weight of his words settled between us. Did he hear himself? This wasn’t just about the packlands or the mountain, it was about him . They’d told me if he was alone too much, he would let the madness in. Was this what this was? The reason he didn’t trust his own kind? I knew why he’d become a loner, isolating himself; he was grieving. But this…I didn’t have an answer for this.

“I’m human,” I reminded him gently. “Your Council can’t do anything to me, Caleb. There’s no reason for them to know about me. I’m just a human.”

“I know,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t make sense, Willow. This.” He grabbed my hand. “Can you feel it? It’s every day. Every waking moment, I’m aware of you, where you are, the need to touch you. It’s not natural.”

Wow. “Not pulling the punches this morning on the crazy train, huh?”

He ignored me. “And when I’m here. I can feel it—like eyes on my back. Waiting. Watching. They want me to leave.”

“The mountain wants you to leave?”

“No. The mountain wants me here. They want me gone. They’re not getting my mountain.”

His paranoia wasn’t completely unfounded—it had to be rooted in something deeper. Something I didn’t understand. Not yet. But watching him become this unhinged thing , I could see what the shaman, and Cannon, and the others had been warning me about. The isolation. It had worn him down. The constant vigilance of thinking someone was coming for his mountain. He was tense and suspicious of everyone and everything. Did it include me?

“What about me?” I asked him, already dreading the answer. “Am I trusted? ”

Caleb paused for a moment, and I thought I saw softness for just a second before the hardness fell over his eyes again. “I’m trying,” he told me quietly. “You’re so pure and innocent. I don’t know how they got to you, but we’ll figure it out. You’re linked to me. I don’t understand it, but we can’t ignore it. It may be the only lead we have.”

It was scary to see how far he’d gone off the deep end.

I nodded, even though I wanted to scream. I tried to understand the weight of his words, and I tried to convince myself that he was just trying to protect me, but it was more likely that he was protecting himself. His past was dark and horrifying, and he’d committed atrocities that I still hadn’t accepted, but the uncertainty of broken trust and betrayal had bedded deep down in his soul, and I feared returning here, to this mountain, had been his undoing.

I didn’t know what to do. Leaving him here wasn’t an option. He would never leave me, and I refused to leave him.

Standing in this clearing had brought a change over him, one so sudden that I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“Caleb,” I spoke softly, gently. Holding out my hand, I stepped closer to him. “We’re in this together. I’m not going anywhere. We can figure this out, together .”

He looked at me with a wariness that tore at my heart, and as I watched him, I saw them. The shadows that surrounded him. Here, in this place, they manifested into something almost corporeal.

“I won’t lose this place,” he whispered, his eyes flicking away, settling on a cluster of shadows that I was sure was moving.

“You won’t.” My eyes focused on the darkness, and I spoke directly to them. “I’m right here, by your side. You are not alone. Not this time.”

He nodded, his eyes still searching the trees. “I’ll protect you,” he told me. “We’ll sever this link, and you can be free.”

Tears welled in my eyes as we stood there, and I listened to his ramblings as he told me how he thought they were trying to trick him.

He’d been fine. He’d been good.

Confessions of mass murder aside, he had been normal . Until he’d stepped over those rocks onto this land, and it was like a switch had been flipped.

There were no answers for us on this mountain, I realized. All there was, was Caleb’s madness and my desire to set him free.

I just didn’t know how I was going to do it.