The Thing About Weres: A Mystwalker Novel Read online

“She is my mate,” Trowbridge said simply.

  I am his mate. Happiness made my heart swell. Every medicine cabinet should come equipped with a silver flask filled with Fae juice. The unbearable heat in my gut was completely gone.

  In its place … this wondrous sense of well-being.

  “You lie, Robson Trowbridge,” snarled Bowler-hat. “Her skin does not carry your scent.”

  Shut the hell up.

  Trowbridge’s arms tensed. “She is part Fae, she has no scent.”

  “No friends in the pack, either, it would seem,” the killjoy continued. “One of your kind plunged a knife into her belly, while the others left her to die. A true Alpha would never leave his mate in such mortal danger.”

  “Stay out of my business,” rumbled Trowbridge. “Close the fucking portal, right now.”

  “Give her to me,” said the Fae. “I will take her to safety.”

  At that, I uttered a mewl of distress, and felt perverse comfort when Trowbridge’s grip tightened almost painfully. Could there be anything better? His chest against my cheek. The smell of him—a heaven-sent musk cloud around me.

  “You won’t travel an inch in my territory without my permission,” my mate said. “And if you don’t shut those gates right now, I’m going to—”

  “Your ‘territory’?” mocked the Fae. “Your wolves have not come out to greet their Alpha. They tremble in the woods.”

  “They can wait,” grated Trowbridge.

  “For what? For a sweet reconciliation with your mate? You are no longer of this world, Son of Lukynae. Tender words will not change you back to what you once were. The moon is demanding that you transform, and transform you will. Then you shall become the beast and she will know you for the animal that you are. Perhaps she’ll be frightened, sickened by—”

  “You better hope I can meet their challenge or have you forgotten what you will lose?” Trowbridge asked.

  A pause.

  Then the Fae said in a hard voice, “You need to display—”

  “I know what I need to do!” Trowbridge snarled.

  “Then do it. I have risked much to come here,” the Fae hissed. “I will not have everything lost because you are too stubborn to yield to the moon. A challenge has been issued. You must meet it.”

  “When I’m sure she’s healed,” he said, in a low, fierce voice. A prickle of nails as Trowbridge slid his hand across my ribs.

  “Don’t,” I whined, curling against his chest. But my mate persisted, tenderly pushing away the leg I’d brought up to protect my belly. “Shh, sweetheart,” he murmured as his fingers examined the place where once a knife had bobbed.

  I summoned up the effort to dislodge Grumpy, Dopey, and Sleepy, and failed. Whined a bit instead, high through my nose, as my own paw tried to feebly swat his away.

  “That’s it, Hedi,” said Trowbridge. “That’s more like you. Fight me.”

  I don’t want to fight you. I want you to hold me and promise me that you’ll never let me go.

  “We have no time for this. Give her another mouthful of the sun potion,” said the Fae. “She cannot lie like prey on the ground.”

  The silver flask was offered once more, and I accepted, possibly a little too enthusiastically, because the good stuff was jerked away before I could suckle more than a tablespoon of it.

  “Open your eyes, Tink,” said my mate.

  I did and found myself looking upward into Trowbridge’s face. Don’t worry, I’m fine, I wanted to tell him. Even if you’re not. I knew my emotions were dulled, and blunted—contentment was grudgingly slow to make room for dismay—but I recognized that. He wasn’t fine. Black whiskers crawled up his gaunt cheeks. Beneath his tired eyes, purple shadows darkened the skin.

  Goddess, he’s suffering or he has suffered.

  Under the cool light offered by the moon, I could see again.

  But I didn’t want to. Not like this. Not with the clamor of unwanted emotions and sudden terrifying perceptions overwhelming that blank peacefulness. I searched for that pink comfort I’d felt just seconds before, and felt a petulant peevishness that it was gone. Shamed, my eyes slanted away. Don’t think about those bruises beneath his eyes. I essayed speech and came up with a croak. “Trowbridge?”

  Firm lips pressed against my brow. I lifted my hand to draw his head closer to mine—kisses are a very good thing—but my fingers got entangled in the rope curtain of his dreads. The sound of their dry rasp filled me with a strange foreboding.

  My hand fell.

  “The first taste is lightning in a bottle,” mused the Fae. “She’ll never find that joy again.”

  “There will be no other time.” Trowbridge’s breath warmed my ear.

  “A wolf believes himself qualified to make choices for a Fae?”

  “Not only can a Were make the right choices, but he can command,” retorted Trowbridge. “For the last time, close the portal.”

  Good luck with that. I rolled my head to watch.

  Bowler-hat shrugged and made a chopping motion. And just like that—with one indolent wave—my magic parted from the tree to which it had been tethered. I thought it would fly back to me—even lifted a weak paw to welcome it home—but it flew over to the fog-shrouded portal; there it floated, an unsecured strand of fairy seaweed, no ocean bed for its roots.

  Seriously, never piss off your magic.

  The Fae eyed it with something akin to boredom. He tapped two fingers downward in that same annoyingly lazy fashion. And then the whole damned writhing, searching cable of magic exploded. Exactly like last night, when I’d told my magic to go to hell. Myriad bits of green fluorescence glittered above the smoky ground.

  Not so fun to feel all discombobulated and directionless, is it, magic-mine?

  “Sy’ehella,” the Fae said.

  Bells chimed as the Gates of Merenwyn closed.

  My magic glittered in the evening, a hive of fairy bees. I opened my mouth, thought to say something, and decided against it. It seemed to me I’d said enough.

  However, magic-mine took my open mouth as an invitation.

  She dove past my tonsils, slid down my gullet in a choking ball of pressure, and then—thump! She filled that damn near empty magic space inside my gut with some Fae vim and vigor, claiming her spot near the tail of my spine without so much as a murmur of apology.

  My inner-bitch wagged her tail in greeting, then hunkered down again.

  I could feel them inside me once more.

  The Fae alive. My Were beside her, ears pricked forward.

  We were whole again.

  * * *

  There was supposed to be a long, tender moment there.

  I didn’t get it.

  Trowbridge’s embrace—so solid, so welcoming, so right—turned inexplicably stiff.

  He hadn’t seen my magic return to me, had he? That wasn’t part of the mate thing, was it? That might have looked a tad ugly.

  I tested my mouth and discovered that I could speak, and so I filled in the awkward moment with what seemed to me a reasonable request. “Get me out of here, Trowbridge. Before those wolves come back.”

  Uh-huh, in hindsight, I might have chosen my words more carefully.

  If he’d felt stiff before that statement, he became rigid after it. Thoughtfully, I wiped a droplet of Trowbridge’s sweat off my cheek—hey, my fingers are working again—and rolled my head toward My One True Thing’s chin.

  Aw hell.

  Dreads and beards can make any man dangerous looking. Moonlight might amplify that perceived threat. But at that moment, Trowbridge was staring down his long nose at me in a way that felt both foreign and oddly menacing.

  This is not going well.

  Blue comets started playing a halfhearted game of tag around his pupils. Usually a lovely sight, that prelude to an Alpha’s flare, except now blue fire illuminated his face, and I could see well enough to perceive the fact that his features weren’t shaped in aching joy at the sight of me. They were set in a grim, faintly pain
ed cast that appeared semipermanent, and his brow was—oh wonderful—visibly shifting. My mate was a breath away from his transformation into his Were.

  “You’re”—I made a hazy circle near my own temple—“turning wolf.”

  And maybe I did wince with ill-disguised disgust, because at that precise moment, the bone in his cheek chose to move, and it was both ugly and fascinating to watch his skin roll, crest, and then recede back to resemble something reasonably normal.

  “Shit,” I said, for want of a better word, as my inner-bitch moaned in disbelief.

  I’m a card-carrying Trowbridge interpreter and have a mental catalogue of every expression his handsome countenance had ever assumed in my presence. I’d privately labeled them: cool curiosity. Covert lust. Simmering annoyance. Devastating tenderness. Pussy-melting possessiveness. Combustible passion.

  By golly, to be scrupulously fair, I’d even kept a file on some of his less cozy displays of emotion—forced patience, annoying arrogance, bullheaded maleness, and perverse stubbornness.

  I’d thought I’d seen them all—including, more than once, evidence of true love in his eyes.

  But at that moment, I didn’t know how to read him—never mind the fact that he was on the cusp of turning into his Were.

  Dismay coiled inside me: a fat, hungry worm hidden in the apple core. Had I imagined the depths of his feelings for me? Had I wanted to be loved so badly that I’d tinted every one of our shared dreams with soft, seashell-pink fantasies of forever after?

  My cheeks grew hot.

  “I want to sit up,” I said in a little voice.

  He allowed me to slide free of the comforting band of his arms, though he didn’t entirely relinquish his hold on me. When I made a weak attempt to crawl a couple feet away, he used gentle pressure to keep me there, sitting cross-legged between the cradle of his hard thighs.

  There are worse places to be.

  I could have leaned back against his damp chest, if I’d wanted to. Flattened my palm over his heart, and checked for a beat. He had a streak of blood near his hairline.

  Knox, I thought broodingly.

  Add another dollop of guilt to my felony list.

  That’s when the little brown wolf from Merenwyn let loose a low, menacing growl, and began to slink toward me, its amber eyes flicking between my mate and me in a way that might have unnerved me if I hadn’t spent six months holding a pack at bay.

  This pissed-off fairy has had a day, puppy.

  Behold the wrath of my flare.

  “Don’t,” warned Trowbridge, before I could summon a spark. The light that had lit his face dimmed. “Don’t ever use your flare against a wolf. I’ve seen that, and it’s never good.”

  I said, my heart twisting, “That’s bullshit, Trowbridge. Your father used his Alpha flare to control his pack.”

  “My father was a Were.” His tone was implacable. “He had the right to use it on his kin.”

  This time, I gasped.

  The little brown wolf crept forward, nose crinkled.

  “Anu!” Trowbridge said sharply, before breaking into a long string of Merenwynian, directed at the wolf eyeing me like I was the last hamburger on the grill.

  Yes, I know. I should have thought, What’s with that wolf? or better yet, Who the hell IS that wolf? My inner-bitch certainly was suddenly on alert.

  But my mind swirled over yet another puzzle.

  Impossible, I thought, horror filling me.

  In the space of a summer, Trowbridge had learned to speak my mother’s tongue. I’m not referring to the use of a few Fae curse words; I’m talking about fluid language skills. Verbs, and nouns, and maybe an adjective or two thrown in for good measure. I couldn’t tell what he was saying—I’d never managed to pick up the Fae language other than that freakish time in Threall when I became temporarily fluent in Merenwynian. But I’m thinking Trowbridge had issued a “cease and desist” order, because the little brown wolf’s ears flattened, and it paused, mid-stalk, hackles raised in a line of outrage, nape to rigid tail.

  What was I? A language idiot? Trowbridge spent half a year in the Fae world and suddenly he’s fluent in a language I could never get my tongue around after twelve years of listening to my mum? Was it really that easy to pick up the language?

  Goddess, did he think I’d deliberately kept him trapped in Merenwyn?

  I gave the tip of my pointed ear a stroke or two and felt no comfort.

  My One True Thing made a sharp “sit” gesture with his fist. The canine looked at it with something akin to frustration, issued a noise that sounded uncannily like a peeved Wookie, then lowered its ass to a choice patch of Creemore’s clover.

  The remnants of my pink glow of happiness were eroding faster than a wad of cotton candy ground between two molars.“What happened here?” Trowbridge asked.

  Good question.

  He flicked a dread over his shoulder. “Why did someone try to kill you?”

  “Not someone. A Were,” I said flatly.

  “Why?” he asked grimly.

  “Because the NAW came.” I tilted my head toward the woods. “Knox—the guy you dispatched—I take it he is dead?”

  Trowbridge nodded.

  “He was sent here to investigate claims that…” I floundered for a second, realizing that I was edging myself into turbulent waters and, Goddess curse it, I was already at sea without a life vest. “I was accused of breaking the treaty, and what you saw was the end result of a trial by my ‘peers.’”

  “Why didn’t you claim your status as my mate?” he demanded.

  Oh crap. The treaty and the mate question—two things I really wanted to avoid in the first few minutes of our fragile reconciliation—delivered in a one-two bitch-slap. “It must have slipped my mind,” I said, sarcasm dripping.

  I know. I should have saved being a smartass for later, but it was so wrong … every bit of it. The Fae watching us with his head tilted in deep calculation; the pack listening in from the bushes; the little brown wolf shifting on its haunches yearning for leave to attack. None of it fit my script. I’d imagined my mate walking across the field toward me, top button undone on his blue cambric shirt. When his gaze fixed on mine—I usually got choked up at this part—his features would crease into an expression of deep tenderness, bordering on aching joy. Yup. That’s what I’d been anticipating.

  I gave myself an inward kick and struggled to stand. He helped me up.

  “This isn’t the homecoming I had planned for you,” I muttered.

  Trowbridge’s eyes narrowed. “Considering I had to find my own way back home, I imagine it wasn’t.”

  Low blow.

  His nostrils flared. “Why wouldn’t the pack support you?”

  For a second, I gazed up at him, feeling like I was on that portal again, the ground beneath me breaking into pieces. What had happened to my dream-guy?

  Gone.

  I looked back down at my knitted fingers. They were visibly swelling, payback pain’s itch finally starting to bother. My gaze skittered away from them, studied a blade of broken grass, found no enlightenment, and then twitched back toward the jaw of the man who stood between me and the rest of the world. It was slick with perspiration, patchy with a rough beard. My gaze dipped. His neck was ringed by something that looked like a heavy callus and—I squinted—underneath that, a few vertebrae were moving.

  He wanted the truth?

  “Because it was easier to throw me under the bus,” I said slowly. “Because it was simpler to let the NAW think I killed Mannus, and Dawn, and Stuart, and…” I gave him my own bitter smile. “You—the lost heir to the Alpha crown. Because they found me wanting as an Alpha-by-proxy. Because I don’t carry your scent. Because I can’t change into a wolf. Because I fucking well eat cookies.”

  Trowbridge’s hands—look at that, they’re tipped with curved talons—tightened at his hips, and he took a deep breath, like he was afraid he was going to bust apart and both of us would be drenched in an explosion of aft
erbirth, and gore, and all that other flying crap that just might hurt, like anger, disappointment, and the ugly cruds of once-perfect dreams.

  “Because I’m not, nor ever will be, one of them,” I finished.

  Silence greeted that prediction—a little broken quiet moment where the unexpected void between us grew and grew.

  * * *

  It was almost a relief when the shrubbery shivered.

  A black wolf emerged from the woods. One of the Danvers, but I couldn’t be sure which. Then another wolf—this one buff and brown—slid out from the shadows. It chose a place behind the black wolf, the quality of its personal challenge made murky by the way its head was lowered. Crickets fell silent as two more Creemore wolves crept out from the cover of the forest.

  “And hello, Karma,” I murmured.

  “I’m waiting to see your pack greet you, Alpha of Creemore,” taunted Bowler-hat.

  Trouble-making poseur. I hated the Fae’s clothing: his pants were indecently tight and his high boots spoke of guys that really, really like their laced cuffs and duchesses. Plus, I loathed how he’d angled his bowler over his left ear, convinced he’d done it to highlight the long fall of yellow hair that spilled over his other shoulder. And finally, I totally despised the way he appeared prosperous, while my guy looked like he’d been rolled in a dark alley by a hooker named Bess.

  “Piss off,” I mouthed to the Fae, and then felt taken aback when his wide mouth stretched into an approving smile.

  Trowbridge studied the wolves quietly, then turned back to me.

  When I didn’t volunteer to step up toward him, he moved close to me, obliterating my personal space, until all I could see was a broad expanse of well-muscled chest, half covered by ugly dead ropes of hair. I heard him sigh over my head. Then he bent his neck until we were relatively nose to nose.

  Do not roll into a ball of boo-hoo.

  “I have to make this short—” he began.

  “Why?” I said with admirable coolness. “What is so pressing that—”

  Trowbridge covered my mouth. Not hard. But gently—surprisingly so—two knuckles on the top of the swell of my upper lip, fingers curled so that the points of his talons were sheathed. “Don’t talk,” he said in a rough whisper. “For once, Tink, please don’t talk.”