Caged Wolf (Wolves of Willow Bend Book 2) (7 page)

“Then why am I here? That other man said I had to answer some questions. He acted as though he had a right to some answers.” Ferocity replaced the little girl lost notes threatening to shred him. “But I didn’t tell him anything. They should have been there for you. They didn’t get you out of prison.
I
did.”

Guiding her toward the porch, he hoped he could get her to sit, but no sooner did he release her than she paced once more. So, she didn’t want to be comforted. Blowing out a breath, he leaned against the railing and watched her. The air around her seemed to shimmer with energy and she stayed in constant motion.

Even tired and upset, she remained beautiful. The sunlight caught on the dark red strands of her hair. Though she’d sported a tan when he’d first met her, her skin seemed to glow with a pale translucence. Brighter still were her jade green eyes. They were the shade of a perfect gemstone, and he’d never forgotten them nor the horror he’d seen reflected back at him on that dark, and bloody night.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” She’d stopped pacing and stared at him expectantly. Had she asked him a question?

“Why did you go after the evidence to get me released?” The thought of her anywhere near the taint of the experience curdled his stomach. “I told you to leave it alone.”

“Actually, you ordered me never to speak of what happened. To keep silent, and I did.” Nose wrinkled, she gave the first hint of a smile since exiting the cabin. “So I didn’t talk to anyone about what happened when
we
were there.”

He let her response sink in. She’d found a way around the order. Though impressed, he wasn’t certain if her striving to obey him while she worked to free him or that she’d obeyed him at all counted more.  Regardless, neither had been the point of the order. “I wanted you to go on with your life.”

“I couldn’t.” Arms folded, she stared at him and he met her gaze. The connection sizzled in his system, burning through the torpor gripping his soul. “Not while you were in prison.”

“It was my choice.” One he’d willingly make again.

“But you—”

He glared and she sighed. “A.J., you should never have been in that place. You didn’t kill that man.”

“It’s done. No amount of regret can change the past.” Not when the long hard road brought him to this cabin in the woods with her. “Tell me about Arizona.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I wanted to get out of St. Louis. I wanted—to get away.” She sat in the grass abruptly, and hugged her knees. He didn’t think it was the whole truth, but he couldn’t trust his nose.

“Was someone bothering you?” Maybe Mason had done him a favor in bringing her here. If anyone tried to follow or reach her, his pack would deal with them.

“No, my choices were bothering me.” Chin resting on the top of her knees, she met his gaze again. “You being in prison bothered me. I spent eleven months for contempt.”

He hadn’t known that. “Once the conviction came down, why would they keep you there?”

“Because I was really rude to the judge. After I got out…” She shrugged. “I tried to go back to my life, but I didn’t even know what it was anymore. I had some issues and then…well it doesn’t matter what happened next. The important part was releasing you gave me a purpose. I came to the courthouse yesterday.” She hesitated. “It was yesterday, wasn’t it?”

The muddling of time he understood. “It feels like five minutes ago.” Strangely, after having missed his family for all those years, he’d been eager to be away from them. Eager to be away from all of them, except Vivian. The more they spoke, the more he wanted to hear.

“So weird.” She frowned. “What about you? It must be good to be home with your—you know, with your kind.”

A careless shrug was the only answer he could find, then he offered a truth. “I was happy to see my mother and my father. Tyler and Ranae, too. I haven’t seen Linc yet…”

“He looked healthy when I saw him, but I haven’t since I woke up here.” The speed with which she tried to comfort him earned a smile. The ragged pieces of his soul continued to warm.

“I’m sure he’s all right. Mason gave me his word.”

“And you believe him?” Doubt bottomed her question.

“Yes.” No hesitation marred the answer. He paused a beat to consider the truth of it. He did believe Mason—his Alpha. The man may not have been Alpha long, but he’d made damn sure A.J. had been taken care of, insisted he would stay, and wouldn’t release him to fend for himself. He
cared
. Hard ass or not, Mason gave him no reason for distrust. “Yes,” he repeated. “I do trust him. He will keep his word.”

“They kidnapped me.”

“I know, and while I have my issues with their actions, I also believe they would have asked you first. We have our laws, and we must abide by them.” Among those laws were the cast iron net of secrecy. Humans at large were not allowed to know of the existence of the packs. Vivian was not all humans, and they were not forbidden from revealing the truth to a select number—A.J. sighed and rubbed his face. “I’m sorry they scared you.”

Her earlier fear had begun to dissipate along with her agitation, leaving only the sweetness wholly belonging to Vivian. Of course the kidnapping had frightened her, but the wolves who’d been sent to get her couldn’t have known the hell she’d been through. Linc and Tyler had.
I owe my brothers for trying to protect her.

“Can I tell you a secret?” The question caught him off guard and he focused on her.

“Of course.” Hungry for any part of her she would share, he ignored the disarray of his thoughts.

“I didn’t want to be here.” She swallowed, then released her knees and straightened. “I really didn’t. I thought I’d imagined all of this and there’s a part of me that still thinks I am.” Another hesitation, a spike in her fear. What was she trying to work up the courage to tell him? “But if this is another delusion…”

“Another?” A.J. frowned. In her earlier rant, she’d insisted he wasn’t real.

A slow, hesitant nod from her. “I had some issues—have some issues. I—I thought I was losing my mind. I’d go into these…Nathanial called them dissociative fugues. Once I disappeared for almost two days and I woke up in Castlewood, it’s a state park. I had dirt under my nails and leaves in my hair. I had no idea where I was, apparently miles from the road. Took me half a day of hiking to find a person. After that, I started tying myself to my bed at night.”

His heart fisted at the image awaking a slumbering rage. “Did it help?”

Despite expecting her slow headshake, he clenched his fists. “No,” she whispered, a hesitation hitching the words. “No one could explain it. I couldn’t keep a job. A lot of my friends faded away over those couple of years, especially during my contempt confinement. My mother wanted to commit me, but then she…”

She’d lost her mother. She didn’t have to say the words, he saw the stark truth of a child abandoned in her eyes and his heart bled for her. “I’m sorry.”

Vivian shrugged, but sadness was not so easily dispelled. “The fugues got worse. One day I couldn’t take it anymore.”

One day…three years ago. “You tried to kill yourself.”

A jerk, surprise beneath the shame and the sadness. “How did you know?”

Because he’d woken up from a nightmare three years before, and it had taken him two weeks of scouring the obituaries every chance he had to be certain. “What happened?”

“I took some pills—”

He didn’t want to know how truly lost she’d been. The slowly rising rage turned to fury, but he swallowed both. “No, after. What happened after?”

“I called Nathanial. He’d been my court ordered shrink.” She bit down on her lip—again—and he found the action infuriating. She would do injury to herself if she continued. “He got me to a hospital in time for them to pump my stomach then committed me for a seventy-two hour psych hold.”

They’d locked her up?
Again?
 

“It was for my own good,” she said in a soft, nearly inaudible voice. “You don’t have to be angry.”

A rumbling growl was the only answer he had.

“Stop. Nathanial helped me. He was there for me when I received my diagnosis, and he helped me. First with medication, then taking me home and giving me a place to live—”

The man was going to die.

“—with him and his wife.”

Oh.
He relaxed his hands and exhaled. “He’s your friend.”

One nod. “Confidante. Savior. Doctor. But he was never inappropriate, never tried to be more than that.”

Good.
Uncharitable as his thoughts were, he didn’t want her looking to someone else. She didn’t need them, she had…
Does she have me?
Could he be there for anyone?

“I stayed with them for a few months, then got a place of my own. Working on finding a way to free you helped ground me out. I had fewer fugues…”

“But you still have them?” Concern blunted the edges of his fury.

She nodded. “I thought I was having one here. I mean they were all here and then they were gone and I was alone. It wouldn’t be the first time I imagined you.”

This whole situation was fucked up. Standing, he crossed to her and held out his hand. To his immediate gratification, she accepted the aid and he pulled her to her feet. Interlacing their fingers together, he headed for the trail. He didn’t have to see it to know it was there.

“Where are we going?” She didn’t fight following him, keeping pace.

“We’re going to see Emma and Gillian.” The healers would know what was wrong with her or they would figure it out.

“Gillian?”

“Yes, you met her.” She had, hadn’t she?

“Doctor Barbie? The girl in the cabin who—” She hesitated.

“Who what?” Pausing, he faced her. When she sank her teeth into her lower lip, he scowled and leaned in to lick the injured spot carefully. Her jade green eyes went wide at the contact, but he refused to back off. “You’re hurting yourself. Stop it.”

“Okay.” Her lashes swept downward, hiding her dazed expression, then rose again.

“What did Gillian do?” Her scent had changed again, growing more heady and intoxicating. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get drunk on her.

“She fixed my face, I think.” Careful words, oh so careful. “It was sore when I woke up. The other wol—woman…” Her eyes widened at the slip.

“You can call us wolves, Vivian. That particular animal is already out of the bag.”

Flushing, she went to bite her lip and then stopped. He gave a nod of approval. “The wolf with Owen, the female, she grabbed me. She covered my mouth and my nose.”

A new surge of anger.
Fucking Enforcers
. “Show me.” He had to know everything that had been done. If they’d broken her in any way, well, fuck their laws. He’d definitely take back a pound of flesh for every bruise they’d left on hers.

With great hesitancy, she turned away from him and then backed up until her spine pressed against his chest. Taking the hand she held, she drew his arm around her shoulders and then loosened his fingers so that he covered her mouth with his palm and two fingers bracketed her nose.

Suffocation.

I will fucking kill the bitch that did that.
Releasing her so she could turn, he studied her face. No smudge of injury marred the perfect alabaster around her lips. In fact the only injury he saw was the broken skin she’d created with her gnawing.

“Gillian healed you.” A point to the sweet young wolf. He owed her a great favor.

“I guess so?” Vivian didn’t seem as certain.

Well, fuck, she already knew they were wolves. She deserved the rest. “Gillian is a healer, so is Emma. They have gifts. If Gillian can heal you, a human, she’s definitely grown in her ability since I left.”

“So you’re taking me there?”

He nodded. “I want to talk to them about your fugues.”

“All right,” she said, surprising him with her compliance. “They can look at you, too.”

“I’m fine,” he argued, but she took his hand and started them once more in the direction he’d been leading her.

“Then it won’t matter if they check.”

“Vivian…”

“You want them to look at me?” Her eyebrows raised and for the barest of instances a window opened. A window to the fierce woman he’d rushed to aid, one who’d fought even when she’d been bleeding from so many injuries and could barely stand.

“Yes.”

“Then you have to let them look at you.” No, she wasn’t asking.

The corner of his mouth curved upward, the feeling so alien he couldn’t help but notice it. Her answering smile set fire to another cobweb in his soul, battering at the dark chains holding him prisoner. If it put that expression on her face, he’d let them check whatever they wanted.  

Chapter Five

Hand-in-hand, Vivian followed A.J. through the woods toward a path she would never have noticed on her own. Only a few hours before—
it was hours, right?—
she’d been planning to box up her life in St. Louis and move to Flagstaff. While she hadn’t had much life since that pain-filled night, she thought relocating to where she was a stranger would make it better.

And now I’m walking through the woods with the wolf, man, person I didn’t think I’d ever see again to go see a healer.
The surrealistic nature of it all struck her and she began to laugh. Clapping her free hand over her mouth, she couldn’t suppress the sound. Her shoulders shook, tears gathered in her eyes, and breathing grew more difficult.

A.J. paused and swung around to face her. His scowling frown, combined with the question in his eyes, only set her off into another fit of inappropriate giggles.
Insane.
Everything about the situation was utterly, and completely insane.

As she continued to struggle to stifle her laughter, his frown eased and the corners of his mouth kicked upward. Moments later, he shook his head and the rustiest, most awkward laugh she’d ever heard escaped him. It came out almost a honk of a noise and totally undid her efforts to stop the manic amusement rushing out of her like a water crashing through a dam. Soon they were leaning against each other, wheezing.