Desert Fate (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 3) (8 page)

His name popped right into her mind. He hadn’t left, had he? The thought had her nostrils flaring, desperate to locate him. And they did—he was out there somewhere, not far away.

For a warm instant, she felt better, but then it hit her. Jesus, it was really happening. She was turning into a wolf, sniffing the air. Soon she’d be down on all fours, scratching an ear with her back foot and peeing on bushes to mark her turf. A line of sweat broke out along her forehead as she fisted her hands in her shirt.

His shirt.

She pulled the collar up to her nose and took a deep breath of it.

“How are you doing?” Tina asked.

“Fine,” she blurted, pretending to study the greenhouse. The one around the back, full of rich colors that contrasted with the dustier desert hues. But there was beauty in the open landscape, too. Just a subtler one. The desert was like Kyle: bristly and rough on the outside, contemplative and quiet inside. Full of hidden secrets, like the wrinkles in the hills.

“And over here we have the pump house…”

She made it through an endless morning and through another lunch, this time with Tina and two nice old ladies named Jean and Ruth. Stef just couldn’t picture them changing into anything but…well, nice old ladies.

“So lovely that you’ve dropped in on us,” Jean gushed, as if she really had dropped in and not been blown in by some twist of fate.

Fate brought us to him,
said a faint, scratchy voice from somewhere inside.

She looked out the window and tapped her foot against the floor. Where was he?

“And how long will you stay with us?” Ruth asked, her face bright.

Stef looked at Tina, and Tina looked at the floor.

“Um…I’m not quite sure.”

The old ladies didn’t miss a beat. “And you’re an old friend of Kyle’s! Isn’t that sweet.”

Sweet, like his kiss. Like his soft touch on her back when she needed it most. Like the little warble in his voice when he said her name.

“Such a nice young man,” Ruth nodded.

“Reminds me of that Baker boy, don’t you agree, Ruth?” Jean winked.

Tina cleared her throat sharply, and they went back to stirring their tea.

Yes, they really were nice, those two. If they shifted into anything, it might be a couple of old cats, purring on a sunny windowsill.

Tina, though, she could picture turning into a sleek fox with a beautiful ebony sheen. Make that a crafty fox. Because for all that Tina sat quietly, Stef suspected something was up. Not that she didn’t trust Tina—the woman seemed genuine enough, just as everyone on the ranch seemed to be. But in the meetings yesterday, Tina seemed every bit a part of the leadership team as her brothers. So what was she doing, touring a stranger around the ranch and lingering over lunch?

When Tina glanced at her watch and suddenly declared it time to get going, Stef was sure she’d been stalling all along. The question was, stalling for what?

She had her answer shortly after they thanked the older women and turned a corner to the central square of the ranch. A group of men was just filing out of the council house. Meeting adjourned?

Stef pulled up short as a wave of anger stiffened her spine. “So, they’ve finished deliberating my case?”

Tina turned, a shadow of guilt veiling her eyes. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like? Tell me.”

The others were coming up now: Cody, with a sunny expression that didn’t quite reach his eyes, along with a tight-lipped Ty and two others she didn’t recognize. Behind them, Kyle emerged from the council house looking like a man blindsided by a surprise verdict. Her heart sang on seeing him but clenched on reading that look.

“It’s complicated,” Tina started.

Stefanie all but bared her teeth as the men came up to face her. “Try me.”

Tina exchanged looks with Ty and Cody, and Stef could sense words flying though no one spoke. More secrets?

“Tell me!”

It was Cody who finally met her eyes and spoke. “Look, we want to help you, we really do.”

Not a promising prelude. A twitch started in her left eye.

“This is the thing,” Cody continued as Kyle came up and locked his eyes on hers.

His face wore an expression she knew all too well from the old days: the same bitter look that followed one of his stepfather’s rampages. The look that said he had to accept his fate, much as he despised it.

Cody was going on, explaining that they couldn’t shelter her on the ranch for fear of trouble on a larger scale. Something about shifter laws that forbade one pack from harboring a fugitive from another. “And technically,” Cody added, “you’re a fugitive.”

She threw up her hands. “Technically?” She hammered the man with a glare that held all her pent-up frustration. “Technically?” Then she stomped off, leaving Cody protesting behind her.

“We have a solution, though,” he called. “There’s another pack, a hundred miles west—”

“So glad you’ve figured everything out for me,” she shot over her shoulder and hurried away. They’d been stringing her along, all this time. They were shipping her out to her fate. She clenched her hands into fists, but then jerked them apart at a jab of pain. It felt like her fingernails were being pulled out by the roots.

She paled. Were those claws in there, ready to break free? The rage she felt was far, far more intense than anything she’d ever felt before.

At the sound of footsteps, she spun, not sure whether she could keep the wolf locked away. Not even sure if she cared.

It was Kyle, though, not Cody or Tina, and the rage receded just as quickly as it had come. He looked worn and weary, a decade older than the day before. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she whispered, cocking her head at him. “You okay?”

Kyle shoved his lower jaw sideways on its hinge and grunted a reply. “Yeah. Good.”

The man looked like he’d been pushing boulders up a mountain all night, only to have them roll straight down again. The blue of his eyes was a little pale, his look equal parts exhaustion and determination. The familiar look of a kid fighting impossible odds and refusing to give up. Before she could process her own thoughts, she had her arms around him, squeezing tight. It was a desperate, crazy gesture, but his arms went around her too, and she breathed him in, pulling great, long gasps of his scent into her lungs. He seemed to be doing the same, pulling her ever closer, refusing to let them be torn apart in the hurricane that was about to strike.

She melted into him, and he tilted his head into hers, murmuring something undecipherable in low, scratchy tones. Then he shuddered, perhaps recalling some awful truth, and pulled away. He gazed at her quietly before smoothing a lock of hair behind her ear.

“So now what do I do?” she whispered.

His hands ran along her arms as he took a deep breath. “Do you trust me?”

Did he have to ask?

He took her hand and led her back to the others. There was a short standoff in which Stefanie feared Cody would start up again with that hypnotizing tenor of his. But Kyle squeezed her hand and started first.

“She comes with me.” It was a statement, not a suggestion.

Ty immediately started to bristle, but Cody protested first. “If she stays on the ranch, we’re in violation of pack law—”

“If she stays with me,” Kyle broke in, “she’s not on the ranch. Technically.”

Stef watched the three siblings exchange glances. Tina was the first to tilt her head sideways. “True, the old blacksmith’s place is on a separate parcel…”

“I don’t like it,” Ty barked.

“Could work, though, as a temporary solution,” Cody conceded.

Stef’s heart jerked at the word
temporary
, but she kept her mouth shut.

Tina went on, nodding to herself. “It’s far enough not to flaunt pack laws, but close enough in case…”

Everyone went silent, and Stefanie wasn’t sure she wanted to fill in the blanks. Ty gave a slow nod, and she could read the message in his eyes. The one aimed at Kyle.

Do not fuck this up.

She looked from face to face, wanting to plead her case, but the distant sound of a child’s laughter pulled everyone’s attention away. She turned, letting her eyes drift over the ranch as the laugh rang out again, followed by the eager woof of a dog, both somewhere out of sight.

And just like that, she understood.

There was peace and continuity here on the ranch. Life. Love. Prosperity. She glanced at the ranch leaders, seeing them in a new light. Human or not, they were good at heart, and they had a lot to lose by getting embroiled in a battle that wasn’t theirs.

And yet they were offering to help. Even if it was temporary, she’d take it.

She felt herself swaying again, losing resolve. Because really, what else could she do but heed their word? She’d never felt so powerless in her life.

Until Kyle nudged her and caught hold of her with those deep blue eyes. There was her answer. He’d been powerless, too, once upon a time, and yet he’d moved on. Kyle was living proof that there were ways to overcome.

Though Ty was scrubbing his jaw, clearly unhappy with the solution, he did manage to give her a bolstering nod. Cody was smiling—a real smile this time. Tina was swinging her eyes back and forth between Stef and Kyle, analyzing them closely.

Stef shivered, wondering what Tina saw in her. A raving lunatic? A rabid animal? A lost soul?

“Come on,” Kyle said, tugging her hand.

She took a deep breath. It was time to take action for herself, even if it was only the first crawling inch toward an uncertain destination. One shaky step toward Kyle’s truck at a time. Her legs grew bolder when he swung in step beside her, and then she was climbing into the high cab and leaning over to open his door before buckling herself in. And there it was again, his scent, filling her with hope. The engine roared to life, and they were off, rolling under the ranch gateway and out into the desert.

Just the two of them. Alone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Stefanie tried to process her dark new reality of packs, mates, and unwritten laws during the drive home.

Home
. She snorted. Her home was a sparsely furnished rental apartment in Colorado, but she couldn’t go there. She doubted the neighbors even noticed her absence. And anyway, the North Ridge wolves would find her there.

Wolves don’t give up on mates,
Tina had said.

She watched the prickly pear and cactus blur past for a few minutes, wondering whether the North Ridge wolves could find her here. The open desert wasn’t like the woods when it came to places to hide.

What had Ty and Cody promised?

We’ll help to whatever degree we can.

She had to wonder what degree that might be.

Kyle might have been thinking the same thing, the way he was flexing and re-flexing his fingers around the steering wheel. If push did come to shove, where would he stand? More importantly, could she even ask him—or any of them—to take a stand? After all, the mess she was in was all her fault.

She tilted her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, listening to the steady roll of the tires, searching for some source of comfort. Kyle’s hug had been more than just a hug of reassurance, and the scent slowly tickling her nose now was about more than a place to crash for a couple of nights. That much was clear, even to her untrained sense of smell. She drifted off, wondering why she welcomed the possibilities so keenly.

Then there was a lurch, and she snapped her chin up, suddenly awake. Her lips parted in an instinctive smile at the sight of his house, the shed out back, the creaky old windmill up on a rise. Somehow, it felt more right than anything on the ranch. More like home.

But when her eyes found Kyle’s, expecting to find a similar kind of relief, there was only the cold touch of steel.

“I have to go,” he grunted.

Go? Where? She blinked as his gaze slid to the car door, hinting that she should get out. He’d left the engine running, too.

A sticky lump formed in her throat. Her friend was gone, replaced by a stranger with cool, military eyes. Eyes that reminded her of her father’s or brother’s when they were getting ready to ship out.

“Where are you going?” she squeaked.

“Work.”

The man whose eyes had promised her the world suddenly couldn’t do better than four letters, one curt syllable, and a kick out the door. What happened? Had she done something wrong?

She found the door handle more by touch than sight, her vision blurred by tears she fought to hold back. She slid out of the truck, swayed a little when she touched down, then pushed the truck door closed.

Before she even made it to the porch, Kyle drove off, leaving a plume of dust and a rutted wake of gravel. She sank down on the top step and watched him go. The hard-to-read kid had become a walking hieroglyph. Earlier in the day, he’d been her shining knight, her savior. Now, he couldn’t seem to get away from her fast enough.

She sat there a long time, clasping and unclasping her hands until something niggled at her senses. She stood and walked to a corner of the porch. A nearly full moon was rapidly clawing its way from behind the hills, swinging on a seesaw with the sun. The minute the sun set, the moon would take over and fill the sky with its pale light.

The hair on the back of her neck shivered, and Stef hugged herself tightly.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kyle had to admit that work was a lame excuse. But a minute longer in Stef’s company and he might have done something he’d regret, like following that enticing scent straight to her neck. The way she’d tipped her head back in the truck had pulled every trigger in his body. She was so innocent. So trusting.

So sweet.

Yeah, that was the wolf again, and the beast was getting harder and harder to control.

He’d been tracing her slight curves with this eyes, studying the athletic figure. The tomboy had filled out in all the right places without overflowing awkwardly into a body that didn’t match her soul. He wanted to reach out and feel her heat—a heat that pulsed and flared whenever they got close.