Fade (21 page)

Her eyes darted in Dace’s direction and then back to me, her tail pointing straight out, and her neck strained. Obviously excited at the thought of me petting her.

Dace sighed. “You might as well,” he said to me, resignation tingeing his voice. “I have a feeling you will anyway.”

Probably.

Buka huffed and leaned down, her head bowing toward my outstretched hand. I hovered over her thick, gray fur for a brief second and then touched. The softness of her fur took me by surprise. I expected it to be rough, wiry even, but it wasn’t. I stroked my fingers through the silky fur between her ears, loving the feel of it slipping through my fingers.

She rumbled in her throat, almost like a cat purring, and thumped her tail on the ground.

“You like that?” I laughed at her reaction and scratched her ears.

The last vestiges of fear fell away as she rumbled, the sound like the purring of a cat.

I smiled, digging my fingers into her fur and scratching.

“You’re going to kill me,” Dace groaned from his place at my side.

Buka looked at him, almost glaring, and I laughed.

“Yes,” he said, sounding put upon. “She likes you, too.”

“I do,” I said happily. I truly did like her. She wasn’t at all frightening when rumbling her appreciation as I stroked her head. I felt ridiculous for having been so afraid.

She stretched up onto her hind legs and licked a quick, wet line across my throat.

Air hissed between Dace’s teeth.

Buka sat back on her haunches before I could process what she’d done.

Why did she lick me?

Dace swore and dragged me backward, his wolf’s furious growls pouring into my mind. Buka whimpered once as my hand left her head, but she didn’t attempt to follow me.

Kalei rose to her feet, a growl emanating from her throat.

I cried out, alarmed by their reactions more than Buka’s behavior.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Dace, his expression making my heart thump hard. His face was like granite, his scowl severe. Storm clouds moved through his eyes as he stared down at Buka.

Buka whined and hung her head.

A howl sounded somewhere in the woods.

“Dace.” I put my hand on his arm, truly alarmed by the tension radiating around the clearing. As soon as I touched him, his emotions whipped through me. Anger and jealousy stabbed like needles.

He jerked his arm from my hand, crouching slightly, as if ready to leap at Buka.

“What’s wrong?” I pleaded with him, not understanding his sudden, savage change of mood. I looked to Buka, who whined and sank lower to the ground. Tears burned up my throat. I didn’t understand what went wrong or why, but Dace was furious at Buka, and he wouldn’t tell me why.

“What did I do?” I whispered to her, a tear slipping down my cheek.

She whined again.

Before I could so much as blink, Dace had his arms around me, holding me protectively to his chest. The palpable tension disappeared. So did the anger and jealousy I’d felt moments before. “You did nothing wrong,” he rasped. He touched his hand to my cheek and groaned. “Don’t cry, Arionna. Please, don’t cry. It’s not your fault.”

“What happened?” I whispered. I couldn’t have said why I’d even started crying, but I felt emotionally drained. The day was taking a toll, I guess. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “What did I do?”

Buka whimpered at my feet.

“You didn’t do anything,” Dace said into my hair and then drew a deep breath. “Buka welcomed you. I wasn’t expecting it and neither was Kalei.” He didn’t sound pleased by the fact either.

Neither did Kalei for that matter. She was still growling low in her throat.

“Is that a bad thing?” I asked, leaning away so I could look up at him.

He hesitated for a long minute and then wiped tears from beneath my eyes with the pads of his thumbs. “I—” He blew out a sharp breath and leaned his forehead against mine. “Remember when I said the wolf side wants to claim you?”

I did indeed remember that. Vividly. I nodded.

“He doesn’t want to share you. When Buka welcomed you … .” Dace pulled me back into his arms, squeezing me tightly. I got the feeling the wolf wasn’t the only part of him having trouble with the situation.

“But she didn’t do anything,” I said, still confused. All she’d done was lick my … “Oh,” I muttered as realization dawned. “She marked me somehow?”

He nodded and frowned down at Buka. His wolf’s frustrated growl still echoed, his displeasure as evident as Dace’s. “She likes you. Very much.” Dace’s voice was tight, strained. “She claimed you as one of her own.”

Buka thumped her tail on the ground, her head still lowered.

“Oh.” I couldn’t help but smile at her. “I like you too, Buka.” I looked back to Dace.

He frowned, glancing between the two of us.

“Um, what does claiming me entail?”

“For you?” Dace asked, his expression a puzzle to me. “Nothing. For Buka? It means protecting you with her life if it comes down to it.”

“Oh.” Tears welled in my eyes. I turned from Dace and dropped to my knees in front of Buka. I didn’t want her to die to protect me, but I understood what she’d done meant a great deal. “Thank you,” I whispered.

She rose to her feet, and I wrapped my arms around her neck. Hugging her felt completely natural.

Dace grumbled, obviously irritated by our display, but he didn’t say anything about it. “She thinks you’ll make a wonderful little sister.”

His wolf growled once more, and then subsided.

“Thanks.” I grinned at Buka. I didn’t know anything about wolves or their customs, but being accepted so readily humbled me. I only hoped she never had reason to give her life to protect mine. That would be awful.

I squeezed her neck a final time and then rose to my feet to reclaim my place by Dace’s side. He looked at me with the strangest expression, part confusion, part awe, part pride, and part something else I couldn’t even begin to decipher. The lights in his eyes sent a current zinging through me, making my stomach clench. The desire to feel his lips against mine waved through me.

Behave
, he warned with a groan before turning back to Kalei. “We must speak, sister.”

Kalei seemed to sigh, and then her massive head dipped low and rose again.

I waited beside Dace as he and Kalei stared at one another, not exactly aggressive, but with respect that the other was an equal and could be dangerous. He stepped forward to meet her just as she stepped forward, leaving me standing beside Buka. They seemed so serious. Odd that a wolf could seem serious, but Kalei did.

The way Dace and Kalei approached one another was vastly different than how he and Buka interacted. He hadn’t seemed so formal or wary with Buka. With Kalei though, Dace met alpha to alpha, truly equal. He stood rigid and yet loose, as if prepared to leap at any moment. Kalei’s stance mirrored Dace’s.

I watched them, fascinated.

Buka stepped up next to me, butting her head against my thigh. I dug my fingers into her fur and held, my eyes not leaving Dace and Kalei. Buka didn’t seem to mind my inattention. She sat on her haunches beside me, her head trained in their direction as well. Though, I grimaced to myself, she spoke wolf and knew what they were saying. They could have been discussing the height of trees for all I knew.

Oddly though, I felt if I closed my eyes and concentrated hard enough, I could make out what he and Kalei were saying to one another. I had enough sense not to test my theory. Dace and his wolf were already edgy. I didn’t want to make that worse and possibly create a rift between him and Kalei that couldn’t be easily mended.

Call me crazy, but I had a feeling her wolves hadn’t decided to make the area home out of the blue. They’d been drawn here by the same thing that brought me and Dace together. I wasn’t sure if they even realized that, but I knew it to be true.

Story of my life. Since arriving, I’d understood next to nothing, but my mind continued accepting these impossible things as true. Didn’t matter how scary or extraordinary they seemed, once the initial shock wore off, the pieces slipped into place as if they belonged there.

The feeling was enough to drive a girl crazy.

But, as previously established, I didn’t need a shrink. Everything I’d seen and felt was as real as, well, as real as Buka. With my hand clutched in her fur, I couldn’t doubt her existence for a minute. “I wish you could tell me what’s happening,” I said, rubbing a bit of silky fur between my fingers.

That same pleased rumble from earlier sounded in her throat.

We stood silently for another long moment, watching Dace and Kalei.

Kalei dipped her head low to the ground then back up. When Dace returned the formal gesture, Buka rose to her feet, and with a final butt of her head against my thigh, padded across the clearing to Kalei’s side. Without further ado, the wolves turned and departed.

Dace watched them until the shadows on the far side of the pond obscured the wolves, then he turned back to me. I couldn’t read his expression. I couldn’t get a sense of what he felt either. He’d shut me out again, and wasn’t that frustrating?

He reached for my hand and I placed it into his with a small sigh, the feel of his skin against mine easing some of my frustration.

“How big is the pack?” I asked.

“Hmm?” Dace glanced at me, obviously distracted. He nestled me into the crook of his arm before walking back the way we’d come.

“How big is the pack?” I repeated. “You said we were meeting a pack of wolves. That was two.”

“Oh,” I heard the frown in his voice. “There are eleven of them altogether. I asked Kalei to leave behind those that were less accepting.”

“All nine of the others disapprove of you?” I blinked, trying to process that.

“No,” he said, leading me back into the woods. “They don’t all disapprove. I also asked that she bring as few of the others as possible. I wasn’t sure how they would react to you or you to them.”

“Ah. And how did they react to me?”

“Buka loved you,” he snorted. “Kalei found you surprising.”

“I meant the others,” I said. I’d gathered as much about Buka and Kalei. It’d been obvious, even to the deaf human, that Buka accepted me and Kalei wasn’t sure what to think. “I thought you said they would both want to sniff me.”

“I did.” Dace lifted me over the fallen log we’d crossed on our way to meet the wolves. “After Buka’s little display,” —his tone soured on that word— “I asked Kalei to refrain. I don’t think I could have maintained control had she decided to pull a similar stunt.”

“She wouldn’t have,” I informed him, confident of my assessment for some indefinable reason. “She’s not as excitable as Buka.”

“Oh?” Dace stopped walking for a moment, surprise lacing the question.

I nodded, feeling positive.

“You’re right,” he said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you bring out unexpected tendencies.”

“Only with you,” I said.

“Not only with me,” he disagreed. “Buka is second in command. She can be as formal as Kalei when necessary, and she never accepts a new pack mate that quickly, no matter how playful she can be.”

“Oh.” I turned that over in my mind, not sure what to think. “Then why—?” I broke off, unsure how to phrase the question.

“Why did she accept you so readily?” Dace hesitated for a moment. “She said you smell like kin.”

“Like a wolf, you mean?” A little hum of expectation went through me. I hoped that maybe Buka sensed the animal inside me and could clue me in on what it meant. Knowing why Dace and his world felt so familiar to me would have been nice.

“Not exactly.” Dace drew to a stop again.

I stopped beside him, not foolish enough to attempt to hack my way through the woods without his handy night vision. I’d never make it.

“It’s more like a memory. Remember what you felt last night?”

I’d wanted to kill Ronan. How could I forget that? I nodded.

“I felt it then, too. It’s not necessarily what you are, so much as what you were. You feel familiar. To Buka as well,” he added after a moment.

“Oh.” He’d said last night that maybe I’d been a shifter in a previous life or had an ancestor with the ability. Maybe that’s what tried waking up inside me. A long lost memory of another life, jogged loose by recent events. I didn’t really believe that, but I had no other explanation for the hole inside me. “One more weird thing to add to the list, I guess,” I muttered under my breath with a slight shake of my head.

“Do weird things happen to you often?” Dace asked as we resumed our trek through the woods.

“Not until I got here.”

“This is weird to you?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I hear voices in my head and want to rip out people’s throats all the time.” I regretted the sarcastic response as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

Dace tensed, and I knew my carelessness hurt him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Didn’t you?” he asked softly, a sliver of pain in his words.

Me and my big mouth. I cringed.

“I’m just frustrated,” I said after a moment. “I have more questions than I do answers and everything is… .” I wasn’t sure how to finish the explanation. Everything just felt weird. Things like my connection to Dace didn’t just happen. Neither did what had occurred with Ronan. Or the wolves. Or whatever Gage was or however he fit in. My life had officially become the stuff of fantasy. Who wouldn’t find that a little weird? “I never knew any of this existed until I got here. I keep expecting the truth to finally sink in. My mom just died, Dace. I don’t know how to deal with all of this and that, too.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

I snorted. That was kind of the understatement of the century. I kept learning all this new information, all this scary information, but instead of panicking, I accepted everything. That wasn’t like me. Hell, none of this was like me, but I had no clue where that left me, or what it left.

I felt like the parts of me I’d always known packed up their bags and went on vacation, leaving this new, unfamiliar part in charge. The new part accepted impossibilities, trooped through the woods to meet wild wolves, and obsessed over a boy at first glance. The old part wouldn’t have done that, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. I’d already lost so much. The thought of losing myself, too, overwhelmed me. How could I burden him with that fear though? He had enough on his plate. “What did Kalei have to say?”