Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (7 page)

‘What’s his
name?’

‘Laithe. You’ve
met him before.’

‘Have I? When?’
asked Indi. Rhett ignored her question. Tightening her arms across her chest,
she looked out the passenger window and ground her teeth.

‘I’m sorry,’ he
said quietly a few minutes later.

She turned to
glare at him. ‘Why are you acting like this?’

Rhett gave her
his full attention. ‘Like what?’ he asked coolly.

‘Like you hate
the idea of touching me?’

He looked back
at the road, his face carefully neutral. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said
stiffly.

Indi’s anger
flashed. She chewed the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying
something she’d regret later. When she felt calm enough, she said, ‘You reach
for me all the time, but when you touch me, you look disgusted, and pull away
from me.’

‘I think you’ll
find you’re the one pulling away.’ Rhett’s retort stung.

‘Only to save
you the discomfort.’ Indi’s voice carried the heat of her anger. ‘Just tell me
why.’

The muscle in
Rhett’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing. She glared at him until he gave her a
cursory glance. ‘You’re just imagining things, Indi.’

This time she
didn’t tamp down her anger. ‘Like
fuck
I am.’ She spoke slowly,
enunciating every word. Rhett didn’t even bother looking at her this time.

‘Ind, you’re
being ridiculous.’ She opened her mouth to argue, but he asked her, ‘How are
you feeling?’ before she could speak.

‘My jaw is
aching,’ she answered after a long minute of glacial silence. Rhett looked at
her from the corner of his eye, nodded, but said nothing more. That seemed to
be his default mode. Don’t want to tell Indi the truth? Just stop talking
altogether. Indi ground her teeth together viciously.

About half an
hour later, they pulled into the car park of St.Mary’s hospital and went
inside. Rhett didn’t stop to ask for directions once they were inside the
double glass doors. He just seemed to know where to go. Two rides in the
elevator and five homogenous hallways later, they arrived at a door that stated
it was the “Employee Lounge”.

‘Are we allowed
in there?’ Indi asked, her eyes shifting between him and the door.

Rhett shrugged.
‘Probably not, but this is where Laithe said he’d be.’ Lifting his fist to the
door, Rhett knocked and stepped back. Indi’s gaze travelled up the hallway,
looking for any signs that people might know what they were doing, but all she
saw were nurses and doctors doing their jobs, not paying attention to them. The
whine of hinges spun Indi around suddenly. Standing in front of them was a guy
a few inches shorter than Rhett with biceps the size of her thighs. His brown
eyes were vaguely familiar. She looked away when they slipped to acid-green
then back again.

‘Laithe,’ Rhett
said, giving the guy his palm.

‘Rhett,’ Laithe
grunted in reply. ‘Come in. We’ve got about fifteen minutes before people start
coming back in again.’

Rhett went in
first, reaching for Indi, but dropping his hand back to his side before walking
into the room. Indi’s hands bunched into fists following him in. With the door
shut securely behind them, she took a minute to absorb her surroundings. It was
just like a giant living room. There were couches and a big-screen TV, as well
as a small kitchenette with a kettle and an expensive-looking, stainless steel
coffee maker in the corner. Laithe was over by the double-door fridge pulling
out a blue cooler.

‘Sit down,’
Laithe rumbled, placing the cooler down onto the table between two two-seater
sofas. His eyes slipped colours again when he looked at Indi. ‘You don’t
remember me, do you?’

Indi’s eyes
narrowed. ‘Should I?’

‘That’s a nice
right hook you have.’ Laithe’s hand went to his jaw. And then it dawned on her.

‘You’re the guy
I knocked out when I was in hospital.’

He smiled, just
the edge of his lips lifting to reveal straight, white teeth. ‘The one and
only. So do I get an apology?’

Indi frowned.
‘You were trying to stick me with a needle, so no fucking way.’ Indi was
prepared for a fight—spoiling for one really—but Laithe only laughed and the
sound was infectious. Rhett chuckled next to her, pulling her free hand into
his lap, twisting his fingers in between hers intimately.

She glanced down
at their joined hands, frowning. She tried to pull free from Rhett’s grip, but
he only squeezed harder, glancing between her and Laithe. Indi stopped fighting
it.

‘You’re right,
Rhett. She does have spirit,’ Laithe said before reaching into the cooler to
show them what he had. ‘Okay, so we’ve got ten bags of O neg. If she feeds once
a day, you should only have to come in once a week to get restocked. If not,
well, we’ll figure something out.’

Rhett’s hand
tightened around hers.

Laithe
continued, ‘If she doesn’t like O neg, she’s going to have to learn to like it.
The blood bank doesn’t have enough of the other blood types to stop people from
noticing it’s going missing. We’re also going to have to work out another
source because my boss will have my ass if he finds out I’m swiping blood.’

Rhett nodded,
motioning for them to stand. Laithe packed the baggy of blood he’d pulled out
back into the cooler and snapped on the lid. Rhett picked it up.

‘Thanks, man. I
owe you.’

‘You already owe
me,’ Laithe replied, looking pointedly at Indi, ‘so I’ll just add it to your
tab.’

*

Rhett was driving a little faster
than was safe, but he couldn’t help it. He just thanked Christ that Laithe
hadn’t seen Indi pull away from him. He had to maintain the appearance of
solidarity with her. He’d hardly paid attention to what Laithe had told him.
The whole time he was in that room, the fight he’d had with Indi after she’d
seen Beth just kept replaying in his head. He was to blame. She’d called him on
his insecurities, and he’d just flat-out refused them.

He glanced over
at her in his passenger seat; the weak November sun was softly caressing her
face, touching her smooth, cool skin. He was suddenly jealous of it. He looked
back at the road angrily, cursing under his breath.

If he could just
figure out a way of getting Eaton back without compromising Indi’s safety, he’d
do it in a heartbeat. But as it stood, he couldn’t see any other way around Marcus’s
demands. In order to get his alpha’s mate back, he would have to give up his
own potential mate.

Christ, he
hadn’t just thought that, had he? Is that was Indi was? His mate?

Cursing again,
he ran a hand through his hair before gripping the steering wheel so tightly
that his knuckles turned white. His alpha came first. The pack came second. And
Rhett’s wants came dead last. So he was stuck in limbo—stuck in a place where
duty was paramount, loyalty was king, and love was a pitiful idea left in the
dirt.

Indi cleared her
throat, causing Rhett to look over at her. She was still staring angrily out
the passenger window. He opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, but
decided against it. They would probably just end up fighting again.

‘Rhett?’ Indi’s
question punctuated the silence like a gunshot. He glanced at her quickly.
‘What did Laithe mean when he said you already owe him?’

‘Nothing,’ he
replied in a flat voice. ‘He didn’t mean anything by it.’ He wasn’t ready to
talk about that yet. Indi had barely had enough time to come to terms with her
own transition, and what had happened to Beth. All he wanted was just a little
more time for her to settle into this new life before she had to find out more.

Her indigo eyes
narrowed. ‘You’re lying to me.’

Yes
. ‘No,
I’m not. Just drop it Ind. Please.’ From the corner of his eye, he could see
her grinding her teeth together, her jaw muscles tight with tension. ‘Please?’
he asked, carefully keeping his voice gentle.

When she didn’t
answer, he stole a glance in her direction, finding her eyes cold and hard. ‘I
don’t want to fight with you Ind,’ he said, pulling his Jetta next to the curb
outside her apartment building and cutting the engine.

‘Well then
you’re shit out of luck because I want to know what the hell you meant by
that.’

She wasn’t going
to back down. It just wasn’t in her nature. He sighed. ‘Can we just go upstairs
so you can eat?’ he asked, noticing how defeated his voice sounded. She had to
be starving by now anyway. It had been two days since her transformation. He
knew that mature vampires needed to feed at least once a day to stay strong,
but since she had only recently changed, she would need more regular feedings.

She levelled him
with a hard look. ‘We’re not done talking about this,’ she snapped, opening her
car door forcefully and getting out.

‘Don’t I know
it,’ he muttered to himself, following her into her building.

After hauling
the cooler up three flights of stairs, Rhett set it down onto Indi’s tiny,
cracked and flaking Formica kitchen bench top and pulled off the lid. The
baggies were laid out neatly in two rows; gleaming dark red in the overhead
light. Reaching inside, Rhett picked up one of them and stared at it.

A flare of
possession exploded through his body at the thought of Indi drinking someone
else’s blood, but he quashed it quickly, realising that she couldn’t take
anymore of his no matter how much he wanted her to.

The sound of the
TV being turned on interrupted his thoughts, snapping him back to reality.
Taking the baggie he had in his hand, he opened the microwave, dumped the
baggie onto the rotating plate, and slammed the door. Scrubbing a hand down his
face, he hit “start” and watched the plate whir around and around.

The scent of the
blood heating filled the kitchen making Rhett feel a little queasy. His wolf
woke up, sniffing the air and baring its teeth. Taking in a few calming
breaths, he waited for the bloodlust to pass. When Indi’s blood was done, he
emptied the bag into a mug, and took it through to Indi.

She was curled
up in one corner of the small sofa in the middle of her apartment. When he
rounded the corner, she glared up at him. Ignoring the hostility, he handed
Indi the mug and sank down onto the couch beside her.

‘You must be
hungry,’ he said. ‘Go ahead and drink it.’

She shrugged
stiffly. ‘I guess so.’ She sniffed at the contents of the mug before taking her
first tentative sip. Her top lip curled away from her teeth revealing
blood-stained fangs. Rhett instantly had a hard on thinking about having them
sunk into his skin.

‘What’s wrong
with it?’ he asked casually, not looking at her.

‘It’s cold
already,’ she replied in an indifferent voice. Rhett could feel her eyes on
him, burning into his skin. He turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow.

‘What do you owe
Laithe?’ she asked.

Rhett growled
under his breath. ‘It doesn’t concern you, Ind. Can’t you just let it go?’

‘No. I can’t.’

He scrubbed both
hands down his face this time. ‘I’ll tell you soon Indi, just not now.’

‘Why the hell
not?’ she hissed.

He growled under
his breath. ‘I don’t want to tell you this now because I’m just looking out for
you, alright?’

‘Just tell me
Rhett,’ she replied through gritted teeth. ‘I’m a big girl. I can take it,’ she
added in a sarcastic voice. But Rhett wasn’t so sure she would be able to take
it. If her father hadn’t been killed, she would have known this already, but he
was dead, so it was left to him. Rhett sucked in a deep breath of air and let
it out.

‘The reason I
owe Laithe is because I took you to him after Nox attacked you.’ Behind his
eyelids, he saw her bloody throat, her cold skin. ‘I’d found you in an alleyway
in Hell. Nox had drained you of all your blood, and was in the process of
taking your heart when Vaile and I stopped him.’

Indi put her mug
of blood onto the floor. ‘Why didn’t you kill him then?’

He wished he
had. ‘Nox’s particular talent was Shadow Walking. He disappeared into the
closest shadow when we confronted him. We didn’t know where he went, or when
he’d come back—if he’d come back.’

‘How’d you get
me to the hospital?’

‘I shifted back
to take care of you. I had to steal a car to get you to Reynard.’

‘But why Reynard?
Why not Buxton?’

He shrugged,
bending down to pick up the mug left forgotten, gently giving it back to her.
‘As you now know, Laithe works at Reynard. I needed to know that you’d be safe
if Nox came looking for you again.’

‘So you owe
Laithe because he babysat me while I was recovering.’

‘More or less,
yeah.’

Indi took
another sip from the mug, her nose scrunching up a little. ‘Why didn’t you just
tell me this before?’

Rhett shrugged.
‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

Indi levelled a
flat look at him. ‘I can take it, Rhett.’

She was right.
She could take it, and she had a right to know the whole story. He cleared his
throat. ‘Since we’re on the topic, there’s something else you need to know.’
She arched one brow in response. Rhett felt like his tongue was stuck to the
roof of his mouth. There was no easy way to say it, so he took the bandaid
approach. ‘Indi, you are the last félvair.’ He said the words slowly,
carefully.

‘In this area,
right? There are others around.’

Rhett shook his
head. ‘Your father was the last Incubus, and he was killed by one of the
Sicarii eighteen or nineteen years ago. You are the last of your kind.’

Rhett was
waiting for the truth to hit her, waiting for her to finally realise just how
precious she really was—not just to him, but to his entire pack.

Frustratingly,
she shrugged her shoulders. ‘So?’

Rhett ran his
fingers through his hair roughly. ‘I didn’t tell you this before because you’d
just finished your transformation, but there’s a reason why werewolves are
assigned to félvairs, and it has to do with your blood.’