Haunted Wolves: Green Pines, Book 2 (16 page)

It reminded Colin a little bit of Lorelei.

“Welcome to Clover,” Jay said, holding out his hand. “And welcome to Green Pines.”

Dylan clasped it with a sudden smile. “You must be Jay. I’m Dylan, Red Rock’s Lorekeeper, and this is Sasha.” He nodded to the redhead with his heart in his eyes. “Our pack witch, and my partner.”

“I bet they can tell.” Sasha tilted her head with a smile of her own, and the sunlight caught the silvery lines of scars on her cheek. Perfectly spaced lines—like claw marks.

Oh, yeah. Red Rock’s witch knew about trauma.

Stepping up next to Jay, Colin extended his hand. “I’m Colin.”

“Colin Knox?” Dylan’s grip was firm, just on the safe side of challenge, but his eyes were sharply curious. “I’ve heard of you. Some of the pack you rescued in North Dakota ended up with us.”

He remembered the job—a smaller town than he usually rolled through, but the alpha had been a particularly vicious ass, and in serious danger of exposing all wolves. “I’m glad they ended up somewhere safe,” he said by rote, but the words weren’t accompanied by their usual guilt. He was helping build that somewhere safe now—and that felt good.

“Where’s Stella?” Sasha asked quietly.

Jay laid a hand on the woman’s arm. “Upstairs. She blames herself for what happened.”

“Of course she does.” Sasha sighed and squared her shoulders. “I’m here now. We can figure this out together. Right, honey?”

“Between my brains, your spells and Shane’s computer?” Dylan’s grin held enough confidence to spare. “Absolutely.”

“This way.” Jay herded them up the walkway toward the porch.

The door shut behind the odd little group, and Colin moved to help Shane with the bags. “I know they’re supposed to be good, but they’re awful young. Can they really handle this?”

“Hell yeah,” Shane replied. “You ever hear what happened in Bedagi Creek a few years ago?”

The words scratched a memory. “The sanctuary that had been co-opted by the vampires?”

“Had been,” Shane confirmed. “Until Sasha and Dylan took them down, that is.”

Vampires were deadly—fast, hard to kill and generally invested in finding ways to stock up on werewolves as snacks. Colin himself would hesitate to go up against one without a lot of planning and a lot of backup. “Christ. That’d take some guts and nerve, all right.”

“Guts and nerve.” Shane hoisted one bag and then another over the porch railing. “That just about says it all.”

They’d need both to deal with whatever had almost killed Kaley, but Shane seemed utterly confident they could, so Colin let himself believe it too. The magic would be taken care of, the threat from Memphis had been neutralized, and Jay wasn’t going to murder him if he touched Lorelei again.

Maybe life wasn’t too good to be true. Maybe it was just…good.

Lorelei stared down at the stack of orders in her hand and fought a hysterical laugh. They barely had enough stock to fill them, and Shane had yet to generate picking sheets for the rest of the online orders they’d received. Even with a week’s worth of late nights, they’d have to scramble to keep stock levels above zero.

“More orders?” Eden stepped through the office door, her eyebrows rising. “How are they getting so many so fast?”

“Word of mouth, I guess.” Lorelei dropped the papers on the desk and rubbed her temples. “It’s damn hard to worry about these things when we’re still fighting for our lives.”

“I know.” Eden stepped close enough to wrap one arm around her shoulders in a brief hug. “But that fight’s all but done. Sasha and Stella promised they have everyone protected temporarily, and they’re working on a permanent solution.”

“I know.” And it was enough. “How are you holding up, Eden?”

“I’m doing good. Especially now that Kaley’s up and about a little more. How about you?”

“Fine. Good.” Lorelei met the other woman’s gaze, not bothering to shield her worry—or her relief. “That whole thing scared the hell out of me.”

“It scared us all. Which is why I have to talk to you.” Eden shifted her weight to lean against the desk, giving Lorelei space without retreating. “You and Colin seem to have gotten…closer.”

Denying it would be useless, and Lorelei realized she didn’t
want
to deny it. “Yes, we have.”

Eden’s gaze sharpened. “How are you?” she asked again, but this time the words were quietly intense.

I’m fine.
Lorelei bit back the words and struggled for something more, something honest. But honesty wasn’t a malleable thing. It was clear, rigid, and didn’t allow for secrets.

Especially secrets like hers.

Lorelei shoved the thought away. “It’s intense, but…I want this.”

For long moments, Eden simply studied her, and Lorelei wondered if the other woman could see through her. Silence stretched, growing heavier until Eden broke it with a sudden smile and a pleased noise. “Good. I know Colin means well, but good intentions don’t promise happy endings.”

“Nothing does, last time I checked.”

“No, but some things make them likelier than others.” Eden offered a tentative half-smile. “I’m sorry I had to ask. I’d rather have waited for you to tell me, but I needed to be sure. You and Kaley and Mae feeling safe means everything to me.”

“I can only speak for myself.” Mae felt safe enough with Shane, but Kaley… “It’s going to be a long road.”

“Long road to where?” Mae poked her head through the door and visibly brightened when she caught sight of the orders on the desk. “God, more already? These people are nuts.”

“Not nuts.” Kaley pushed past her and swept up the sheaf of papers. “They’re loyal customers, that’s all.”

While Mae’s good mood seemed sincere enough, Kaley’s was forced, artificial. Lorelei smiled at them both. “I hope you feel like working all weekend.”

“I do.” Mae tugged the top few orders out of Kaley’s hands and studied them. “This is the scary fun part. This is where we figure out if we can handle a little bit of success.”

“Of course you can,” Eden put in confidently. “I’m at your disposal, ladies. Whatever grunt labor you need to get everything packed and shipped.”

“Thanks.” Mae glanced up at Lorelei. “So, what’s a long road?”

Kaley studiously avoided her gaze, and Lorelei shook her head. “Nothing. Just idle chatter.”

But Eden cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders as if bracing herself for an awkward conversation. “There’s something I wanted to bring up, something important. We’ve all been together for more than a month now, and it looks like things could be settling down into normal soon. We’re all getting to know each other better, and that brings…well, changes. Or it could bring them, I mean…”

Mae’s eyebrows headed toward her pink bangs. “Did she find out about the kissing, Lorelei? Is this a facts of life—”

“I have something to say too,” Kaley interrupted abruptly. “To Lorelei, mostly, but you guys should hear it too. It’s about all of us, in a way.”

Eden looked mostly relieved to have been cut off. “All right.”

“It’s about Memphis.” Kaley twisted her fingers together until her knuckles turned white. “I need to apologize to everyone—and I will—but most of all to you, Lorelei.”

She sat straighter. “To me?”

“Yeah. Because the whole time you were breaking yourself to make sure everyone else was okay…and I didn’t help. I only made it harder on you.”

Lorelei had to look away. It had been unreasonably difficult to deal with Kaley’s censure, with the doubt and recriminations the younger woman had heaped on her. Always demanding to know why she wouldn’t fight, even if it killed her. Why she had to bend instead of standing straight, and damn the consequences.

“I’m sorry,” Kaley whispered. “I was selfish, way too damn focused on what I wanted instead of what needed doing.” She swallowed hard. “I was the alpha, but I sure as hell didn’t act like one.”

“You were new,” Lorelei protested. “You still are.”

“And you were grieving,” Mae added quietly, her gaze flicking to Eden. “Lorelei understood that. We all did.”

Kaley’s cheeks burned red. “That makes it worse. I should have taken over when Zack—when he…” She cleared her throat. “I should have handled things better.”

“You were new,” Eden echoed softly. “Kaley, if you stayed sane at all through that… I’m new. If I didn’t have this bond with Jay choking down on the power sometimes, I don’t know how I’d get through a day without clawing my way out of my skin. Sometimes being stronger doesn’t make it easier.”

But Kaley only shook her head and met Lorelei’s gaze. “You know the truth. How much of it I couldn’t help, and how much was me taking the easy way out.”

Yes, she knew. She knew all too well. “We’re out of it now, Kaley. And it turned out better than we could have hoped, didn’t it?”

“It did.” Mae took Lorelei’s hand and squeezed it. “You kept us together long enough for us to be safe.”

“Safe,” Kaley echoed, the tense lines of her shoulders easing a bit.

Once, Lorelei had looked to Kaley to lead the tiny, shattered pack in Zack’s stead. But how could a girl who’d been a wolf only a handful of months, who’d never had a proper Guide, navigate those tricky waters without drowning?

She couldn’t. Maybe she
still
couldn’t, and that explained the tiny flicker of understanding in her hazel eyes. Once, she should have been Lorelei’s alpha. Now, they were equals, submitting themselves to Eden’s leadership as surely as the men listened to Jay.

Lorelei smiled. “Instead of sitting around, waiting for Stella and her friend to tell us something, we should sort these orders. See if we’ll need to make anything to fill them.”

“I call packing duty,” Eden said at once, nudging Kaley’s hip with her own. “We can’t afford any more fires.”

Mae actually laughed as she leaned into Lorelei’s side. “I told you to be careful with the emulsifying wax. It’s really flammable.”

“Eden can stick to post office runs,” Lorelei declared. “The postman’s sweet on her. If we need help with packing, I’ll conscript Colin.”

“You can’t.” Kaley sobered. “He and Shane took the new guy over to see Zack.”

“What for?”

She shrugged. “Guy time, I guess.”

Guy time…or because Colin knew just how much Zack didn’t need to be alone right now, in spite of his desperate avoidance of the traumatized women he’d brought with him from Memphis. He needed support, the kind Lorelei couldn’t give him.

But Colin could.

Chapter Eleven

Dylan, it turned out, was a man of many talents. Along with vanquishing vampires and setting people at ease, the man was damn good with a hammer.

“I worked construction in Helena for years,” Dylan confided as he flipped through some of the sketches Zack had accumulated, presumably during sleepless nights. “Wasn’t exactly the career I’d planned on, but I’ve actually kind of missed it. Working with your hands is very calming.”

“Honest labor,” Shane mused. “There’s something to be said for being too tired to think.”

“I’m never too tired to think,” Colin muttered as he watched Zack watch Dylan. At least Zack looked like he’d taken a shower and dragged a comb through his hair recently, though it had grown long enough to pull back, and the man had a full-on beard going now.

Dylan chuckled and arched an eyebrow at Shane. “Is he a brooder?”

“You have no idea.” Shane waved a handsaw in Zack’s direction. “That one’s even worse.”

“I’m not brooding,” Zack replied, his voice dry enough to scratch. “I’m bugfuck crazy.”

Dylan
tsk
ed. “You’re diet crazy, at best. You haven’t threatened to gnaw on my spine or brought up one megalomaniacal plan to seize ultimate power. Your aesthetic’s a little Unabomber, maybe, but on the whole, you’re doing pretty good.”

The words were light, teasing, but Colin tensed. Dylan just kept on shuffling through the sketches like he hadn’t poked at the raw wounds of a wolf half again his size and twice his power.

Zack looked dumbstruck, but after a few seconds, he creaked out a rusty, eerie laugh. “You’re the one who’s nuts, kid.”

“Nah, I’m friends with a grumpy vampire.” He grinned at Zack. “Compared to Adam Dubois in a temper, you’re not so scary. Ask Shane.”

“Nobody asks me anything, because I have no ‘tact’.” Shane put air quotes around the last word.

Dylan tilted his head and considered the words with false gravity. “Yeah. That sounds fair. You’re subtle like a sledgehammer, buddy.”

“I just call it like I see it.”

“Not to me, you don’t,” Zack muttered. He straightened a little, his gaze challenging. “What do you see?”

Instead of answering, Shane picked up a length of wood and a tape measure. Zack frowned, and Colin ground his teeth. Not answering
was
the tactful move, but trust Shane not to trouble himself with niceties like changing the subject.

Well, Colin would. “Shane isn’t seeing much right now, not with Mae smiling at him all the time.”

Zack missed the nail he was aiming for and sank the head of the hammer a quarter inch into a piece of wood. “What?”