Haunted Wolves: Green Pines, Book 2 (21 page)

Already, the whole awful scene felt like it had happened to someone else, like Lorelei had only watched it from afar, a disinterested if sympathetic third party.
Defense mechanism.
Easier than having to face that she’d been the one to hurt him with her helpless anger and careless, mean words.

As if any of it had ever been his fault.

Eden closed the door, engaging the privacy wards and leaving Jay firmly on the other side. “Most of the time, I’d let it go at that. I don’t want to push any of you, but not talking isn’t working anymore.”

“But you know what will, huh?”

“No.” Eden crossed her arms over her chest, her stance firm but not challenging. “All I know is if you need someone to lash out at, it’s going to be me. I can do that for him. And you.”

Except she wasn’t angry. She was
scared
. “I haven’t told anyone. Zack doesn’t even know.”

Sympathy filled Eden’s gaze. “Lorelei, I guarantee there are things Zack never told you. Horrible things about his life on this farm. We all have scars, and we all hide them. Mine were in a police file for Jay to see, and I got mad when he went and looked, because then he knew all the ways I’d failed.”

“You don’t understand.” Lorelei faced her. “If Colin knows—if anyone does—it makes it true. Real. And it can’t be. I—I can’t deal with it.”

Eden unfolded her arms, but didn’t reach for Lorelei. She just spoke in a low, intent voice, one trembling with confidence. “Yes, you can.”

“You don’t understand,” Lorelei said again. Her gaze fell on the box, and the corner of the picture sticking out of it. Nothing so simple as failure or heartbreak. The end of her world.

Eden’s gaze followed hers, and she crouched in front of the box and ran her fingers along the edge, stopping just short of the picture of Robbie. “I don’t,” she agreed softly, looking up at Lorelei. “I don’t understand what you felt like or what you’ve been through. But I know how strong you are. I can feel it, just like you can feel me.”

If only. “Being a wolf hasn’t helped me with this. It’s only hurt more.”

Eden’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why?”

How could she explain the horror of being imprisoned, not only by doctors who considered her sick, but also by her own body? “When I was first turned, I couldn’t shift. Even when the moon was full.”

“Oh, hell.” Eden’s gaze fell to the picture again. “How long?”

The question could have had multiple meanings, but Lorelei ignored them all. “I need to find Colin.”

Eden opened her mouth and then shut it again without speaking. After a moment she nodded. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

“No, I—” The last thing she needed was another witness to her guilty conscience. “I should apologize for going off like I did.”

“All right.” Eden tucked the diploma and commitment papers into the box before folding the flaps over. “I’m here if you need me, Lorelei. Always. No matter what you say, no matter what secrets you tell or hold back. This is your home, and it’s never going away.”

Lorelei stepped forward without thinking and grabbed Eden’s hand. “You and Jay have never made me doubt that, not once. My stuff—it’s about me, okay?”

Eden met her eyes with a smile. “That’s the part you guys never got a chance to learn, because no one ever taught it to Zack, either. Pack, Lorelei. It means never having to be as weak as you are alone. You get to be as strong as we all are together.”

Maybe they
could
help her—but only once she’d started to help herself. “I’ll see you later?”

“Of course. Don’t stay out in the woods too long.” Eden squeezed her hand. “I’m running into town to pick up dinner for everyone, since Mae and Kaley are still out in the barn.”

“I’ll fix it, Eden.” The only promise she could offer, the only one she had left.

The house was a mélange of scents, but she knew where Colin had retreated—to the woods. And sure enough, once she made it outside, it was easy to pick up his trail and follow it across the backyard.

She’d thought Jay might have come after him, but he was alone, sprawled in the clearing where they’d gathered to shift with the last full moon. He didn’t stir as she approached, just stared up at the night sky, his jaw set and his hands tightly fisted.

No room to dance around it. She didn’t have the
right
. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

“Don’t, Lorelei.” His voice was flat. No anger, no accusation… Just gentle firmness. “I thought pushing was what you needed, but I was wrong. I won’t do it again.”

“Maybe it is what I need,” she countered, crossing her arms over her body. “My way isn’t working out so well.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But if so, you need it from someone you trust.”

This was the hardest to explain. Eden still thought she stood on shaky ground, that Lorelei couldn’t depend on her the way she had Zack. But the truth was far more damning. “I trust you all—every single one of you—more than I trust myself. I think…maybe that’s the real problem.”

Colin finally turned his head, squinting at her through the darkness. “You don’t trust me with your secrets or your pain. I’m not blaming you, just stating a fact.” He turned his gaze toward the sky. “How could I blame you? Maybe I’m not built for trusting.”

It hurt worse, in a completely backwards sort of way, having him take the blame on himself. “I don’t know if you’re making this about you because you’re trying to protect me, or if you’re just being a self-centered dick.”

That
got him up. He rolled to his knees and glared at her, and she could
feel
his anger and hurt seething behind a blank wall of power, as if he’d locked everything up inside him so tightly that his wolf was muted. “It’s about me because I
should
be protecting you.”

“From what? Something that happened six years ago?” Familiar panic threatened to choke her, but she shoved through it and reached for her own anger. Her pain. “Most of the time, I don’t think about Robbie, because I can’t. I hide from what happened, that’s how I keep it together. But fair is fair. I shouldn’t have started this if I couldn’t open up to you. Be mad about
that
.”

“I
can’t
,” he snarled. “I can’t get mad.”

“Why not?” Need dragged her two steps closer, desperate, driving need. “I fucked up, and I hurt you.”

His breath whistled out as he came to his feet, and for a moment she thought he’d retreat. From her. “After all you’ve been through—” He bit off the words and growled. “You’re supposed to be safe here.”

Everything burned—her eyes, her throat. The knot in the pit of her stomach. “I lied to you, hid parts of myself. And now you’re doing the same thing to me.”

“I’m not—”

“You
are
.” She bit off the words with a frustrated groan. “I’m safe, Colin. Here, with you, I’m—”

Pressure raised the fine hairs on Lorelei’s arms a fraction of a second before magic cracked through the night like a shot. It throbbed in her ears, muffling Colin’s shouts.

Run. He was telling her to run, but her feet were rooted to the spot. It took every ounce of her strength to lift them enough to stumble, to try to close the distance between them.

Then Colin flipped into the air, head over heels, and slammed to the ground in front of her. Lorelei screamed for help before the same unseen force sent her sprawling. Her head hit something hard, and the blinding flash of pain subsided into an inky weight that dragged her under.

Chapter Fourteen

Colin had only been really drunk once. As a werewolf, his metabolism kept up with whatever liquor he consumed, and with a job as dangerous as his, it was never that much. But he’d been drunk once as a teenager, during the week before he’d undergone the transformation from human to wolf.

It had felt a lot like he did now. Blurry, confusing. Like he might puke on his shoes at any moment.

“Wake him up.”

His eyes might as well have been cemented shut. Vertigo crashed into him when he turned his head toward the sound of the voice—or
tried
to turn. He couldn’t tell if he’d moved at all when everything seemed to have taken on the inebriated sway of a boat at sea.

Pain cracked across his face, shattered the cement and sent his stomach lurching. At least he could open his eyes now, but squinting only revealed the rough walls of a cabin and two blurry figures.

“He’s useless now.” A woman’s voice, aged and low, and one of the figures bent closer. “First you rattled his brains, and now the spell… It’s too much.”

“You wrap a binding around me and then tell me it’s too much,” the other retorted primly. “He’s a dark one, he is. His hands are dripping with blood. Shall I have him add yours to it?”

“Don’t be daft,” the woman spat. “We’ll have to get it from the girl.”

The girl.
Colin craned his head, ignoring the seesawing vertigo, and caught sight of Lorelei sprawled out on the other side of the room. Rage shot fire through his limbs, and a growl escaped from between his teeth.

“Hmm, I concede your point.” One pale hand reached toward him, twisted, and Colin rose. Not of his own accord, but as if some force dragged him to his feet. “Up.”

Even with a rattled skull, he knew he was facing witches. Two older women, one small and slender, the perfect picture of a small-town grandmother, the other tall and curvy, wrapped in silk and fading glamour. She had a charismatic air and the arrogant body language of a leader, but it was the sweet-looking grandmother who held Colin immobilized, her magic a crushing weight all around him.

God, he hated witches.

“Don’t look at me like that,” the gray-haired witch admonished. “I haven’t killed you yet, and I could—right where you stand.”

Anger cleared the static from his mind, so he let himself feel the vicious bite of it as he glared at her. “Then let the girl go. Whatever you need, get it from me.”

She scoffed. “No, that won’t work. The boy’s gone. Austin’s girl is the key to everything now.”

Austin’s girl. He forced his gaze to the side again, but his eyes only told him what his nose had already confirmed—Lorelei was the one sprawled out in a tangle of limbs and blonde hair. Lorelei, who looked so much like Eden that no one had questioned they were cousins.

They thought they had Eden, and correcting them might prove fatal. He couldn’t know for sure until he got more information. Not that it could be as easy as asking.

Or could it? The witches stood in front of an open door, one that spilled morning sunlight into the cabin along with a chilly autumn wind. Arrogance, but maybe justified when they had him wrapped in so much magic he could barely move his jaw to ask, “The key to what?”

The witch ignored the question. “What did they do with it?”

“What did who do with what?”

Her jaw clenched. “With the
node
, smartass.”

He didn’t have to fake a growl. It rattled through his aching chest as his lips pulled away from his teeth. “Do I look like I know what a fucking node is?”

“One of you knew enough to get it out of the ground.” She nodded to the taller woman. “The others will be here soon. Get the blood.”

The witch took one step toward Lorelei, and Colin reassessed the danger. “If you want Eden’s blood, you won’t get it from her. That’s not Eden Green.”

The women exchanged looks, and the tall, curvy witch shook her head. “Looks like the picture to me. I think he’d say anything to stall.”

Panic spiked through his rage as he realized that his wolf hadn’t stirred. His other self was there, asleep inside him, but it wasn’t a natural sleep. The wolf felt muted, distant. He could no more summon the change than he could take flight, and that was the most terrifying knowledge of all.

No, the second most terrifying. The curvy woman took another step toward Lorelei, and he redoubled his struggles, straining against the invisible bonds with a desperation born of the need to protect. His pinky finger twitched, and then his whole hand, and he snarled and threw himself at the spell with renewed hope.

“Unless…” The older woman held up her hand, stilling his struggles as well as the other witch’s progress. “Unless he’s telling the truth. We only have one shot at this.”

“You think it’s better to wait for Nancy?”

“She’s known Eden Green since she was a child. She can tell us for certain. And once we’re certain—”

“We’ll be ready to go.” The tall witch backed off with a nod. “Then we’ll wait.”

The grandmother dropped her hand, and Colin hit the wooden boards in a painful sprawl, knocking his head against the floor hard enough to cast a gray pall over the world. “The wards will hold them both,” he heard the older witch say, her voice brisk and unconcerned. “But I see no reason to take chances. I’ll set his bindings, and you see to the perimeter.”

“Should we bind the girl?”

“Next to him, her power is a spark beside a bonfire. Save your strength for their witch. She might be a clumsy child, but she’s strong. You’ll have to mask everything.”

“I’ll get started.” She stepped away from Lorelei and slipped through the open door.

Colin’s skin prickled, a mild itching that turned to rough pain as magic began to press in on him. The weight made it hard to breathe, but he didn’t panic. He’d fallen facing Lorelei, and her deep, even breaths soothed him.