Haunted Wolves: Green Pines, Book 2 (26 page)

“Mine didn’t. I had hit my head, and when I came to, there was blood everywhere. And Robbie—he—” Lorelei shook her head, her voice thick with tears. “He was already dead.”

“Honey…”

She went on. “I know the man was human when he pulled me out of the car—I saw his hands. But after that, all I remember is the wolf.”

He didn’t remember trying to soothe her. His wolf was simply there, flooding up into him, wrapping strong, calming magic around their mate while Colin stroked her. He’d never felt so close to his other half, as if the boundary between them had blurred, or maybe vanished altogether.

“Sometimes I forget,” he murmured. “Most of you are born into our world in blood and pain. And you survive. Do you know how amazing you are for that?”

She drew back to look at him, a fierce light in her eyes. “I had to. I had to make sure he didn’t go after Robbie.”

“And you did.”

“I did.” The defiance faded as tears welled. “I couldn’t save his life, but I saved him from that hunt.”

“I know, honey. I know.” Cupping her cheeks, he kissed her forehead, then kissed away the tears as they fell. “I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

“I don’t want that. I want you to understand, Colin.” She slid her hands over his. “I wasn’t trying to lie to you. It wasn’t
you
.”

His gut already understood the truth, but she needed to say it. And maybe he needed to hear it. The words would break through the pain and wounded ego once and for all. “What was it?”

“I couldn’t tell anyone,” she whispered. “You already know, but saying it still makes me feel like I’m doing something horrible. Like I’m making it happen all over again, or making it more
real
.”

He swiped a stray tear from her cheek with his thumb. If only pain could be erased as easily. Helplessness twisted his gut into knots, but there was nothing to fight. No dragons to slay, no quick fix. It should have sent him into a blind panic.

It didn’t.

Lorelei sighed. “That’s why I need to get help. Because I know feeling that way is bullshit, but I can’t stop it.”

“And I’ll be here. If you want to talk. Or not.” Smiling, he kissed her temple. “If you want to shout. Anything, honey. In case you didn’t notice, my wolf is a little attached to you. I think we’d try to raze Memphis if you wanted it bad enough, so use your powers for good, huh?”

“There’s nothing to fight,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “There’s only me.”

Closing his eyes, he laughed at himself. “See? You’re not the only one who needs to start thinking differently. I won’t just
fight
for you. I’ll build the things you need, care for the people you love. I don’t just want to be your shield. I want to be your everything.”

She answered his helpless tumble of words with a tentative smile. “I have to learn how to do those things for myself before I can let you do them for me…but I want that too.”

Not a blind acceptance, but something better. Honesty, an admission of the rocky ground and a clear line he needed to respect. Carrying her through the painful memories would soothe his need to protect her in the short-term, but she wasn’t offering him a few days or weeks.

This was a lifetime, and that was a long time for a werewolf. “Does starting over mean keeping separate bedrooms?” he asked, struggling for overblown innocence. He wanted to hear her laugh. He wanted to hear that every day for the rest of forever. “Yours is so far away from here…”

She gave him what he wanted—a low, clear chuckle. “Across the hall?”

“That’s three steps, minimum. Plus the six to get to my door from the bed…another five or six in
your
room…” He made what he hoped was a plaintive noise. “Plus getting caught sneaking across the hall at night. Do you have any idea how often Mae’s in the kitchen eating ice cream at two in the morning?”

Lorelei crossed her arms over her chest and arched a teasing eyebrow. “You don’t want anyone to know you’re carrying on with me?”

“Absolutely,” he replied solemnly. “That’s why I want to live with you.”

“Good. Because your furniture is ugly.”

He choked on a laugh. “God, it is, isn’t it?” Sobering, he caught Lorelei’s hand. “I don’t care if it’s here, or in your room, or in a barn or under a haystack. I don’t care if we screw three times a day or spend the next month kissing. As long as we’re together when we close our eyes and together when we open them.”

“Yes.” She stretched up on her toes, slid her arms around his neck and kissed him.

A promise. A challenge. Colin wrapped her in his arms as snugly as she was already wrapped in his heart, and focused his attention on returning her kiss.

Well, most of his attention. A tiny part of his mind numbered the days until Christmas and concluded there was one thing he could build for her to commemorate their new life beginning—some new furniture. Something simple. Something attractive.

Something sturdy enough to last their part of forever.

Colin hadn’t been joking about Mae’s late-night forays into the kitchen, so he wasn’t surprised to see the light spilling into the hallway when he slipped from Lorelei’s room. He rounded the corner, his lips already parted to greet Mae, and drew up abruptly when he found Shane poking at an old, disassembled radio.

He looked up and waved the screwdriver at the parts scattered across the table. “Found this in the attic.”

“Lot of crazy stuff up there.” Colin retrieved a glass of sweet tea before taking the seat across from Shane. “That thing looks older than either of us.”

“Damn near. The only difference is that the radio has seen better days.” A tiny smile quirked his lips. “Not you, though.”

His own smile appeared without prompting. At this rate, his jaw would be aching inside of a week. Smiling this much couldn’t be natural, and damned if he cared. “No, not me. These are pretty good days.”

Shane set the radio aside. “I’m glad. You shouldn’t be alone.”

None of them should, maybe Shane least of all, when he’d spent so much of his life that way already. “I’m not.
We’re
not. All we have to do is keep this place safe.”

“Seems like a bit of an ongoing process at this point, doesn’t it?” He paused. “The witch is dead.”

That wiped away Colin’s silly grin. “How? And when?”

“Jay found her earlier. Magical version of a cyanide capsule, I guess.”

In some ways, it simplified things. His darkly practical side had no trouble doing that math. Fletcher had already slammed against the wall of how much information he could convince her to hand over short of torture, and Eden had drawn that line before anyone got a chance to suggest it. But a hostage took resources to keep contained, and there had always been the danger that she might break free.

No, Colin felt decidedly safer with her gone. That didn’t mean it was for the best, though. “Did they get anything out of her?”

“Nothing we didn’t already know.” Shane shrugged. “Stella was working on a spell to compel her to give us more information, but the best she can figure now is that they’d been drawing power from the node. She and Sasha disrupted that, and the witches were looking to put it back in operation.”

“Well, they can’t do that dead, so I guess we can all sleep soundly at night.” Colin arched an eyebrow at Shane. “We can, right? Is there a reason you’re camped out in the kitchen?”

Shane nudged the radio out of the way and reached for his beer. “Just listening to the place. I didn’t feel like sleeping.”

“Not much to hear,” Colin started, but the creak of the stairs proved him wrong. He knew who it was before the footsteps made it halfway down the hall; of the people currently living upstairs, Kaley strode with purpose, Tammy crept and Fletcher thumped his boots like he was trying to announce his presence a hundred feet off. Only Mae drifted, lazy, unhurried steps as if she wasn’t paying much attention to where she was going.

Maybe it was a coincidence. And maybe he wasn’t the only one who knew about Mae’s late-night ramblings.

She turned the corner and stopped abruptly, blinking at them both, and Colin rose to offer her his chair. “I was just on my way out. I want to check on Boz and make sure she’s doing okay her first night under a roof.”

“All right.” Mae smiled and tossed him a sleepy wave on her way to the deep freezer. “Have a good night.”

Shane ignored him. It would have been easy to blame it on his lack of interest in social niceties, but sometimes Colin thought other people faded from Shane’s awareness when Mae entered a room. Not that he watched her too closely or stared, but Colin never doubted that Shane was focused on her tiniest gesture or expression.

Leaving them to what he was beginning to suspect was at least a semi-nightly ritual, Colin pushed out the door. The porch creaked under his feet, and the night breeze carried the sharp scent of frost. The quicker he ran his errand, the quicker he could be back in a warm bed, curled around his mate.

He hopped the steps and started across the lawn. The little house was empty except for Boz, which might be the only reason she’d agreed to stay there at all. Close quarters bothered her after so long living under the night sky, but she’d adapt quickly enough. For Lorelei, he thought she’d do anything.

They had that in common.

A flicker of movement caught his eye, but when he turned his head, there was nothing there. Colin shook it off and kept walking, but it happened again. He looked automatically, his gaze tracking toward the disturbance in his peripheral vision.

This time, he saw a figure. Quinn, plain as life, leaning against a tree in the side yard.

Colin felt his lips trying to pull away from his teeth. The wolf, prompting a snarl as the back of his neck prickled. He stared at the young man he’d barely had a chance to know, stared at him and waited for him to vanish or fade.

He didn’t.

Drawing in a deep breath, Colin adjusted his course. Two careful steps, three. Half a dozen, and he was still staring at the wolf he’d helped bury in the woods beyond the house. “Quinn?”

The man smiled faintly. “Sorry. I should remember your name, but things like that can be hard.”

“I’m Colin. And you’re…” Impossible. And undeniable. “I don’t know what you are.”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe.” A chill marched down his spine. He was having a conversation. With a ghost. “Are you really there?”

“I am.” Quinn shook his head and took a step back. “Thing is, I’m not the only one.”

“Not the only what?” Colin asked, but Quinn didn’t answer. He turned toward the woods as the wind shifted and, for one heart-stopping moment, Colin swore he could
smell
the other wolf, even as he started to fade. “Quinn, not the only
what
? Are there other ghosts?”

No answer. Quinn walked into a tree and vanished, and the scent of wolf disappeared just as abruptly. Impossible, but Colin strode to where the specter had been and found no trace. No lingering smells, no sign of disturbed leaves or bent grass.

I’m not the only one.

Well, shit.

About the Author

How do you make a Moira Rogers? Take a former forensic science and nursing student obsessed with paranormal romance and add a computer programmer with a passion for gritty urban fantasy. To learn more about this romance-writing, crime-fighting duo, visit their webpage at
www.moirarogers.com
, or drop them an email at
[email protected]
. (Disclaimer: crime-fighting abilities may appear only in the aforementioned fevered imaginations.)

Look for these titles by Moira Rogers

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Sanctuary’s Price

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Crux

Crossroads

Deadlock

Cipher

Impulse

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A Safe Harbor

Undertow

…and the Beast

Sabine

Kisri

Children of the Undying

Demon Bait

Hammer Down

Bloodhounds

Wilder’s Mate

Hunter’s Prey

Archer’s Lady

Diana’s Hound

Green Pines

Haunted Sanctuary

Coming Soon:

Enigma

The shadows of her past could destroy their future.

Haunted Sanctuary

© 2013 Moira Rogers

Green Pines, Book 1

Eden Green can’t remember a time she didn’t believe in monsters—her cousin was born one. Her family’s dark past casts a long shadow, making it hard to make friends and harder to commit to a lover. She lives a quiet life in small-town Clover, Tennessee, but she’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.