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This was what Kathleen had been afraid of. Exactly this. The threat that this terrified woman represented was enormous. If she returned to the world crowing about a man with magic… Goldie shuddered.
“You know there’s a pack near here?”
Moira swallowed. “It’s who I was looking for.”
Goldie’s jaw dropped. “You were looking for the werewolves?”
“There are rumors of a pack a witch can apply to for help.”
Those rumors were thirty years old; they’d started when Kathleen had disappeared from a huge coven with a prize stallion. Maybe that’s how long it took for gossip to get to Massachusetts?
“I didn’t find it,” Moira said, “but I did find this job opening.”
What was she running from that she actively sought shifters?
Moira turned in a circle, taking in the valley. “I figured this was remote enough for now.”
Goldie opened her mouth to explain that she had found the shifters, but she closed it again. Outing the pack wasn’t a decision she could make on her own. Every instinct told her this woman was terrified and running for her life. She was no threat to any wolf here, but it was the pack’s decision whether she knew about them or not.
“You’re not going to tell anybody?” Moira asked, sounding deeply exhausted.
“No. I said it before. If you’re no threat to me and mine, then I’m no threat to you.”
“Brennan? There’s work to do,” Paul shouted from the door of the stable. “This isn’t a take-a-break-whenever kind of job.”
Moira sagged. “What is his deal?”
Goldie looked back at Paul, a shifter without a wolf. He was stoic almost to the point of being comatose, but she knew that had to be an act.
“Don’t worry about Paul,” she said slowly. “His bark is way, way worse than his bite.” She couldn’t help a small snicker.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing. Let’s get back.”
“If you’re a witch and there’s a coven near here, I need to go.”
“I won’t rat you out. I don’t know what is going on in Boston, but we don’t generally meddle in stranger’s business around here.” She looked the woman up and down, noting how tightly her skin stretched over her collarbones. “You look like you’re about done running, whether you want to be or not.”
“I better get back then,” Moira said slowly and started toward the barn.
“Wait.”
Moira stilled like Goldie was a cop with a gun to her back.
“What you’re running from, it’s not gonna…”
Moira laughed, looking about twenty years older than she was. “What I’m running from is no danger to anyone but me.”
What could scare a young woman so badly she moved ten states to a horse farm in the middle of Appalachia, when she’d clearly never been near an animal before? And did Goldie trust her enough not to press for the whole story? Aiden was right; you trusted someone or you didn’t. “Okay then.”
“Brennan!” Paul shouted, and Moira ran for the stables.
Goldie hiked home and only chose the wrongWhite Fangtwice before she got the secret stair open to join Aiden.
“I’m just about done and then we can go for a ride,” he said with a wave of his hand.
She adjusted her favorite doll that sat with his baseball bat. Aiden had complained it looked like something out of a horror movie because its eye fell off when she was in fifth grade, buthe didn’t move it. She sat on the new couch they’d picked out together. “Is that a euphemism, or do you want me to saddle the horses?” They still hadn’t foundherhorse, but Goldie rode Beauty when they went for a casual ride around the land.
“What? No. I meant a horse.” He thought about that for a second. “But we can euphemism after. Or during. There’s a meadow north of here I think you would probably enjoy.”
She put her arms around him and kissed him, reveling in the fact that she could do that whenever she wanted. “I love you,” she breathed.
“I love you too?” he said, sounding confused. “I’ll never object to hearing it, but what brought this on?”
She glanced out the window toward the stables, thinking of Moira alone in the world.
“I’m home.”
* * *
