“What the hells?” I whisper to the floorboards. I’m face down so I can whisper to them. They don’t answer back but I stay where I am. “Why would I-oh Luna.” I close my eyes and let my forehead hit the floor. I don’t even have the strength in me to ask myself why I called out Thorne’s name.
You want him, my wolf reminds me, because she’s not one to dance around the matter at hand.
“He’s not ours,” I remind her. “He’s just an alpha.”
An alpha that’s been nice to us and fed us, had our back and…an alpha that we climbed like a tree the second we saw them. Plus there was that time that he sort of admitted that he thought I was pretty….
“No,” I whisper-scream to floorboards. I leap up, a feat with how tangled I am in the bedsheets. “No, do not go there.”
Thorne is nice in his own way. He’s steady and dependable. I like how even he is, how constant. At least, he’s feeling that way the longer that I’m with him. He intimidated me before. Scared me even but that was before I started to see the tender side of him. The side that smiled at the pups and took time to chat with the elderly pack members. He was always there if they needed a hand, even when he was meant to keep an eye on me.
“That’s coming to an end.” I have to say it because it’s easy to forget that I won’t always go on like this with Thorne walking me to work and meal times. He isn’t going to be there to serve me my plate or glower at someone that stares too long. He’s my storm cloud, a little gloomy and scary if you don’t know how to read it but once you do then there’s…wait…no.
“My storm cloud?” I hiss and pull my hair. “Knock that off. Now.” I shake off sleep and the bedsheets. I need something to drink. I pad down the hall and into the kitchen. When I was rooting around in here earlier taking stock of what was in the cabin I found a bottle of whiskey. I’ve never needed a whiskey more than right the hells now.
I pull the bottle out and pour myself a measure in silence. After my dream, my cabin feels cold and sparse. I rub my arms. I can still feel the summer sun on my skin, smell the sweet grass with a hint of pine, the dream feels deafening, like the realness–the weight–of it will crush me right where I stand in the quiet of my kitchen. I gulp down my whiskey and pour another finger of it.
“We don’t have storm clouds that are ours, or alphas that we want. We don’t have fated mates because that’s not for us, and that’s okay,” I say into the dark kitchen. A sliver of moonlight makes it in through the parted curtains but that’s the only light in the space. I’d stub a toe trying to walk around in the cottage if I wasn’t a shifter. I look around my cottage and I can see everything pretty clearly due to my heightened senses. The longer that I look out at my space, at my things, the more my mate dream fades away and the calmer I get.
It could also be the whiskey kicking in, but who’s keeping score?
The cottage is coming along nicely even after just a couple of days. I’ve spruced it up some with Clover’s help. Fresh cut flowers sit in a mason jar on the counter and we used her magic cabinet to get our hands on candles, pillows, blankets, and a rug. We even got a lamp too. Basically anything we could carry ourselves without drawing too much attention.
“They get so weird when they know I’m conjuring stuff,” Clover told me. “Best to keep it small. We save them freaking out when we magic you up a new bed.”
“Can a bed fit through the cabinet?”
“You know…I never tried it, there’s only one way to find out.”
I didn’t know if we’d get the bed through or not but I was thankful for the little touches that Clover had helped me bring to the cabin. On the counter my home design magazine sits face down, open to a page I was particularly inspired by.
Autumn Rain Chic is emblazoned across the top of the page. Deep greens and burnt mustard yellows are the base of the color theme. There’s a pink here and a coral there in the form of blankets and I smile because I managed to bring those exact blankets through the cabinet. I tuck my magazine under my arm and go to sit on the couch. I spread the blankets over my legs andflip on the lamp beside me.Then I settle in and sip my whiskey while I look over my magazine for more ideas on how to make this cottage mine. Outside I can hear the wind blowing, the tap of limbs against the roof, the creak of the porch settling, all of it calms me.
I’m almost done with my whiskey when I hear a thump. It’s slight, just the sound of a footfall really on the porch. I get up and go to the window, whiskey in hand and that’s when I see the big wolf sitting outside.
Thorne.
He’s at the edge of my porch, snout up sniffing the wind. Wind blows through his coat and I want to go to him. Pull one of my new thick blankets off the couch and wrap it around him but I don’t. He’s not mine. If he was…if he was, then I could take the blanket to him, but he’s not. Thorne turns and looks over his shoulder right at me.
I jerk back from the window but the damage is done. He’s already seen me. Still, I let the curtain fall back into place and go back to the couch. I set my empty glass down on the floor and crawl back under the blankets there.
Thorne’s outside. Why is he outside?
Was it him that was outside of my door in the Keep?
I turn over the thoughts once, twice, but not nearly three times before sleep pulls me under.
Chapter
Forty
COREDELIA
Iwake up in the morning feeling better than I should. I thought I’d wake up feeling like a truck ran over me but no. I’m refreshed and well-rested. A blessing from the universe to be sure. I stretch and when I sit up, my foot catches the empty whiskey glass I set down last night. I wince as it rolls towards the window and thankfully it doesn’t break. I’m still wiping sleep from my eyes when I get up to pick up the glass. When I stand, I realize that I’m right back where I was last night when I spotted Thorne on my porch.
It’s light out. Late enough that he wouldn’t still be out there, right?
I hesitate before I push open the curtains and peek out. He’s not there. I let out the breath I’d been holding and open the curtains all the way to let the sun in. It’s a bright and beautiful day, perfect for a pack meeting…I think.
