AllFreeNovel
Share Us
SARIEL
Between everything else that was going on in the shitshow that was my life recently, I picked up painting again.
When I’d asked for a studio, Auren had given me space in an old storehouse that was used to hold things that were only rarely taken out. He’d also provided canvases, tarps, paints, and the whole works without me even needing to ask for them first.
They’d all come pretty obviously as hand-me-downs, which made me wonder who they used to belong to. I asked him, but he’d just shrugged and said they’d been collecting dust in a different storehouse. I then wondered if he genuinely didn’t know, or if it was another one of his secrets; at least I was too used to his behavior at this point to feel anything about being kept out of the loop anymore.
I’d spent the first day moving around boxes and random equipment I couldn’t even begin to guess the use for until I had about half of the place for myself, then laid out the tarps and set up the stands. This way, if there came a day when I had to pack up and leave, it wouldn’t leave too much of a mess behind.
The first time I put my brush to canvas, I’d sunk into the familiar and comforting feeling it gave me. It’d been like meeting up with an old friend.
There was some wistfulness within me, too. My old studio at Credence’s place had gone up in flames, as had all those paintings I’d done over the years. That was the inspiration for my current piece, actually—it was her hidden-away home in black on the background of a blood-red sunset.
I let my brush fly, the trance-like state I went into whenever I painted taking over. All of my actions were automatic: mix paint on a palette, dip brush, make strokes, dip brush, make strokes, wash brush, repeat. The house gradually took form, as did the familiar forest around it, even when splatters of a painted flame threatened its corners—
Someone suddenly whistled low behind me.
My brush slashed across the canvas when I jumped at the sound, leaving an annoying streak of red across the porch. Both my angel and my wolf suddenly went on high alert.
I turned around quickly to see that a dark-haired, oddly pretty man was poking his head out from between the towers of boxes that made up the “entrance” to the studio. It took me a second to recognize him as that wolf named Ashe, who Auren had claimed was his mate.
The wolf wasn’t even looking at me; his eyes were firmly moving between the finished paintings I had hanging on the walls and the works-in-progress I had on the floor. Eventually, he turned to me with a mischievous glint in his eye. “A painting studio, huh? I didn’t know this was here. You don’t mind if I look around, right?”
Ididmind, but I couldn’t think of an excuse to get him to go away that wouldn’t possibly make Auren mad. “Uh, sure,” I said, picking up my sponge so that I could dab away the red.
He nodded, seeming to ignore my hesitance, and then just… made himself right at home, honing in on the painting nearest to the entrance to examine it up close. He was holding a bundle in his arms, too, for some reason.
Do you think Pack Olskin is made up only of busybodies?I asked Aria, and her confusion tugged back at me.
Where did that come from?
That Ashe guy is in my studio.
My annoyance must have amused her, since I swore I could feel her giggling.That’s Auren’s mate, right? What’s he doing there?
I have no idea. I didn’t even hear him come in.
Which was the truth, actually. The door to the storehouse was pretty noisy. Had I been that deep into painting that I hadn’t even noticed? It wasn’t impossible, but it was still weird.
My wolf and angel were still on alert. I prodded them for answers as to why they were acting up, but neither of them gave me anything. The silence wasn’t anything new for my angel since our return from Hell, unfortunately, but he would usually give some kind of silent sign about what was really bothering him.
Well, ask him! We should at least get to know him! He doesn’t show up much around the compound, so I haven’t been able to talk to him myself yet.
That wasn’t a terrible idea. If he was my brother’s soulmate and also a seemingly important part of the alliance, whether his closeness to Elias was any indication, then it would be good to get to know him better. I just kind of wished that Aria was the one here to do the socializing instead of me. Even though I was slowly getting better at it, I still wasn’t the most friendly.
After the few seconds it took me to talk to Aria, I heard Ashe say, “This stuff’s great. Are you selling them?”
He’d moved on from the first large painting to the second, which was a distorted version of my cage in Hell, black and red and nightmarish. Painting about it had been pretty therapeutic, even though doing so had seemed almost counterintuitive at the time.
“You… want tobuythat one?” I repeated disbelievingly. Who would want my horrific therapy piece?
“I’d buy alotof the stuff in here, trust me,” he answered, finally turning to me with a sharp-toothed grin. “When we fled the US, I had to leave my collection behind, and now I’ve just got a boring apartment with nothing cool in it. Elias told me to decorate it because we’re probably going to be here a while, but where am I supposed to get bones and wet specimens around these parts? Or anything Gigeresque? There are only flowers and wood and wicker. It’s not my style.”
Okay. Him liking that painting made sense, now.
The mention of Elias brought something else to my mind. I knew how he and Jack were connected, but I had no idea how he and this Ashe person were connected, though they seemed close. Maybe he was just one of the most competent members of Pack Olskin, and had earned his way into the Alpha’s good graces?
“What’s your name, again?” I had to ask first, turning my attention back to the painting I was in the middle of. The pillar needed some touch-ups before it dried and stuck like that.
