Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) (2 page)

His hands lingered on her elbows as he took them. “When’s the shower?”

She bit her bottom lip and smiled. It was a very promising smile. “We’ll probably have more people in the sanctuary this weekend. It’s a homecoming day, so everyone’s going to want to come visit. Will you help me wash all the extra linens tomorrow?”

Abel’s stomach twisted. “Laundry.”

She laughed. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. Forget about it.” Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. It really brought out the resemblance between her and Abram.

Abel’s eyes narrowed. “Your son doesn’t like me.”

“
My
son?” Rylie asked.

“Yeah,
your
son. Because I’m an asshole and he doesn’t want nothing to do with me.”

“He likes you. He just doesn’t know you well because he’s stuck on two legs and you like to be on all four in the forest. And this ‘your’ son business isn’t going to help. Just give it time—you guys will find common ground.”

“He’s avoiding me,” Abel said.

“He’s handling the homecoming because I asked him to. It’s not all about you, Abel.”

No, it wasn’t. It would always be about Seth. Guy had been dead for weeks and it was still about him.

“Thanks for your help with the canopy,” Rylie said. “I know you were up working early this morning. You can go back to prowling the perimeter as soon as you’re done. This will be the last time I bother you with chores for a while.”

“I’m not bothered,” he said. He was surprised that he meant it.

Her expression softened as she reached up to touch his face, cupping his jaw in her hands. She touched his scars without hesitation.

All the new humans living in Northgate and the sanctuary meant that there were a lot of new people to stare at him everywhere he went. Many of them stared with sympathy. The former slaves that had served in Hell had more than a few scars of their own, inside and out. But even if the stares weren’t hateful, it was a cold reminder of the fact that Abel was permanently marked as different. Other. Victim of a werewolf attack.

Rylie never made Abel feel like a victim.

After a moment, she dropped her hands to the canopy, fidgeting with its folds. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes even though she was still smiling. “Thank you, Abel.”

That smile was going to stick with him for weeks.

But then Rylie left to do more chores—chores that weren’t, unfortunately, showering—and reality crept over Abel again.

He checked his watch. Two o’clock.

Already halfway through the last day, with too much left to be done.

Abel’s stomach lurched. He gathered the canopy under his arm, glanced up at the gray sky, and headed toward the forest.

Trevin was arguing
with Crystal again. They were always arguing—it was as natural a state for them as breathing, sleeping, or blinking—and it didn’t even matter what they fought over half the time. They fought for the sake of fighting. Crystal was fun when she got ticked off.

Now that the increased population of the sanctuary was forcing them to be roommates, they were in for a
lot
more arguments.

Christmas was going to be fun.

“You can’t have the entire closet,” Trevin said, barring the front door of the cottage with his body. “You just can’t.”

Crystal flung the cardboard box she was carrying to the ground. “And why the hell can’t I?”

“Because it’s my closet and it’s full of my stuff and I don’t want you in there.”

“Uh, no,” she said, planting her hands on her hips. She was wearing her usual uniform of a midriff-baring tank top and booty shorts, bless the merciful gods, and seemed as immune to the winter cold as she always did. “If I’m moving into this cabin, then it’s
our
closet.”

“Oh, now it’s ‘our’ closet, not ‘yours,’” Trevin said. “That’s not what you said thirty seconds ago.”

“Yes it was. You’re not listening to me.”

He reached for her box. “Give me that, chicken arms.”

“Chicken arms?
Chicken arms
?” Her voice rose to a shriek.

Before Trevin could think of a properly provocative response, Abel stalked up the street with a bundle of canvas and metal poles under his arm. He was followed by a storm all his own—not a storm of clouds, but a storm of sweat and stressed-out pheromones that made Trevin’s hair stand on end.

Trevin snapped to attention, shoulders bowed and gaze lowered. The submissive posture came to him instinctively. His inner wolf knew how not to get his ass kicked when the most dominant male in the pack came around smelling like
that
.

Crystal, on the other hand, gave Abel a totally insolent look. She had never quite forgiven Abel for chasing after Rylie’s affections when Crystal had made it clear that
she
didn’t need to be chased. “Tell this douche that I’m entitled to at least half the closet,” she said. “You’re an Alpha. He has to do whatever you say.”

Abel dropped the canvas on her box and pretended that he hadn’t heard her. “Set up the canopy for dinner.”

She looked affronted by the order, but Trevin cut her off. “You got it, boss,” Trevin said.

The Alpha was already gone, trudging away through the snow. Trevin turned to watch him go.

As soon as Abel was out of eyesight, Crystal mimicked his growl. “Set up the canopy for dinner,
obedient slave
,” she said in an exaggerated baritone. “
You
set up the canvas, douchebag.”

Trevin snorted. “Careful. That’s mutiny.”

“Can’t be mutinous, we’re not pirates,” she snapped back instantly. Just like that, another fight.

Trevin was ready for it. “They can still keelhaul you.”

“Yeah? On what ship?”

“On their razor-sharp silver Alpha claws,” he said, lifting his hands with his fingers curled into mock-paws.

“Because
that
would totally make me respect his authority. Being a douchebag isn’t making people obey you? Double down on the douchebaggery! That’ll show ‘em.”

Trevin opened his mouth to shoot a retort back at her, but then a piece of fluttering paper caught his eye. There was a note sticking out of the canvas. He grabbed it to find that it was addressed to Abel in Rylie’s handwriting. It was easy to identify her girly cursive. He had seen it enough on the cooking and cleaning schedules.

“Uh oh,” Crystal said, plucking it out of his hand. “Looks like Rylie slipped Abel a present and he didn’t notice. Wanna bet it’s a sexy note? Ever wonder what an Alpha’s dirty talk is like?”

He ripped it out of her hand again. “Don’t read that.”

“Why not? It’s probably super filthy. ‘Oh baby, I can’t wait until you knot your giant wolf dong inside of me tonight.’”

“You’re sick, Crystal.”

“Come on, just take a look,” she said. “Nobody needs to know.”

She jumped at him, but Trevin lifted his arm up high, holding the note out of her reach. “If you’re not going to set up the canopy, then find someone else to do it,” he said. “
Before
Abel realizes that we’re playing hot potato with the task he assigned to us.” He waved the note. “I’ll catch up with Abel.”

Crystal thrust her middle finger at him. “Teachers’ pet.”

“I’m going to take that as a promise,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at the obscene gesture.

“In your dreams.”

Trevin laughed, broke into a jog, and followed Abel’s footprints into the trees.

He warmed up as he got moving, and the snow fell faster as he climbed into the higher elevations without pausing. That was something else that he enjoyed about having been bitten by a werewolf: the way he could run for days on end without his muscles tiring. He had been a teenager when he was bitten and on his college track team, so he had never been in bad shape. But a wolf’s stamina was far better than any human distance runner’s.

The snow fell faster, softening Abel’s footsteps into shallow divots. Trevin sniffed the air. Abel’s visible trail was obscured, but his scent was strong as ever and easier to follow. Those stress hormones lit up the evening like blazing red alarms.

He put on a burst of speed, eyes wide for any sight of the Alpha. Trevin had to be catching up to him. He’d left just a few seconds after Abel had.

But even as the scent trail grew stronger, he still didn’t reach Abel. Not until he approached the top of the mountain, where the snow was almost knee-deep.

Trevin glimpsed Abel up by the rocks and slowed. Abel was pacing along the fence that marked the edge of the wards. His face was twisted into a scowl, and that look made Trevin dart behind a tree instead of approaching.

He knew that he should just call out and let Abel know that he was there. But the Alpha didn’t look like he was in the mood to find out that Trevin had a love letter for him.

“Just do it,” he whispered under his breath. Abel wasn’t exactly friendly, but he was a good guy. He wouldn’t take his mood out on Trevin.

Probably.

Trevin was still deliberating with himself when he heard a loud
snap
. He leaned around the tree to see that Abel was holding one of the fence posts in his hands. He had wrenched it clean out of the ground, concrete pier and all, snow and dirt clinging to its base. He tossed it aside.

The Alpha dropped to his knees and began to dig. It only took a minute for him to come up with something else—a piece of quartz crystal the size of his fist.

All thoughts of approaching Abel fled from Trevin’s mind. He was transfixed by the way the stone gleamed in the dull gray light. Bringing it into the air filled his nose with the faint scent of herbs and essential oils.

The smell brought to mind a memory of a witch that had visited the sanctuary earlier that year: Stephanie Whyte, the doctor with the strawberry-blond hair. She had received a shipment of crystals like that from her coven in California.

That crystal was one of the things that she had used to protect the sanctuary with wards. It was magicked.

Abel smashed it against a rock. It gave an audible
crack
and split into two pieces.

Trevin bit back a gasp.

Just as casually as he had broken it, Abel reburied one half, then tossed the other aside. He put the fence post back in its hole and kicked snow around the edges to help conceal the fact that it had been disturbed before taking off down the mountain.

Trevin stared at the note crumpled in his hand.

There had to be a good reason for breaking the crystal. Maybe he was fixing something. Trevin didn’t know enough about magic to guess.

It had to be pack business. Something that Abel and Rylie had agreed on without talking to the rest of the pack.

The Alpha wouldn’t deliberately weaken the wards protecting all of them…would he?

Later that night,
Abel stood in the mausoleum where his brother had been interned. He braced his hands on the edge of the table and gazed into Seth’s immobile face.

It was warmer in the mausoleum than some of the cottages, but Abel shivered deep in his bones. The candles flickered in the breeze. There had always been a few candles around Seth, like it was a religious monument. He’d avoided making this pilgrimage for a while. He didn’t want to run into anyone worshiping his perfect dead brother. Abram was constantly visiting Seth, just like he’d constantly visited Seth during life. The two of them had been tight, real tight, bonding over their kopis instincts and being boring and whatever else demon hunters liked to talk about.

But Abram was a quiet, kind of morose guy. He probably got off on visiting with Seth’s dead body and being miserable about it. Abel wasn’t like that. He didn’t want to dwell in his pain.

He wanted to forget that Seth had gone and died on him.

The bastard.

Abram’s refusal from that morning rankled. Abel wondered what he had been doing in the mausoleum. Was he the one that had replaced the burned-out candles with new tapers? Had he been the one to bring up a park bench so that folks could sit in quiet, angsty misery with the corpse for hours on end? Or had he just gone to hide where he knew Abel wouldn’t follow?

He didn’t know Abram well enough to guess at his motives. But it all came down to one simple fact: Even as a corpse, Seth was better than Abel.

That was the most convincing reason to avoid the mausoleum. But even though Abel had been avoiding Seth, he needed to take one more look. It was too easy to remember Seth the way he had been when he was alive. Kind of annoying. Way too smart for his own good. Clever. Funny.

Abel needed to see what he had become to make sure that he remembered how awful Seth’s death had been.

So here was his brother. A stone corpse that looked just as horrified now as he had been in the instant of death. The guy that Abram would rather spend time with than his own father.

“You’re a punk ass bitch,” Abel told Seth. “Always will be. Doesn’t matter how dead you are.”

He thought about saying something else. If he’d thought to say goodbye to his brother instead of harassing him the last time they talked, what would he have said? It probably would have been something insulting, maybe, “Back off my mate and kids, I’m worth their attention too.” Nothing he’d be proud of saying goodbye with.

Anyway, this wasn’t a goodbye. Not really.

“You better be fucking grateful,” Abel said, and then he turned from Seth’s body and stepped outside.

It was a blizzard outside, though the wind wasn’t blowing. Visibility was terrible beyond the edge of the river. The trees and air and clouds were a uniform shade of gray. But even though it was miserable out, the pack was having dinner down at the bottom of the valley. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear the laughter and smell the food Rylie had helped cook.

Abel hiked down into the valley, taking a trail that he had shoveled early that morning. The snow was already several inches deep again—thinner under the trees, but with drifts that covered his ankles. There was no way to tell that he had worked on it at all.

The next morning someone would have to shovel it again, and probably the morning after that.

It wouldn’t be Abel’s problem.

The glow of warm orange light emerged from the gray haze. Abel stood outside the canopy Trevin had assembled. Someone had set up heaters to keep the pack warm as they ate, and it cast a warm red glow on the revelry.