Wolves’ Bane (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

Kelly

I cried until my tears were spent, the danger of the situation finally settling in like a cold fist encircling my heart. That psychic had gotten it right after all—I was desired by two men, just not really how I’d pictured it There was nothing romantic about bonding with someone to become a warrior or bonding with someone else to become a brood mare. I didn’t ask for this, I wasn’t prepared for this, but I sure as hell had to do something about this crazy situation because I highly doubted anyone—not Cal or the Order and certainly not Lazarus, the king of the beasts—would let me just walk away and get on with my life.

So the tears needed to stop.
Suck it up, buttercup
, as my mother used to say.

I made my way into the bathroom and quickly washed my face, the cool water refreshing and energizing. Time to figure out Plan B, because Plan A was not something I had consented to—no one in their right mind would. If I was going to get the hell out of here, I needed to figure out where I was to begin with, and how I could make my way back home without getting captured by a werewolf. Then I would have to go into hiding or something.

I cringed. Okay, Plan B needed some work.

A light knock at the door had my heart thudding with anticipation and I cursed my weakness.
Plan B, my ass. If that’s Cal begging for forgiveness, you’ll hop right up on the bed and welcome him openly. So pathetic.

I emerged from the bathroom to find Andrew poking his head past the door. “Morgan? You in here?”

My heart flutters stopped abruptly, but I wasn’t annoyed at the intrusion. It wasn’t Andrew I was angry with. “I’m right here, Andrew, come on in.”

Andrew’s gaze fell on me and his smile erased any remaining anger or frustration I felt. “Oh good,” he said. “Listen, I know that things are a little much for you to digest right now. It’s a lot to take in all at once. I was kind of hoping that you would accompany me to see my mate, Kelly…the Oracle. She’d really like to meet you.”

Unable to rebuff the positive vibe from Andrew, I gave a hesitant smile and nodded. “Sure, I guess that would be okay.”

Andrew held out his hand. “Come on, then. Our room is just down the next hallway.”

He entwined my arm with his as we walked, a strangely comforting gesture considering I’d known the man for less than an hour.

“I met Candy this morning.”

Andrew nodded. “Oh, yes, she’s super excited to have another female in the house. She wouldn’t stop talking at breakfast about going up to see you. I hope she didn’t bug you too much.”

I chuckled. “No, she’s sweet, and very bubbly. I’m sure we’ll get along fine. Although, with the way things are right now, I can’t see myself staying here for very long.”

Andrew paused, his face drawn into a frown. “Oh, really?”

I shrugged, suddenly feeling self-conscious and defensive. “I didn’t ask for this, Andrew. I won’t give over my life in order to save your asses. And things with Caleb are…complicated.”

Andrew’s expression softened and he patted my hand. “I understand, Morgan, I do. But really, where will you go if you leave? Lazarus wants you and the second you step foot off the property, he can lay his claim. None of us asked to be born into this. We’ve all had to make adjustments in order to accept our fates. It may take some time, but you will come to understand just how important your role is to our group.”

I bit my bottom lip, contemplating his words. “I don’t know how to take that. It’s like you’re saying I’m trapped here.”

Andrew shook his head. “Life is about making choices. You feel like you don’t have a choice right now, but you do. You could choose to die. Fate has marked you for death and without our help, without Cal’s powers, you
will
die. It’s as simple as that.”

I flinched at his words, my mind tracing back to the night in the psychic’s tent. The woman had used the same words:
you are marked for death.
I slid my hand out from his and wrapped my arms around my waist.

Andrew frowned. “Listen, you’ve got a lot to think about, but how about we set aside all of this talk of leaving for a little bit and go see Kelly?”

I nodded as he motioned down the hall and remained quiet as we walked. I didn’t know how to process all of the things I was being told, but one thing was certain—if I decided to walk out on Cal, I’d be walking to my death. Maybe not right away, but eventually it would happen. Would Cal let me do that? He had said he couldn’t stand to lose his Huntress, couldn’t stand to be like the others who had lost theirs. So would he let me leave if I tried, if it was so clearly a suicide walk?

We paused outside a closed door, Andrew’s hand on the knob. “I have to warn you, Kelly is in a type of coma. She can only communicate through me.” He curled his lips slightly as if touched by a deep sadness and I immediately shifted my thoughts away from myself.

“What happened to her?”

Andrew attempted a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “She’s been like this for about six months now. She suffered a kind of problem when we bonded, unique to my particular powers we think…prophesy can become overwhelming to the brain, evidently she couldn’t handle it. Her body froze up.” He sighed as he laid his hand on the doorknob. “I’m the only one who can communicate with her via our mental link. I talked about sacrifices, adapting. She’s made the ultimate sacrifice.”

“If she knew that this would happen before she bonded with you, would she have done it again? Would she be willing to sacrifice?”

“Yes. She’s told me that many, many times over the months. She would do it again because it has meant a change in the tide against the beasts. The wolves’ numbers have run rampant. They are producing more and more bitten werewolves and are encroaching on the humans, killing to the point of discovery. We must fight back. Because of Kelly’s power, we are slowly starting to regain the advantage. With the Huntress, with
you
, we can win against Lazarus.”

Geeze, no pressure or anything.
His words were so strong, so determined that for a moment I would have agreed to go and bond with Cal right there and then. But as sudden as that conviction came, it left again, and I remembered that I was just a plain girl, a university drop-out with no ambitions, no drive and no goals. I was not Huntress material, no matter what Andrew and the rest of them thought. Someone clearly made a mistake in choosing me. Obviously, Cal understood that. He didn’t even want to fulfill the bond to me, at least not on an emotional level.

Andrew cleared his throat and painted a smile on his face once again. “Sorry about that, got a little carried away.” He opened the door and motioned for me to step in. “Here, my dear, is Kelly.”

Pity tugged at me as I gazed down at the young, beautiful woman who had given up her life for the Order’s cause. A cause that I really didn’t understand. She lay on her grand bed, her red hair fanning out around her pale face, machines whirring and pulsing as they pumped air into her lungs and monitored her heart. It sent an uncomfortable chill through my body. Sickness had always made me feel too vulnerable, too out of control, and all of Kelly’s machines made me remember the weeks I spent watching my mother die—an alcoholic whose organs had failed one by one. It was an agonizing death for her to go through, and for me to watch. And seeing as how I’d experienced the trauma alone, having never known my father, it wasn’t one that I liked to reflect on very often.

“Morgan, this is Kelly,” Andrew said, his cheery voice a stark contrast to the hospital-room atmosphere. This was nothing like any psychic’s tent I’d ever been in. This was reality in the worst possible way. Prophesy at the expense of a woman’s life.

“Can she hear us?” I shifted my gaze to Andrew. “Does she know we’re here?”

“Oh yes, and she’s thrilled. She’s already trying to communicate with me.” He closed his eyes then, and I waited, not really understanding what was going on. When he opened his eyes again moments later, he smiled. “Kelly has been having some trouble reading your future. Her images about you have been fuzzy. Just now she was telling me, other than how happy she is to meet you, that she still can’t get a strong read on you.” He frowned as he shifted his gaze back to her. “It’s really bothering her.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not really sure what I was doing to cause so much trouble. The psychic had told me that I was marked for death. Maybe the reason Kelly couldn’t read me was because I didn’t have a future. I opened my mouth to tell Andrew about the psychic’s warning when he raised his hand to me and motioned for silence.

Moments later he smiled. “She says that I need to reassure you now…that as usual, I’ve blundered the intro. She says she’s really happy that you’ve agreed to come to visit. That her not being able to see your future is not your fault, and”—his smiled widened—“I’m sorry if I made you feel like it was.”

I shook my head and waved his apology away.

“She also wants me to tell you that she can sense your frustration and hesitation to commit to Cal. She wants you to know that she didn’t mess up that part of her prophesy. You and Cal are meant to be together. You are his Huntress. She knows that you can feel a connection to him and she wants you to try not to hold back. Live with your heart.”

My temper flared, my face flushed, but I tamped it back down. The last thing I needed was to freak out all over this helpless invalid. “But Cal won’t—”

“Cal doesn’t want to get hurt and he doesn’t want to hurt you. Kelly says that’s classic, isn’t it? Classic macho man stuff.” He shrugged as he looked back down at her. “She says that you could change that if you wanted.”

I scoffed. “Like convince him to love me?” I shook my head. “This is the craziest situation. I don’t even know you people. I hardly know Cal.” I laid my hand over my heart. “I feel something for him that I can’t explain, and I’m so angry that he doesn’t want to give it back to me. That he’s denying his feelings. It’s insulting, and whether or not he wants to hurt me, rejecting me, treating me like a whore
does
hurt.” I raised my hand to halt Andrew’s protest, then tapped my fingers over my heart again. “I can see, I can feel, that he’s denying his feelings and I know that he’s not totally lying to me. He really doesn’t want to hurt me. But he’s also holding something back. I don’t know what exactly, but I can feel it. He’s not being completely honest.” I ran my hand through my hair. “It’s all so bizarre. There’s no such thing as instant love or love at first sight, but sometimes I feel…oh, well, it’s just stupid, it doesn’t exist. It isn’t real.”

Andrew raised his gaze to meet mine. “Before yesterday, did you think there was such a thing as werewolves?”

I frowned. “It’s not the same thing.”

Andrew nodded. “There’s magic here, Morgan. A legacy that you don’t understand, that you won’t understand until you are bonded and become the Huntress. I know that it seems too difficult now, but after the bonding, it will all be easy. Your strength, your knowledge, your powers will all meld together, and it will just…make sense.” He sighed. “I know that Cal seems like a total asshole for telling you that he can’t develop feelings for you. I also know that he has good reasons for doing it. But those reasons are for him to tell you, not me.” He shrugged. “Kelly thinks it’s not going to matter in the end. She thinks that Cal will do what is right no matter what. She thinks men are stupid sometimes…she wanted me to tell you that, those exact words.” He smirked. “She also wanted me to tell you that Cal doesn’t trust himself, but Kelly trusts in him to do the right thing.”

I stared back at Andrew as he grew quiet and closed his eyes once again, sensing a double meaning behind his words.
Everyone in this place speaks in riddles. He’ll do the right thing. What the eff does that mean?

When Andrew opened his eyes again, he leaned forward and planted a chaste kiss on Kelly’s forehead. I felt pity for their situation. Pity mingled with something else, something like longing. Andrew clearly loved this woman, loved her with all of his heart. He didn’t deny his feelings for her no matter what the cost, no matter how much it pained him or how much he lost. I envied that. I wanted a man to look at me the way Andrew looked at Kelly, even with her being unmoving and physically unavailable. I wanted that kind of unconditional love and I wouldn’t accept anything less.

“Cal might have his reasons,” I said. “He might be lying to himself or not trust himself, but I’ve learned something in my life that I will not forget. Men cannot be changed. They cannot be made to feel something that they don’t want to feel. I’m not going to have sex with him out of duty or as some lusty byproduct of bonding with him. I deserve better than that and with all due respect, if Kelly was any kind of oracle, she would see that from a mile away. I will not bond with Cal, not while there’s a chance of anything more happening between us, not while he’s denying the possibility of anything more developing. I don’t need to have sex with him.”

Andrew’s smile reminded me of the one my mother had often given me. It was the kind of smile that was meant to placate a whining child. He reached his hand across the bed as he moved down the length of it. “Why don’t we go and see the training facilities. You need to know where they are regardless. You’ll have to start training your body so that you’re in better shape to defend yourself, with or without the bonding.”

I eyed his hand suspiciously, sensing once again that there was some hidden meaning behind his words. His smile widened, losing that parental edge and my reservations slipped away. What harm could there be in visiting the gym? I lowered my guard and slipped my hand into Andrew’s
.

What could possibly have been going through my mind when I agreed to come to the training room?
I shifted my gaze from one chiseled, muscle-bound man to the next, gawking down the line like some horny teenager. There were ten in total. All deliciously shirtless, wearing loose-fitting track pants, bodies gleaming with sweat as they moved in unison, Cal in the lead, through what Andrew informed me was a karate kata.