Tales of the Otherworld (29 page)

She met my gaze. “Understanding doesn’t always mean accepting, Clay.”

The knot in my stomach tightened, but I pushed on. “I know. But just—just come with me, and then you can make up your mind.”

A hesitation that seemed to go on forever. Then she nodded.

T
HIS WAY.” CLAY TOOK MY HAND AND LED ME
off the driveway onto the lawn.

It was past ten at night and the yard was dark, with a half-moon lighting the way. Clay’s eyes glowed, like a boy returning home after his first summer camp. Still holding my hand, he ducked through the evergreens, following a faint path. I could picture him as a child taking this same route, his secret trail home.

Home.
His
home. I swore I could feel him, embedded in this place like the well-trodden pathway etched on the lawn.

We turned a corner and he swung behind me, grabbed me around the waist, and held me still. I could feel his breath against my hair, the pound of his heart. Then he eased us to the left, past the trees…and there it was. Stonehaven.

A house with a name. I’d only ever heard of such things in books. An ancestral home. A place you grew up in and died in, as had your family before you and as would your family to come. A place so important, such an integral part of your family, that it needed its own name.

If anyone had asked me to picture a house called Stonehaven, the one before me would have been exactly what I would have imagined. A stone house over two stories tall, as plain and sturdy as the material it was made of. A haven of stone, like some residential fortress tucked away from the world, surrounded by its cushion of lawn and trees.

“You like it?”

When I looked at him, I saw how important it was that I liked it. This was where he wanted us to live after we were married. Here, with Jeremy.
As much as I loved the concept of a family home, when it came to the reality…well, I hadn’t been so sure. I knew how close Clay was to his guardian, but to set up married life in your father’s home…? As I looked up at this house, though, and looked over at Clay, my gut ached with longing.

“I love it,” I said.

He smiled, a smile so wide that it cast my doubts into exile. I smiled back, and he grabbed my hand and led me to the front door.

Those doubts resurfaced as we stood on the front step, doorbell rung, awaiting a response. Clay’s reason for ringing the bell was the same he’d given for taking a cab on the long and expensive ride from the airport.

“I want to surprise him,” he’d said.

“He doesn’t know we’re coming?”

“It’s Easter. Of course he knows I’m coming home. It’s
when
that’s the question.”

Of course, he knows
I’m
coming home. I hadn’t missed that. Yet Clay was the one who’d be expected each Easter, not Clay and his fiancée, so the phrasing wasn’t inappropriate.

I could have squelched my doubts with a single question: Does Jeremy know you’re bringing me? But I told myself that was ridiculous. Clay wouldn’t bring me home without telling Jeremy. This visit was so important that he’d never risk screwing it up like that.

Clay was lifting his hand to knock again when the door swung open. I braced myself, then relaxed. This wasn’t Jeremy. I hadn’t seen pictures of Clay’s guardian—Clay kept only sketches Jeremy had done of their friends, and there were no self-portraits. Yet I knew this wasn’t him.

As Clay’s surrogate father, Jeremy had to be at least in his late forties and this man, without a wrinkle on his lean, angular face, or a strand of gray in his black hair, couldn’t have been more than thirty. I mentally flipped through the portraits on Clay’s wall. Jorge? The friend who’d moved to Europe a few years ago? The coloring was right, but the face—

“Hey, Jer,” Clay said, his voice tight with strain. “Aren’t you going to let us in?”

I blinked and looked at the man again. It couldn’t be…But as I saw the look on his face, his shock double my own, I knew the truth.
This
was
Jeremy. And not only hadn’t he known I was coming…he hadn’t known I existed.

Those next few minutes were a blur. Jeremy backed up to let us in and Clay performed introductions, both Jeremy and me struggling to overcome our shock and give some appropriately polite response. Then Clay grabbed our bags, mumbled something about seeing Jeremy in the morning, and rushed us up the stairs.

He ushered me into the first bedroom on the left. I’d often wondered what his room here would look like—he kept his apartment and office so utilitarian—but now that I was there, the room could have been empty for all I noticed. The moment the door closed, I turned on him.

“How could you?” I whispered.

He reached for me, but I backed away.

“How could you?” I said again, rage turning the whisper to a hiss. “To bring me here—show up on his doorstep—without a word of warning to him—to
me
…”

Clay said nothing. In his eyes, I saw desperation and shame. And fear—fear that he was losing me. He looked so lost that I had an overwhelming urge to hug him and tell him everything would be okay. He loved me. Sincerely and deeply, and I so desperately wanted that to be enough.

How many times had I seen women in destructive relationships? Friends, classmates, foster mothers. I’d seen women battered by abuse—physical, sexual, and psychological—and when asked why they stayed, so often their only defense was “I know he loves me.” Until now, I’d never understood how you could cling to those words, that belief, and use it to wash away every misgiving.

I had other talismans, too. He doesn’t drink. Doesn’t use drugs. Doesn’t gamble. Doesn’t even smoke. He’s never cheated on me. Never even looks at other women. He’s never insulted me, degraded me, pushed me to do something I didn’t want to do. He’s never hit me. Never threatened to…except for last weekend, when he’d turned on me, hand raised, eyes blind with rage, knuckles brushing my cheek. But that had been a mistake. A mistake …

So many excuses. Talismans to ward off the fear and doubt.

“So …” I said. “We’re here. You said you’d give me something when we got here.”

“Hmm?”

“An explanation.”

“Right. I will. Just as soon as—” Doubt flickered over his face. Then he shook his head. “No, I’ll do it now. We’ll—”

A rap at the door. Clay tensed. His gaze cut to me. A pause, then another knock, louder. I motioned for him to answer it. He paused, then called, “Come in.”

Jeremy eased the door partly open, but stayed in the hall. He nodded my way, before turning to Clay.

“I’d like to speak to you.”

“We were just—”

“It’s getting late and I’m sure Elena is tired from the trip. I’ll keep it short.”

Clay hesitated for at least thirty seconds. Then he swallowed, murmured something to me, and left, closing the door behind him.

J
EREMY LED ME INTO THE STUDY. THEN HE SAT
in his recliner and stared at the fire.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a few minutes.

“Sorry?” The word came slow, hesitant, as if spoken in a language he didn’t recognize. “I don’t even know what to say, Clay.”

Neither did I, so we sat in silence for at least ten minutes.

“I should have seen this coming,” he said finally. “I knew what you were looking for and when you came home, excited and happy, the obvious reason should have been that you’d found it. But the thought never crossed my mind because I thought you could never find what you wanted, because there were no female werewolves. A human mate? That never occurred to me. The way you feel about humans—”

“Elena’s different.”

“Different?” Again, that careful, confused enunciation. “How long have you—? No, I guess I already know that. Since fall. But all those months…And you never…Not a word. I can’t—” He let the sentence fall away.

“I knew I had to be sure—to be able to prove to you that I was sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“Of us. Elena and me. That we could make it work.”

“Make it work?” Enunciated even slower this time. He paused. Then his gaze swung to mine. “And how do you intend to make it work, Clay? By turning that poor girl into a werewolf?”

“No. Never. Not unless she—” I saw his look and backpedaled. “
Never.
I meant that we could be together without that.”

“With that secret between you?”

“There wouldn’t be any secrets.”

Jeremy’s hands clenched the chair arms so tight his knuckles went white. “You haven’t told—”

“Not yet. I’m telling her tonight.”

“No, you will not.” His gaze locked on mine. “You will not tell her, Clayton. That is an order.”

“You don’t understand. She—”

“No,
you
don’t understand. Maybe that’s my fault. All your life I’ve made allowances for you. Yes, maybe you need a mate, but do you think none of us ever feels that urge? If I’ve led you to believe that this is another concession to your nature that I’ll make, then that is my fault. But the misunderstanding is about to be corrected.”

He met my gaze, held it, and said, “The girl must go.”

“Never.”

The word came out as a snarl. Jeremy blinked, genuine fear flashing behind his eyes. Then he pulled himself up straight, face going as hard as his eyes.

“Don’t you ever challenge my word, Clayton.” His voice was low and sharp. “You have a choice to make and, as Alpha, it is my duty to insist that you make it. Either you end it with this girl or you take her and walk out that door—for good.”

I jerked back as if punched. I stared at him, unable to think, let alone speak.

Jeremy blinked, and in that tiny reaction, I knew that he hadn’t understood at all. He’d thought that if he put it that way, I’d capitulate. I might rage, throw a tantrum, break furniture, but there would be no question about which I would choose.

“Don’t make me. It would—” I swallowed hard. “
Please
don’t make me.”

An awkward moment of silence. I could feel his gaze on me, confused. Finally, he sighed, head falling forward, exhaustion etched on his face.

“Let me …” he began. “Give me some time to think about it. I’ll look after this for you.”

With that, he pushed to his feet and left the study.

As I climbed the stairs to my room, one refrain looped through my head: Jeremy will help. I repeated it over and over, not because I believed it, but because I so desperately needed to believe it.

Jeremy was more than my Alpha, more than my father. He was my savior. He’d rescued me from the bayou and he’d rescued me from every pitfall I’d stumbled into in the twenty years since. There had been nothing he wouldn’t do for me, no battle he wouldn’t fight for my sake, no obstacle he wouldn’t find a way to overcome. And so he would again.

Yet I knew I had found the one battle he couldn’t fight on my behalf. I’d broken Pack Law. The only way he could avoid punishing me, by death or exile, was to eliminate the threat. To clean up the mess I’d made.

He wouldn’t kill Elena. As long as there was another way, he wouldn’t take that step. But if I pushed him into a corner—

No, he still wouldn’t do it. Never.

As much as I told myself that he’d find some convoluted way around the Law, I knew that wouldn’t be it. He would solve my problem by making the choice for me. He’d convince Elena to leave me. And, as I walked into the bedroom and saw her in bed, gaze shuttered and cool, I knew he wouldn’t have to work very hard to do it.

For a long minute, we just stared at each other. Then she crossed her arms, fighting to keep her expression hard, to hide the tremble of her lips.

“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” she said.

Goddamn it, why
hadn’t
I told her? Told her yesterday, in the office, when I’d promised an explanation. Told her tonight, on the front yard, her eyes bright as she stared at the house.

I gritted my teeth and tried to force my brain past Jeremy’s command, but it wouldn’t budge. He’d expressly forbidden me to tell her, and I could find no loophole to slip through.

“I—I can’t.”

She lifted her hands to her face, shoulders crumpling. I hurried to the bed and sat beside her.

“I can’t tell you tonight, Elena. But I will tell you before this weekend is over. I swear it. If I don’t …” I took a deep breath. “I’ll lose you if I don’t. I know that. Believe me, I know it.”

She nodded, gaze down, her face as exhausted as Jeremy’s had been. Exhausted from worry and doubt and disappointment. Nick was right. I’d let everyone down. Betrayed them all.

My gut clenched and I reached for her, but she shook her head and moved to the other side of the bed and curled up with her back to me. A moment later, I heard a muffled sob. When I touched her shoulder, she shrank from my fingers, and all I could do was lie beside her, listening to her struggling not to cry.

More than once that endless night, I thought of waking her, begging her to pack her things and come away with me. To leave here. Get someplace safe, where we could sort all this out. But each time I reached to wake her, Jeremy’s words stopped my hand.

If I left, would he think I’d chosen exile? If he did, could I ever come back? Banishment would destroy me, just as sure as losing Elena would. My Pack and my mate—two equal commitments, an impossible choice. I had to find another way.