Читать книгу About Face - Amy Lee Burgess - Страница 6

Chapter 2

The room glowed with candlelight. Golden light shimmered against the soft cream paneling and danced in circles across the ceiling.

Six people stood in the front of the room before Kathy Manning, who was dressed in her ceremonial Councilor’s robe of dark blue trimmed with white.

As the highest-ranked Regional Councilor in attendance, she would perform the bonding ceremony.

Her serene expression gave no clue to her actual feelings. It had to hurt to be the one to preside over her ex-lover’s bonding ceremony to someone else he’d just met two months previously. Someone he couldn’t keep his eyes off.

Jason Allerton was smitten, there was no escaping that fact. How I hadn’t seen it before tonight, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps he hadn’t allowed himself to look at Lauren the way he did tonight.

They were the center duo, facing one another hand in hand, and simply drank each other in as the candlelight enveloped them in a soft, amber glow.

The other duos were younger—first-time bonding for both of them—but Lauren and Jason were the ones who drew our gazes.

The families and packs of the duos stood behind them as witnesses, and beyond us were several round tables with pristine white tablecloths and summer floral centerpieces. The sweet fragrance of tiger lilies perfumed the room.

I’d managed to hop in the shower, wash my hair, throw on my new red dress and black spike pumps. My hair had even cooperated with the curling iron, although I was pretty sure all the curl would fall out halfway through dinner. It didn’t matter.

When I took a deep breath, I must have made a wistful sound because my cousin Faith, who stood beside me, moved closer so her shoulder brushed mine. She took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

I hadn’t seen her in two months, and during that time her pregnancy had started to show. She had a definite baby bump beneath the wine-colored Empire maternity gown draping her body. She placed my hand across her abdomen, and I felt a tiny, fluttering movement. Had that been a kick?

“My God,” I whispered and turned to her in excited shock.

“I know.” Her whole face glowed. She was beautiful. “Grandmother Carolyn says it’s twins, Stanzie. Can you believe it?”

“Twins!” I pressed my forehead to hers and grinned. “You are so lucky, Faith.”

“Scott wants two boys, but I think one of each would be nice.” The babies, or at least one of them, fluttered beneath my hand again, and Faith went still so I could feel it better.

“Alpha female, surely the Pack prospers because of you.” The words were traditional, but I’d never said them before. They felt strangely right to say to my cousin who was Alpha of my birth pack.

“Someday I’ll say the same to you.” She seemed convinced, but I wasn’t. Hard to be Alpha without a bond mate.

I twined my fingers with hers as Kathy began the ceremony.

Halfway through I started to cry, thoughts of Murphy and Lauren and Jason tangled together in my head, impossible to sort out and laced with a bittersweet ache that tingled through my whole body.

Scott Charest—my cousin’s bond mate, Kathy Manning’s Advisor, and my friend—wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close. Faith kept hold of my hand. Alan Perrault, another friend from Mayflower, moved close behind me, his body warm against mine, his breath soft in my ear.

I remembered us in bed together, the first step of his wolf’s initiation, and leaned back against him as Lauren fastened her new bond pendant around her throat and Jason Allerton did the same with his.

* * * *

After the ceremony we feasted on baked stuffed shrimp and Maine lobster. I sat at the table with Jason and Lauren, Faith, Scott, Shane, Samantha and Todd.

Todd was Faith’s father and Shane and Samantha were his bond mates.

The rest of Mayflower ate at nearby tables. No one from Silverlake was present, and I wondered if that bothered Jason.

He and I sat on either side of Lauren, but we didn’t talk. He and my mother were very wrapped up in each other, but he made the effort to chat with Faith, who sat on his other side.

Lauren had chosen the baked stuffed shrimp for an entrée, as had Jason, but I saw how she cast wistful looks at my lobster.

I put one of my lobster claws on her plate, took half a baked stuffed shrimp in return, and her face lit up.

“I couldn’t decide what to order,” she confided in my ear with a little laugh. “So I ordered what Jason did, but when the lobsters arrived, I realized I should have ordered that instead.”

“Always order something different than what Jason does,” I suggested. “Then you can share, and you won’t be disappointed. That’s what I always did when Murphy and I went out to dinner.”

I bit my lip as I remembered the many restaurants we’d visited on our road trip from Texas to Massachusetts. We’d gotten to know each other as bond mates during that time.

We’d made a thirty-hour drive last nearly four weeks. If we liked a city or town, we’d stayed there for as long as we liked.

We’d remained nearly a week in New Orleans. It was there we’d figured out the rhythms of each other’s bodies and the sex became intense. The third day there we hadn’t even gotten out of bed until after sunset, and then only because we were starving.

It was there, too, we’d vowed to share our food and always order something different so we could try more than one thing. From appetizers to desserts, we never had the same thing, and we shared it all.

“I wish you’d work things out with him,” Lauren whispered as she dipped a succulent piece of lobster claw into the melted butter on my plate. I moved it to her plate because I never put butter on my lobster. I loved the taste of it plain.

“Who?” I pretended ignorance and she sighed.

“I know you’re thinking about him. You just said his name. Murphy, your bond mate. You always get that same starry-eyed, wistful look on your face when you think about him.”

“Wren.” I wished I’d ordered wine with my meal but I hadn’t because I was still slightly hungover.

“I know you don’t like to talk about him, but I think it’s a shame. It must be really hard to see all the duos and triads together tonight and be alone.”

I winced, the ache inside me so raw it hurt.

“I’m fine,” I gave her a bright smile that didn’t fool her. “Anyway, tonight is about you. You and Jason and the other two duos who bonded tonight. You better drag him on the dance floor because I want to see if he can keep up with you.”

Lauren giggled and the whole table looked indulgently at her. Sometimes I couldn’t believe this perfectly stunning woman was my mother. She seemed so unearthly, and I was so very grounded and real. It was as if a fairy had given birth to a peasant girl.

My appetite gone, I gave Lauren the other lobster claw and excused myself to go to the bar for a drink. Hangover be damned.

* * * *

Once there, I pulled a Lauren and couldn’t decide between a mixed drink or wine.

The back of my neck tingled as someone moved close behind me and then came to stand beside me. Scott. He gave me a grin and stood close so our shoulders and hips brushed together.

He studied the twinkling bottles of alcohol behind the bar and frowned. Then he saw the beer and wine list and brightened.

“Two Labatts.” Scott decided for me, and the bartender bent beneath the bar to retrieve the bottles from the mini fridge.

When she’d opened them and moved down the bar to attend to another guest, Scott turned to me and said, “Hunt with me tomorrow night.”

My stomach flip-flopped, and it wasn’t all due to the fact Scott was gorgeous as hell. It mostly had to do with waking my wolf now that she was supposedly normal.

“What if she won’t come out?” Scott was possibly the only person on Earth I felt comfortable with talking about my wolf. Comfortable was not even a very good word. He’d been there the last time I’d tried to shift and couldn’t do it.

“It was the pack bond holding your wolf back, Stanzie.” He nudged my beer closer to my hand with his bottle. Ice-cold condensation dripped down the brown glass. “It’s gone now. She’ll come out.”

I cast him a doubting look.

“And if she doesn’t, I’ll be there with you. Look, we’ll shift away from the rest of the hunt. That way if there’s an issue, no one will know. But there won’t be.”

Shift away from everyone else. I took a sip from the bottle. The beer tasted bitter as my thoughts. I hadn’t participated in many Regional hunts, but when I had, I’d always shifted away from everyone else and gone the opposite direction, with Grey, Vaughn and Elena, my former pack mates, chasing after me.

Now my wolf was theoretically normal, and Scott, unwittingly, proposed the same basic concept. Screw that.

“I don’t know.” I took another sip and watched as his gray eyes filled with both compassion and exasperation. “What about Faith?”

“Have you seen her?” he said and then laughed. “She’s not shifting again until after the twins are born. She says it’s too uncomfortable.”

There was no medical reason to avoid shifting during pregnancy, but most women did prefer to avoid it after they got bigger.

“Why don’t you go with someone who you know will be a good hunt partner,” I suggested.

His seductive mouth twitched. “That would be you.”

“We may be good Advisor partners, but I don’t know about hunting, Scott.”

“Well, I do.” He put his hand on my arm, and the weight of it was so soothing I wanted to melt.

“You smell good, you know that?” I didn’t mean to say it, but the words escaped me anyway. He did. He smelled like Pack.

“Faith got me this new cologne. Made me wear it tonight.” Scott rolled his eyes.

“Pussy,” I said and he grinned.

“Hey, if it gets you to agree to hunt with me, I’m fine with it.” He gave my arm a squeeze. “At least give it some thought, Stanz, okay?”

I nodded, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t do it.

“You’re going to have to do it sometime,” was his parting shot before he walked away. “Why not do it with a friend who understands?”

“I thought you were such a dick when I first met you.” I shook my head in amazement.

Laughter was his only response.

I turned back to the bar and squared my shoulders. Maybe Scott was right. Hell, he was. I had to face my wolf. If the worst happened and she wouldn’t come out, Scott would be the only one to see it. And he understood. He was Alpha of Mayflower. He knew how my father’s pack bond had dominated the pack for thirty years and made everyone who’d activated the bond into slaves. I’d run from my birth pack and never activated the pack bond. It had remained an invisible wall between my psyche and my wolf. The reason she’d been childish and stubborn and so different from everybody’s wolves was because she couldn’t get past the pack bond.

For years I’d let her do whatever she wanted. I’d never tried to reach her. I hadn’t known about the pack bond. I’d just thought she’d been different and hadn’t wanted to force her to be like other wolves because I didn’t think she could.

Then I’d met Murphy and he convinced me she could be changed. From the start my wolf had adored his wolf. For him, she’d tried to change, but had been so frustrated because of the unactivated pack bond. The more we pushed, the more she suffered. She’d been so mad at me and her circumstances. She refused to come out the last time I’d tried to shift. But there was nothing holding her back now. Scott was right.

If we hunted together, she’d come out, she’d be normal. And what the hell would that be like? Even if she did look for Murphy’s wolf and he wasn’t there, she could handle it as a normal wolf. After all, I was handling it as a normal human.

I snorted and drank more of my damn beer.

* * * *

“Can I talk to you?” Jason Allerton approached the dessert table at the same time I did. Neither of us was aware of the other until we both reached for the same piece of cheesecake.

When I spoke, he let his hand drop away in an indication I should take the cake.

“Please?” I added when he didn’t say anything.

Behind us the dance floor was full of couples moving sinuously under flashing strobe lights. Faith’s laughter rang out above the music as she and Scott danced together and he whispered crazy, naughty things in her ear.

Alan hadn’t left the floor since the music started. He’d had a different partner for nearly every song, including me once. He was full of confidence, brimming over with excitement.

“I’ve met more people tonight than I have my entire frigging life, Stanzie,” he’d confided to me as we’d danced together.

“Found a hunt partner?” I’d teased, and he blushed.

“She asked me,” he whispered, awestruck, as if the thought of it was too weird to be possible.

He’d changed so much from the frightened, sheltered boy he’d been when I’d visited Mayflower two months ago.

“Who’s initiating your wolf?” I’d asked him and he’d grinned.

“Dorothy. Can you believe it? She asked me if she could. She remembered when I’d asked her and she’d turned me down because of the pack bond. But there is no pack bond now, so she asked me. It’s going great, Stanzie.”

I remembered I’d told Scott about Alan’s preference for a teacher and wondered if he’d had a hand in Dorothy’s recent offer. I suspected he had. He was a good Alpha.

The slice of cheesecake was the last one. Bright red strawberries decorated the creamy frosting, and I could smell their juice above all the other desserts. My mouth watered at the thought of sinking my teeth into one of the plump, ripe berries.

“Not tonight.” Jason’s voice was cold, as if he didn’t even know me and I was some stranger who wanted an audience when he had better things to do. Right now better things to do translated into what dessert should he choose now that he couldn’t have the cheesecake.

“Take it.” I pushed the cheesecake in his direction. “I bet you’re getting it for Wren. Cheesecake’s her favorite. She never got it much. Paul preferred chocolate cream pie.”

He pulled his hand back from the piece of chocolate cream pie he’d selected and I walked away.

* * * *

I needed air so I pushed open the reception hall door and walked out into the salty breeze.

A wooden deck overlooked the sandy beach. Moonlight streamed down upon the glassy black waves and made a path of shimmering silver.

A woman stood by the stairs that led down to the sand and gripped the rail, her head bowed. She had pixie-short brown hair highlighted with streaks of dark gold and wore a nude-colored sheath dress with a black colorblock hem and black Jimmy Choo pumps. Diamond drop earrings glittered from her earlobes.

She’d taken off her ceremonial robe and looked small and vulnerable as she huddled against the rail.

“Kathy,” I whispered and she swung around guiltily as if she’d committed a crime instead of gazed at the ocean.

“I did the right thing.” She made no pretense that I hadn’t caught her almost in tears. “But it’s still hard to watch the way he looks at her. He used to look at me that way.”

Before I could stop myself, I went to her and put my arms around her. The strength of her return embrace hurt, but I held her as she buried her face in my neck and we rocked together.

Our eyes were wet when we drew apart, but some of the wild sadness had lifted from her face.

“It would never have worked.” Her tone was conversational as she slipped her shoes from her feet and waited for me to do the same thing. We left them on the deck and descended the wooden stairs to the rough sand.

In common accord, we moved toward the black expanse of the restless ocean, which muttered secrets to itself that grew louder as we approached.

“He wanted me and Matt to leave Darkhunt and join Silverlake. I would have had to leave the New England Regional Council. He told me he believed I would be appointed to the First Western Regional Council, but he couldn’t guarantee it. He knew damn well Matt wouldn’t leave Darkhunt. He was counting on that, counting on us severing the bond. He had no real interest in a triad but was willing to compromise on that for me. His exact words. Can you just hear him saying it, Stanzie? The colossal gall of the man.” Kathy linked her arm with mine as we turned parallel to the ocean and continued to walk. We left bare footprints in the wet sand behind us.

“The First Western Regional Council is bigger and more influential than the New England one.” I spoke before I thought as usual. Kathy just laughed.

“Do you really think I would have been appointed? As Jason Allerton’s bond mate I would have had two strikes against me as the Council leaned backward to avoid making it seem as if they took orders from Jason and the Great Council. And the third strike would have been that I knew absolutely nobody in the region. How exactly was a stranger supposed to swoop in and become a Council member?”

“You could have pitched it as a fresh perspective that wasn’t jaded with knowledge of the packs in the area.”

Kathy laughed again and skipped nimbly over a slimy string of seaweed.

“I probably could have done that,” she admitted. “But I have a life here. Should I give it up for him? Where was his compromise?”

“Matt.”

“Who would never have come. Ah, I do like talking with you, Stanzie. You make me feel much better and reinforce my conviction that I did the right thing.”

“I’m not his Advisor anymore,” I blurted and was forced to stop dead when she dragged me to a halt. “I quit because I was so pissed at him for bonding with my mother. And he let me.”

She forced me to tell her the whole story, and her blue-gray eyes grew darker and darker with every word. By the end of it she wanted to charge back to the reception hall and confront him. I grabbed her by the arm. It was like trying to hold back a whirlwind.

“I thought you’d laugh at me and tell me what an idiot I was.” I hung on grimly to her arm, even though she’d stopped her struggle to break free.

“You are an idiot,” she said. “But so is he. Does everyone around you eventually lose their minds, Stanzie? First Liam and now Jason.”

When I heard Murphy’s name, I let go and turned around so I could continue pacing along the shore. Kathy heaved a frustrated sigh, caught between returning to blast Jason and lecturing me.

She chose the lecture. I knew she would.

“Now it’s more vital than ever you get your butt to Dublin and fix things with him. Do you know that exasperating man has changed his phone number? I tried to call and give him a piece of my mind and got some strange man in Revere instead. I suppose it makes sense that he wouldn’t have his American phone number anymore now that he’s gone back to Dublin, but it’s still very annoying not to be able to get in touch with him. What did you do anyway, Stanzie, to provoke Liam into bolting for Ireland?”

“You know, that’s just like you to take his side of it and not mine,” I snapped over my shoulder. “Why does it have to be something I did and not something he did?”

“He’s the one who left.”

“That’s just stupid,” I said, which only made her smile one of her Kathy Manning patented smiles that always sent me sailing over the edge of my temper. “For your information, I didn’t do anything except possibly give him shit because he didn’t stay with me during the tribunal. And everybody, including you, you hypocrite, told me over and over he was wrong and I was right about that. So what? I’m not allowed to get mad at the bastard? Ever? Or he’s justified in walking out on me? That’s not fucking fair, is it?”

I tried in vain to modulate my damn voice, but it was impossible. The goddamn ocean amplified it and sent it shrieking back at me until I wanted to block my ears.

Kathy’s smile never faltered. “When he walked out, what did you do? Stand there and let him?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I knew I sounded sullen and moody, but fuck it.

“Of course not,” she said with an annoying-as-hell little laugh. I flipped her the bird, then stomped off. This time she didn’t follow.

* * * *

Brooding alone in my room sucked. Dissatisfaction seethed within me until I wanted to punch something. Instead I pulled on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt and scrubbed the makeup from my face. Then I paced the confines of the little motel room that had become mine by default. Lauren’s things were gone, only mine were left, and in two days I would drive back to Boston alone.

I couldn’t sustain my fury but self-pity only annoyed me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. So when someone knocked on my door, I sprang to open it with a small cry of relief.

I braced myself in case it was Kathy, but when I opened the door, I saw Faith and Scott instead.

She looked tired but determined, and he had a grin I didn’t altogether trust.

“Can we come in?” Faith asked, and I stepped away from the door.

Their bond pendants winked in the overhead lights. I was supposed to wear mine since it was a Regional. Ever since I’d broken the clasp of my silver chain, I’d kept it in the small pewter box Murphy had given me the night we’d bonded in Paris. A hundred million years ago it seemed, although it had barely been nine months in reality.

“Look, if you came to talk me into shifting with Scott tomorrow night, save your breath. I’ll do it, okay?” Up until I said it, I hadn’t known what would fly out of my mouth. But once said I could not take it back, nor did I intend to.

Shifting was another step I needed to take to reclaim my life, and I damn well was going to take it.

“Whoa.” Scott’s face filled with pleasant surprise, and his cocky grin became genuine.

Faith took my hand. “That’s great, Stanzie, but it’s not what we came to discuss.”

She examined my face as if I were under a microscope. Her scrutiny exposed my rawness. I was not at all sure I wanted to hear what she had to say.

“You need to go to Dublin.”

For a wild moment I almost laughed. Of all the things they could have said to me, this was what they’d come to say?

“I had this dream,” began Faith, and a blasting shock of coldness permeated my bones.

“Murphy? Was it about Murphy?”

Faith dreamed the future sometimes. Not often, but there had been enough episodes during my childhood where Faith confidently predicted what would happen and it had that I’d learned to pay attention whenever she said, I had this dream—because inevitably what she dreamed came to pass.

Once she dreamed our pack mate Darren would get caught robbing someone’s house, and three nights later the homeowner walked in unexpectedly, and Darren had barely escaped before the police arrived.

Another time she’d dreamed Samantha, her father’s bond mate, would have a baby boy and name him Alan and he would have blond hair and blue eyes. Eight and a half months later, she had.

I always tried to be skeptical about Faith’s predictions. For instance, the law of averages demanded that cat burglar Darren’s luck run out at least a few times. That it had a few nights after Faith said it would didn’t definitively prove she was precognitive.

And it was a fifty-fifty shot Samantha would have a boy, and since she and Shane, the third member of her father’s triad, had blond hair and blue eyes, what else would he have? Perhaps Faith had heard them talking about names for potential children.

At the time of Faith’s dream, Sam had been Alpha female, and the whole point of being Alpha is to procreate. How far-fetched was it for Faith to have predicted a baby boy?

However, no one knew Samantha was pregnant when Faith related her dream to me, and no one knew for sure whether Shane or Todd was the father until after Alan was born and looked like a carbon copy of Shane.

“Tell me about your dream,” I demanded. Why would I need to go to Dublin? Faith’s dreams were indiscriminate; she foretold both the pleasant and the not so pleasant future. I wondered which category this dream fit.

Scott’s face held no clues except that he was skeptical. Enough uncertainty shone in his eyes to let me know his doubt was eroding. Faith’s accuracy tended to do that. I wondered what she had dreamed for him that had come true.

Faith frowned, and I went cold again. It wasn’t going to be good, I just knew it. She hadn’t had some hearts-and-roses reunion dream. No, of course not.

“I was tired from the party, and I took a nap about an hour ago and dreamed. I woke up and knew I had to come tell you about it. My dream didn’t make much sense, but I remember he had an Irish accent. I can’t remember much of what your bond mate said except that once he said, Now do you believe in me again? You were there, and you were crying, but I don’t remember why. You said, Yes, I believe in you. I belong to you. And he smiled, but it was so wistful and haunting.” Determination filled Faith’s voice. “I think it was a dream about your bond mate and how you need to be together.”

I frowned. I belong to you? That wasn’t something I’d say to Murphy, but it did remind me of something that had been said to me once. The bastard.

Suspicion made my voice prickly. “What did he look like? My bond mate.”

Faith frowned in concentration as she struggled to bring up the dream memory. Scott shifted his weight and sighed.

“Dark curly hair. Oh, and one blue eye, one brown eye. He looked like a really nice guy, Stanzie.” Faith bit her lip and might have gone on, but I interrupted her.

“It wasn’t a dream about Murphy. That’s Paddy O’Reilly you’re describing, my Alpha. And I’d never say that to him. I don’t belong to him, the lying bastard.”

“Whoa, are you saying the Alpha of Mac Tire has curly dark hair and different-colored eyes?” Scott was shaken. I nodded.

“Goddamn it,” he said. “Faith, she must have told you about him.”

“No,” Faith denied. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he almost, but not quite, shrugged it away. “Now do you believe I dreamed I would meet you at the Regional? I did, you know. Down to the Red Sox baseball cap you wore to the meet and greet.”

“Bullshit,” he whispered, but more of his skepticism fell away. He took a deep breath.

“Maybe you’d better go, Stanzie,” he said, and my heart performed a strange dance in my chest.

“Paddy O’Reilly is a lying bastard.” I was furious with Faith’s damn dream. I would never tell that man I belonged to him. Ever. Paddy had betrayed me when he left me behind. He told me I was family and then not even a week later walked away.

Scott recovered his equilibrium and grinned. “Jesus, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about this guy?”

“Shut up, Charest,” I snapped, and he winked at me.

“Maybe I should try that line out on some of the Mayflower ladies. You belong to me!” He made his voice sound like Bela Lugosi’s in Dracula.

“Fuck off, Scott.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the response I’d probably get. I guess I’m no Irish heartthrob Alpha, huh?” He laughed. But he sobered at the look on my face.

“It’s not funny.” I was so pissed at Paddy if he’d been in the room with me I would have spat at him. Scott’s lame sense of humor only made my humiliation worse.

“Okay, okay, I’m getting that now. God, Stanzie, it was just a joke. How could you take a line like that seriously? Oh, hell, you did. He said it, you took it seriously, and he fucked it all up. Now you’re going to kick my ass, right?”

“Just stop talking about it,” I rumbled, so close to tears I could taste them. I belong to you, my ass, Paddy O’Reilly.

Faith’s expression was somber. Alarm bells zinged down my spine, and I tried to fight them. There was something about the dream she wasn’t telling me, I just knew it. “Stanzie, I’m sorry. I really thought it was about your bond mate. I still think you need to go to Dublin. I woke up thinking that. Just because he’s not your bond mate doesn’t change that. He’s your Alpha, lying bastard or not. Maybe you’d better skip the hunt and go tomorrow. I think he needs you.”

“Needs me?” I scoffed, but a thread of disquiet wormed down my spine. Goddamn Faith and her stupid-ass dreams. I was not going to Dublin.

Faith gave me one last look before she took Scott by the hand and led him out the door.

I still think you need to go to Dublin. Faith’s words reverberated in my head until I wanted to scream. Need. Why did she have to say need? Was he in trouble? Was something wrong?

“I do not belong to you, Paddy O’Reilly,” I announced, but even to my ears my voice sounded weak and unconvinced.

Goddamn dreams.