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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

He was dry and warm and bundled in bed, but he wasn’t safe. Not yet.

In the dregs of sleep, Allen had heard one set of footsteps coming and going and a muted conversation, something about pajamas and hot toddies. There’d been the occasional creak of the desk chair, except it wasn’t by the desk anymore. It was beside his bed, its occupant shifting during their vigil.

He smelled her before he fully roused. Sunlit water and flowers. Lilac .

Allen opened his eyes.

It was morning. She’d stayed beside him all night.

Lilac perched on the chair, feet propped on the bed frame so her thighs could act as a pedestal for the little book she was reading. She’s wearing my clothes .

In a surprisingly juvenile maneuver, his wolf sprang upright with a delighted yap, ears pricked and bushy tail wagging.

Down, boy , Allen chastised. She’d not ours yet, and . . .. And from what they’d done, they might’ve lost her forever. She was a Hawthorne, after all.

“Lilac. ”

Her ivy-green eyes flew from the pages to his face, worry and anguish swirling there with too much betrayal.

“Are you alright?” He kept his voice quiet, didn’t reach for her even though every fiber of his being and his wolf demanded he lurch upright and drag her into his arms. His training ruled him now, because it was what she needed.

She dropped her feet, creating more distance between them without scooting back her chair. The maelstrom of emotions lasted for only a second longer before he watched the ice queen take control. Cool and aloof, she regarded him with thinly veiled contempt.

It hurt more than that missile he’d taken to the chest.

From the little leather-bound book, Lilac retrieved something from where she’d secreted it between the front cover and the first page. Her photograph. The one he hadn’t burned.

Oh no.

“Explain. This,” she said crisply.

“I will, but please,” he pleaded, “answer this first. Are you three safe?”

She wet her lips and searched his face with that cutting look of hers, gauging his sincerity. Then her eyes shifted to the morning light glowing in the frost-covered windows. “We’re fine. Prue’s still unconscious and locked up in Zofia’s old suite in the cellar. Talia’s at home.”

“Did you call your elders?”

The corner of Lilac’s left eye twitched. “That’s two questions. And no. With Prue in custody, Boar did not see the need. And you? You slept like the dead.”

The snappish inquiry after his health gave him hope that he hadn’t lost her completely.

Allen sat up, realizing as the bed sheets slid down from his chin that he was naked. He kept them pooled around his lap as he reached up and touched his unmarred chest .

“You’re not even wounded, or even scarred,” she breathed in wonder.

“Shifter awesomeness,” he explained. “I’m perfectly fine.”

Apparently she was not in the mood for a teasing remark—he should’ve known—and she flicked the photograph onto the comforter like it was a hideous insect she was glad to be rid of. “Now this ?”

He leaned forward to retrieve the photograph. It was a little worse for wear, stained in addition to its worn edges, but her face was just as beautiful and sad as he’d remembered it. As it was now, behind that cool facade. He lifted his gaze, owing the woman before him his undivided attention.

“My name is Allen Chase,” he began, “and I’m a Nemean wolf.”

Lilac seemed startled, her mask slipping, then: “Any relation to a Lewellyn Chase?”

Now it was Allen’s turn to start in surprise. “My older brother.”

“And are you a low-life mercenary like him?” she spat.

Clearly her grandmother had employed his brother in the past.

“Retrieval specialist,” he corrected, trying to keep the heat from his voice. That was his brother, after all, and despite their differences, Allen looked up to him. “And no. Other than our last name and some shared physical traits due to our bloodline, I’m nothing like him. I’m Retired Corporal Allen J. Chase of the United States Army Special Forces. A former Green Beret.”

“You look a little young to be retired.”

A wry smile flickered across his face. “Well, technically I’m not retired . According to the Army, I was killed in action in Afghanistan. To most of this world, I don’t exist.”

“Why?” she blurted.

Allen fiddled with the photograph. “Because I showed them my true nature, my wolf, and they . . . shunned me for it.” His voice wavered. “And I’m terrified you’ll do the same.”

Lilac didn’t say anything, but she fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair.

“I’m sorry. You need an explanation, not pressure.” He sucked in a breath, letting it and the tension drain from his body. It was all or nothing. “I’m not sure what you know of Nemean wolves, but our bloodline is cursed. It’s said our ancestors drank the blood of the Nemean lion after Hercules killed it, assuming its power of invincibility. But the desecration of that magnificent beast came at a cost—for our greed, we were never to belong, even amongst our own kind. Lone wolves, eternal wanderers, without soulmates.

“But I didn’t want that to be me. I guess I was different, refusing to let my ancestry provide an excuse for my life. To victimize me. I saw what easy friendships looked like, what love looked like, and . . . I coveted it. As you can imagine, dating was off the table—a human would never understand me, and shifters don’t associate with lone wolves—but there was a fraternity that willingly accepted anyone who wished to serve. The military.

“Long story short, I joined the Army and worked my way into Special Forces. Seems I was particularly cut out for it. Green Berets are specialists in unconventional warfare—infiltration, guerrilla, training foreign troops. Manipulation. We’re the chameleons, and we’re very good at it.”

“I know.”

He winced, not looking at her. “My last mission sent my team and me to a desert town so far removed from civilization that it rarely found itself on any map. Probably for good reason, since it’s an oasis and water is more precious than oil or gold in the desert. But it was also a holy place, one now spoiled and corrupted. It was no longer a place of peace, but a tactical location to be exploited. A haven for criminals and murderers. We went there to free it, and, of course, ensure they remained more friendly to their protectors—the United States—than their own countrymen.”

Allen let the photograph drift from his fingers and leaned back against the headboard with a resigned sigh. “Timing is everything, and shortly after we landed and started ingratiating ourselves, opposition arrived. Intel had claimed such a force wouldn’t be arriving for a least a month, but it was a last-minute decision on their part. We weren’t fully engrained yet, the town torn in its allegiance, and we were driven into the desert. Hunted like wild beasts.”

He paused, feeling the phantom sting of sand against his skin, the stink of death, the howling of the wind, the sharp staccato of three-round bursts. His voice was barely audible. “We holed up in a cave during a sandstorm. But they knew the terrain better than we did and were picking us off at their leisure. Like it was sport . Hell, they’d killed Omar and Levi already. The rest of my brothers and I were dead men, or so they thought.

“I shifted. When someone like me is about to lose everything, you have no other choice than to blow your cover and risk it all for the ones you care about.”

Lilac’s face remained unreadable, but it was no longer as frosty as it was before.

Allen tensed, afraid to reveal the entire truth but knowing he had no other choice. She would see him as a monster after this. He swallowed past the lump in his throat—his heart, trying to strangle him—and forced out: “I killed them all. Every last one of them, even their horses. And not a scratch on me. The Nemean wolf hide is wholly impenetrable, so what are bullets and machetes compared to that?

“Then, I returned to the cave. As a wolf, obviously, because my rage was running hot and there still was a sandstorm going on out there. My brothers . . . well, it’s different watching werewolves in the movies and actually coming face-to-face with one.”

His hands clenched into fists, the fabric of the bedsheets actually tearing in his grip. “I’d just saved them, and they couldn’t fathom what I was. That I was wholly wolf and wholly their brother. ‘Brothers don’t keep these kinds of secrets,’ they told me. Maybe it was the shock, I don’t know. But they turned their backs on me. Couldn’t trust me after that.”

Allen lifted a hand to his eyes, dabbing away the color-correcting contact lenses. Lilac stared at their true color, a deep, luminous gold reminiscent of the treasure found in ancient pharaohs’ tombs.

“Couldn’t trust me, though I had put my whole life in their hands to defend and save theirs,” he whispered. “How does a man come back home and explain that his brothers no longer want to serve with him? That they won’t. Uncle Sam doesn’t like complications, and I was exactly that. So my unit suggested a solution: Corporal Allen J. Chase was to die in the desert, giving up his life in the defense of his unit. They would not breathe a word to anyone what they had witnessed, and they would take care of all the evidence. They funded my return to the States from their own pockets.”

“Allen, that’s . . ..”

Not looking at her, he waved away her pity, if that’s what it was. “I applied to the Coalition next, knowing it was a long shot, but there was nothing else for me. They were my last chance at belonging. Until . . . you.”

She swallowed, some of her composure slipping as her fingernails picked at the leather binding of the book she clutched in her lap. “The photograph?”

“You three were my mission,” he answered solemnly. “I was to come to Annesley Valley, infiltrate, and watch . Protect from afar.”

“Protect us from what?”

“It was suspected that with the coven’s prolonged absence in Redbud, someone might try to take advantage. A coup, for example.”

“A coven war,” she murmured, mostly to herself. She pursed her lips. “Prue Stonewell.” Then she shook her head, brown hair swishing across her shoulders. “But why would the Coalition concern itself with the likes of us? It’s a conglomerate of shifters . Hawthornes don’t—” She cut herself off. “We can take care of ourselves. Why would they feel the need to help us?”

“From what I’ve gathered, it has to do with your cousin, Meadow.”

“It usually does,” she muttered.

“Does it matter?” he ventured. “They sent me here to help you. To guard you. Lilac, I was never meant to truly meet you, or Rose, or Boar. I was never supposed to be the caretaker. To befriend you. You three were never to know I was even here, shifter or not. But fate”—he glanced down at his hand, the one he’d used to truly touch Lilac for the first time and elicit that green spark—“decided otherwise.”

He lifted the photograph. “I was trained to memorize a dossier and destroy it. I burned everything but this.”

“Why?” she whispered.

“Because I knew her. Knew her pain, how trapped she was. How desperate she was to be her true self and be accepted for it, not rebuked. For the longest time, I didn’t think that would ever be my destiny, but my toxic trait is my eternal optimism.” He chuckled once, a wry bark. “I wondered that if I could help her, even from afar, then at least one of us could be free. Free to leave the shadows and live in the light.” His throat seized. “A-and I understand if that life doesn’t include me. I don’t regret any of it, Lilac. You are worth it to me.”

She stiffened, her eyes glassy and bright. Her shoulders were so straight, her chin lifted like she was wearing armor. “What am I to you, Allen Chase? A mission? Validation?”

He blinked, taken aback by the insensitive words. Could she really doubt his commitment after all he’d said?

She’s hurting , his wolf said. Reassure her .

“You’re mine, Lilac,” he said gravely. “My mate, if you’ll have me back.”

She didn’t move. “Tell me like I’m someone who doesn’t know what that means.”

Allen softened, understanding. “I love you, Lilac Hawthorne. From this day until I draw my last breath, I am yours.”