Page 8

Every step away from the bonfire was torture.

My wolf growled and snarled within me, urging me to go back.

For some reason, he’d latched onto her—probably because I’d never fucked a girl I really cared about before, and as much of a brat as she was, I couldn’t deny that I cared about Julia.

I didn’t like leaving her alone in the dark any more than my wolf did, but I also knew it was for the best. Given a few hours to cool down, I was certain she’d see sense, let go of this ridiculous idea she had that we were mates.

She’d be embarrassed in the morning, but I had no intention of teasing her about it—I’d much rather forget she even suggested it—so that would work out for both of us.

It had been coming up on one o’clock when I’d bid goodnight to the last of the visiting Alphas and made my way down to the bonfire to apologize to Julia, so it must be at least two by now, and my friends and Betas had already made a start on collecting the discarded bottles and paper cups left by our guests.

“Look who finally appeared,” Leo teased, dropping his trash can to lean against the nearest table. Xander followed his lead, adopting a stern expression that was completely foreign on his normally smirking face.

“Dodging the cleanup, Ethan?” he said, in a disconcertingly good impression of his late father. “I’m disappointed in you.”

“Nah,” said Jace, who had snuck up behind me, poking me in the side with an empty bottle. “He found himself a girl.”

I couldn’t fault him for his conclusion, but this was the last path I wanted to go down.

I tried not to be indiscreet about my hook-ups—I wouldn’t give names or talk about specifics— but I’d never exactly been shy with my friends when I’d made a conquest. This, though—this was nothing to boast about.

I stayed silent, hoping they’d let the matter drop, but I had no such luck.

“So, was she cute?” Jace prompted, and Xander draped an arm around his shoulders.

“You know Ethan’s a man of exacting tastes,” he said, his fake posh accent grating on my nerves. They might not know they were talking about Julia, but I did, and my wolf was spitting mad.

“Piss off,” I said, trying to sound casual, and failing entirely. Leo gasped.

“Has Ethan Cain struck out for the first time in living memory?”

“No.” This time, I couldn’t keep the growl from my voice, and my friends exchanged loaded looks.

“So what, she wasn’t impressed with your moves?” Xander needled.

“You weren’t impressed with hers?” suggested Jace.

They were both so wrong, but now was not the time to think about the softness of Julia’s skin beneath my fingers, or the beautiful little hitches in her breath every time I hit that spot deep inside her. It was never, in fact, the time to think those things about my best friend’s little sister.

“Just can it, would you?” I insisted. “There’s no girl.”

Mercifully, Leo and Jace seemed to get the message, and Leo placed a firm hand on Xander’s shoulder before he could push any further.

“Sure,” said Leo, “but there’s definitely cleanup left to do, and you’re lagging.”

He shoved the trash can into my hands, and I took it gratefully, letting my friends’ chatter wash over me as I held out the bin for them to throw discarded bottles into.

Usually, this kind of job was far below an Alpha’s station, but I liked to make an exception on the Solstice.

It was a night for the Pack to let loose and not worry about their responsibilities.

Since my Betas and I had to stay sober for the sake of diplomacy in any case, I had decreed that we would be in charge of clean-up for the evening.

It had been a popular announcement, and I didn’t regret it for a moment.

The rhythm of the work was soothing, and I was almost calm again by the time Leo ruined it.

“Hey, anyone seen Julia?” he asked, and the other two shook their heads.

“She was sitting by the fire a couple of hours ago,” Xander offered, and Jace nodded.

“Maybe she went to bed.”

Predictably, Leo wasn’t satisfied with those answers. Why should he be? Julia was a lone female—and a weak female at that.

“I’m gonna go check on her,” Leo declared. “She shouldn’t be by herself out here.”

“She’s fine,” I snapped. “She went to bed.” It was a lie—or at least it could well be.

Julia could be in bed for all I knew, or she could still be sitting alone in the dark, angry and rejected.

I couldn’t stand the thought of Leo finding her like that.

Would she tell him what had happened? Would he figure it out on his own?

The shame of it shot through me, stirring my wolf from his fitful rest.

“Sounds like you need to go to bed, buddy,” said Xander. “You’re getting real grumpy.”

Grumpy didn’t begin to cover it. I hated the pitying looks my friends were giving me, as if I was just tired, or I’d been rejected by some girl. Still, I was grateful for the out when Leo took his trash can back and said,

“It’s been a long day. Literally. Go to bed, we can get the last couple of things here.”

I was all too happy to retreat back to the house, to undress for bed—shoving my Julia-scented clothes to the bottom of my hamper—and wait for sleep to take me. Everything would be better in the morning. It certainly couldn’t be much worse.

Usually, the low babble of talk and the occasional clink of glass against glass would have been soothing, but that night my ears pricked up at every fresh sound, my wolf still on edge inside me, waiting for a sign of Julia’s return.

She was probably safely in her room, already asleep, I told myself.

Like I should be. Even once the sound outside died down, the last of the cleanup crew making their way to bed, I was still awake and staring at the ceiling, trying to concentrate on my breathing, to fill my mind with anything but her.

I could go and check on her. That was an option.

I would crack open the door of her room and make sure she was there, in bed, like she was supposed to be.

It would be remiss of me not to. I had a duty to Caleb, and if it started another argument, then so be it.

Better to be yelled at by a safe Julia than endure the silence of uncertainty.

Despite the relative quiet of the house as I made my way down the hall, it still felt strange and loud.

I had become used to solitude and silence at night, so the muffled sound of Xander snoring from the couch downstairs may as well have been a revving engine.

At the very least, the sound of my footsteps was not so marked—with any luck, Julia wouldn’t wake when I checked in.

I stood in front of her closed door for far too long, wishing that Julia snored or talked in her sleep or something that would give an indication of her presence without having to open the door.

My wolf hated the inaction. He was urging me to push open the door, to make sure she was safe.

He was urging me to do other things, as well, but I was continuing to ignore him on that count.

When I could stand it no longer, I turned the handle and gently pushed open the door.

I was so certain of what I would see—Julia, her dark hair spread out over the pillow, face soft with sleep—that I almost managed to trick myself into seeing it.

When I blinked, though, reality imposed itself on the image I had conjured: the room was empty, the bed untouched.

“Fuck.”

A quick glance out of the window told me that the embers of the bonfire had been thoroughly doused—no one needed to be woken by a wildfire—but I couldn’t make out the shape of any people even in the pale dawn light.

What was Julia doing out there? Was it stubbornness, was it simply to spite me, to make me worry, to punish me for leaving her out there? Whatever her plan was, it had worked.

I didn’t stop to grab shoes or a shirt before I crept downstairs and slipped out of the house.

Briefly, I considered waking one of the guys and asking them to join me, but that would mean explaining why Julia was refusing to return home, why she was out in the dark alone, and they would all react poorly in their own ways.

Leo would be judgmental, Xander would be indiscreet, and Jace would ask way too many questions.

Even if they’d all been perfect confidants, I could never ask any of them to keep this from Caleb.

No. I had gotten into this mess on my own, and I would get out of it on my own.

The town was dead quiet as I checked every side street and the back of each cottage.

Normally, at this hour, there would be at least a few people up and about—the women in the laundry starting their day’s work and those who cared for our elders beginning to prepare breakfast for the early risers—but everyone slept late the day after the Solstice. Everyone, it seemed, but me.

By the time I reached the remnants of the bonfire, nausea was curling in my stomach. Where the hell was she? Had she spent the last few hours learning to cloak herself entirely in shadow, to become one with them and go unnoticed? No, that was ridiculous.

Though there was no physical sign of her, Julia’s scent lingered by the bonfire.

Even beneath the smell of smoke and a hundred other shifters, I could pick out berries and dark chocolate, and I followed the unsteady path where we’d half-walked, half-stumbled to the old oak tree.

As I breathed in our combined scents, I couldn’t keep the memories at bay: the silky feeling of her hair in my fist, the yielding heat of her mouth, the trembling, fluttering pressure of her as she came around my cock.

I couldn’t think of that now—preferably, I would never think of it ever again, but I was already losing that battle.

The patch of flattened grass beneath the tree should be of no interest to me.

It was in the past. What mattered in the present was finding Julia safe and then ripping her a new one for making me worry before I dropped her back on Lapine where she belonged.

I sniffed the air again and realized that she was two steps ahead of me, leading away from the oak; her scent was clear and unadulterated, heading in the direction of the Lapine Bridge.

That stubborn, stupid girl. Did she really think she could walk back to Lapine on her own?

There were no wolf tracks to accompany the scent, so she must have been in human form.

Why she would do that was beyond me, but I’d never claimed to understand the way her mind worked.

At least it meant that if I shifted and went after her now, there was no way I wouldn’t catch up to her before she made it back to Lapine.

If she wanted to go home, I wasn’t going to stop her, but she shouldn’t be going alone.

My wolf was only too happy to take my skin; he’d been frothing at the mouth since I first touched Julia earlier that evening, and for a moment I worried that I wouldn’t be able to wrestle control back once we caught up to her.

That would be embarrassing, but a small price to pay for how concentrated I was once I let him have control.

He wanted nothing but to find her, to have her, to claim her, and he wasn’t going to let us rest until we caught up to her.

I made it to the Lapine Bridge in record time, and my wolf growled, pleased, to find that her scent was fresher here. It was still an hour or so old, but I could pause to catch my breath; I was getting closer, and I’d catch up to her soon.

I’d taken only a few steps onto the bridge itself when a new scent hit my nose—no, two new scents—no, three.

They were males, unfamiliar and foul-smelling, and I was running again before I knew it.

I should never have left her alone. She should never have wandered away. She was supposed to stay with me.

At the center of the bridge, all four scents abruptly disappeared, and I skidded to a halt.

The scents were muddled here, strong, and joined by an awful chemical smell as well as the coppery tang of blood.

A small puddle of it decorated the stone, its scent strong enough to tell me immediately that it wasn’t Julia’s.

Whatever those bastards had done, she’d put up a good fight. Of course, she had.

It didn’t lessen my worry, though. If she’d hurt them, they were going to be pissed.

I pressed my nose to where the unfamiliar scents were strongest—stone wasn’t as good as wood or clothing at retaining a scent, but it was good enough for what I needed.

While every shifter had their own unique scent, they also carried a subtler note that was shared with every member of their Pack.

Lapine wolves had a hint of petrichor, while on Ferris, we shared the same fresh rainwater undertones.

Beneath the stench of stale sweat and tobacco and rotten food, I could make out something woodsy, like fresh-tilled earth. I snarled.

Arbor.