Page 14 of Watch Me Burn (Sanctuary #1)

CHAPTER 13

FITTING

S uddenly, I’m very interested in his answer.

I swear, if ever there was a king of mixed signals, it’s Conall. One moment, he seems way too interested in my safety. Then there was how he spent the last week following me around the village whenever I left my house, and I haven’t forgotten what happened with the conditioner.

But since I arrived, I got the feeling he was counting down to the moment he would be seeing the back of me.

I wait.

“You’re here. That’s all that matters. Now, this thing of yours… what exactly does it look like?”

Way to bring the subject right back to where it was before. Oh, no. You’re not avoiding my question. You’re just trying to get this excursion over with so you can go back to the village and, I don’t know, pee outside of my house some more.

Then again, I need the fire opal. If only to get rid of the fire in my veins so that Elise can have something to drink without burning her tongue, I need it.

Okay.

“Orange,” is my answer. “It’s an orange crystal. Shiny, I think. Do you know where it is?”

“There are plenty of crystals down here. I’ve been exploring these caves since I was a pup, and I’ve seen all colors. We’ll find it, Red. Don’t worry.”

Is it that obvious?

To keep from saying something that would undeniably be an untruth, I look at Conall through the fire. Like everything else in the cave, he looks orange, too, but I peer at him, trying to imagine him as a pup. As a boy.

He was probably super cute.

The man standing in front of me now is definitely attractive. Even when he was unwittingly aggravating the crap out of me, I had to recognize that he was ruggedly handsome. Now that he’s stopped glaring at me?

He’s pretty freaking good-looking.

Damn it.

“How old are you?” I ask.

Let him be, like, two hundred. Give me something to shatter this sudden and inexplicable pull I’m feeling toward him.

“Thirty-three.”

Damn it!

“Shifters are long-lived like witches,” he continues, as though guessing why I asked—and only part way right, “but we’re not immortal like vampires. We should both reach hundred, hundred-fifty easily, but the corpse… sorry, Elise. She’ll live forever if she chooses to.”

Wow. That’s a pretty heady realization. All of it.

I don’t know what comes over me. Whether it’s knowing, one day, I’ll be dead and gone and Elise will still look like she’s in her twenties, or that I should have a similar lifespan as Conall, I can’t tell. But when I suddenly change the subject, you wouldn’t believe what pops out of my mouth.

Shit. I said it, and I can’t believe it.

“That’s one way that vamps and shifters seem to be different. What about when it comes to mating?”

I’m still holding up my firelight, illuminating Conall’s face. That’s the only reason why I can see his stunned expression as he chokes.

I should let it go. Too bad I can’t.

“You know,” I say, pushing the topic. “Vampires have their blood exchanges. What do you do when you have a mate?”

He clears his throat. “I’ve never had one.”

Never had… wait. He’s not a virgin , is he?

No. No way. A thirty-three-year-old man that looks like Conall? No way. He must mean that he’s never bonded a woman—wait, female , supes have this weird thing going where they refer to each other as ‘male’ and ‘female’—to him before. It’s the equivalent of being married in the supernatural world. He just doesn’t have a shifter wife, but plenty of single males sow their oats before they settle down.

Chicks do, too. I’m proof of that, even if it’s been way too long since I’ve gotten laid… and here in Alaska, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

And, yet, I don’t drop the subject. Instead, I ask Conall, “Shifters have mating rituals, too, don’t they?”

“You mean when we bond?” At my shrug, Conall explains, “Of course. Us wolves revere the Luna. Our moon goddess. She guides us to find our mates. Alphas are gifted the name of their mate when they lead a pack. I’m a lone wolf. I don’t have a pack.”

“So how will you find your mate?” I ask, way more curious than I should be.

And, no, that’s not suspicious at all...

“I’ll know it in here,” he says, gesturing at his nose. Snout? He’s human now so I’ll go with nose. Dropping his hand, he lays the flat of his palm against his chest. “And here.”

“Your pec?”

Conall gives me a look of disbelief. “My heart, Red. When I’m looking at my mate, I’ll know it in my heart. After that, I’ll just have to wait until my mate eventually recognizes that we’re fated to be together.”

“What happens then?”

His eyes glimmer in the firelight. “We will mate. When the Luna is high, I’ll mark my mate as mine as I claim her body. We’ll be bonded then, and it’s a bond that will never break.”

Holy shit. Where did the butterflies flapping away in my belly come from?

Jeez, Bridge. I already knew my taste in guys is questionable. Always has been. But don’t tell me that after convincing myself that Conall was a witch hunter on the low, all it takes is him actually offering to help me search for the fire opal for me to start liking him a little.

He’s a shifter. Worse, he’s a wolf shifter. His kind—like most supes—mates for life, and he only gets one. Of course he’s holding out for the one woman meant for him.

And there’s no point in even entertaining that strange pull toward him because no way is it me .

“In that case, good luck to you and the future Mrs. Grump.”

“Hunt,” he grumbles.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s my name. Hunt. Conall Hunt.”

I snort. “Fitting.”

I really wish I could say that we found the crystal. That there was, like, some blinking neon sign in one of the abandoned, musty caves that told us we found the right one.

Yeah, right.

It’s one thing to look at a map and be like: I need to get there. In reality, certain caves are blocked, either by rocks or because there never really was a path from one to another in the first place. Conall might insist he knows how to read a map—and, I’ll admit, he’s doing a better job than if I had to do it myself—but when we make it to one of the starred caves, it doesn’t look any different than the others that we squeezed our way through.

We were probably down here for about two hours before Conall mentioned we should probably be heading back to the entrance. Assuming it would take at least half that long to reach the entrance, I reluctantly agreed.

I felt like I failed. Conall only has my description of what I’m supposed to be looking for to go on so I can’t blame him when we leave the caves empty-handed. I’m the witch. Celeste told me, as a fire witch, I’d be able to find it.

I didn’t.

What I did find, though?

The tiniest bit of grudging respect for Conall.

Okay. So I misjudged him. I got one look at his scowl, let it color my first impression of him, and decided that he had a problem with me from then on. Never mind the fact that he’s the only one in Dyea besides Elise and Mayor Lou who actually paid attention to me. I got the wrong idea, and after spending the afternoon with him, I’m willing to admit that I did.

He’s not as bad as I thought. Easy on the eyes, definitely, and his shifter talents came in handy. He doesn’t need the fire to see down in the caves because his vision is that impressive, and his nose is such a good sniffer, he could follow our tracks back to the entrance. Even if he didn’t know the caves as well as he does, his wolf would make it so that we didn’t get stuck underground.

There are so many more caves to explore. Seeing how disappointed I was that we didn’t find the fire opal, he promised to help me search until we do. The only concession I had to make was agreeing not to go down there when he can’t. If he’s too busy with the village, or Mayor Lou needs him for something, he asked—asked, not demanded, which is one of the only reasons I say okay—if I would wait for him.

I don’t want to get trapped down in the caves. If it takes a little longer because my guide might be occupied, that’s fine. When the alternative is me plunging through another hole because the rocks gave way and I didn’t have his shifter’s sense to tell the difference between solid floor and the freaking entrance to hell , I can be a witch a little longer.

We walked back to Dyea together, making tentative plans to head out again tomorrow.

Conall waves once the sanctuary welcomes us ‘home’, jogging off in the direction of his house at the end of the oval while I head toward the back of mine and Elise’s.

There’s more yellow snow out there, I notice. I snort, then let it go. If that’s the only retaliation I got for pissing off Mr. Grump, I can deal with it, especially if he honestly believes he’s protecting our house by spraying wolf piss all over the place.

Letting myself into the house, my plan is to head upstairs where the shower is. I’m dusty, covered in I don’t know what, and I desperately need to get clean. However, when I call out for Elise and she doesn’t answer, that makes me curious.

Where is she?

I search the downstairs. No Elise. She’s not in the small kitchen, the living room with the television, or the bedroom she keeps on the bottom floor. Frowning, I jog up the stairs. No Elise in the bathroom or my bedroom.

Weird.

Instead of heading to the bathroom, I go back downstairs and plop down on the couch, hoping I don’t transfer too much of the cave muck onto the fabric.

I don’t have long to wait. About ten minutes after I made it back, Elise slips in through the front door.

She has more color in her cheeks than she did this morning which is one small plus. Her hair is pulled out of her face, tied back in a low burn, showing off her sharp cheekbones; already so small, she’s lost more weight than she could afford to since she hasn’t been able to drink.

Her fingers are tapping nervously against her upper thigh. She’s visibly distracted, not even noticing that I’m sitting in the room until I greet her.

She blinks, and while I could’ve sworn her eyes were red a second ago, they’re back to their usual pale green color when she glances over at me.

“Bridge. Hi. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

I figured.

“Hey. Yeah. I finished up earlier than I thought.”

“Any good news?” she asks hopefully. “Did you find the fire opal?”

If I find the fire opal and it nullifies my fire magic, the witch hunters won’t come after me. I can leave Dyea. Elise can, too, and I can help her deal with Peter so that she can return to Clarity again.

She can go back to having easy access to blood again.

But until I have the fire opal, I can’t leave. And Elise?

She won’t .

I shake my head, feeling even worse than before. “Not yet, but maybe tomorrow.” Then, changing the subject to her, I ask, “Where did you go? I was surprised when I came back and you were gone.”

Surprised and more than a little worried—and Elise knows it.

“Just for a walk.” A small smile. “I needed a little fresh air.”

That’s usually my excuse. Elise? Since our arrival, she’s rarely left the cottage. Mainly because she’s holding out hope that Thorn will get the replacement cooler of blood to her that seemingly disappeared, and until she does, she knows better than to trust herself around someone she can’t drink.

The humans are taken. The other vampires won’t allow it. I’m off the menu. And the shifters… yeah. That’s not gonna happen, either.

But Elise… I know her. I’ve gotten to know her very well over the six months we’ve lived together, and though you could argue that I didn’t—since I had no freaking clue she was a vampire—I’d picked up on all of her quirks. I just couldn’t explain them since jumping to the supernatural wasn’t something I ever did.

And Elise is lying .

I don’t know where she went. I don’t know why she left the cottage. Maybe she did need to go for a walk, but even if that’s true, she’s hiding something else from me.

I don’t want to call her out. She’s clearly struggling, and when I remember that she’s doing this for me, I owe her a little grace. So, rather than demand she tell me what’s really going on, I mention almost off-handedly, “Did you know that wolf shifters can smell it when someone lies?”

The little bit of color in her cheeks disappears. As if I needed proof that she’s hiding something, I get it then and there.

Oh, Elise.

She doesn’t spill, though. Moving further into the room, slipping off her heels, she asls, “How do you know that?”

“Conall told me.”

Elise purses her lips, hiding her fangs for a moment. “Conall?”

“Mr. Grump himself.”

“You were talking to Conall about wolf shifters and their sense of smell?”

Right. That sounds weird if she doesn’t know the whole story. After all, when I last saw Elise, I was bitching to her that I saw Conall—because I guess I just subconsciously knew it was him—lurking outside of the back of the cottage. She doesn’t even know about the yellow snow, or how he followed me out of the sanctuary.

Or that he offered to help me explore the caves.

So I tell her, and I thought she was going to apologize again for not coming with me, but the only thing she seemed to get out of my entire story is that Conall is a wolf shifter.

“There’s a wolf in Dyea? I mean, I thought … but, no. There are only supposed to be prey shifters here. It’s why it seemed like the perfect sanctuary for me. I didn’t have to worry about other predators being a danger to the two of us.”

She still doesn’t. “Conall’s definitely a wolf, but I don’t think he’s a danger .”

Oh, no. He calls me dangerous.

Elise sinks down gracefully onto the couch cushion next to mine. “Maybe not to you. Probably not to me, either. But if he’s a wolf and I didn’t realize it… I should’ve.”

“Why? Why does it matter?”

“Because vampires and wolf shifters are ancient enemies,” Elise tells me. “Our kinds have been at war for so long, we don’t even distinguish between the different skirmishes. It’s just known as the Claws and Fangs war. He must hate vampires.”

Well, he doesn’t seem like the world’s biggest fan, but I get the strange feeling it’s not vampires that bother him, but maybe one in particular…

No. No . I’m wrong.

And so is Elise.

“He doesn’t have a problem with you. It’s just me he can’t stand.”

Elise raises her eyebrows so high, they nearly disappear into the hairline of her ruby-red waves. “You sure, sweetie?”

Yes?

No.

I don’t know…

“Did you just tell me that he’s been helping you in the caves? That he knows you’re a witch, but he promised not to tell anyone else? I don’t know, Bridge… I’m beginning to think he might be more fond of you than we both thought.”

We nothing. I never thought Conall thought of me as anything other than the human who walked into the sanctuary and immediately defied him.

I’m pretty sure a couple of hours in the caves haven’t changed everything.

And to prove it to Elise, I bump my shoulder against hers and confess, “I burned his tail.”

I’ll say one thing. The way my sheepish admission has her laughing for the first time in days makes up for all of the disappointment that came with knowing I’ll have to go back down to the caves.

With Conall Hunt.

And as I join in with Elise’s tinkling laughter, I can’t help but look forward to it.