Among the Trees

Chapter 16 - Inside His Mind

I walked until I could walk no further and cried until I had no tears left. I knelt down and began to rummage through my backpack for anything I could use to keep my warmth. A twig snapped ahead of me and I stopped what I was doing in a split second.

"Trouble in paradise?" Lee stepped out of the shadows. I huffed as I rolled my eyes and then returned to my rucksack.

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be off doing some sort of chore for the pack?"

This time he huffed though it sounded like a laugh.

"They wish. My choice for losing was become omega, or go it alone in the big bad world. I chose the latter. I won't be anybody's lackey." I glanced up at him. His entire demeanour was defensive and standoffish. I sniggered. I wasn't going to fight him, not again. I had already shown my strength against him once, I didn't need to do it again. There was slight shift it the atmosphere as his tension left him. It was almost as though he'd heard my own thoughts.

"So you left him too, huh? Figures." I moved to sit cross legged as his comment set in, but when I looked up again he'd begun to leave.

"He left me no other choice." I spoke quietly, almost whispering. "I wanted him to feel how he was making my family feel. He wanted to be in control of everything." I looked down into the dark recesses of the bag. "I guess that's something you and I have in common." I looked back at Lee. "Neither of us will be controlled." I let a sly wry grin creep on to my face. I had never done well with manipulative, controlling men, who thought they could take what they wanted with no repercussions. Lee helped put everything back into the bag and then slung it over his shoulder. He lead me to the oasis I had first visited with Adam. Though Lee and I entered from the other end. At this end was small cottage, prettier by far than the simply wood cabin Adam had taken me to. Leave of red and gold had fallen around the dainty house. Although the flowers were withered and dead, it looked like a house from a fairytale.

"It's not much but there electricity and hot running water." Lee unlocked the door and gestured for me to go in first. He shut the door behind us gave me a quick tour of the small building before telling me to freshen up while he cooked something to eat. It wasn't until he'd looked me up and down twice that I realised Adam hadn't even given me the chance to get dressed this morning. I groaned and headed to the bathroom.

Lee was right, there wasn't much, but the running hot water running down my back, between my shoulder blades, and down over my navel felt unbelievably refreshing. I stepped out, steam rising off my skin, and remembered I'd left all my clean clothes in the rucksack I'd dropped by the front door. I chuckled to myself and open the cupboard beside the shower. There was several towels, toothbrushes and toothpastes. I picked out a soft pale pink towel, a toothbrush and toothpaste, wrapped the towel round myself and brushed my teeth. I rung the water from my hair over the sink, draped it across my shoulder and walked down the stairs.

"Just in time. Dinner's," he stopped talking as he stepped out of the dinning room, "done. You not getting dressed this evening?" He raised a questioning eyebrow. I grinned, crouched by the rucksack and picked out my butterfly clip. I twisted my hair up and clipped it.

"That depends on how cold it gets, doesn't it?" I smiled sweetly back at him. He stretched his hand behind him into the dinning room.

"Ladies first." He smiled back. The meal was meagre but filling all the same and soon over.

"I have a favour to ask you." Lee kept his back to me as he spoke. He was washing the pots. "I need you to get inside Adam's head. Find out what he's up to." Lee stopped and turned to face me, leaning back on the edge on the sink. I was still stood with only a towel on, leaning my shoulder on the kitchen doorframe.

"And why would you need me to do that? Weren't you his second in command? His Beta? Surely you should already know." Lee smiled and looked down at his feet, nodding.

"You'd think wouldn't you? But no." He looked me in the eye again and moved towards me. "He shut me. The second you turned sixteen, he shut me out of his head. I can show you." He held out both of his hands and gestured with a nod for me to take hold of them. I did.

It felt like being pulled into the eye of a storm. Everything seemed to spin. As quickly as it had begun, it ended. I landed flat on my feet for once, but where I stood was not a kitchen in cottage in the middle of winter, but in the trees, mid summer. I looked across to find my mother's bungalow just ahead of me. Then I saw the back of my head. I still wore my pyjamas and both my parents looked overjoyed. I turned again to face the wolf of stood beside me, Adam. I tried to reach his mind to ask who he was looking at, I saw my face flash in my mind and then a thick opaque, shatterproof Perspex. I hit metal fists against it but it wouldn't budge.

The spinning began again and a second later I was back in the cottage kitchen. I took a deep breath.

"He was planning something, wasn't he?" Lee nodded. I nodded back. "Then I'll do it. I'll get inside his head." Lee smiled but not the sinister, sly smile he had given me before; it was a sad, defeated smile, like this was his last resort. He let go of one head and pushed himself off the sink's edge. He led me out of the back door and towards the edge of the lake.

"Lee it's cold." I grumbled as the autumn leaves covered my feet. He chuckled as we stopped right at the edge of the lake, my toes just dipping into the ice cold water.

"As long as you touch the water, I'll be able to see everything you see." He smiled and guided me through the process of getting into Adam's head.

I waited for the spinning to start but it didn't. It felt more like tumbling down a hole. When the tumbling finally stopped I wasn't looking out across the lake anymore. Instead I was looking across a bar top at Betty who was frantically trying to sooth a screaming Clarissa. This didn't feel like I was just watching his memories like it had with Lee. This was happening right now.

"Are you telling me you planned this from the day she turned sixteen? Planned every last detail of it?!" Betty sounded furious, now wonder the child wouldn't settle.

"I never planned on her running out on my Betty! She's out there, on her own, more than likely lost and cold!" Adam continued to bellow back at Betty.

"Then find her Adam, before she gets herself killed, get inside her head."

"I won't! She doesn't have any understanding of what she can do! If I get inside her head it could hurt her!"

"Why did you ruin her life like that Adam? Why did you hurt her so much?"

"Because the broken make the best fighters Elizabeth." I felt Adam turn a walk out of the bar. I pulled myself from his mind. Strangely I didn't feel like crying. I was angry, enraged in fact. He had planned the last eighteen months of my life to make me a fighter?!

"How do I break him?"

Lee led me into a room that looked lived in. He reached into a draw and pulled out what looked like a Christmas tree ornament. He explained it was an instrument of sorts. It had originally been used as a 'separating spike', it split the two souls and changed the two wolves mates. In some case it could be used to pull one mate in to head of the other against their will.

"All you have to do is drag the spike across your palm, and he'll see whatever you want him to see." I dragged the swished gold across the line in my palm and then threw it aside.

"So he can see this then?" I nodded the towel and Lee grinned. I stepped slowly towards him, held out my hand and ran my finger down his chest.

"He most certainly can." He lightly gripped my wrist and pulled me flat against him. "But this time I want take what you don't offer."

"Then I'm offering it all." I stood on my tip toes, his hands flat against my bare back, and kissed him passionately.