Red
It was a miracle to see her eyes open, even if she'd only glared at him as if he were the devil.
"How is she?" Henry asked as Red stepped into the hallway.
"Confused. Scared. Angry. Anger was the most dominant emotion I could sense from her. It just...oozes from her pores."
Red nodded to Phillip and Deacon, guarding her cell today, as he and the Alpha headed for the stairs.
"The infection?"
"Gone completely." Red held the door open for Henry and they emerged into the building that sat atop the jail. In three strides, they crossed to the door and were through and outside into the forest. "I couldn't scent anything wrong within her, which was a relief after the last couple of days. Thank you, again, for bringing Ejo in. She would have died without him."
Hell, she'd almost died even with the interference from the warlock.
It had been the worst three days of his life. He'd been conversing with a few of his warriors over dinner, discussing new rotations for perimeter guarding when he'd felt the pain in his chest.
Red had never experienced anything as terrifying as it had been. The pain had been sharp, so intensely sharp that all other thoughts and emotions had emptied from his brain. He'd collapsed to his knees, sight going black. It felt like a sword cutting through his chest.
The worst of it had been the feeling of a growing crack in his soul, moving towards a total severing. He had felt that she was near-death. Had known inherently that if he didn't go to her, she would be gone.
Gone before he even...knew her.
Red had practically flown to the jail, moving faster than he'd ever run before. He must've looked half-mad as he'd thrown himself down the stairs and towards her cell. The two wolves on watch – Patrick and Chandra – had certainly stared at him as if he were insane.
Yet neither of them had questioned his orders when he'd shouted at them to contact Dwayne and tell him to prepare for a critical patient. Not as he'd slammed the door open and saw his Mate lying on the cold, hard cement floor.
Horrifyingly slow heartbeat. Eyes closed. So pale she looked death-white. Red lines running up her arm, emanating out from that injury. Blood poisoning.
The room had reeked of death. He'd known it was coming – had been able to scent how deep that infection went the day before when he'd visited her.
Red had just been hoping that she'd come to her senses, lose the hard exterior and allow them – him – to help before it came to this. The moment he'd first laid eyes on her in that cell, he'd wanted to whisk her away to the clinic but he'd known instinctively that if he'd done that, she would never trust him again.
As he'd stared at her, collapsed on that floor, Red had realized that if he didn't intercede, she would die.
He'd rather have her hate him than have her dead.
Red had moved on instinct, sprinting to her side and gathering up in his arms. It was only later after he'd run with her to the clinic where Dwayne was waiting and had placed her on a cot for the healer to begin doing his work, did he realize how perfectly she'd fit into his arms. How her head had tucked into the space between his neck and shoulder as if it were made for her.
Amanda forced Red out of the room as she and her father had fought to save his Mate's life. Henry and Lucy had arrived within moments, quickly followed by Monroe and Toby. All of them waiting to see if Red's human Mate would survive.
The healers bought her time but both Dwayne and Amanda were unfamiliar with human physiology and didn't know the exact specifics of what her body needed to heal. Not when werewolves usually healed so rapidly, rarely needing medical intervention unless in extreme cases. Red didn't think they'd ever even had a case of blood poisoning before.
And before Red had even had the chance to ask, Henry had been on the phone speaking with Ejo. The warlock was an old friend of Henry's. They'd met at various shadow world functions over the years and the warlock had taken up a residence in Los Angeles offering magical healing talismans to the world's elite.
Red was grateful for that connection – that friendship. For only five minutes later, a portal had opened and Ejo had stepped through into the clinic, bypassing the pack's wards on Henry's authority.
The warlock often used magic to glamour his true appearance – which was a five-foot-ten tall man with skin the colour of lavender – but he'd appeared before them as he truly was. Dressed in a black silk kimono and jeans, he'd dashed into the exam room, leaving the rest of them behind.
Including Red who'd just stood there and stared at the closed door for what felt like hours. His mind had been quiet and empty in a way that it had never been before. He kept seeing visions of her eyes – the way they'd looked the first time he'd seen her.
Grey. Storm clouds on a cool winter morning. Such strange eyes and when he'd seen her collapsed on the ground in her cell...Red had wondered if he'd ever see those eyes open again.
And though the bond between them was weak, one-sided and non-solidified – a bridge that led to nowhere – Red was sure that if she died, he would too.
So seeing her now, eyes open, heartbeat strong...Even if she hated him, at least she was alive. It was all that really mattered.
Henry clapped Red on the shoulder. "We needed Ejo here, anyways. He agreed to weave some wards into the wall as we try to figure out why it's failing on us. Ejo said that it's a temporary solution. His wards won't last forever but they should keep out our enemies for the time being."
"Good. We'll keep up on the same patrol schedule just in case."
"Do you think the hunters will come back to rescue her?"
"No. That's why she's so intent on killing herself. She knows that no one is coming back."
Henry heaved a breath as they broke through the treeline, entering into the main strip of their little town. He steered Red towards the one restaurant the pack had – so simple that it was just named 'The Diner.'
They sat in a booth by the corner and their waitress, Shayla – a fifteen-year-old she-wolf whose mother Reba ran the diner – took their orders. The Diner was busy, as it always was on Saturday mornings, though this week there were a few noticeable faces missing.
Red didn't linger his thoughts on those missing souls. Or the reason that they were no longer in attendance. Didn't want to remember the night he'd burned the bodies of twelve wolves beneath the moon because it was a hard thing to reconcile. The grief and guilt he felt for their deaths intermixed with the unexpected joy of finding his Mate.
When Shayla disappeared off to the kitchen, Henry said, "The man had realized it as well. He was refusing to divulge more information but if I'm being honest, I don't think he knew much else. The last thing he told me was that your Mate was leading one of their tactical assault teams. And that she seemed friendly with the leaders."
"I had assumed as much," Red admitted. Henry raised a brow, so Red continued, "The people who know nothing are usually eager to offer up all of the information that they know, hoping for clemency. But the people who know too much are the ones that stay quiet because they know the risk they're putting others at if they talk. My Mate hasn't said a word. I can only assume it's because she has too many secrets."
"Like where the scars on her back came from."
"Exactly." Red's fingers clenched on the handle of his coffee cup, the skin stretching white and pale over the knuckles.
Horrible scars, or so he'd been told. Red hadn't seen them personally. Though his instincts had screamed at him to be with her in the exam room where she'd been receiving treatment for the blood poisoning and dehydration, he'd stayed in the hallway out of respect for her and the healers treating her. It had been Dwayne who'd told Red about the scars at the same time he'd emerged from the exam room with Ejo to claim that the human woman would live.
The scars, he'd said, were years old but gruesome. The wounds would have been near-fatal. It was a miracle that she'd survived then.
That's what she was, even if she didn't know it. A miracle.
"It's a shame I couldn't press the man more for information on her before he—"
"Croaked?" Red offered.
Henry nodded. "Yeah."
The news had come while Red had been sitting by his Mate's bedside in the hospital, watching the vital monitors beep. He'd been resisting the urge to take a peek at those scars and see for himself what she'd survived before him when Li had found the human man dead in his cell. No one had been in with him when he'd passed and the running theory was that he'd had a heart attack.
In any case, there was only one human in Sanguis Ridge now. One that likely wasn't going to tell them anything.
Shayla interrupted his train of thought as she returned carrying a tray of plates. She set one down in front of Red, the other before Henry and a third next to the Alpha for –
"Sorry, I'm late!" Lucy breezed into The Diner, collapsing into the bench seat next to her Mate.
"Where's Annalise?" Red asked. His goddaughter was nowhere in sight.
"Still sleeping. I tried to wake her up but she started throwing a hissy fit, so I left her in the dutiful care of my darling parents and got the hell out of dodge."
Red laughed and a few of their packmates dining nearest them chuckled as they overheard. "What a smart Luna you are."
"That's why I got the title. It wasn't just for my sunny personality and connection to the Alpha. One of us had to be the brains." She jerked a thumb towards Henry as she picked up the tea that Shayla deposited on the table. "He got the brawn. I got brains and beauty. Guess you know which one of us is really running the show around here."
"Thanks for that, sweetheart," Henry grumbled but there was a teasing element to his tone.
Lucy patted him on the shoulder and then turned back to Red as Henry removed that hand from his shoulder and held onto it. "My dad told me this morning that your Mate left the hospital today, That's great news."
"Yeah, she's back in her prison cell under armed guard, awake, refusing to talk, and glaring at anyone who gets too close."
"Okay, maybe not great news. But at least she's going to be fine."
Red's fingers drummed against the table. "I just don't know what to do with her in the long-term. I can't keep her locked up forever but if she refuses to cooperate with us then we can't just let her go."
"Give it time, Red," Lucy murmured. She reached out to place her hand on his arm. "You've only visited her a few times, right? She's been in rough shape and now you've thrown her for a new loop since she woke up healed and thriving. Keep visiting her and maybe, just maybe, she'll come around. If we can figure out the kind of threat that she poses, there may not ever be a need for drastic measures."
Right, he thought. Like it was that easy. He didn't have other options though and she'd been brought near enough to death already. He wasn't going to send her to an early grave.
Not if he could help it.
*~*
Every day for the next three weeks, Red went to visit his Mate in her cell. Each time he went in was the same. He brought her food and water, talked with her for a few minutes, and then left. Sometimes he would try to get her to answer questions – not just about the band of hunters she was protecting, but also about herself.
What kind of food did she like – could he adjust what he was bringing her? Was she cold down here – did she need another blanket? Were her wounds okay – should he bring Ejo back in to see her?
She never replied but as the days wore on, he began to feel a...change. The iciness that radiated out from her whenever he entered the room thawed slightly. That snarling fury started to dissipate and those cool grey eyes were no longer as hard as they'd been the day he'd met her.
It was as if she was starting to grow comfortable with him. Not enough to talk but as if she had stopped worrying that he was coming into the cell to torture her. He hadn't told her about her dead hunter friend, the body now removed from the adjacent cell. It would only give her reason to distrust him more and considering that they seemed to be moving towards somewhat less hostile conversations – even if they were one-sided – Red wasn't keen on bringing in more strife.
Sometimes, Red would sit there and tell her about himself. Nothing too specific but basic things. Items that might make him appear less threatening to her. More human.
What was his favourite season – autumn. He liked the colours of the leaves and the feel of cool soil beneath his paws.
Did he like sports – yes, soccer was his favourite. The adrenalin that came with the running had always been a rush.
Who his family was – he told her about Henry and Lucy, Monroe and Toby. Not his by blood, but the only family that really mattered, anyway.
"Going back in?" Juliet asked as Red walked down the steps. Her auburn hair was up in a bun and her brown eyes sparkled at him. She'd healed up quickly after the hunter attack. A few days after having the silver bullet had been removed from her shoulder, she had been back to full function.
Red was surprised when she'd offered to take shifts guarding his Mate in the prison, especially given that injury she'd sustained. A part of him had wondered if she'd meant to harm the human woman but he'd realized shortly after that it was curiosity that had brought her to the jail.
She was a few years younger than Red but old enough to have found her Mate. The fact that she was still unmated weighed on her and he knew that she'd begun to contemplate if her Mate was somewhere beyond pack borders. Red finding his Mate in a human had increased the contemplation as she'd started to wonder if perhaps she'd never thought to look in the right spot. If perhaps her partner wasn't a wolf as well, but some other being.
Sitting on the ground next to Juliet was her older sister, Jenny. They shared similar looks, though Jenny's eyes were green and her scent was interwoven with that of a Mating bond belonging to her partner, Lauren. While Jenny and Juliet had both been trained by Red to follow in their mother's footsteps as warriors, Lauren was a school teacher.
"Yup," Red said to them both. "How's it been today?"
"Quiet, just like every day that I'm here," Jenny said. She leaned her head back against the wall. "I tried to spend a bit of time in there like you requested to see if she'd open up to a female instead but she only read her book in a really passive-aggressive way. I can't believe that she's gone over three weeks without saying a damned word."
Juliet rolled her eyes. "That's because you can't do three minutes without saying a damned word." Red laughed as Jenny glowered at her sister. Juliet grinned. "Jen's right, though. I was in there yesterday morning and she looked at me like I was no better than the gum tracked in on the bottom of my shoe."
"She has a habit of doing that," Red admitted. He scratched at his head self-consciously.
"You can say that again. I don't know how she manages to make me feel three inches tall despite not saying a word. She's just a damned human but I swear that this girl could make a demon cry just by staring at it." Juliet shuddered.
Red wished that he could refute that but Juliet wasn't being entirely inaccurate. "Why don't you two take a break?" he said to the sisters. "I've got this covered."
"You sure?" Jenny asked with a raised brow.
"Yeah. If she hasn't tried anything by now, she won't."
Of course, that was just a theory. Either way, even if she tried to attack him, it would be futile. She had no weapons except for her fists and feet and teeth. And her sparkling personality.
The sisters shared a quick look and then Juliet shrugged. "Okay. Want us to come back to let you out?"
"No. Li and Phillip are supposed to be on the clock in fifteen minutes. They'll let me out of the cell when they get here."
"Is it true that you've been sleeping here? That's what Carsen told me when we took over his shift earlier." Jenny stretched as she stood but kept her eyes firmly on Red.
He nodded. "Mmhmm. I tried sleeping in my own bed the first couple of weeks but this stupid bond wants me to be near her. Makes it impossible to fall asleep. If I want to get any shuteye, I've gotta sleep here."
She cringed. "You're a braver wolf that I, Red. I don't think I could give up my mattress."
"Not even for Lauren?" Juliet teased.
Jenny pretended to consider. "It'd be a tough call."
No, it wouldn't.
The two females bade Red goodbye as they headed for the stairs. He listened to them go and then walked over to the cell. Red took a steadying breath and then opened the door and stepped inside.
She was sitting where she usually was, on the cot with her back pressed against the wall. In her lap was an open book. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – one of his favourites. Red had given it to her three days ago, thinking that she had to be bored and perhaps this would be another bout of normalcy for her. Maybe she liked literature.
Those stormy eyes tracked him as he entered, watching as the door swung shut.
"Hey," he said as he settled himself down on the ground. His eyes roved over her. Her hair was down today, not in the usual braid she forced it into. It softened the planes of her face, rounding out the sharp features and making her look like nothing more than a carefree young woman, not a hardened hunter.
"How's the book? Dickens was always a favourite author of mine but I also have a soft spot for Tolkien, Hemingway, Shakespeare...I can bring you something different if you'd like," he offered as he rummaged through the backpack he'd brought, pulling out her daily rations of food and water.
"Why?"
The word was so sudden, so unexpected, that he froze for a second. Slowly, Red raised his eyes from the backpack to her face. She was staring at him, head cocked slightly to the side. The book was closed in her lap and she was sitting so still that he could have believed that she hadn't spoken...If only the resounding sound of her voice wasn't ringing through his ears.
She was waiting for him to reply but his mouth had run dry. Her voice...gentler than he'd expected. And hearing her speak – it was like coming home. A sound that he'd never heard but was instinctively familiar.
In the weeks she'd been here, the hours and days he'd spent speaking to her, he'd started to imagine what she'd sound like. With the little that he knew about her – the hatred and the fight, the scars and scowls – he'd begun to imagine that her voice would be just as dark and low. A voice that commanded authority – a voice that led a group of humans to lay siege to an unsuspecting pack of wolves.
His Mate's voice wasn't anything like that.
As Red blinked at her, he realized that he'd forgotten something. That beneath the battle-weary exterior was a young woman. She probably had a family back in that group of hunters. Perhaps even a boyfriend. Someone she spoke to in this soft, lilting voice.
Red had to clear his throat before could speak. "Why what? Why do I like Great Expectations? It's a classic and—"
"Why haven't you killed me yet?"
A blunt honest question. He supposed that he owed her the same with his response.
"I don't see a reason why you need to die." The honest, stark truth.
Her mouth tightened but she didn't look away from him as she said, "I can't tell you what you want to know. You know that."
Slowly, he nodded. "I do."
"Then why prolong the inevitable?"
"Are you trying to persuade me into killing you?"
"No." She shook her head, midnight hair waving.
It sent some of her scent wafting towards him – vanilla and bourbon. Sweet and supple and spice.
"I just don't see what you're getting from all of this," she continued. "I've tried to think my way through it for weeks and I can't find an answer. Ever since you started coming in here, your Alpha and those other idiots – Li and Phillip, I think – haven't been back. No one else has been to see me except some redhead who was trying to talk to me about crocheting earlier today. Do I seem like the kind of person who knows shit about crafting?"
"Not particularly." Red felt a huff of amusement. He'd need to talk to Jenny and Juliet about this later. Somehow, the crafting had put his Mate over the edge. The sisters would lose their minds with laughter when he told them what had prompted this conversation.
"Exactly. So aside from that brand of torture, no one has tried to force answers out of me. You have me sit in here, day-after-day, and I know you're not keeping me alive for my conversation skills."
Red's lip twitched. "Well...no. Your conversation skills have been fairly abysmal until this moment."
A spark lit those eyes like she was surprised by the dry humour. It vanished quickly, as if she were internally scolding herself for allowing even a speck of joy. "Then why?"
"How about this. I'll answer your question if you answer one of mine. I'll even give you three options to pick from. You can pick whichever question feels most comfortable."
He waited a moment while she pondered that.
Then, a slow dip of her chin. "Fine."
"Why did the hunters come here to attack us? Is your hunter band responsible for the magic in our pack wards failing?" He knew that there were more vital questions to ask, things for pack safety that Henry would yearn for, but he couldn't help himself as he asked, "What's your name?"
Though he knew that he shouldn't, a part of him hoped that he would answer the latter. To hear her name would be a blessing – just as surely as this conversation was.
He was more than a little disappointed when she said, "We had to come here. You were endangering human lives. You broke the Laws."
Red was surprised that she knew about the Laws. They had been decreed by the Wolfswächter upon its creation and since it was a werewolf oversight board, there was no reason for a human to know about them. The Laws were straightforward. Don't expose the supernatural world to humans, make sure no one sees you Shift or notices the superhuman strength, speed, and senses, and no killing of humans unless deliberately threatened.
"We haven't broken any Laws," Red said firmly. "Believe me, I would know."
Her eyes shifted, an edge of anger brimming. "I should have known that you would lie."
"I'm not lying to you."
"You are. Humans have been killed and your pack is responsible for it."
Red's nostrils flared at her tone. "No human has been killed on our territory in years. Decades even."
"You just said it yourself," she murmured. "No humans killed on your territory. But you're working around that, aren't you?"
"What?"
"A twenty-year-old man was mauled to death a few hundred yards away from your territory two weeks before I came here." She frowned. "At least five weeks. You do the math. And eleven others have been killed sporadically between your pack border all the way to Denver over the past six months or so. We had to step in to control you. There was no other choice."
Red stilled. It wasn't her icy tone that had frozen him but rather her words. Humans had been killed? There had been no reports, no indication that a human had come anywhere close to the pack border. Whenever humans did happen to get near the border, the Old Magic turned them away – and made them forget that they'd ever been anywhere near that spot in the forest.
So there was no reason for humans to be dead and killed by a werewolf. No reason at all. Especially since none of his packmates had reported an attack or a need for self-defence that would result in the maiming of a human.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said honestly.
She huffed, clearly not believing him. "Sure you don't. Hell, it was probably you that killed them."
Red shook his head and there was a pang in his chest at her accusatory tone. A low growl slipped from his throat. "I swear to you that I have no knowledge of any human killings. If I did, I can assure you that we would be trying to figure out who is responsible so that we may hold them accountable for their actions."
He waited for her to say something but all she did was shake her head.
"I get it," Red said to her. "You have no reason to trust me and I don't have any reason to trust you either. But believe me, I don't know anything about these deaths. I'm the Lead Warrior in this pack. There are only three others who rank above me. They're the only ones who would be able to have this information without me knowing about it and...I trust them. They're good people. They wouldn't allow these deaths to go unpunished."
"You're a good liar. I almost believe you."
"If I wanted humans dead, don't you think I would have killed you?" Red asked as he got to his feet. He needed to start asking some questions around the pack – starting with Henry and Monroe. Needed to know if his Alpha, Luna, and Beta were hiding things from him.
"Doesn't that bring us to my question?" she asked. "Why are you keeping me alive when you know that I won't tell you anything else?"
At the door, he paused and looked back. He knocked once, still staring at her, and was relieved to hear Li or Phillip start to twist the handle on the other side. But he made sure that his whole focus was on her as he admitted the truth, "Because if you died, I would die too."
And before she could so much as blink, the door was open and he was gone.