Echo Falls (11 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Phoebe sipped her champagne, looking out at the diminishing wedding crowd. The lights in the tent had been dimmed and the music relaxed with the bride and groom now gone. She sighed, slipping her tired feet out of her shoes and silently thanking herself for having the foresight to buy flats instead of heels. She’d have had to abandon them and go barefoot a few hours into the ceremony if she’d chosen the latter.

“This makes us even,” she said, leaning toward Aidan.

He leaned toward her. “Even for what?”

She smirked. “I owed you a meal for cooking me breakfast. You didn’t say I had to cook it.”

He laughed, thinking about the delicious three course dinner he’d just consumed, and patted his stomach. “Alright, debt paid. But next time I’ll make sure to set some rules.”

She looked at him and arched her eyebrow. “Who says there will be a next time?”

“An optimist.” A slow, sexy smile spread across his lips, holding promises that made warmth spread through her chest.

She laughed, making him smile all the more. She had to admit that she liked his smile. Sweet and genuine, it lit up his face and gave him a mischievous look that made butterflies dance in her stomach. When he laughed, a lock of hair fell down to the center of his forehead and she rubbed her fingers together, wanting to push it away.

“Thank you,” she said, finally.

“For?”

“Taking me out on the run. I’ve never done anything like it.”

“I’m glad.”

She looked away and licked her lips. “Will Charlotte… Does Charlotte…?”

He nodded as if he had expected the question, however many words she’d happened to leave out. “Yes, Charlotte will become one of us. With both Will and Elle being who they are, there’s no way she could have missed out on her ‘inheritance’. Thankfully she doesn’t have to deal with it until she’s a teenager.”

She nodded. Having been turned later in life and with only her brother to talk to, she had no idea how these things worked. But she needed to know – and not just to sate her curiosity. Not that she thought she would be having children anytime soon. The butterflies in her stomach began to turn into an empty pit.

“I’d worry about her, but I think she’ll do as well as she possibly can with the pack there for her.”

He cocked his head to one side. “You care a lot about her.”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t? She’s adorable. You see a baby like her, always happy and laughing, and you hold her just once… You’ll do anything you can do to protect her. Anything.”

She opened her mouth to say something, to lessen the drama of her statement, but no words came to mind. She looked down at her champagne and pushed it away.
No more alcohol for me tonight.
Aidan didn’t seem to mind her outburst. He smiled at her, something in his expression that she couldn’t quite pick. But she knew she liked it.

When the song ended, she put on her shoes and packed most of her equipment away, save for one camera she used for a last round of photos while people were leaving. Many people wanted small group shots and silly faces – much helped by the champagne – before they left. After just a few of those, Phoebe’s energy waned and she walked out of the tent.

The last photo she took, a shot out into the dimly lit car park where people gathered for smokes and last goodbyes, sent chills down her spine.

She stared at the screen on the back of her camera.
Not possible. Not possible.

The solar powered ‘torches’ couldn’t have possibly provided enough light to distinguish a specific face. And yet, she lowered her camera with shaking hands, looking to the figure leaning against a black car at the far end of the dirt car park. She couldn’t possibly see to that level of detail, but somehow she knew he had a smirk on his face.

The true full moon night had passed, but its fullness still empowered the wolf. The wolf felt conflicted, both with the human’s fear and with her own experiences at the hand of the enemy. The wolf asserted herself enough to try to catch a definitive scent, but the enemy stood too far away. She whined softly, not sure whether to try to chase him down or to run for whatever safety she could find.

“Phoebe?”

She yelped and then looked around. Thankfully the rest of the people at the reception were too drunk or distracted to notice the animalistic sound. However, Aidan recognized it and immediately put his arm around her waist, scanning the area for danger. He lifted his head to scent the air, but nothing alerted him.

“What do you see?” he asked in a whisper.

“Nothing,” she said. She resisted the urge to let him comfort her with all her strength. Liam watched them even now; she could feel it. Letting him comfort her might as well be like painting a big target on his back. No doubt he already had one in Liam’s eyes, but she didn’t want to do anything to encourage the Hunter to strike out.

Aidan moved to wrap his arms around her, but she cleared her throat and took a step back. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing toward the black car.

“What did you see?” he asked again, his voice deep and soothing though more insistent. He looked in the direction she had glanced in and then turned to her.

She shook her head and took another stop back. “A bad dream. I want to leave.”

He nodded and placed his hand on her back, gently guiding her to his truck.

They didn’t speak for most of the drive back to her place. He didn’t press her, his mind busy with other things. He had to be upset with her for keeping so much from him, but she could only protect him by not saying anything. Telling him would only lead to more questions. Questions she didn’t want to answer and probably a few she
couldn’t
answer.

But are you really protecting him or just protecting yourself?

Anger bubbled up inside her. Why did this have to happen? Why couldn’t she just tell him? Why did caring about someone have to equate fearing for his life?

“I can’t take it sometimes!” she said, suddenly. “Every time I start to have a normal life, the wolf figures out how to mess things up. Every time I think that maybe, maybe I’ll embrace life as a wolf, humanity keeps calling me back. This tug of war is driving me crazy. I’m so tired. I just want it to stop. But if it stopped, I don’t know if I’d know what to do with myself.”

“You don’t like being a wolf?”

She sighed. A few months ago she would have said that it was a necessary evil. A regular, one-night-a-month side effect of the ‘disease’ she had. But since the nightmare began, her wolf had helped her to survive when she didn’t think she could. Even during the new moon, when she was closest to being a ‘normal’ human, her senses were better than ever. Her sense of smell stayed amazing and her combined instincts even more so. In dark moments, the wolf gave her comfort like nothing could.

Like or dislike? She didn’t know, but she wouldn’t have survived otherwise.

“We need both sides,” Aidan said. “Even ‘normal’ humans. Weres just have a more physical chaotic side. But that just means we are better at balancing the stress and the quiet. Sometimes we take longer to learn that balance, but finding it means more to us.”

He pulled into a parking space in front of her apartment building and turned the engine off, leaving the keys in the ignition. They sat there in silence, watching insects dart around the outside lights. With a nervous flutter of recognition, she realized she didn’t want to go inside yet.

“Do you ever want to just…?”

“Turn into the wolf and stay that way?” he asked, looking at her.

She shivered when she looked at him, the shadows cast by the lights making his face look that much more serious. He could have given her one look right then, and she would have let the wolf take over without a fuss. As it was, she thanked her logical mind for not yet taking off her seatbelt. The sensation of it wrapped around her body made her feel safe from herself.

“Sometimes,” he said, answering her unfinished question.

I want this,
she thought, her heart drumming.
I want this. I want him. I want to be
‘us’
with him.
But she couldn’t. She had to keep him at a distance to keep him safe.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to
be
safe with him, and she had a feeling that he didn’t want to be either when it came to this. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned, putting one knee on the seat as she leaned toward him.

She held his face in her hands and kissed him. He froze for a moment and then responded with enthusiasm, trying to unbuckle his seatbelt with one hand and pull her closer with the other. He couldn’t quite manage to untangle himself from the buckle and used both his arms to pull her closer instead.

His urgency released something inside her and she unbuttoned his jacket before pressing against him. She dipped her head down and nipped at his neck, her heart pounding.

He managed to free himself of his seatbelt and pushed up slightly, maneuvering her back into her seat. He moved over her, trailing his mouth down her neck and giving her more than the nip she’d given him. A lot more.

She gasped as he bit and sucked in all the right places along her neck, sending waves of urgent expectation washing over her. He moved his hands down to hold her while his thumbs teased her nipples through the thin material of her dress. She grabbed the front of his shirt, making the buttons strain. She gave a moment’s pause to the shirt being a suit shirt and began to fumble with the buttons, aching to get her hands on his bare chest.

Suddenly he knocked his knee into the gear stick, enough distraction to stop his slow teasing of her neck. He paused above her for a moment, breathing hard. Then he lightly kissed her forehead, her cheeks and her lips before sitting back in his seat. She sat up and couldn’t help a small moan.

They smiled at each other.

“Wow,” he said.

She nodded. “Uh huh.”

“I want…” He sat back further into his seat and took a deep breath. “I want things to keep going, but not here. Not in the truck.”

She glanced around and then nodded. “Another night.”

“Another night.” He released her hair from the clip it had been in all day and then ran his fingers through it. “When we’re both not half-asleep after a full moon and a wedding for strangers. When we can take the time to make things memorable.”

She wanted to argue that any time with him would certainly be memorable to her, but she knew better. He’d given her an easy out. She could invite him up to her apartment if she wanted to pursue things further or she could leave it at what he said.

“I am tired,” she said.

He smiled. “I’ll help you with your bags.”

He brought her bags to the front door and put them on the ground before turning toward her. She almost giggled when he took her hands in his and squeezed them. She squeezed back, grinning like a mad woman until she looked up at his face. His expression held serious things – and not good ones.

“Phoebe, I need to ask you something.”

She shook her head, her brain refusing to form words. The look on his face said that he wouldn’t be asking any of the questions a woman would want to hear after a first date of sorts.

“I have to ask.” He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Thomas thought that the Hunter had to be working with someone in the pack to be able to get to…” He looked around. “To get to us so fast. I told you about it the night he was killed. I know in my gut that he was right. And I think whoever is betraying us found out about his theory and killed him for it.”

Phoebe nodded slowly, the information coming together in her mind. When Aidan had first told her about Thomas’s theory, she hadn’t had a chance to think about it before that awful phone call came. But now she knew Thomas had a good point. Liam needed an accomplice to know who to kill so quickly. If there was one thing Liam didn’t do, it was take action without reason and planning. He couldn’t go killing whoever she talked to and he certainly couldn’t just know werewolves by looking at them

A sense of relief settled in her. Perhaps the burden of the murders didn’t rest solely on her shoulders.

“There’s something I need to know.” Aidan said.

Her grip on his hands loosened. “You aren’t suggesting that I -”

“No, no. You didn’t know the others who were killed. You didn’t know anyone at the time of the first murder.”

“What do you need to know?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“Did the Hunter follow you here?”

Time seemed to freeze then, the world narrowing into the space just around them. Tears welled up in her eyes and she bit her bottom lip. Words, excuses and lies all swam around in her mind, but none made it to her mouth. What could she possibly say that wouldn’t add up to ‘Mia was right. The Hunter followed me here and I’ve been lying to you all this time’?
Oh, by the way, the Hunter is my ex-boyfriend. How’s that for a can of worms?

She pulled her hands away from his and began squeezing the tip of her thumb.

“Phoebe?”

“What does it have to do with anything anyway?” she snapped. “What difference will it make?”

He stared at her for a few moments and then said, “He did follow you.”

She nodded, her tears spilling down onto her cheeks. “I didn’t know at first. I began to think maybe it was him for a while, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“But then you were sure.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, looking toward the doors, and her heart sank. He’d brought out his inner cop to deal with her; liars didn’t deserve friends.

Or lovers.

She wiped away her tears and stared down at her shoes. “Thomas. When you said he’d been killed with a silver bolt. Then I knew.”

“Something you would have known about the previous murders if we’d had a real conversation about them.”

Something that could have saved Thomas’s life.

She looked up, hearing him moving her bags. He lifted them onto her shoulders and then gestured to the front door. She looked at him, confused.

“I want you safely inside before I leave.”