Fade (13 page)

How crazy was that?

I’ll answer your questions.

All of my questions?
I asked, not even caring that he was still in there, too relieved to feel him in there
to
care. Despite the trauma of the night, I still felt more right with him nestled in my mind than I did without him. I wanted that to matter. I wanted his intimate, unrequested presence to make me angry. It didn’t.

He thought about his response, trying to decide if he had another option.
Yes
, he answered after a lengthy pause,
all of them
.

I won’t wait forever
, I warned him, knowing he would take his time otherwise. He didn’t want to answer my questions. Despite the fact that my heart trembled at the thought of his answers, his fear of my response was greater. That comforted me in a demented sort of way. I didn’t want him afraid, but the realization that he was made me feel less alone.

Ten minutes.

Five,
I countered.

He sighed internally, but didn’t reply. I didn’t need his answer anyway. I felt him moving toward me, where moments before, he’d been absolutely still.

How could I be so certain of something I could neither see nor explain? The fact that I could was disconcerting. Wasn’t that the story of my life lately, though? My mind didn’t belong to me alone anymore, not since the moment I’d seen Dace … if it ever had at all. And that didn’t matter as much as it should, because as much as tonight had scared me, the thing coming for us scared me more.

I shivered and released Chelle’s arm, flopping back in the chaise. “You’re off the hook.”

She exhaled, her eyes falling half closed. “Thank you.” Relief echoed in her words.

“Don’t thank me. Thank Dace,” I muttered, not feeling any better. I was hurt, angry, scared, and confused all at the same time. With her, with him, and with myself.

Dace and the wolf had intimate access to my mind for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand, let alone change. Given everything I’d felt tonight, I half suspected what that meant for me. It seemed impossible, but if I’d learned anything lately, I’d learned that the lines between possible and impossible were no longer static. Somewhere over the last weeks, they had blurred and shifted, and Chelle knew what I had only begun to guess.

Where I had questions, she had answers or guesses close enough to answers not to make any real difference. She knew what I’d experienced at the rave tonight. She knew exactly what Dace was and maybe even what
I
was. Maybe she even knew why Ronan prowled through my head like he had. Every single thing I questioned, she held the answers to, and she hadn’t said a word when she’d had the chance.

Worse, Dace had lied to me, diverted my attention … a million little things to keep me from looking too deeply, from questioning too far. I wasn’t sure if I was more disappointed with him for keeping those cards close or with myself for not guessing what my heart had known from day one.

Dace wasn’t human, and maybe I wasn’t either.

The urge to scream hit me as I sat there, but I did the smart thing instead. I closed my eyes and waited.

I knew the exact moment Dace stepped into the room. He made no sound at all, but the faintest breath of energy brushed across my skin and settled in the pit of my stomach, soothing the raw feeling poking at me with every breath. My senses focused on him, humming as if they’d only just come alive. Maybe they had. I certainly
felt
more alive when he was around.

I cracked open an eye, my gaze moving in his direction on instinct.

He stood right inside the door, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t even begin to unravel. Possession and protection, relief and reverence all shone in his eyes at once. His golden hair was windblown, strands sweeping down across his forehead and making my fingers itch to right them. He smelled of grass and pine and home.

A tremor ran through me.

His eyes were so bright; I started drowning all over again. I was always drowning with Dace, and I never seemed to care enough to make myself stop. Whether it saved me, killed me, or tore me to pieces, I wanted to keep drowning.

I jerked my eyes down and instantly regretted the action.

Dace wore nothing from the waist up, and he looked absolutely perfect, all hard planes and smooth, contoured muscle. He wasn’t thick like a bodybuilder, but lean like a runner. I wanted to reach out and run my hands over his chest and stomach to feel those muscles ripple beneath my palms. I wanted to touch him and know I affected him as easily as he did me.

I swallowed hard and fisted my hands at my sides, watching the gentle play of light across his golden skin. Even knowing what he was, or maybe what he wasn’t, I still wanted him so much I hurt. That ache pushed away even the worst of my grief, making it seem smaller and somehow so much less consuming. When Dace wasn’t around, the missing piece of me felt so much larger. But with him near, it shrank to nothing. No matter how terrifying this situation was for me, he still made me feel better.

I squeezed my eyes closed and turned my head away, unable to trust myself to look at him and not touch, and knowing I had to find the will to do the former. If I touched him, we wouldn’t talk. Not tonight. And more than I needed anything else, I needed him to explain why nothing in my life made sense anymore. I needed him to tell me that this wasn’t as bad as it felt. That this thing between us wouldn’t hurt me. That, no matter what, I wouldn’t lose another part of me.

I couldn’t take any more loss. I couldn’t deal with any more fear. I wanted to curl up in a ball beneath the covers and stay there until the world righted itself and my life went back to normal, but I didn’t have that option. I hadn’t had that choice since I’d driven into Beebe. It wasn’t fair, and I didn’t hate the injustice as much as I wanted to.

Part of me, a big part, wanted to rage at Dace for becoming so important. I resented that I spent more time thinking about him than I did my mom now, but I couldn’t hate him for it. I couldn’t even blame him for it. I’d felt his fear out there with Ronan, and I’d seen the broken expression on his face. Our connection confused Dace as much as it did me. He’d asked for all of this as little as I had. And somehow, I think, he had more to lose in this messed up situation than I did.

That didn’t make me feel any better.

Chelle shifted on the chaise at my feet and then murmured something. I don’t know if she was talking to me, to Dace, or to the room in general. I couldn’t hear the words through the pounding of my heart.

Dace responded, and I felt her rise from her perch on the chaise. I wanted to tell her not to go, to stay with me and keep me sane. To please keep me from diving into Dace’s arms and demanding he kiss me and make this night all better.

He had power over me in ways I didn’t think he even realized, let alone understood. When he came anywhere near, I didn’t care if he was Dace, Dancer the reindeer, a demon, or the Devil. That wasn’t a good thing, not right then anyway.

The door closed.

I refused to open my eyes.

“Arionna,” he said, my name nothing but a soft sigh on his lips.

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even acknowledge him.

He said it again, louder this time, and started toward me. I couldn’t hear his steps, but as he neared, energy crackled between us like it always did, dancing along my skin until I wanted to wrap myself in it like
I
always did.

Whatever happened to me tonight tied us more closely together. I couldn’t sense his thoughts anymore, but I couldn’t force him out of my head either. He’d found his own little corner in there, and I didn’t think he’d ever leave again.

“Don’t touch me, Dace.” My request was the barest of whispers, as fragile and vulnerable as I felt. I struggled into a sitting position, then huddled against the back of the chaise, the afghan that had been covering me wrapped around my shoulders. My heart pounded, fear coursing through me. Would he ignore my warning? Would everything I experienced tonight stop mattering to me if he did? Had it already stopped mattering? “Please, don’t touch me,” I begged, my eyes meeting his across the room to do a little begging of their own.

He opened his mouth to say something, reconsidered, and then nodded once. His eyes slid away from mine as if he knew I couldn’t look him in the eyes and think.

I drew a deep, grateful breath.

For a long time, he didn’t try to come any closer. He simply stood right where he was in the center of the room, staring at the wall with those sad, knowing eyes. Those half-human, half-wolf eyes. The same eyes I’d seen earlier tonight.

That reminder shocked my system like cold water being poured over me.

Every thought, every question, and every worry I’d had since meeting him, as well as those that came rearing their ugly heads at the rave, poured in one right after another. I didn’t know what to say, how to begin, or
where
to begin. There were so many things I needed to know, and so many things I couldn’t even put into words.

“Why?” Apparently the words weren’t necessary after all. Every question, every fear, and every ache I had burst out in that single word, sounding both hurt and angry at the same time.

Dace bowed his head. “I don’t know why, Arionna.”

“What
are
you, Dace?”

I knew what he was going to say before he ever opened his mouth. That knowledge had beat at me all night long, demanding I listen to the little cues I’d been given since meeting him. That I pay attention to the animal that leapt and snarled, and stared and waited. The one that defended me without a moment’s hesitation tonight, and bound me to this confusing person who just might have owned half my soul from the moment our eyes first met.

I didn’t need confirmation of any of that, but Dace gave it to me anyway.

“I’m the wolf you saw.” He closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping.

I felt no surprise, no shock, and no fear when he said it. Nothing at all. I was numb inside and out, like everything I’d suspected had been confirmed. And I guess it had. I’d grasped at this truth from the moment I met him. I’d simply been too ignorant to understand.

I wanted to cry, but not for myself. Dace looked defeated, as if his admission cost him everything. Remembering the way his fear whispered across my mind, choking me, I thought maybe it had.

“How? It’s … .” I shook my head, trying to dislodge words and make my mouth work. I wanted to tell him he was crazy, that no one in their right mind would believe him. That he could not be a wolf any more than I could be a fairy. I couldn’t make myself voice those denials though, because it seemed less possible that he was merely human than it did that he was a wolf, or half a wolf, or whatever term defined him.

“What am I?” I whispered. The question hurt. For my entire life, the question had always been
who am I,
and now it wasn’t. Somewhere between meeting Dace and waking twenty minutes ago, everything I knew about myself, people, and the world around me had changed. I was a
what
now, not a
who
, and knowing that didn’t scare me nearly enough.

“Human,” he answered.

I wanted to believe him. I desperately wanted to believe him, but … “You felt it. Whatever happened to me tonight, you felt it.”

“I did,” he said, looking at me. His eyes were wide and sad. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not you, Arionna. It doesn’t mean you’re like me.”

“Maybe,” I whispered. “But I think maybe I’m supposed to be.” The truth of my words settled over me, and I couldn’t escape them. I was supposed to be like Dace. I’d felt the thing in me at the rave, demanding I hurt Ronan, that I force him out of my head and kill him. As unfamiliar and frightening as the urge had been, it had been by no means foreign. Maybe I hadn’t felt that part of myself before meeting Dace, but it had always been there, or should have been. Now I just had a big, gaping hole where that piece went. So I might not have been like Dace, but I was supposed to be, and for some reason I didn’t understand, I wasn’t. That piece was gone. Left somewhere I couldn’t follow.

That hurt.

“I don’t know,” he said. This time, he wasn’t trying to evade me. He honestly didn’t know the answer, and I think that hurt him as much as it did me.

”Are you a werewolf?” I looked up at him, the word quivering uncertainly between us.

”No, I’m a shifter. A shapeshifter.”

“A shapeshifter.” I tried out the word, feeling the shape of it on my lips. The word felt right, more right than werewolf had. I looked up at him, trying to understand, to make sense of this new world and his place in it. “Is there a difference?”

He didn’t say anything for the longest time. He simply looked at me as if trying to find some answer in my eyes, on my face, somewhere. He sighed and shook his head. I knew he hadn’t found the answer one way or another.

“How much do you want to know?”

”I … .” I thought about his question for a minute. How much
did
I want to know? Before he’d walked in the door, I would have said everything, but that wasn’t true anymore. Now that he stood in front of me, I wasn’t sure I
wanted
to know any of it, or that I could handle knowing any more right now. My entire life had changed in the course of a few hours, and I’d had no choice in the matter. Did I have a choice now?