Moon Chilled (14 page)
"I hated her, but she was still my mom," Shae whispered, her hand returning to the thick fur on my wolf's neck.
My wolf turned and looked at the body behind us, understanding just as I had. I'd hated Diane as well, and even my wolf understood why as there were plenty of times that I'd felt her rustling in the back of my mind when the woman had spoken badly of Shae. I was saddened by the death, the waste of life, but not that Shae had killed her. I remembered watching through the crack in my door when Diane had pulled Shae by her hair, kicking and screaming, down the hallway toward Ray's room. I'd sat there with my knees against my chest and the palms of my hands clasped against my ears to block out the sounds of my mate's pain. But it didn't stop all the noises from coming in, and I'd tried for nearly a decade to forget the sound of Shae's terror that first night. When Diane had come for me shortly after Shae's escape, I'd made much the same noises.
My wolf turned toward the body, and though I felt some semblance of sadness for her, the wolf had none to spare. She growled at the lifeless heap of the woman that had caused us both pain for the last ten years of our lives. I couldn't blame her for how she felt. Shae got to her feet, and my wolf pressed against her leg, steadying her when she might have gone down.
"I never thought, coming back here, that all of this would happen." She sounded distant, like she really wasn't talking to me even though her hand was on my wolf's neck. I wanted to nod; I hadn't expected it either. But now that it had happened I wasn't exactly upset by it, not in the least. There was rebuilding to be done, but I had faith that by the time the elk came back in full strength in the spring, our pack would be better than I could ever remember it being. And that was all because of Shae and what she'd managed to do for all of us. Sometimes it takes fighting and a bit of bloodshed to wash away the pain. I hadn't ever known that, but I was seeing the truth of it as we emerged from the alley to see the last of the fighting taking place.
Diane and her group were dead. I didn't have to count the bodies to know that as people started dragging them to the middle of the street. Without saying a word, two men went behind us to retrieve Diane's body and added it to the pile as well. We'd lost a few as well but not nearly the numbers that they had. I saw a teenage girl carrying Gavin and shielding his face from the carnage. I appreciated that and nodded to her. She gave me a weak smile, her face smeared with dirt as she joined the others as we all looked at the mess that had become of our little town. We were barely a mile wide, no more than twenty homes and small buildings, and could hardly even be called a town, but it had been my home. I'd been born here in Elderthorne and had known nothing else. And I could see the life under the blood and peeling paint. It needed some work, but I knew this place could be ours again.
Again I asked my wolf to let me have my body back, and this time she agreed. Though I was still left gasping and in pain as my body came back together from wherever it went when I wasn't a wolf, I felt stronger this time as I got to my feet unassisted. I took Shae's hand, grasping hers in mine and hoping she got some comfort from our connection the same as I did. "It's over," I told her.
Shae nodded and forced a watery smile. "Thanks to you all."
I quickly shook my head, knowing where the source of our strength came from. "Thanks to you. You gave these people hope and a chance to be safe. All they needed was a chance to take it and a reason to fight. And an alpha that they could fight for."
She hugged me close, and I wrapped my arms around her as I buried my face in the softness of her slender neck. "Thank you for bringing me back here." I nodded, unable to do anything more without breaking the connection between us, which I wasn't ready to do just yet.
Someone came up behind us, and with Shae holding me close I didn't startle as I had been known to do so many times before. The fear was still there, and I had no illusions of it going away anytime soon after everything I had been through, but having her there to hold me somehow made it softer and far more manageable.
"What do you want done with the bodies?" the man asked us. I didn't want to think about it but figured that it had to be done anyway. Thankfully Shae was there to answer the question for me.
"Bury our dead and burn theirs," she told him without letting me go. It might have sounded cold and maybe even heartless of her, but I knew that was likely what everyone in the pack would have wanted anyway.
She led me away from the bodies as that gruesome work began. We took Gavin from the girl that had been holding him, and I followed her into the darkness of the surrounding forest where she sat down with her back against a wide pine tree and I found comfort on a lush bed of moss.
"Are you all right?" I asked her after a few long moments of silence stretched between us. I knew she likely wasn't after everything that had happened recently, but I couldn't simply let the silence continue on between us either. I had never been all that great with silence.
"Do you really want to stay here?" Shae asked me. Her voice sounded strained as if she couldn't quite believe the possibility of me saying yes or of even having to ask such a question.
I nodded. "I do," I told her. If she left again I would go with her, though. She was my mate, and even if I didn't love her and hadn't been in love with her for years, we were bound together, and I never wished to be away from her again.
Her face pinched and her shoulders hunched as she leaned forward and looked me squarely in the eye. "Even after everything that happened here?" she pressed me.
Smiling at her, I came forward as well. Gavin lied down between us and closed his eyes, looking nearly as exhausted as I felt. "Yes, even after all the history here, I still want to stay." I thought that she was going to argue with me, or to try to tell me all the reasons we should be going as far away from here as we could possibly get. As if I didn't already know them all by heart myself.
But instead she only simply asked me, "Why?" as if it were the most basic question in the world. And maybe it was.
I crawled toward her on my hands and knees and laid my head down on her thigh as I stretched out beside her. "Because this place, with its good and the bad, is still my home." I took a breath and pressed her hand between mine near my face. "But I won't make you stay here. If you want to leave, I will go with you. I'm sure it was hard for you to come back here this time, and if you'll be unhappy here then we can go. I won't sacrifice your happiness just because I feel like staying here."
The hard lines around Shae's face softened. "Thank you. Do you really think that we could make this place a home? A real home, and not the fake shadow of something resembling a home that it was before?" she asked me in a soft voice that reminded me of the autumn breeze as it whispered through the changing mountain leaves.
I nodded firmly. I was sure of it and felt it deeply within my heart. "I am."
She nodded as well and ran her calloused thumb gently over the back of my hand. "Then it's settled, mate. Elderthorne is our home. A few coats of paint and a few more homes demolished and it might not even look the same."
I smiled up at her and chose to ignore the way her eyes sparkled when she spoke of causing more destruction to the town. I knew her reasons, and they were shared by plenty of the people here as well. "There you go."
She gave me a wink. "Or we could just burn it all to the ground and live like wild wolves up in the hills. Killing for our dinners, bathing in the river, lying naked under the stars ..." She looked up at the moon above us as if to make a point.
She was right; we didn't live all that differently from what she was describing now. We'd all shared in the kill of a buck the night before and had cleaned ourselves in the river, and now of the three of us near this little tree, Gavin was the only one wearing pants. She was also joking. I knew this by the shining light in her eyes and the wink she had given me. And so I said, "Whatever makes you happy, Shae."
"You make me happy, mate," she quickly replied.
Heat flooded my cheeks, and I kissed her knuckles. "You make me happy too."
A chorus of howls went up around us, and though we weren't wolves, Shae and I tossed our heads back and joined in the song of our kind. We rejoiced in the music as it celebrated who we were and where we had come from. There was something magical about having a pack around me that I felt like I belonged to, one I believed in, that I felt like I could trust. I'd never had that before, and with my mate by my side and our son less than a foot away, I knew that I could believe in a brighter future together, for all of us.
Fin
About the Author
Caitlin was fortunate growing up to be surrounded by family and teachers that encouraged her love of reading. She has always been a voracious reader and that love of the written word easily morphed into a passion for writing. If she isn’t writing, she can usually be found studying as she works toward her counseling degree. She comes from a military family and the men and women of the armed forces are close to her heart. She also enjoys gardening, hiking, and horseback riding in the Colorado Rockies where she calls home with her wonderful fiance and their two dogs. Her belief that there is no one true path to happily ever after runs deeply through all of her stories.
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