Otherworld Nights (31 page)

“You gave our kids flying reindeer.”

“I did.”

I put my arms around his neck, and wrapped my hands in his damp hair and kissed him. “God, I love you.”

He kissed me back, then said, “If I’d known how many brownie points this daddy stuff could win me, I’d have talked you into kids years ago. Would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“It would have.”

“Problem is, they’re going to grow up.” He paused. “We may need to have more.”

“We may.” I wrapped my hand in his shirtfront and pulled him down in front of the fire.

We lay in front of the fire, naked, legs entwined as we ate gingerbread cookies and drank hot chocolate from the thermos I’d brought in earlier.

“This feels familiar,” he said.

I smiled. “It does.”

“Twenty years.”

I bit back a sleepy yawn. “Hmm?”

“Twenty years since our first Christmas.”

“Twenty? No, it can’t be …” I calculated. “Shit. It is.”

Twenty years since our first Christmas together. Twenty years since we’d been curled up together on another rug, in another place, munching on gingerbread cookies and sipping hot chocolate.

“The cookies are better,” he said. “They actually look like gingerbread men now.”

“Because we remembered to buy cookie cutters.”

He laughed and we lay there, lost in memories. Then he glanced under the tree.

“I think I see a gift under there for you.”

I laughed. “No, you’re not going to make me open one early this time.”

“One won’t hurt.” He nudged a small present off a pile with his foot. “There. It fell. Don’t make me put it back.”

Still grinning, I reached down and scooped it up. It was small and flat, oddly shaped.

“Please don’t tell me it’s another spare set of keys,” I said.

“Mmm, maybe.”

I unwrapped it. Inside, I found a silver tree ornament. A circle surrounding a cutout of two wolves on a snowy hill. He’d had it engraved with the years of our first Christmas and this one.

“We’re starting a collection,” he said. “You’ll get one every twenty years. I figure we have three or four more to go. Which could mean a lot of kids, to keep me in your good graces.”

“You don’t need kids for that,” I murmured.

I ran my fingers over the wolves. Part of our lives. Such a huge part of our lives. A part that we were keeping from our children.

That, I realized, was the real issue. When our children are old enough to understand, they’d look back on a childhood where they’d been raised as normal kids, believing their parents were normal people, and they wouldn’t see a harmless fantasy, like reindeer tracks in the snow. They’d look back on every part of their lives—on their relationships with the rest of the Pack, on all the times I’d done “research,” all the times Clay and I had to leave on “a trip,” even on things as small as why they couldn’t have pets—and they’d see lies permeating every aspect of their lives. Every person in their lives telling them lies. Every person they’d trusted to tell them the truth.

We gave them the fantasy of a normal family because that’s what I wanted. That’s what I’d dreamed of, and as much as I loved my life, there was still part of me that thought “normal” was what my children deserved. But it wasn’t. They deserved us—their parents and their extended family—as we really were. They deserved
our
normal.

“I want to tell them,” I said.

He didn’t ask what I meant, didn’t need to, just nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Can we talk about that?” I said. “Now? I know it’s not the time, but—”

“Now is fine.”

C
hristmas morning. Awake at dawn, the kids tumbling down the stairs, Logan tripping over Kate and sprawling to the floor, Kate helping him up, making sure he was okay before the race resumed. Presents. Not a lot, because, let’s face it, for our kids, Christmas came year-round, endless toys and books and games from friends and family and, yes, indulgent parents.

Santa gifts first. Then stockings. Then breakfast—pancakes and ham and cookies. Then gifts to each other, still in pajamas, curled up in front of the blazing fire. Later, some talk of going outside, but for once the forest didn’t call to anyone, and we were all quite happy to laze about and play board games.

We missed lunch. Hardly shocking, considering breakfast never really ended. At two, the kids realized they’d skipped a meal and insisted on going through the motions of making lunch, even if no one was particularly hungry.

Afterward, they fell asleep by the fire. When they began to stir from their naps, Clay took off. Once the twins were fully awake, they asked where he was.

“He just stepped out,” I said, gazing at the window. “He’ll be back soon.”

“What are you looking for, Mommy?” Kate asked as she climbed onto my lap.

I was about to say, “Nothing,” and slide her back to the floor, then I stopped.
Was I ready for this? Really ready?

I took a deep breath, then settled her on my lap and leaned down
to her ear.

“Watch,” I whispered.

Logan glanced up from the floor, still sleepy. It took a moment for him to figure out something was going on. When he did, he walked to the window and gazed out.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“Just wait.”

It only took another minute. Then Clay stepped from the forest in wolf form and my heart jammed into my throat.

I’d wanted to explain it first, sit them down, tell them everything. This had been his idea. What the hell had possessed me to go along with it? How were they supposed to process this? What were they thinking? What was I even going to say?

Clay walked toward the chalet, slowly, his blue eyes fixed on the window. Waiting for me to appear and change my mind, madly wave him away. I wanted to, but I was frozen there, watching him.

He stopped, lowered his head, and chuffed, breath streaming from his nostrils. Kate slid from my arms. She walked to the window, pressed her hands to it, her nose to it. Her head tilted one way then the other as she studied him. Then she turned to me with a blazing grin.

“It’s Daddy, isn’t it?”

I hesitated, certain I’d misheard. Worry clouded her eyes.

“Mommy? It is, isn’t it?”

I nodded. Forced the words out. “It is.”

She turned and slugged her brother in the arm. “Told you.” She looked at me. “I told him. I saw the werewolves in my book and I said they’re real, and he said they weren’t.”

“You didn’t say you thought Dad was …” Logan stared out the window.

Kate took off, shouting that she was going outside, and I didn’t think to stop her. I just watched Logan. He didn’t step closer to the
window. Didn’t press against it. There was no smile on his face. He just stared.

I slid from the chair and crouched beside him. “I know this is a big shock, baby.”

He kept gazing out the window as Kate now raced over to Clay, plowing through the snow in her slippers, no coat on.

“Is it magic?” Logan asked.

“Yes.”

He turned to me. “Can you do that, too? Turn into a wolf?”

I nodded.

“And Jeremy and Uncle Nick and everyone?”

I nodded.

“And me?”

He watched me, his face still expressionless. When I didn’t answer, he said, “When I’m older, will I be able to do that?”

“I … we don’t know. Maybe.”

He grinned then, a grin as bright as his sister’s, so sudden it made my breath catch.

“Cool,” he said.

He threw his arms around my neck, gave me a quick hug, then raced to the door. Before he ran out, he turned around.

“Can I go—?” he began.

I smiled. “You can.”

A second later, the door banged shut. Another second and he was out there, no coat, no boots, wading through the snow to where his sister stood beside Clay, running her hands over his fur. Clay turned. Logan stopped. Clay stepped forward, and looked him in the eyes. Then, slowly, Logan reached out and patted Clay’s head and Clay licked his face.

Logan giggled, so loud I could hear him. He wiped his face. Kate pounced on Clay from the back. Logan jumped him, too, and they went down, shrieking and giggling, rolling in the snow.

I’d done the right thing. Maybe I should have done it sooner. I
don’t know. Didn’t matter. But it was done now and everything was fine.

Kate waved at me through the window. Logan beckoned me out. I smiled, lifted a finger to say I was coming, then headed for the back door to grab their coats and boots and join them.

I
was dreaming of the ravines in Toronto, racing through them, feeling … lonely. Crushing loneliness—and frustration and self-loathing because I shouldn’t have been feeling lonely, damn it. I’d chosen that life. I’d chosen that man. Good choices, both of them. And yet … not for me. That’s what it came down to, in the end. Something can be good and decent and worthy, and still not make you happy because it doesn’t fill that pit inside you. And you won’t be happy until it is filled, however hard that will be. So that’s what I remember. The loneliness, and venting my frustration on the coyotes, and racing through the forest when what I was really running from was the man who’d bitten me, the man I’d still loved … and hated … and loved.

“Elena.” A voice whispered in my ear as my paws ripped up the soft earth. “We’re here.”

A hand shook my shoulder. I growled and tried to shrug it off. Then I felt it, the warmth of his touch.

“Clay …”

I opened my eyes. He was right there, his blue eyes inches from mine. I inhaled the rich scent of him, and for a second I was back in that forest, back in that time, and I felt my insides crumple, as if I were still only dreaming of him, and hating myself for it.

Then he pulled back and I saw his face, the faint lines around his mouth and his eyes, and I catapulted through time, back to now, back to here. Here. Now. On a plane. Going to see our children.

For a moment, that, too, seemed like a dream, and I felt a prickle of anger for letting myself imagine it.

“Elena?”

I blinked and looked out the window, into the darkness, at the city lights below. I could see my reflection. Not the young woman in the forest. Not anymore. I lifted my hand to the glass and saw the ring on my finger, the same ring he’d given me twenty years ago, before it all went to hell. The ring I’d thrown back at him again and again until, finally, I put it back on.

“Till death do us part,” I whispered.

“Hmm, that sounds ominous,” Clay said. “You planning something I should know about?”

I smiled and leaned against his shoulder as the plane descended into St. Petersburg.

I travel a lot, both as a freelance journalist and as the Pack’s mediator, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve left North America. Landing in a country where I don’t know the language is disconcerting. I feel lost, and I hate that. So I was quiet as we disembarked and went through customs, anxiously scanning the signs for international travel icons and trying to remember my very few words of Russian.

“Baggage,” I murmured. “Baggage …”

Clay steered me through the crowd. He knew even less Russian than I did, but being in a non-English-speaking country doesn’t bother him, because he has no interest in communicating with anyone anyway. I let his sixth sense for escape routes guide us as I gawked about, taking it all in.

“We’ll come back to St. Petersburg next week,” he said as he prodded me along. “Bring the kids. Check out the museums.”

As we walked, Clay rolled his shoulders, stretching.

“How’s the arm?” I whispered.

If anyone else had asked, they’d get an abrupt “Fine.” A festering zombie scratch five years ago nearly cost Clay his arm and he’s been dealing with the fallout ever since. After the week of hard fighting we’d just been through, he’d been feeling it again, but after a moment’s hesitation he said, “Not more than a twinge or two since yesterday. Guess I’ve finally learned to compensate.”

“I’m sure any of those guys you put down would agree.”

He smiled and waved me toward the baggage claim.

In the arrivals area, I caught sight of Nick Sorrentino almost immediately. He was easy to spot. Most of the people around him looked as if they’d slept in the terminal. Nick was as bright-eyed, clean-shaven, and impeccably dressed as if it were midday, not midnight. The young man beside him didn’t look nearly so chipper. Nineteen-year-old Noah—Nick’s ward—was chugging Coke to stay awake. Though they’d been in Russia for a week, he hadn’t quite adjusted to the time difference.

As I scanned the crowd around them, Clay whispered, “You better not be looking for the kids.”

“Of course not. I—”

“—told Nick not to bring them.”

“Right.”

“You weren’t just saying it because you thought you should, while secretly hoping Nick would bring them anyway.”

“Er, no. Not really …”

He gave me a look. “If you want the kids, you can’t tell him not to bring them. You’re Alpha-elect. He’d consider that an order.”

“Damn.” I sighed. “Do you think I should have said he could bring them?”

He shrugged. “Tough call. Worrying that they’ll get grabbed in the airport is a bit paranoid. On the other hand, we did just finish stopping a crazy supernatural cult from unleashing a killer
virus. And that cult
was
after our kids. So I’d say a little paranoia is warranted.”

That’s why the kids were here in the first place, under the added protection of the Russian Pack. That cult had been gathering supernatural rarities because its leader had proclaimed them signs of the coming supernatural revolution. Twins born to two bitten werewolves was an extreme rarity, so Kate and Logan had been high on Gilles de Rais’s shopping list.

When we made it over to Nick, he swooped me up in a feet-off-the-ground hug and kiss that earned us a few stares from onlookers. There was a time when I would have squirmed away, worrying what people might think. I’ve learned not to care. Nick is my Pack brother and my friend. So I hugged him back and kissed him and he told me the twins were fine, sound asleep when he left. He knew that’s the first thing I’d want to know, so he told me without being asked, which is the real mark of a friend.