004 | THE MOOSE CREEK PACK

Enzo’s POV

I was going to kill him. 

My hand tightened on Scarlett’s as we stepped through the portal. The cold hit us almost instantly. I barely felt it; my rage burned so hot that I could’ve sworn the snowflakes melted before they even touched my skin.

Alpha Ryker had hurt her. She wouldn’t admit it, but she didn’t have to. It was clear as day in the quiver of her lower lip and the distant look in those beautiful blue-green eyes.

“It’s amazing,” she breathed, as we stepped out into a meadow, teeming with wildflowers and scraggy, dry grasses. The Canadian Rockies reached above the heads of the pines and firs in the distance, capped with snow, imposing against a blue sky that was crisp in a way it only ever seemed to be in autumn. Fat grey clouds drifted above, scattering snowflakes on the wind.

My lips hooked up into a smile. “Yeah, I suppose it is.” 

“I know about the time difference, of course, but,” she paused, her lips parting as she spun on the spot, twisting as far around as she could without letting go of my hand. 

“But?” I pressed, my voice light and teasing. Her lips were flushed, bitten by the cold. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from them.

Her cheeks darkened, turning as red as her lips. “But it’s another thing entirely to step through a portal at night and come out the other side in the day.”

I tilted my head to the side, viewing my home in a new light. “I’m so used to travelling through them that I’ve never thought of it that way.” I caught a scent on the wind and my smile grew. “You smell the same as it does here,” I said, pulling her to a gentle halt. “I didn’t realise before, but you do.”

She beamed up at me and squeezed my hand. “I guess it makes sense. This is where I’m meant to be.” Her blush grew, spreading up to the tips of her ears, but she didn’t shrink away from my gaze.

I was so lost in the depths of her eyes, clear as a glacier, bright as the Northern Lights, that I forgot to blink. “It is,” I murmured, my voice rough and thick with emotion. I swallowed hard. How did she have such a hold over me already? 

I’d not even thought about what Ryker had revealed about her. It was as irrelevant to me as he was. She was my mate – that was all that mattered.

She tugged my hand. “Come on. There’s so much I want to see!”

I laughed, letting her pull me in the wrong direction. “Well, up here, there are trees. And, past that, some more trees. Then, if you keep going: you guessed it! Trees–”

“You’re laughing at me!” She stopped with a quiet huff, but her smile didn’t let up. This was a different woman to the one that had crept around Ryker’s pack house, subdued and silent, her head bowed.

“Just a little.” I slid an arm around her waist, emboldened by her grin; she leant into me, catching hold of my hand and threading her fingers through mine. It sent pleasant shudders rolling down my spine. “Are you not tired?” I asked. “It’s sometime around midnight in Desert Oak.”

“Just a little,” she parroted, with a timid smirk that almost had me on my knees. “Maybe we should see your pack house first. Wait.” She frowned. “Do you live in a pack house here?”

I wanted to keep teasing her, but I didn’t have to heart to. Not when her eyes were wide with curiosity and her lips were pursed like that, full and so damn kissable…

I swallowed hard. Again. I wanted to sweep her up into my arms and take her back to my bed and fuck her, but I didn’t know if she wanted that. And I couldn’t exactly ask her, could I? We’d only just met and, sure, I’d heard stories of mates meeting and flinging themselves at each other – but that’s all they were. Stories.

“I do.” I nodded, my gaze trailing from her oh-so kissable lips to the pulse jumping just beneath her jaw to the jut of her collarbones. “It’s not far from here. Unless they’ve found mates themselves, most of my unmated wolves will still be at the ball. The rest of the pack have today off – no training for the Warrior Wolves, no chores for the Omegas – so it should be pretty quiet.”

A tiny line appeared between her eyebrows. “You’ve given them the day off?”

We started walking again, a little faster as the snow began to fall in earnest. “Of course I have.”

She scoffed. “Alpha Ryker didn’t give anyone a day off. Ever. Even the Omegas at the ball last night – well, right now, I guess – had to work.”

“You were there as his servant, he said,” I hedged. “You never got any time to yourself?”

Her expression darkened. “No. No, for the last year and a half I’ve been at his beck and call, always–” She stopped speaking abruptly and bit her lip. Her whole body tensed; without thinking I started toying with the hand that held mine, drawing idle, abstract patterns around the swell of each knuckle.

“The last year and a half?” I pressed.

“Things have just been worse since then.” 

“Why?”

She lifted her shoulder in a half-shrug. “No reason.” But the frost to her tone could rival a Canadian winter, and I knew there was more to it than she was letting on. 

I let her stew in silence for a while, not wanting to push her too hard too soon. My heart rejoiced at the simple feel of walking across my territory with my mate’s hand in mine, our steps falling into sync without thought or direction. 

As we neared my pack house, I squeezed her hand once before letting her go, leaving her case stood upright beside her. I started to step away; Scarlett’s head jerked up, as though she’d not realised that we’d been walking until we stopped. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes showing white all round. Then they dropped to the grass, avoiding my gaze.

My brow creased. “What for?”

“Being impolite.” She tensed, like she was expecting something. I didn’t want to consider what that something might be.

“You weren’t.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

My lips twitched up, but there was no humour in my heart. “I wasn’t talking to you, either,” I pointed out. “I was just enjoying your company. I… I liked it.” I shrugged, a little embarrassed, but I pushed myself to open up to her. “So many people expect so much of me, all of the time. It’s nice to just… be.”

Before she could answer, I ducked down and picked the handful of wildflowers I’d been eyeing up. “I just wanted to pick these for you,” I admitted, the back of my neck prickling, my heart pounding.

“You… what?” 

The flowers were dusted with snow and muted in colour, all spiny stems and windswept petals. I pressed them into her hands, which, I noted, were small – almost delicate, the fine bones structured gracefully beneath sun-kissed skin – and criss-crossed with scars. My heart constricted. I wanted to demand that she tell me who’d hurt her and, if it were a person and not an accident, then I wanted to find them and rip them limb from limb.

“My room is a bit… eclectic,” I said instead, shoving down the strange, protective urge. It tussled with the desire to kiss her, to fuck her; I ignored the writhing of emotions competing in my chest and focused instead on my mate. Taking up the case in one hand and sliding the other into hers, I continued. 

“You’ll have to put your things in it, make it somewhere you want to live as well. I thought the flowers might be a good start.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, blinking up at me with some unreadable emotion in her eyes.

“I have a lot of books,” I blurted out, not wanting the conversation to come to a halt. “And I have a telescope, and some vintage swords and, for some reason, every Twilight film on DVD.” 

She grinned. It rose slowly, like the first rays of sunlight edging the horizon. “I thought you didn’t concern yourself with human affairs?”

“I wanted to make Ryker feel like an idiot. Of course I know who Nigella Lawson is – I love British cooking shows.” I snorted. “I mean, have you ever seen Come Dine With Me? That shit is comedy gold, Scar.”

The nickname slipped unbidden from my lips. The air felt thin, my head light, as she blinked up at me. Perfect, I thought. She’s perfect.

“Nobody’s called me that in ages. Not since…”

“Since what?”

She didn’t reply. And, just like that, our conversation was over. Irritation flared, deep in my belly; I wanted to know every part of her, to hear her laugh again, free and joyous, well away from whatever the fuck Ryker had done to quash her spirit.

* * *

“You weren’t joking,” she said, a sweet half-smile tugging at her mouth. Her case had been abandoned just inside my bedroom door, and now she walked across the floorboards and the mismatched rugs, drifting from the bed to the desk to the bookshelves. She clasped the wildflowers between both hands, holding them up almost to her chin. 

I smiled back. “About what?”

“The books.” She looked pointedly at the over-laden wooden bookshelf, every shelf of it bowing beneath the weight; from there she arched an eyebrow at the piles stacked on either side of my desk, beneath the windowsill, on the windowsill, by the bed, on the bedside table…

“Do you like to read?”

Her smile widened into a grin. “Do fish like to swim?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

She tilted her head curiously. “I didn’t think your room would be like this.” Gesturing vaguely at me, her teeth nibbling at her full lower lip, she added, “I didn’t think you’d be like this.”

“Let me guess,” I said, crossing the room to the bed and sitting on the edge of it. Hesitantly, she joined me, placing the flowers on their side on the windowsill. “You thought I’d be callous, cold, cruel.”

“Or mean, miserable, melancholy.”

“Beastly, brooding, a bastard.” I snickered. 

She rolled her eyes. “All of the above. But…” She sobered, shifting closer, her hand reaching for my thigh slowly, as if waiting to be admonished for it. “You aren’t. When you were saying those things to Alpha Ryker, I thought: this is it. These are his true colours. Even that was you being nice, though.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t ever want you to think that of me. But you’re mine, and there was no way I was leaving you there with him.”

I couldn’t keep the scorn from my voice, and she looked at me, puzzled, as she tried to unpick why. “You don’t like him,” she guessed.

I put my arm around her. She stiffened but, after a prolonged moment that had my heart in my throat, she let her weight press against my side, the bed sinking beneath us. Outside, footsteps clattered loudly in the hall; someone swore in a too-loud hushed voice. Drunken idiots, I thought fondly. They must have got lost on the way back to their rooms after the ball.

“I don’t like bullies,” I said, making a guess of my own. Scarlett knotted her hands together in her lap and went quiet. I lowered my voice and, as softly as I could, asked, “Do you really not have a wolf-side?”

She turned away. “I really don’t,” she whispered brokenly. 

I pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to her temple. Her pulse thundered just beneath the surface of her skin. “I wonder why,” I murmured, my lips brushing her face. “There must be a reason.”

“It’s just bad luck.” 

“I don’t think so. I think you’re special, Scarlett.”

Her throat bobbed. “You can call me Scar. If you’d like to, I mean. It was just a shock to hear it.” She looked up at me then, all wide-eyed wonder. “You really are nothing like I thought you’d be.”

We stared at each other for an eternal moment, and the world fell away. There was only her. My heart beat fast and my throat felt thick. My palms started to sweat.

And then more footsteps sounded in the hall, shattering the universe we’d made just for us. These were quieter, more purposeful, and they crept past my room with much more consideration than the other drunken members of my pack.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

She nodded, catching her lip between her teeth. Good God, I thought, my hand tangling in the duvet. She’ll be the death of me.

“Everything you’ve heard about me is a lie. I started those rumours – the ones about me being a monster.”

Her brow furrowed. “Why? Why would you want people to fear you?”

“To keep my pack safe. Nobody would dare take on the evil Alpha Enzo,” I said, a little sadly. My voice grew in volume and strength as I looked at her, the words as binding as any vow. “And, wolf or not, you’re a part of my pack now, Scar.” I tested the nickname and found that I liked it. “More than that, you’re my mate. I’ll do anything it takes to protect you.” 

Her jaw tightened; her eyes turned serious. “I’ll do whatever it takes, too. I won’t tell anyone that I don’t have a wolf if you think that’s for the best.”

A floorboard creaked outside the door. Right outside.

Someone was listening.

Shit.

“Well,” she whispered, her nose wrinkling, “there goes that plan.”