I lay on our bed with Ben for about an hour, neither of us even speaking for the better part of that time. He was content to rest there next to me, holding my hand, while we stared at the ceiling. When he did talk, it wasn’t to ask questions or to tell me what he’d learned from the run with Sam, only to make sure that I was okay.
I wasn’t sure I was okay, so that was a difficult question to answer. I just wanted to take Starla and throw her as far away from me as I could so that I’d never have to see her again. I had known from the beginning, somehow, the second that I’d met her, that she was going to end up being trouble for me. Even though I’d avoided her at all costs, it was inevitable that she would come back around and end up being a major pain in my ass.
Despite my agitation, I was beginning to get tired, and my eyes we
I knew what I was asking of Ben was a lot, and I shouldn’t even be pondering the possibility of requesting that he go through with what Sam had suggested. Sending Ben over to Starla, to try and convince her to tell Sam the truth, was too much. So, as my boyfriend came and sat down near me on the couch--not right next to me, as I would expect--I wasn’t sure if I should even tell him, not that he didn’t already know.“I don’t think this can end well, no matter what we decide,” he said, sitting down and folding his hands between his knees.“I know,” I agreed. “But… Sam wants to know who the father is. He deserves to know. We all do.”“I’m not sure the rest of us do,” Ben said, being pragmatic. “But I do agree that Sam deserves to
There is something about running in the form of a wolf that is freeing in a way I cannot quite describe. Since I’ve learned about my magical abilities, I have tried traveling a few different ways, and all of them are fun. Riding a unicorn. Flying as a bird. Running in other animal forms. But when I am a wolf, I feel so connected to my pack. I feel like I am more one of them than any other time when I am just their mage. So even though it was just Brice and I running through the woods that evening, as the sun was beginning to set, our paws crunching over the fallen snow and decaying leaves, I still felt like I was one of them in a way I hardly ever felt.We ran for about a half an hour, making our way through our forest toward the river, crossing a few yards, and heading past the quarry, through the forest that Ben had taken me to that first time he kissed me. We ran through the trees over there, me f
“Is this something that Francis is doing from Paris, or did she not go?” Melanie asked me from the room downstairs where I’d asked everyone to gather so that we could talk about what Brice had discovered in the woods. We might be able to wait until after New Year’s to do anything about Starla, and we might be able to wait to actually do anything about this, but I at least wanted to talk to my pack about it so we could think about what we needed to do to stop the spread and get Francis Flamingo under control.“I don’t know if she went or not,” I admitted. “I haven’t talked to anyone over there in a while, nothing more than Merry Christmas, anyway.” I had been trying to put some distance between myself and the School for Mages since Mage Jaye had promised she’d be dealing with me as soon as the holidays were over. I hadn’t felt that it w
It just seemed fitting that when I flew over to the Flamingos house, I may as well be a nightingale. I don’t know a lot about those birds, but I knew they weren’t nearly as big as some of the other birds I could’ve chosen, and I figured they probably flew at night, what with a name like that. I needed to make sure I watched for owls so I didn’t become someone’s dinner. Visions of me changing my form back into my human self while an owl tried to swallow me down cracked me up a little.I headed right up the stairs as soon as I hung up, intending just to fly to the Flamingos’ house and look for any lights that were on. I didn’t intend to do anything more than that, and I figured it wouldn’t take long. My wolves were still out in the forest and probably wouldn’t be back for at least an hour, maybe longer, depending upon how deep into the forest they decided
The beacon of light calling to me through the snowy winter air was like a lighthouse, bringing me into safe harbor, even though I knew that it was actually dangerous. I could sense, in my gut, even though I was in the shape of an owl at the moment, that I was headed into trouble. I just couldn’t get myself to stop and turn around.I had flown for over an hour when I finally got a true picture of where the light was coming from. The house was a large cabin in the woods at the foot of the mountain. It was situated between several large pine trees, and I had to think the house itself was even larger than my grandma’s, after we’d built onto it. The main part of the house was two, maybe even three, stories tall, and then there were other wings that didn’t reach as high into the dark sky. The building looked fairly new, like someone wanted a cozy cabin in the woods but also wanted it to b
It seemed to take forever for me to fly back home. The snow and wind had picked up a lot since I’d left. It was getting late, and the sky was darker by far than it had been when I’d originally flown to the Flamingos’ house, which seemed like forever ago now. I considered stopping to shift into something else, but my desperation just to get back to where I knew I was safe and could get out of the weather kept me going.When I finally got back home, my talons touched down on the railing of the front porch before I shifted into my human form and extinguished the light on top of the house I’d put there to help guide me back. I rushed inside. All of the lights were on, but the house was silent. “Hello!” I shouted, hoping that someone from my pack was there so that they could let everyone else know I was okay. The thought that something might’ve happened while I was gone
Apparently, mages and wolves take holidays off. Maybe not Halloween, but they must take New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day off because whenever I brought up the idea of going to check on the woods or that strange cabin I’d found the night before up to my pack at breakfast the next day, they all reminded me that it was a holiday, and I needed to chill out.I’d laid away most of the night thinking about the things I’d seen, so I was in no mood to be playful. Knowing that it would do me no good to go to the cabin myself and not willing to go out to the forest to check to make sure that what they’d found out about the pink trees the night before, that they were gone, by myself, I retreated to my own trees and spent most of the last day of the year feeling the power of the forest flow through me. Most of the colors I saw were familiar to me. Colors of my pack members and mysel
After the fireworks ended, Ben took my hand and pulled me back toward the house. I had a feeling all of the couples would be headed to their rooms now, which would leave Brice on his own. I watched as he shifted and took off into the woods. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was the only one who didn’t have a significant other, after all. Still, I got the impression that he was trying not to let it bother him. Maybe he had a lady wolf waiting for him in the woods. When Ben tugged me into the house, I forgot all about Brice.In our room, with the door closed, only the moonlight filtering through the curtains to provide illumination, Ben walked me backward to the bed, his mouth back on my shoulder, where it had been when Raven interrupted us all of those hours ago. “Where were we?” he whispered, slipping the strap of my dress down off of my shoulder. “Oh, yeah. I was tak