Daxon pushed the crying woman into another pack member’s arms and then grabbed my hand and pulled me away from Wilder until I was flush against his body. He stroked my cheek while he stared into my eyes. “Everything’s going to be all right, baby,” he whispered, his tone and touch at odds with the intense look in his eye.
I wished I could have believed him, but I’d learned early on that nothing was ever all right in my life. Even when everything seemed to be good, there was always something waiting just around the corner to ruin everything.
I just hadn’t imagined that the thing lurking around the corner was a terrifying shadow monster.
Daxon reluctantly let me go and then started barking orders. Wilder grabbed my hand and started to pull me the opposite direction down the path. As I walked away from the group, I saw that they were gathering Eve’s body and heading in the direction of where the party had been taking place. A few of the women were leading Eve’s mother’s trembling body behind the somber procession.
A sob tore at my throat, and I hurried away from the sight. Wilder took the keys from me when we reached the van. The back doors of it were still open from where I’d left them, thinking I’d be right back to grab more food. I tiredly watched as Wilder slammed them closed and then walked me to the passenger side of the van. I felt like a zombie, like I was just a stranger in someone else’s body that was just going through the movements. I got into the seat, and Wilder buckled my seatbelt before shutting the door and going around to the driver’s side. He got in and started the van and then wordlessly drove us back to the inn.
We pulled up to the back of the inn, Wilder obviously being familiar with how the catering worked at the place. Jim came out with a worried look on his face, his arms crossed in front of him as he watched us questioningly. I just sat there in the van, unmoving, staring blankly at some plaster that needed to be repaired near one of the large windows back there.
“Sweetheart,” Wilder said softly, and a little cry burst from my lips at how out of place the tender words seemed in the situation. Wilder sighed and then got out of the van. I watched as he said something to Jim and Jim’s face collapsed in sorrow. He must have told him about Eve.
I’d obviously not known Eve terribly well, but it would have been obvious to anyone that she was the kind of person the world would miss. She just had this light about her that you didn’t see in very many people.
My door suddenly opened, and I realized I’d gotten lost in my head again. I lamely protested when Wilder unbuckled my seatbelt and then scooped me up in his arms. He carried me through the back door next to a grieving Jim, who was now talking to Carrie, all the way up the stairs to my room.
“We need to do something about this,” Wilder muttered as he sat me down on the bed. He briefly disappeared from the room, and I heard the sound of water.
He was running me a freaking bath.
Things between me and him were complicated. And there was the matter of Daxon.
But did I let him lead me into the bathroom? Did I let him strip me down? Did I let him gently run a warm washcloth over my skin, touching me like he was worshiping me rather than washing me? Yep.
Just like the sweet way he’d spoken to me in the van earlier, the soft way he was touching me in the bathtub…it just did something to me. It broke something inside me. I was so starved for affection and care that it was like my body didn’t know what to do with it when it got it.
Wilder was kneeling down next to the tub and only looked mildly alarmed as I randomly burst into tears and buried my face in my hands. He didn’t say anything, and I needed it that way. I needed to sit in the silence with him and mourn that things really sucked.
After yet another breakdown, I got into bed, exhausted. Wilder turned to go, and I patted the space next to me. “Lie with me?” I asked hoarsely. My body was shutting down, something it tended to do under extreme stress, and today had certainly been one for the books.
Wilder looked relieved and carefully lay down next to me without taking any of his clothes off. I buried my face into his neck and breathed in his scent. His chest rumbled against me in a soft purr, and I soaked the comforting sound in.
“Goodnight, Rune,” he whispered in a gravelly, tired voice.
“Goodnight,” I whispered back.
I still had nightmares that night, but I somehow knew his presence was preventing them from being worse.
Wilder was gone when I opened my eyes the next morning.
2
Rune
My stomach heaved each time I thought of Eve in the woods. I didn’t want to remember her that way, but it was funny how my brain insisted on reminding me of all the things I didn’t want to see. Like her dead eyes staring up into the sky. When I glanced down at my hands, I pictured them covered in her blood, and how much I would have done anything to save her if I had found her in time.
I moved into the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink and lathered my hands with the soap. I rubbed them into a white mass, then used my toothbrush to scrub under my nails again. I had to get rid of this horrible feeling like I couldn’t wash her death off me.
“You did nothing wrong,” I murmured under my breath and lifted my chin to catch my gaze in the mirror. I looked startled. It was the best way to describe the paleness of my cheeks, the red puffiness of my eyes from crying for the past half hour since waking up. I barely knew her, but we’d worked together at Moonstruck Diner enough times to make her loss hurt.
Lowering my head, not wanting to look at myself a second longer, I washed my hands, dried them on the towel, and staggered into the main room. There, I peered out the window to the grounds below. The river glistened beneath the sun, but it had no right looking so beautiful and calm after someone so young lost their life.
My throat squeezed, and I blinked away more tears.
Down by the woods, locals gathered, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they suddenly appeared in front of the inn with pitchforks and fire, demanding my death.
I might have laughed at my overexaggeration, but it was impossible to forget the hatred in Eve’s mother’s gaze when she’d accused me. Queasiness rose through me each time I remembered the rest of the bystander’s venomous stares at me.
I paced back and forth in my room, then collapsed on my bed. My heart beat frantically as I tried to think of anything else but Eve, which only ended up in my thoughts trailing to Daxon and Wilder. To their argument, and the fact that their hatred of each other seemed to be growing. Of course I was somehow being drawn to each because it seemed I liked to complicate my life.
Wilder had carried me back to my room yesterday, set me a bath, and then lay in bed next to me until I slept. No one had ever done that for me, and I wanted to make sure I never forgot what he did. As much as he still remained a mystery and I had so much more to understand about him and this town, I appreciated him caring for me.
Now when it came to Daxon, I was torn and twisted. He’d been so kind to me since arriving in town, but recently, he’d changed, growing darker, more mysterious.
My breath shuddered out of me at how confused I felt about these men.
For the tenth time that morning, I wondered how I could leave town without anyone seeing me.
Staring at the white ceiling, I found my thoughts drifted back to Eve, to her laughter, to her smile, then her dead body. My gut tightened.