“Not true.” I shake my head and get out of the car.
Once I’m on the other side and helping her down, she snarkily comments, “I have some trees, a few windows, and an expensive table that beg to differ.”
I sigh, trying to find the right words so she’ll understand, but Kaleb is the one that’s good at this stuff. Not me. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and she winces with the sound, her gaze turning to the night sky.
Placing a hand on her cheek, I bring her focus back to me. There’s so much pain and fear swirling in the dark depths of her eyes that my chest feels tight, and my wolf whines. I want to take it all away, even if the only way is into myself. At least one of us would be free. But I can’t.
“Fighting my wolf hurts. Fighting the shift hurts,” I explain, extracting her hand from her necklace and opening it palm up between us. In the center of her small hand is a half dollar sized burn with more burns running up her fingers. As we both watch her heal within seconds, I murmur, “I stop fighting, it doesn’t hurt.”
Just thinking of shifting has an itch running down my skin. There’s a feeling in my gut that
something isn’t right, and it’s not the fire or the demons. Whatever it is will need teeth and claws. It will need everything I have to protect her. But first, I have to help her find peace in herself before whatever she fears comes to pass.
“Stop fighting what you are,mi reina,” I whisper, softly running my thumb along the life line of her now fully healed palm. “Welcome it.”
“It’s not the same thing,” she insists, closing her hand tight around my finger. “Whether you fight or succumb to your wolf, it affects only you. The whole reason I’m here and not helping to save my aunt is because my magic can kill everyone. I can’t risk destroying everything.”
I use my captured hand to snake her arm around my waist and my other hand to encourage her to lean her head on my chest. She sighs, drooping against me, and releases my hand so she can twist the fabric of my borrowed t-shirt, which smells strongly of musk, leather, and feathers, within her fists.This shirt might be clean, but whatever it was with, wasn’t.
My hands idly slide up her back over the ties holding her costume together. Trying to articulate what I mean is so difficult that for a fleeting second I wish she could read my mind, but in reality, that would be a nightmare. Some things in there she may never be able to forgive.
“Without me, my wolf runs on instinct to stay alive. A lot of… damage is done in the name of survival,” I explain, my voice slightly hoarse from my dry throat. Painful memories of the things I’ve done clench around my neck, making it difficult to breathe.
Callie thumps her forehead against my chest and mutters, “So what you’re saying is if I embrace my magic, then I’ll be able to stop it from destroying the town? But the binding spell is specifically designed to keep me from accessing and controlling my magic.”
With her pressed against me, I can feel the heat of her necklace, hinting that despite her calmer tone, just as the lightning and thunder crack in the sky, the storm still brews inside her.
I press my lips to the top of her head and breathe her in. “Even if I couldn’t shift, I’d still be a wolf shifter. My wolf is always a part of me. I guide him. He guides me. Your magic is a part of you. Don’t fight it. Guide it.”
She shakes her head, as if she’s unsure what to do with my words, then shivers, sliding her hands underneath the back of my shirt. They feel like five fingered icicles against my heated skin. Realizing she must be freezing in her tiny costume, I pick her up, her hands sliding further up my back, and carry her to the back of the Tahoe.
“You know I can walk, right?” she teases when I set her down to open the hatchback door.
I shrug and dig through one of my bags of spare clothes for something she can wear, settling for one of my flannels. Holding it open for her, she slips her arms through the sleeves, and then I button the front for her. It hangs to her knees, and her hands are lost within the sleeves.
She climbs up into the hatchback, sits against one side, then tucks her knees to her chest underneath the shirt. With a small smile, she wraps her arms around her legs, cuddling the soft fabric to herself, and whispers, “Thank you.”
I nod and try not to think too hard about how much I like seeing her in my clothes. Knowing that even though I smell like Donovan at the moment, she smells like me. Grabbing an old towel from the same clothes bag, I start to wipe the dirt from her feet and chafe them warm.
Trying to traipse down a trail into the forest in the middle of the night while she’s dressed in a tiny costume and no shoes might not have been the best idea.
Her gaze follows my movements, and she wiggles her toes. Another streak of lightning flashes across the sky, momentarily lighting the interior of the car, and she squeezes her knees tighter to keep from searching out the stone hanging around her neck.
“I don’t think I even know how to let go and embrace my magic,” she confesses, nearly drowned out by the boom of thunder. “For years what I am has been the enemy. It’s the thing that let the Bastard keep hurting me. Hell, it’s why the Bastard kept hurting me. It kept me alive when I…” Her words trail off as she realizes what she was about to admit.
My wolf bristles at the idea of her wanting death, but I understand, maybe better than anyone else. Sometimes the pain is unbearable, and for her, it must have felt like there was no end. But there was one. I hate what she’s been through, but I can’t hate her magic. I can’t hate the thing that eventually brought her to us. To me.
“But it’s not,” I counter, looking into her eyes while my hands slide up and down her lower legs. “My wolf. Your magic. Not the enemy.”
“How do I stop fighting?” she whispers, the battle worn warrior clear in her gaze.
All she’s known is pain and survival.
I get to my knees and hug her to me, curling my body around her, while her pain aches inside me. It’s in this moment that the last dredges of my resistance crumbles, and I embrace what my wolf has accepted so easily.
“Let go,” I murmur, feeling the last threads that held me to my life before her break. The future I had planned. A destiny in my control. Gone, as I surrender myself completely to her. “Trust no matter how far you fall, I will always catch you,mi reina.”
She shudders, tentatively sliding her fingers up my chest and over my heart. Her face is pressed to my neck, and her words are hot against my skin as she asks, “What does that mean? What you keep calling me?”
