Then the smell of fresh rain and eucalyptus surrounded me as arms wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me in for a squeezing hug. I leaned into Podcast’s warmth and let him hold me, trying not to fixate on how good it felt to be completely pressed up against him.
“She only lived three more years after I disappeared,” I whispered to him, my voice hoarse with unshed tears. “What if it’s all my fault?”
I felt Podcast shake his head and I turned to find his green eyes full of compassion as he mouthed the word ‘no.’
Storm’s warm, callused hands turned my face so that I was looking at him. “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t think like that,” he said with conviction, his brown eyes soft as he spoke. A stray tear rolled down my cheek and he swiped it away with a calloused thumb.
“But how do I know for sure?” I asked miserably as I stared into my mother’s sad eyes.
Podcast slid his phone into my line of vision. ‘SHE WAS SICK EVEN BEFORE YOU DISAPPEARED,’ he’d written, then he flicked a finger so the screen changed with an article about me.
“I don’t want to read any more things about me,” I muttered but he just shook the phone for me to take it.
I scrolled down until the header ‘Life for the Wilde family post-disappearance’ caught my eye.
“After the disappearance of the youngest member of the Wilde family, life eventually had to move on. Nicholas and Timothy Wilde both started families, but the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth, eventually succumbed to a bout of stomach cancer, an ailment she had been battling for years,” I read out loud, my throat tightening as I finished.
How long had my mother been sick? She had always been on the weaker side, sometimes staying in bed with complaints of migraines, but I never thought she was struggling with something so severe… and then I thought about our conversation in the Pink Room after I was caught sneaking out a few days before the Gala.
She had been so insistent that I find an alpha or a pack as soon as possible, to the point where she was practically forcing me to pick one.
I couldn’t, in good conscience, join your father up in heaven if I haven’t gotten you settled first. Nicholas would never forgive me!The memory of her words rang through my mind. Did my brothers know? Nicky must have, there was very little in the Wilde sphere that he didn’t know about, but did Timothy as well?
What was worse, did my mother expect to find me up in heaven with my father only to find that I hadn’t died?
I let out another whimpering sob in the shelter of Podcast and Storm’s arms. I used to wonder what being able to see the future would be like, but now I wish that I hadn’t asked Storm and Podcast to visit Wilde Manor today. They say ignorance is truly bliss. I should have listened to them.
Chapter Eleven
“Heyfolks,Ihateto be the bearer of bad news, but we close early on Tuesdays,” a voice called from the doorway to the Pink Room, making all three of us jump. I wasn’t sure how long we sat there huddled on the floor, but my eyes were swollen from crying and my legs ached.
Together we sheepishly stood up and I rubbed the sleeve of Storm’s jacket across my face, trying to appear like I hadn’t just been crying my eyes out.
“Is she all right?” the employee asked as we passed by her. I tugged the hood of the jacket further over my eyes, hoping that it looked like I was feigning embarrassment over my tears and not because my face was plastered everywhere in this house.
“She’s fine, just got some bad news,” Storm said as he placed a comforting hand on my back. His fingers were steady and warm as he gently pushed me in front of him and smiled charmingly down at the employee. “Thank you for checking on us though.”
The employee seemed a bit dazzled by him and I couldn’t blame her as I found myself examining the dimples that appeared in his cheeks whenever he smiled.
“You guys have a nice day,” the employee called as we hurried into the foyer and out into the suddenly misty afternoon. I could feel rain in the air, and it seemed like Storm could too because he tilted his chin back and inhaled deeply.
“Gonna rain in the next hour or so,” he pronounced as we descended the steps and followed the last stragglers out of the gate. I turned one last time to look at Wilde Manor, feeling a little bit wistful. I would return again, but hopefully in 1915 instead of 2022. Shaking off my sadness, I hurried to catch up with Podcast and Storm.
“I had an aunt who used to feel the rain in her bad knee,” I teased Storm as we walked down the sidewalk to where we had left their motorcycles. “But she also believed that angels spoke to her in her sleep.”
Podcast’s face lit with silent laughter.‘Maybe she actually saw them,’he signed and I was pleased that I was able to understand him so easily.
Storm chuckled as he brought a hand up to the back of my head and ruffled my hair through the hood. “I don’t rely on my knees to forecast the weather, sunshine. I’ve been around storms all my life, so I can usually tell when they’re coming.”
Storm had tried in vain to explain what storm chasers were, but I still struggled to wrap my mind around the idea that people would willingly drive toward deadly weather just to collect information about them.
I was just about to respond to him with something vapid and silly, but the sound of a woman’s voice stopped me.
“Podcast? Storm?”
The two men whirled around and I felt Podcast’s body quiver next to me as we turned to find a thin, tired looking woman standing on the sidewalk behind us. She was boney and not dressed at all for the cool weather, with a pair of the shortest shorts that I had ever seen and a thin long sleeved shirt that clung to her body but did little to hide her emaciated form.
“Tallulah,” Storm said, his voice stone cold. “What do you want?”
