Broken Mate, Unbroken Bond

CHAPTER 8 - ASH

If he thought I was going to play along with whatever this contrived weirdness was, then he had another thing coming. I sat in the back of Dominic’s fancy car and started to judge. It wasn’t my default setting, by any means, but I was beyond worried about Dee and it was really all this guy’s fault.

The passenger door he’d opened for me slammed closed, and I could swear I heard him huff a laugh. He walked around to the other side of the stupidly large vehicle, and I watched him every step of the way.

“So,” I began when he’d folded his tall self inside the jeep and pressed the ignition button, “Is this estate of yours somewhere that requires a lot of off-roading, or are you just compensating for something?”

His eyes met mine through the rearview mirror. His expression looked caught between a long-suffering sigh and a smirk. “It’s in Kinnitty Forest,” he eventually replied.

My own brows raised then in surprise, but I said nothing and just turned to look out the window, taking in the houses on my street as we passed by. I had an odd, empty kind of feeling that I wouldn’t be seeing them again for a while. The thought made me frown.

“The entire pack is going to be very curious about you,” he said as he took a turn onto a road that would lead us to the motorway.

“Because I’m broken?” I didn’t mean to sound grumpy, or even all that combative, but that’s how it sounded to my ears. I realised then in that moment just how tired I was. A couple of hours on a crowded low-cost airline just hadn’t cut it.

“Because we didn’t know about you.”

“And why is it such a big deal? Why are you all losing your minds over the fact that I wasn’t part of all this supernatural s**t?” I looked away from the window and leaned forward in my seat, elbows on my knees. “Surely you all have a choice.”

Dominic was quiet for a while, mulling over my question, I suppose. When he answered it, his tone was soft. “We have a choice, of course. But no wolf would choose what happened to you.”

I was taken aback, blinking several times. “But why not? I happen to like being by myself.” If you asked me, only boring people couldn’t entertain themselves.

“You have nothing to compare it to. Trust me, there are instincts and drives within you that have been… buried.” Anger crept back into his voice and face as he spoke those words. When I said nothing in response, he took that as his cue to keep talking. Educating me. Forcefully. While I was trapped in his car with no escape.

“It’s such a big deal because there are so few of us left. Especially in this part of the world. The Celtic wolves have been hunted and chased for centuries now, at one stage almost to extinction. So it’s really important for us to know. To keep records.”

“The Pressor,” I muttered, remembering what Dee had told me about the special branch of Hunters. The ones who had chased and killed my parents.

“Yes,” he replied quickly, his eyes moving to meet mine again. “How did you know?”

“Before you eejits arrived to scandalise the whole neighbourhood, Dee had been explaining everything to me. Well, the Cliffs Notes version, I would guess. I’ve no doubt there’s a lot I don’t know.” Or want to know? I asked myself, but then quickly dismissed it. No scientist ignored data or turned away from answers or the truth.

“Did she tell you about your parents?”

“She told me they’re dead.”

He’d been fishing for information about them, I knew. Their names; something useful. I wasn’t playing ball, though. I stared at the back of his head, my eyes narrowed. There was something inside me - something loud and important - that was telling me to trust him. That he was more than how I felt about him in that moment. But Dominic Mac Nessa had come to my house with a posse and had crashed into my life without an invitation. I didn’t think he wanted to hurt me, but I don't think our interests aligned in any other way.

“I’m sorry, Aislinn.” He offered no other sympathy, but somehow I knew he meant it. “When we get to the Estate, I’ll introduce you to my father. If anyone can fill in the gaps you need to fill, it’s him.”

“Know it all, huh?”

“You could say that,” he said, mouth curving upwards in a grin.

“Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Silence reigned for a while, and even though Dominic tried to engage me once or twice in conversation again, I found myself too tired to really muster up much of a response. Inch by inch, my chin lowered. As the seconds turned to minutes and the steady lull of the engine quelled my mind, I began to drift off into delicious peace.

She stood on the battlefield, blood spattering her face and hands. Her eyes were wild, her back straight as she observed the c*****e she had wrought. All around them were the bodies of the fallen, some groaning, still with life, others extinguished, empty, soon to be food for crows.

She clutched her short sword and raised it high above her head, releasing a cry that curdled my blood and sent a shiver coursing through my body. She was wild; beautiful in her untamed fierceness, and waves of something dangerous rolled off her, pushing anyone or anything not brave or powerful enough away from her sight. This was magic, I realised, and it coated my tongue like a cloying fruit nectar.

Other voices joined in, raised in victory. Her green eyes searched the ruined field then, looking for someone. Someone who was hers.

My wolf.

The warrior woman spotted him and took off immediately at a sprint. She dropped her sword along the way, then her shield, then she released her torn cloak. By the time she reached her target, she had shed enough layers to appear almost indecent. But the man waiting for her didn’t seem to mind. He opened his arms and plucked her from the air as she jumped on him, and the two embraced with a kiss of blood and tongues.

His big hands grasped her ass and squeezed. She groaned into his mouth as her hand slid between their pressed bodies, searching for the release on his trousers. He walked forward and backed her into the trunk of a tree, pressing her against it and rolling his hips into hers. A heady moan sprang from her lips…

I awoke suddenly, straightening in my seat, my eyes just as wild as that woman’s had been for a moment while I figured out where I was.

“You snore,” Dominic said from the front seat.

I tried to calm my heavy breathing and the heat between my thighs. “I do not,” I informed him.

“You do. And you talk in your sleep.”