Page 3 of Wolf's Fate

Royce gave me an indecipherable look. “I don’t think he’s hiding,” he told me. “He’s just not ready to be found.”

Which sounded like hiding to me. I returned my attention to the picture of Caleb. “Stalk his ass until you get him,” I demanded. Reaching for my artwork, I flipped through them. “You haveallthe locations—stake him out.”

“Stake?” Royce asked curiously. He made a stabbing motion with his hand. “Stake him with a knife or with binoculars like a spy?”

“Yes! Have someone there until the stubborn bastard turns up.”

They both looked at me with sympathy. “It’s not that easy,” Royce reminded me, for what felt like the ten thousandth time.

“He’s dangerous,” Ned added, as if I needed reminding—which I didn’t. I just had a hard time believing it.

Or if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe it, it was that I didn’tacceptit.

“I think you both underestimate him,” I grumbled, busying myself with bundling up my work.

“And I think you should trust our judgment on this,” Ned snapped back. “You’re seeing it through emotion, and we’re seeing it through experience.”

I clenched my jaw to stop myself from having the same old argument. The fact that I was used to arguing with this man should have been a sharp reminder of how bizarre my life had become.

Royce was also used to us and had already taken the bundled items off me. “Ned, get the truck,” he ordered, and I saw the conspiratorial wink he gave me. When Ned left, I mumbled my thanks, which Royce waved off. “Got two kids at home; I’m used to the squabbling.” He looked around my store, checking he hadn’t missed anything. “I’d prefer it if I only heard the squabbling at home.”

“Then stop bringing Ned,” I suggested without thinking and was grateful when Royce laughed. “Sorry.” Pushing my hair behind my ear, I looked away from Royce as I struggled to try to find words. “He doesn’t know him. He’s not the person Ned thinks he is.”

Royce said nothing, but the sympathy in his eyes told me he was on the same page as Ned—just not as vocal about it. He left soon after, and once again, I was alone in my shop with thefamiliar feeling of frustration that surfaced every time they came.

With a sigh, I forced myself to resume cleaning up. I could dwell or I could try to be productive. Easier said than done. Several times, I caught myself motionless as I stared into nothing, thinking about the last few months.

Nothing was the same after Caleb came into my life, yet as I looked around my gallery and teaching area of my store, somehow everything was the same.

Except me.

And possibly my friendship with Lily. She was still unforgiving in my “vanishing act” as she called it. It didn’t help that when I returned, I was reluctant to talk about where I had been or what had happened. I refused to discuss Caleb, so Lily, being Lily, had firmly settled on the incorrect assumption that he had his wicked way with me, and then once he got what he wanted, he left.

Lily and I were still close, but the speculative look in her eye when she thought I wasn’t looking was an unwelcome one. We’d agreed to not talk about it, which is where the crack between us was slowly widening into a wedge, and I feared it may grow bigger still as we drifted apart.

She knew nothing about my visits from Royce or the others. Now that she worked out at her dad’s lumber mill, the only time I would see her through the day was the occasional lunch hour. Those that we could work around, and by we, I meant me and the shifters who frequented my store to remove the paintings or drawings that I had created of Caleb or their world.

Their world.

The world where men and womenshiftedinto wolves. Intoanimals. Animals that hunted like the wolves in nature, only there was nothingnaturalabout shifters. Supernatural beings that were infused with magic from their Goddess Luna.

I still felt guilty when I thought of anotherbeingthat wasn’t God. It could be the Catholic in me, or it could be the fact that my human brain wasn’t equipped to deal with the whole theological argument. How was Luna any different from Buddha, or the teachings of Hinduism or Jainism? Their religion wasn’t the religion that my foster parents had instilled in me, but who was I to say it was wrong?

“They change into animals,” I grumbled to myself. “So?” It was the same old argument I kept replaying, and the fact that it was always with myself didn’t make it any easier. “You change into a zombie when the ME is bad.”

Yeah, it wasn’t the same and I knew it. While I may feel like death during an ME episode, I wasn’t anactualanimated corpse. I thought about when Caleb had to carry me up the mountain. Perhaps the jury was still out on that, I joked to myself, but no matter how much I tried to lighten my thoughts, the fact was that I was human.

And Caleb was not.

Caleb… It all came back to Caleb.Ikept going back to Caleb, only I hadn’t seen him since he walked out on all of us. I hadn’t heard a word from him. All I had was the gnawing feeling of doubt and failure.

The feeling thatIhad somehow failedhim.

TWO

Willow

After lockingup the store around four, I began the walk home. I’d always managed my illness well, or so I thought. But since meeting Caleb and being introduced to Doc, I’d adopted a more, shall we say, structured approach to my health.

---