Chapter 15
Ophelia
Ididn’t know what to say to anyone at the table as Mercy loaded platters of sandwich fixin’s onto the buffet and ordered everyone to eat. Deirdre jostled me into getting up and making a turkey-on-wheat with a bit of cheese and a thin layer of mayo, and she added chips and fruit when I wasn’t looking. It was just as well—my hands were still shaking too much to do more than stack turkey slices on bread. Handling a spoon for fruit would have no doubt resulted with more on the floor than on my plate.
The humiliation and terror of having almost killed Henry made sickness boil in my stomach until eating seemed like a terrible idea, though some of the heat in my cheeks linked back to getting an eyeful of Henry’s altogether when he was trying to make me feel better. He just stood there… naked. Very naked. Entirely naked. Unabashed, unashamed, comfortable.
And rather impressive, when I allowed myself to think about it. He looked like a wall of solid muscle with some manly chest hair and the kind of scars that a soldier or fighter ended up with. I hadn’t expected someone so… friendly to look so hard.
And that made me blush more. My thoughts distracted me as the rest of the small group got their food and continued what sounded like familiar arguments about who sat where. I’d had a few moments to imagine Henry’s muscles when he caught me at the car and held me like I weighed nothing at all, but seeing him without a shirt on just drove home how very strong he was.
“I’m sorry, what?” I blinked as I caught Deirdre and Miles looking at me expectantly.
Deirdre smiled very slowly, like she maybe suspected what I was thinking, but was kind enough not to call me out on mooning over a stranger. “I asked about your plans in the city. You had an inauspicious start, but is there anything in particular you’re looking for here?”
I searched for an answer, distracted by Henry’s reappearance from upstairs—thank the moon he was clothed. “Just looking for a new place to live, I guess.”
Miles’s head tilted as he eyed me. “Bullshit.”
Deirdre elbowed him and gave him a dirty look. “What he means is that your current circumstances don’t seem like those of someone who is just looking to casually relocate.”
Damn. They were all too perceptive by half. I took a bite of my sandwich to buy a little time, trying not to look at Henry as he sat at the other end of the table with half a roast beef and most of a loaf of bread on his plate. Eventually, though, I had chewed enough and had to swallow or the silence would have been even more impossibly uncomfortable.
“I asked for help from someone who I thought would be able to… cure my condition, the problem with my magic. I really thought he had the answers.”
“Let me guess,” Miles said, leaning back in his chair with a smirk. “Not so much?”
“No.” I fought back irritation. He didn’t have to look so entertained. My life wasn’t a story told for his amusement. “And when it became clear he had no intention of actually helping me, I tried to leave.”
“Tried to?” That time it was Henry who spoke, one eyebrow arched and a hint of a scowl already starting on his face.
I concentrated on my plate. It would have been so much better if I’d been able to explain to Deirdre without an audience. I didn’t even know the other people at the table, except for Mercy, although the two other men didn’t seem particularly interested. “Rocko… took my interest in leaving badly and locked me up in a magically-contained room for…” I shivered, then tried to smile to dispel some of the tension. “For longer than I wanted to be there.”
A curious tension crackled through the room and no one spoke for a long time. When I looked around, Deirdre caught my eye and tilted her head in Henry’s direction. He looked furious—the muscles jumped in his jaw as he ground his teeth, and his fist clenched until the knuckles whitened. One of his sandwiches was crushed into paste in his other hand.
That was… unexpected. The others hadn’t taken it personally that Rocko locked me up, even though they looked disgusted, but Henry might have launched into a manhunt right from the table.
I cleared my throat to try and distract him, and for a crazy second I even thought about reaching out to touch his hand to reassure him. “I escaped eventually. He wasn’t as thorough as he thought, and I convinced him I’d reconsidered staying. He got sloppy and I found an opening.”
“But he’s going to be searching for you,” Deirdre said. She absently braided her long hair, frowning as she studied me. “Is that why you abandoned the car and started running? How close was he?”
“I’m not sure.” I shook my head and pushed down the wiggle of uncertainty that always crept up when I thought about Rocko. “He’s a…sorcerer, so I can’t ever tell whether he’s right behind me or just sending a spell to make it feel that way. Half the time I think it’s all in my head and he’s waiting for me to drop dead from exhaustion so he can swoop in.”
A growl echoed from the end of the table and I glanced at the floor, expecting an angry cat searching for treats, but Cricket was nowhere in sight. Deirdre smiled very faintly when she caught me searching, and instead glanced yet again at Henry. The wolf at least put down his ruined sandwich and wiped his hands very, very deliberately.
“He won’t get to you here,” Henry said, and it sounded like a promise.
My cheeks heated as I found myself caught in the blue intensity of his gaze. My mouth dried out and every word I knew fled until I could only stare at him.
Deirdre broke the silence with an authoritative, “No, he will not.”
I jumped, holding onto the arms of my chair so I didn’t take off running. No man had ever looked at me like Henry did just then, and I didn’t know how to react. It reminded me in a distant way of the possessive air Rocko took on when he first told me I was never leaving, that I had to be with him forever. Everything Rocko said sounded like a threat, while Henry… Henry made a promise. It left a warmth in my chest that I couldn’t explain. I should have wanted to run from the way Henry reacted, and yet… it still felt fine to stay.
Better than fine, truly.
But that didn’t mean I could let them dismiss Rocko’s threat so easily. “You don’t understand. He’s…powerful. He’s a talented sorcerer and he’s…very focused on using a witch’s magic to supplement his own. I don’t think he’ll give up.”
Miles shrugged and took a strawberry off Deirdre’s plate. “He’s never tried to take someone from my pack before. He’ll fail.”