Chapter 18
Henry
It was too much of a struggle to remain calm, but Henry and the wolf alike knew that letting his anger show would only spook the girl. And that was the last thing Ophelia needed.
Her quiet acknowledgment that she was trouble and had deserved all the hateful things done to her nearly tore the wolf free and sent him on a rampage. If he could have hunted down her parents and every coven she’d crossed paths with, he would have done it in a second and damn the consequences. No wonder she was so afraid and had fallen into the clutches of some bastard like that sorcerer, who sought to use her for his own ends.
Henry’s wolf wanted to curl around her and growl at anything that disturbed her, but the man knew it would cause too many questions for her if he stayed the night. He didn’t want her to regret anything about their late-night talk and the kisses that had apparently made her uncomfortable. He padded quietly out of her room once her breathing had gone deep and even, and he passed Cricket in the doorway as the cat returned to take up his own vigil on the witch’s pillow.
He nodded to the cat, his wolf side content that the fierce little beast would protect her or at least sound the alarm if anything untoward happened, and continued on to his room on the other side of the house.
With the promise of their first interactions and the taste of her lips, he should have needed a cold shower to calm himself down after lying on her bed with her and watching her get sleepy and soft. She’d been willing and open at first, but something changed. She shut down and somehow it turned into an expectation, some kind of obligation. Henry shook himself and growled in irritation. Someone else had hurt her or demeaned her and made her think that was where her value was—that if she didn’t give in and sleep with a man, she was the one at fault. He hated it. Hated the possibility that she lumped him in with the sons of bitches who treated her so cruelly.
He didn’t know how to help her, although letting her experiment with her magic around him seemed like a good place to start. Maybe then she’d believe that he wasn’t afraid of her magic and wasn’t going to abandon her. Despite Ophelia being horrified at the potential of hurting him, Henry knew he was better able to weather the shocks of her power than any human. Shifters could survive a hell of a lot more than normal mortals. He would show her—and then they’d figure out how to help her control her magic.
Henry didn’t sleep much that night, or the one after. He paced and patrolled, uneasy with the thought of that sorcerer out there hunting Ophelia, but when he returned to the house in the early hours of the morning, her window was always dark. He didn’t take it personally, even if the wolf always listened carefully at the top of the stairs to see whether she was moving around or actually sleeping. He wanted to know more about her, to talk with her, but she was always with Deirdre during the day and Evershaw kept throwing more and more work at Henry until he suspected the alpha was doing it on purpose.
He spent the next morning at the old pack house, the massive converted warehouse where they’d all lived before Evershaw mated with Deirdre, helping Todd Evershaw, the alpha’s brother, deal with the business side of things. The pack invested in real estate and a variety of businesses to maintain the cash flow necessary to support thirty or forty people and hold their own when the ultra-rich lion brothers started throwing their weight around.
Evershaw didn’t really care about money except as a means to an end—he wanted money so he didn’t have to give a shit about what others thought of him, and he wanted money to protect his mate and his family. Henry fully supported both sides, although he wished that didn’t mean quite so many business meetings for him and Todd.
Henry stepped out of the warehouse to the parking lot, debating whether he had time to get lunch before dealing with yet another meeting downtown with a bank manager, and paused when Deirdre, Mercy, and Ophelia stepped out of a car. He hadn’t seen the witches at the old pack house at all. He frowned a touch as he approached them, wondering if maybe Deirdre was searching for her mate. “Evershaw isn’t here.”
“I know,” the dark-haired witch said coolly. She scanned the area, lifting her sunglasses to rest on top of her head, and frowned at the building. “We were looking for a place to practice.”
“Practice?” Henry glanced at Ophelia’s flushed cheeks and Mercy’s bouncing excitement, and figured it was something to do with magic. “Silas is inside; he can help you find one of the garages if you need to—”
“Henry,” a sharp voice called from across the street, and he went still.
It couldn’t be.
Deirdre glanced over his shoulder, polite disinterest all over her face. “Looks like you’ve got an admirer, Henry. Need some help?”
He did. He really, really did. But he shook his head, though a growl escaped as he turned on his heel to confront the woman who charged across the empty street. “It’s fine.”
The tall woman with bottle-blonde hair had their mother’s eyes and a lifetime of disappointments in the lines around her mouth. His older sister’s disapproving glare set his hair on end, and the wolf wanted to both flee and fight. Nola ignored everyone else there, her one-track mind once more setting them up for a hell of a lot of trouble. “Why haven’t you answered my calls? You haven’t responded to a single message.”
“There’s nothing to say,” he said, jaw clenched. He really didn’t want to deal with Nola, and he wanted even less to do it in front of an audience. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re here to bring you home,” she said. Nola didn’t spare Deirdre a second glance, despite that the witch muttered under her breath, though Henry wouldn’t have minded seeing Deirdre square off with his sister.
“We?” Henry folded his arms over his chest.
She gestured at where she’d parked her rental car across the street, and a leggy brunette stepped away from the sedan. Henry’s heartbeat echoed in his ears as he studied the woman, trying to place her semi-familiar face. Someone from the pack, that was for sure, and probably someone he’d known before he left, but... her name escaped him.
Nola’s lips thinned with disapproval as she looked around at the industrial neighborhood and the scrappy buildings and people. “This is where you want to stay, instead of returning to your family? Henry, what’s the matter with you?”
He growled and wrestled with control. The wolf wanted to shift and run, to get the hell away from everything she reminded him of, and to find someone to fight so he could release the fury that boiled up in his chest. She had no right to disrupt his life, to drag up all the old problems and fears. He was done with all that. He didn’t want to return to Montana, he didn’t want to revisit their shared history, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be alpha of a pack that had abandoned him when he’d needed them most.
Deirdre stepped around him and offered her hand to Nola. “We haven’t met. I’m Deirdre. My mate is Henry’s alpha. And you are?”
The witch had the self-possession and presence of an alpha female, enough that a wolf like Nola recognized it. His sister sniffed and daintily pressed her fingers into Deirdre’s, though she dropped the other woman’s hand as fast as possible. “I’m Nola, Henry’s sister. And this is Fran, Henry’s mate.”
He rocked back on his heels, barely catching a curse before it exploded out of him, and stared at his sister as Deirdre, Ophelia, and Mercy stared at him.
Fran. He remembered her as a gawky teenager when he’d been barely a man himself. He shook himself and refused to do more than nod to her, the young woman’s face scarlet as she half-hid behind Nola. No doubt Nola bullied her into coming all the way from Montana to confront a man she didn’t even know.
Henry squared his shoulders. “She’s not my mate, Nola. You’ve got no business here. I told you before, I’m not interested in returning to the pack and I’m damn well not going to be alpha. You’ve wasted your time. You can spend the night at the pack house, but you should be on your way in the morning.”
