Page 3 of Wolf Caged
“Saphira,” Everlee started, but I held my hand up, silencing her as the weight of everything pressed down on me and I struggled to push it all away, all the doubts and the fears. She sighed. “If you ever need to get away or need a change of scenery, you can always come visit.”
I looked at her now.
Could I?
Would Lucas allow it?
I had a sudden urge to be outside, to explore every inch of my home and the woods surrounding it one last time, as if I would never see it again. I wasn’t sure that I would. It wasn’t unusual for mated females to remain with their new pack and neverreturn to their old one, especially those females who mated an alpha.
Would this be the last time I saw my pack lands? My friends? My parents?
My stomach tightened, twisting painfully at the thought tonight might be my last moments with them, that voice in my head so loud it drowned out the one that soothed and whispered I was overreacting, letting fear get the better of me. I was being foolish, I knew it deep inside, but I couldn’t shake the dread and the fear I would never see this place or these people again, that my mate would order me to remain at his pack—my pack—and cut me off from this world.
The pressing need to drink it all in and savour it, to make memories I would cherish for the rest of my life, had me moving to the cabin window, my wolf instincts tugging me there, towards all that freedom I had taken for granted.
“Saphira?” Everlee’s soft voice tried to soothe the sharp edge of fear that felt like a knife poised over my heart, but it pressed closer nonetheless, the tip of it piercing my chest as I struggled to breathe. “Saphi?”
Her hand on my shoulder was a balm, an anchor I clung to as I placed mine over it, pinning it to me and clutching it tightly.
“Lucas isn’t like that. He’s not like other alphas, and not all alphas are so controlling. Look at your father.” Everlee squeezed my shoulder and I tried to take comfort from those words, but it was hard.
My father, who had never even entertained my requests to go to Quesnel with Everlee, or even with Chase and my protector, Morden. Who had looked close to laughing the one time I had asked whether I could make the long trip to Vancouver. He had always reminded me that my time was better spent here at the pack, carrying out my duties and taking care of our people. My mother had always looked as if she wanted to argue, and thenshe had agreed with him, shutting down my attempts to seek out adventure even in its tamest forms.
Yet even though part of me resented them for keeping me caged within the confines of the pack lands, my eyes still burned and throat still clogged up as the bedroom door opened and my mother poked her head into the room.
“It’s time.” Her eyes—eyes I had inherited—warmed as they took me in and she pushed the door open fully to enter the room. “You look beautiful.”
She bustled across the room, opened the closet and pulled out a thick cream shawl.
“But you’re going to freeze your backside off. It’s April, Saphi. You’re lucky there isn’t six inches of fresh snow on the ground right now.” She handed me the knitted shawl and I took hold of it, but she didn’t release it. She stood there, clutching it, her hands close to mine, so near I could feel their warmth. Her lips trembled as she forced a smile, her blue eyes glittering with unshed tears as she released the shawl and lifted her hand to sweep strands of my matching pale silver hair behind my ear. “It was snowing the day you were born. I told your father you looked as if you had come from the snow, had been born of it, with your hair and your eyes… as if you had come from another world. He had chuckled in that way of his and told me you looked just like me, and I was too warm and kind to be made of frigid winter. Just like you. I knew the first time you laughed and smiled how warm, kind and beautiful you were.”
“Mom.” I rolled my eyes, aiming for dramatic effect. “We’ve heard this story a thousand times.”
She released me and raised her hands in surrender. “I know, I know. But forgive me this one time? It’s not every day a mother lets her daughter go.”
Those words hit their mark.
Let me go.
Like I was being released into the wild, into unknown and uncharted lands, rather than into the hands of another person, like a possession.
I shunned that dark thought and focused on the positives, on the happy moments that were ahead of me, and on Lucas. I pictured his bright smile that would soften his glacial blue eyes and would draw my gaze down to his lips. He had never kissed me on the mouth, but tonight he would do that and so much more.
A buzz tripped down my arms, shimmering through my veins as my blood heated.
Suddenly, I was itching to see him rather than itching to be out in the woods, running wild and free as a wolf.
I pressed the backs of my fingers to my heating cheeks, and my mother smiled knowingly.
“It won’t be long now.” She sounded as proud as she looked as she wrapped the shawl around my shoulders. “Maturity can hit a female hard, but Lucas will take care of you.”
“Oh my god!” I nudged her in the shoulder, sure I looked as mortified as I felt inside. One moment she was talking about when I had been a baby, making me feel younger than my ninety-eight years, and the next she was hitting me with talk of my first heat. I wasn’t sure which was worse. Actually, I was. I would take her speaking about me as if I was still a little pup over her talking about my impending maturity. “I am so not havingthatconversation with you.”
Everlee laughed, the sound bright and warm, and my mother chuckled with her, and as I was escorted out of the room, out of the cabin and ushered into the back seat of my father’s red SUV, I couldn’t bring myself to laugh, even when I wanted to.
Lucas occupied all my mind, my heart, and that ache to stay here in my old home with my old pack transformed into an ache to see him.
An ache to take hold of him.
