Page 34 of Hayden's Haven
The banging, along with a car backfiring finally killed any chance of falling back to sleep. Mila quickly dressed, grabbed her coat and headed in the direction of the noise. A few hundred feet beyond Damien’s house and down a small hill, stood a dozen or so shifters, surrounded by sawhorses, gas-powered saws, hammers, spools of cables and wires, and other construction materials. Several trees had been cleared and the stumps were presently being removed despite the cold morning.
Four shifters were unloading wood beams from the truck she had heard backfire. In the center of it all stood the mousy shifter she had seen talking to Hayden yesterday. The short shifter with the stringy hair and very humdrum hazel eyes was yelling orders at three different groups of men, concurrently. He was small, but he was definitely in control of whatever was going on.
Mila hugged her arms tight to her body, wishing she could access her wolf and not have to suffer the cold. She only had herself to blame for not taking the time to make a pot of coffee before heading out.
“What do you think?” Hayden said from behind, sending a slight chill through her body. He had snuck up on her all too easily.
“Think of what? I’m not sure what they’re building,” she said as she resisted him.
“A lab for you. And Anna.”
She spun around. “Seriously?”
This smile reached his eyes. “We can’t have our two most valuable assets freezing to death in that janitor’s shack. You’ll have plenty of space, with proper insulation, electricity, and heat. Of course, it’s still only generator driven and those aren’t as good as living in a city—”
“It’s perfect!” she said as she bounced on her heels and kissed Hayden without realizing what she was doing. His arms circled her waist and held her there before she could pull away.
“Anything for you, Mila.”
Her smile faltered. “You can’t bribe me to stay here, Hayden.”
“Would staying be so bad? Or is it because I’m here that you don’t want to stay?”
“Why would you say that?” she asked, searching his eyes. She wished she understood the sadness there.
“You’re afraid of me,” he said.
“What makes you think—”
“I’m a white wolf, and I know that scares you. And every time I try to strike up a conversation with you, you find an excuse to walk away, or you avoid me altogether.”
“I’m talking to you now.”
“And if I asked you to go for a walk with me, would you?”
“I was heading to the lab—”
“Then later. Lunchtime. Or dinner. A coffee break even. You name the time.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
His hands slid off of her. “Just as I figured.”
Hayden turned and headed up the hill. He had finally gotten the message that she had been giving him for the past two weeks, the one that said she wasn’t interested.
Except she was.
Wait!” she called after him, except he ignored her and kept walking.
She never did catch up to him. She found his clothes, abandoned at the base of a tree. He had shifted, let his wolf run as she had seen him do several times since they’d returned to his pack.
Hayden was one of the calmest shifters she knew, but he bottled up all his frustrations inside of him. She had seen him take off running time and time again, mostly after an encounter with a shifter who disrespected him. She was sure Damien would never put up with half the things some of the shifters here said about Hayden, even to Hayden, but Hayden simply bottled it up and ran rather than turn on anyone.
This time he was running because of her. Now she wished she had taken Anna’s treatment, so she could catch up to Hayden. His tracks stood out easily enough in the fresh layer of snow. It would definitely take her longer on two legs as opposed to four, but she could find him.
She started out with a moderate jog, pacing herself. Hayden could have gone a mile or four, and she wasn’t in the best of shape. Hiking through the woods was a necessity in any pack situated in the forest, but doing so during winter when she didn’t have her wolf’s stamina to add to her own or even ward off the cold was another challenge. The weather turned on a dime in the mountains and already heavy snow was blanketing the area, quickly covering up Hayden’s tracks. She stopped, braced her hands on her knees and tried to get her bearing as she caught her breath.
That’s when she realizes she wasn’t alone. Someone or something was watching her. The usual sounds of the forest had stilled, and the wind whipping through the trees had taken on an eerie quality that made her think of those slasher films Becka, her roommate in college, loved so much. Mila scanned the forest floor for a branch, but there was too much snow.
