Page 20 of Love in the Forest
“Of course.” He picked up his robe, walked out of his bedroom and shut the door. Maybe he’d shut it too hard because the whole thing shuddered in its frame.
He stood there, right outside the door, however, and couldn’t make his feet move. He heard the shower running but the moment he heard her sobbing again, he shut down his wolf-hearing.
Over the years, he’d learned to close off his heart whenever things in Five Bridges became too painful. His work as a Border Patrol officer always brought him close to the absolute dregs of his world. But it was the innocents involved, those that got caught in the crossfire, that slayed him every time.
He’d once pulled over a rogue wolf at a stop sign and was in the process, gun-drawn, of ordering him to get out of the vehicle when the wolf started firing his weapon inside the car.
Braden had called for back-up.
When he got there, three teenage girls had been shot to death, young, newly-alteredwolves that had been trafficked.
The rogue had been on one of the high-intensity flame drugs.
Braden had killed him. Yet, to this day, he didn’t know if it was because he saw the wolf’s gun lifting toward him, or if his rage over the deaths of the girls had forced his trigger finger to go off like a machine gun.
He suspected the latter.
Those deaths still lived in his heart and had helped him to be a better officer, to work harder at the drug problem in Savage, to try to make Five Bridges safer for all species.
Somehow tonight, though there had been no bloodshed, he felt as he had at that crime scene, completely devastated by the realities of his wolf life. Five Bridges had been one sacrifice after another and now this one.
He’d given up love for the sake of his pack.
Slowly, he forced his feet to move away from the door.
His life would never be the same.
He knew something else as well. As much as his wolves needed the blood chalice, he couldn’t ask her to part with it. He’d have to find another way.
~ ~ ~
Abby took her time in the shower and gave herself to the grief she felt. She’d had a lot of counseling over the years and she counseled others. She knew the importance of letting it all out.
She also knew this would be the first of at least a hundred sob-sessions she’d have to endure in order to start feeling normal again. Despondency had settled deep into her soul, right at the spot where the cord had connected her to Braden. It felt like a wound that she couldn’t close off and that despite the necessary nature of the break with him, she would never stop bleeding.
Braden hadn’t tried to argue with her about the blood chalice. He had no rights to it despite how badly his pack needed whatever it was the chalice provided. He would have to figure it out on his own.
When she was ready to leave, he escorted her through the air to the Graveyard, a no-man’s-land in the center of Five Bridges that separated all the territories from each other. She thought he would leave her there knowing she would be perfectly safe flying the rest of the way by herself. But he insisted on crossing to the boundary of Crescent itself. The borders weren’t hard to see, being deep pits of broken concrete and cactus accompanied by piles of barbed wire.
Levitating in place above the wire, she turned to him and thanked him for letting the chalice go.
He nodded, but his eyes were pinched and his lips almost white from compression.
She felt the tears start once more, so she whipped away from him with a quick, ‘Good-bye’.
He didn’t respond, except after a moment, his voice was in her head,Good-bye, Abby. I wish you well.
She wanted to whip around, fly back to him and throw herself into his arms.
Instead, she flew faster toward her complex.
Once there, she went straight to the chapel, which mercifully was empty. She removed the chalice from her satchel and settled it on the altar.
She dropped to her knees and did something she hadn’t done in years. She prayed. She prayed for herself, for strength, for grace to let Braden go, for everyone living in her complex right now, for her business that helped her pay for everything, and for Braden and his pack.
She stayed put, asking for help outside herself, because deep within she felt utterly and completely broken.
She’d hoped for a measure of peace, instead a figure suddenly appeared in the doorway. Before she even turned, she knew the wizard had found her.
She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t let him take the chalice. She knew he meant evil by it, that somehow her blood, having mingled with the metal, would be used in human sacrifices.
Her gaze dropped to the knife in his hand.
And he meant for her to be his first victim.
