Page 18 of The Alpha's Mail Order Bride

Darion was her only worry, really. Her host was a hard man to get a read on, and even after they’d discussed her stay on Kurivon she couldn’t figure out exactly how he felt about her staying in his house. It was complicated, of course, given the necessity of keeping the community’s presence a secret from the human world, but something told her that wasn’t what was really bothering Darion. Was it just his frustration with his brother meddling in his life that made him seem so stand-offish and cold? Was it that he preferred to be alone, that he didn’t want her in his house? It would only be a week, Darion told her, until the Council had decided what to do about sending her back home. For a moment, she’d considered offering to stay somewhere else on the island. Reeve’s yacht certainly seemed to have plenty of space.

But something had made her bite her tongue. She didn’t want to spend the week on Reeve’s yacht, that was the truth. She wanted to be right here, drinking in every glimpse of Darion she could get.

It was selfish of her, maybe, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to change her mind. Grouchy and standoffish as he was, there was something under that surface that just drew her in like a magnet. And so it became a kind of game, as the days went by, finding the perfect balance between imposing her company on Darion, and withdrawing to give him the space and solitude he clearly needed. Sometimes, she’d overplay her hand—setting a place for him at the breakfast table, for example, sent him stomping out into the front yard and out of sight for the rest of the morning. She learned quickly from those mistakes, though. The trick was to treat him like a wary prey animal, to lure him slowly and carefully into a group activity, letting him think that it had been his idea to join her.

“Oh, no,” she murmured one afternoon from the couch, having waited until Darion was passing through the kitchen.

“What?” he asked eventually, after a long silence, and she grinned secretly down at her laptop.

“Oh, the speakers in my laptop aren’t working. Would you mind if I watched a movie on the TV? I’ll keep the volume down.”

“Fine,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll go out.”

Claire had realized early on that Darion had never used the television installed in his living room—the power cable wasn’t even plugged in, and there was a layer of dust on the remote control. But it was easy enough to connect her laptop, and she clicked through her collection of favorite movies, the ones she liked to have on hand when she needed inspiration or simply had an afternoon to kill. Right now, though, she was looking for something very specific—a collection of deeply trashy B movies from the late 90’s that she and Suzanne had grown fascinated with for a few months. They’d found hundreds, but she’d only kept the best ones—which was to say, the worst ones. And that included about a dozen about werewolves.

The trap was set. She kept her eyes firmly on television as the movie started, pretending to be oblivious to the way Darion was lingering in the kitchen, holding her breath as he moved slowly toward the door. She might have misjudged his curiosity about her work, about the mythological accounts of werewolves that humans had been fascinated with for centuries…but when the credits finished and the movie began in earnest, she realized Darion was still standing in the doorway.

On the screen, a young girl was walking along a dark street, several meaningful shots of the full moon interspersed with her journey. When a snarling beast leaped out of the shadows, she heard Darion make a sound of dismay in his throat…and a moment later, his shadow fell across the couch beside her. Claire allowed herself a quick glance. Sure enough, his silver eyes were fixed on the screen, a mixture of fascination and irritation on his face. The werewolf’s victim was running down the street, screaming for help as the beast pursued her…and Claire fought the urge to whoop with triumph as Darion settled onto the couch beside her.

“That’s a werewolf, is it?” he asked a few minutes later, his scorn not quite disguising his curiosity. “This is what humans think we are?”

“One version,” she agreed. The silence returned. She was debating whether or not she should offer Darion some of her snacks as the monster reappeared on the screen, snapping its bloodstained jaws at the movie’s werewolf-hunter protagonist. Darion clicked his tongue as a wide shot revealed more of the creature’s hideous, distorted body.

“That’s no wolf,” he said, sounding disgusted. “That’s a demon. Any child could tell you that. Who trained this hunter?”

“It’s a movie,” Claire said with a shrug. “It’s just a story someone made up.”

“Stories are important.” She glanced up at him then, surprised by the conviction in his voice. He was glaring intently at the screen, but he turned to catch her eyes. “What? We learn our most important lessons from the stories we tell.”

“You do? Wolves, you mean?” He nodded, and she leaned forward a little, oblivious to the battle taking place on the screen. “What kind of stories do you tell?”

“Old ones.”

Claire forced herself to sit back in the comfortable embrace of the couch, mindful of the last time she’d asked her taciturn host too many questions—it had ended in him breaking off mid-sentence and walking straight out of the house. She didn’t want to jeopardize what felt like a breakthrough in their relationship, so she resisted the urge to ask anything else. Sure enough, Darion stayed on the couch with her until the end of the movie, then left without a word. Maybe she’d offended him, she thought.

But later that evening, when she asked if he’d mind if she watched another film in the living room, he came straight over to the couch to join her.

As the days went by, she still had no idea where she stood with Darion, but she was at least getting better at reading his moods, the subtleties of his body language. In her mid-twenties, Claire had briefly dated a guy who had three pet cats. Two of them were perfectly friendly, but the third—inherited from his late grandmother—was a wizened old creature of indeterminate breed with a mean streak wider than her broad, slightly squashed face. The old cat had long, luxuriously white fur that was terribly inviting to stroke—a mistake that could prove fatal to the unwary cat fancier, because despite her seeming frailty, Madam still had all the speed and power of her youth at her disposal, and two forepaws full of sharp claws that could slice your hand to ribbons in a heartbeat. With her original owner gone, the only person the old cat seemed to actually like was Hal, who found her random acts of violence against visitors hilarious.

Claire, being the kind of person she was, had decided that to win the boyfriend’s heart for good, she needed to win over the cat. If she could just get Madam to like her, she suspected, she could prove that she was worth the commitment that Hal was pathologically unwilling to give. She made all the usual mistakes in her early attempts at bribing the cat into liking her—being too eager, encroaching too much on her space, ignoring the subtler warning signs. But eventually, she stopped pushing herself into the cat’s space and simply waited for Madam to come to her. It took weeks of what felt like ignoring the cat completely, but one day, when she was waiting on Hal’s couch for him to finally finish getting ready for the date he was already late for, the old cat had sprung up and settled onto the couch cushion beside her, purring.

Time and space, that was all it had taken in the end. Enough time and space, and you could win over just about anyone. And befriending Madam had paid unexpected dividends in that Claire had realized that Hal was giving her the exact same treatment, withholding his attention and affection to keep drawing her in without actually putting any real effort into their relationship. Once she’d noticed that, it was much easier to detach herself from him…though she’d stayed a little longer in the relationship than she otherwise might have, just to secure a few more visits with the cat.

Would it offend Darion, she wondered, to know she was using cat tactics on him? The thought made her giggle occasionally, but if that stirred her silent host’s curiosity, he didn’t let on.

The question of their marriage was still lingering in the back of her mind. But Darion hadn’t brought it up for the last week, and she was reluctant to remind him about it for fear of triggering his temper and sending him storming off into another room. They were definitely married—she hadn’t imagined that part. Darion had confirmed that Reeve had had him sign the papers too, though obviously he hadn’t looked too closely at what was actually printed on them. Maybe they’d just annul it when she left, she thought dully. There was a lot of paperwork in her future, she suspected; Darion had said something about signing something that would ensure she didn’t tell anyone about the island’s location. Not that she could, even if she wanted to. She couldn’t be any more specific about where she was right now than the name of the ocean roaring in the distance.

As for the fact that the island was full of shapeshifting wolves…well, all she had for proof was the memory of what she’d seen out there on the path that first night, and part of her was even beginning to doubt that. Occasionally, she’d sit by the window and gaze out at the path that ran by the cottage, but there was never anything to see but the trees and the bright blue sky. Had they arranged for the island’s residents to give the cottage a wide berth, she wondered? That was a little sad. She’d have liked to meet a few more of the residents here, learn a little more about a culture she’d been unwittingly writing fiction about for years.

Writing. If there was one thing that had come out of all of this chaos, it was that she was writing again, more prolifically than she could ever remember. Part of it was her frustration at not being able to tell Suzanne everything that was happening, of course. She drafted careful emails to her friend, mindful that she might be called on to defend what she’d said in them at the meeting at the end of the week. The knowledge that there was an outside chance that Darion might read what she was telling Suzanne definitely altered what she felt comfortable saying, and from the long lists of questions that Suzanne sent in response, she knew her friend was acutely aware of how much detail was being left out. But she couldn’t exactly go into graphic detail about her sexual fantasies about Darion when there was a chance he might read them, could she? The very thought made her blush to the roots of her hair.

So instead, she channeled all of that yearning into a document saved on her laptop. It was something between a journal and a dream diary, alternating between actual descriptions of her time here and speculative fantasies about her maddeningly untouchable host. Maybe one day it would form the basis for a new book—or maybe she’d just keep it for herself, something to remember Darion by once she’d left the island and returned to her real life. But she was trying not to think about that. It was odd, how sad the thought of leaving made her. She was usually pretty good at accepting the bittersweet quality of the end of something good…but something here just felt unfinished.

She’d saved her favorite werewolf movie for last. It was the worst one by far, one that had reduced her and Suzanne to helpless fits of laughter, and she couldn’t wait to see how Darion reacted. It was the last night before the Council meeting, and although Claire wasn’t sure what was going to happen, she couldn’t help but suspect that her time here on Kurivon might be coming to an end. She’d been restless all day, trying to distract herself from the strange weight of that heavy sadness. She’d only known Darion a week—why was she so miserable at the thought of leaving him behind?

“Another one?” Darion said from the kitchen, his tone dripping with disapproval. Claire hid her smile as he stalked stiffly across the living room, for all the world as though someone was forcing him at gunpoint to join her on the couch.

As had become her habit, she inched discretely closer to him, the better to feel the warmth of his skin and breathe the scent of whatever it was that he wore on his skin. She’d searched the bathroom earlier, hopeful of finding the product so she’d have a way to remember him when she got back to the mainland, but to no avail. Did wolves have cologne? Another question for the long, long list. A pang of sadness struck her with the realization that most of the questions on that list were going to go unanswered.

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