Her Wolf

Chapter Nine

When Ashlee came to, a fifteen-member band played in her head.

She opened her eyes, but the bright light hurt too much and her hand flew to shield them. Where was she? A little less dazed, she sensed the soft sheets and mattress under her body. She was not on the roof anymore.

“They gave you their power. They’re gone now, but they sacrificed themselves so you would be strong enough.”

Theo was with her.

Ashlee squinted at Theo who stood to the left side of her bed. She swallowed. Why did Theo have to be with her when she woke up? She knew, out of everyone, he liked her least. He probably blamed her for Tristan’s condition. Truth was, she held herself accountable for it too. If they had just taken the time to even consider the possibility of the spell still being active, they wouldn’t be in this predicament now. Her heart panged in her chest. If she lived another hundred years, she would always blame herself for this.

Ashlee pulled herself up into a sitting position. Her head reeled. She didn’t want Theo looming over her.

The Aunts were dead?

So that was why they’d behaved so strangely. They’d given her their power, which had ended their lives. A pang of regret pierced through her. Ashlee hadn’t even had the chance to tell them goodbye.

Theo cleared his throat. “I don’t know if they’d call it a sacrifice. They’ve wanted to be with their loved ones for a very long time.”

She touched her head and groaned. “I think they could have found a better method to give me what I needed, or at least a less painful one.”

“I’m sorry, perhaps ‘sacrifice’ wasn’t the right word. It was a bit of a shock when the ground started to move and we all heard you scream like you were being murdered. By the time Michael got up to the roof it was too late; they had all but vanished. There was nothing left to hold on to. They just faded away into nothingness. But it’s not your fault and I certainly don’t blame you.”

He didn’t? He could have turned himself into the Easter Bunny and she would have been less surprised. Ashlee stared hard at Theo. The usual gruffness and attitude was absent from his face and his posture. He seemed pretty relaxed.

Ashlee’s throat felt dry, her voice sounded tight. “I’m sorry they’re gone. I only knew them two days, but I liked them very much.”

Theo rose and crossed the room to the dresser that held a stainless steel water pitcher. “You know everything they knew. Their powers are yours. I haven’t heard of anyone doing that for three hundred years.” He handed her the glass he’d filled. “I’ve been a little hard on you. I was afraid when Tristan met you…afraid of what that meant for the pack. The spell killed everyone thirty years ago, but it feels like yesterday to me, and I was afraid that it would all start again. I’m sorry if I turned out to be the Cassandra of the pack. I assure you, it was not my intention. I would rather have been wrong.” Theo paused for a second, his brownish-blond eyebrows pointed downwards. Ashlee was struck by how much Theo’s insecurity reminded her of Tristan, then she remembered Theo and Tristan had been born only a year apart, so they must have been raised almost as twins.

“You were worried about your brother. I understand.” Ashlee smiled. She looked around the room for a clock. What time was it? Had she missed her flight to Cancun?

“You leave in about an hour for the airport.” Theo must have read her signals. His eyes lit with admiration before he lowered them in a submissive gesture. “You didn’t run.

I told you to run when Tristan attacked, but you stayed and talked him down, spoke to him and reasoned with him when it should have been impossible. Now you’re running off to face our father and his witch. I think you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met and I’m proud to call you sister.”

Ashlee’s eyes filled with unexpected tears. She didn’t need Tristan’s soul to tell her Theo was not a man who expressed emotion easily or trusted others with his feelings. She wasn’t going to let any of them down. She would bring Tristan back.

Theo laughed. “Gabriel and Cullen have been arguing all day about who is going with you and your dad to Mexico. They can’t agree, so they’re both going. Michael wants to go too but we won’t let him. He’s our interim Alpha.”

“He needs to do the ceremony.” Ashlee knew what the Alpha ceremony entailed; with the Aunts’ knowledge, she felt like she’d witnessed Tristan’s father’s personally.

Theo nodded. “He will. I believe in him.”

“Can you do something for me, Theo?”

Theo nodded, no hesitation, no hedging. He didn’t even ask her what she wanted.

That was how he treated his family. She felt honored. “Send Rex up to the arboretum; I need herbs. I’m going to disguise my smell so your father doesn’t know I’m a wolf. I know how to do that now. I’ll try to do Gabriel and Cullen too, but he knows them; he doesn’t know me.

“Then take the ferry to the shore, get in my car, and drive to New Jersey. Go to my mother and demand that she and my sister come here to the island. The spell that I will need to do on Tristan requires one leader and two other mystics. Two other female shifters. The Aunts knew this. They must have known I would need my family. My mother will object—she doesn’t want Summer here yet—but there is no choice. If my mother refuses, go and get Summer yourself, or at least threaten to. She goes to Columbia University in New York City.”

“I’ll be back with both of them before you return.” Theo’s eyes held resolve.

“Good, then its time I go witch hunting, don’t you think?”

The flight from Portland to Cancun was a blur. Every time Ashlee closed her eyes, she saw Tristan as she’d last seen him, on the floor writhing in pain. Or she heard his voice, so cold and unfeeling, when he’d yelled and threatened her through the door of his cell.

The flight she’d booked stopped in Newark, New Jersey, where she picked up her father at their house; he fortunately remembered her passport. Theo, traveling by car, hadn’t yet arrived to pick up her mother, and Ashlee decided not to illuminate that fact for her father. He’d be pissed. He didn’t like people ordering Victoria around. Ashlee smiled. Scott wasn’t a wolf, but she could see now why her mother’s wolf had fallen for him.

Daddy. Family. Love. Her wolf stretched out inside of her, content to be with her father even as she worried endlessly about Tristan.

Ashlee stood beside her father outside of the Cancun airport. The heat was not the only thing making her sweat. Cullen and Gabriel had waited inside of the airport, and the plan was for them to follow a few minutes behind, and break through IPAG’s security after Ashlee and her father got inside. This would mean they needed to somehow get through the front gate; both Gabriel and Cullen had assured her they were more than capable of handling this, although both had been vague about the details of their plan.

The driver IPAG sent had run to retrieve his car after he informed them that it would take them an hour to get to where they were going.

“You were so quiet on the plane, Ash.” It was the first time she and her father had spoken in an hour.

“I’m sorry, Dad. We really appreciate your help with this. You’re placing yourself in danger.”

“You’re my baby, what did you think I would do?” Scott sighed. “When your mother told me she would not outlive me, that she would die when I did, it all seemed very romantic. The first time I saw her wolf, I was awestruck. I never could have become all the things I’ve become without your mother. She pushed me, in the best possible way.

She never let me settle for mediocrity. She has always been my strength, my life.”

Ashlee smiled. Her mother knew how to push, even if Ashlee didn’t always find it to be ‘in the best possible way.’ Her father had always been the heart of the family, the gentle one. “Even before I knew you were mates, I found the love you have for each other to be inspirational.”

“This boy, Tristan,” her father began.

“He’s about fifty years older than you are, Dad.” Ashlee laughed.

“Regardless, he wants to marry my daughter.” His voice sounded rough. “That boy Tristan, if he dies, you die too, right?”

“Now that we are mated, yes. Either that or I’m doomed to live a half-life, never complete, always alone. Never happy.” The Aunts had felt that way. She could feel their pain now inside of her. She pushed it down; she didn’t need the faces of the men they’d loved haunting her on this trip. She had enough burdens with just Tristan on her mind.

“It doesn’t seem so romantic now,” her father grumbled. “And you’re sure there’s nothing medical science can do to help him? I could load him up on Valium, drive him down to Bergen Pines Institute, and let Dr. Lewis have a look at him. He’ll come up with a good cocktail of psycho-pharmaceuticals and maybe it’ll take care of the problem.”

Ashlee laughed, one large blunt hiccup followed. “No, Daddy, but thank you for offering. And he doesn’t want to marry me. For all intents and purposes, we are married already.”

Scott shook his head and pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his sweat drenched forehead. “I’m just human, Ash. This man hasn’t come to me, hasn’t asked my permission, and I haven’t walked you down the aisle so, no, you are not married yet.”

“Tell you what Daddy, if we get through this and find the witch—which is already unlikely—say we do that, then I somehow subdue her and drag her out of the facility without getting caught, again a big problem. Then we put her in the car, get her back into the United States and onto the boat to the island, where I miraculously perform and survive the cleansing spell, that is after I kill her—”

Her father grimaced.

“Okay, when I let someone else kill her, and save Tristan, then we’ll have a traditional human marriage ceremony and you can walk me down the aisle. Deal?”

“Just that little amount of stuff, huh?” Scott grinned at her.

Love him. Her wolf grinned.

Me too. She smiled.

“You look so much like your mother right now.” Scott touched her face, on her cheekbone, gently.

The gesture brought tears to her eyes. “People always say that to me, but with my red hair and green eyes, I look like your mother, not mine.” Summer looked like their mother. She always had.

“I don’t mean your physical looks. Here,” He touched her on her jaw line again.

“I’ve loved you your whole life, since the moment you were born. But for the last, I don’t know, twelve years, you’ve seemed so lost. Oh, you pretended to be in love with Tom.

Maybe you even did love him a little, but you always seemed hidden, like you weren’t complete. Your mother, she has this inner strength—I know it’s her wolf. She’s unmovable, secure, complete in herself. When I look at you now, we’re in the middle of a terribly dangerous time, and yet you seem more you than you’ve ever been before.”

Ashlee never got the chance to answer her father as their car pulled up, and the apologetic driver, who couldn’t believe how long it’d taken him to get out of the parking lot, hustled them into the car.

Here we go, Ashlee told her wolf.

Good. Tristan.

Yes, we will save Tristan.

Tristan knew Ashlee wasn’t on the island anymore. Anger surged within him to such an intensity he thought he might explode. Coupled with the sharp needles, the bee-stings, and the burns all over his body—even though he couldn’t see the injuries, he knew they were there—now he had to contend with a woman who had disobeyed him. He had told her what would happen if she left. He hadn’t been lying.

He sniffed the air. Parker was still outside on guard duty. “Parker, my old friend, what is happening to me?”

Silence met his query for a moment before he heard a chair scrape backwards on the floor. “Prince Tristan?”

“Where is Ashlee? Why am I in this room? Has something terrible happened?”

Believe me, he silently willed to the guard outside the door.

“Prince Tristan, perhaps I should get your brother.”

Bad idea, Michael would see right through his act. “Please, Parker, don’t leave me in here.”

“You have been struck down by the curse that destroyed our kin thirty years ago.

Ashlee has left the island, maybe that’s why you’re feeling better.”

Good. Tristan jumped from foot to foot with excess energy. “Won’t you open the door, Parker, so I could get something to eat? I will not leave this room if you like, but I cannot stand to be caged up any longer after my ordeal in the zoo.”

“I will open the door for you, Tristan, and then I’ll go and get your brothers.”

Tristan nodded and tried to put on his most sincere expression for when Parker opened the door. He heard the latch turn on the lock and the door flung open revealing a smiling Parker in front of him. It was a good thing Tristan had earned so much loyalty over the years for being trustworthy and dependable, otherwise he’d never have gotten Parker to open the damn door.

Not wanting to risk his luck, as soon as Parker was fully visible, Tristan leaped on top of him. Being superior in strength and agility, he easily knocked Parker to the ground.

But his opponent was a dominant wolf, and an alpha-class at that, so he didn’t immediately relent to Tristan’s attack.

Parker shoved back at Tristan and soon they rolled on the ground, each one gaining and then losing position.

Kill him and be done with it.

“But he is not Ashlee. Killing him will not stop the pain, my Alpha.”

Parker got a good solid grip on Tristan’s neck and pinned him to the floor. Tristan noticed that Parker’s eyes had gone wolf. In a moment, he would shift. “Who do you speak to, Tristan? Who controls you in this madness?”

“No one controls me, Parker, or you’d already be dead.” The burn that plagued Tristan started to creep onto the skin on his neck. Tristan raised his knee and smashed Parker in the groin. It was a low blow, and Tristan knew it, but it stunned Parker long enough for Tristan to regain the upper position in their fight.

Now subdued, Parker groaned in pain. Tristan slammed Parker’s head into the wall and his opponent lost consciousness.

“I told Ashlee what was going to happen. She didn’t listen, so now this whole place goes up in flames.”

Tristan lifted Parker off the ground and swung his body over his shoulder. He wouldn’t let him burn to death. After all, there was no sense in wasting a perfectly good hostage.