A Wolf in the Fold Read online

  She reached for it. Turning it over, she read the instructions. It said she could start taking them at any point in her cycle. Brodey had said she wasn’t in her fertile time of the month.

  After staring at the blister pack again for another long minute, she pressed the first pill out into her palm, swallowed it, and chased it with a glass of water. She returned the pack to the medicine cabinet and went to bed.

  Follow my gut, huh?

  Well, for now, in light of the latest revelations from Baba Yaga and that night’s sex-induced vision, this felt right. Until she knew who the baby was—and who the woman was—from her vision, she’d rather not risk that it was about her directly.

  * * * *

  Ain wasn’t as asleep as he knew Elain thought he was. After she returned to bed, and long after her breathing slipped into a slow, easy rhythm of sleep, he lay awake thinking.

  Nothing about their mating had gone the way he’d always planned in his mind. First, due to his two idiot brothers having frisky play with Elain in a parking lot after an impromptu and unapproved lunch date, it pretty much forced her to make the decision to become their mate or risk crawling out of her skin from unrequited sexual need.

  Then he’d thought he made her unhappy and nearly got himself killed as a result.

  Okay, that one was totally on me for being an ass.

  Then all the nonsense with Abernathy, the cockatrice, and everything else. And yet, Elain still loved them and wanted to be with them.

  I can’t blame her for not being sure about wanting a baby right now. Maybe it isn’t the best idea.

  He knew he should be thankful they even had a mate at all. None of the Clan elders had ever thought they’d be able to find their One. Then she dropped into their lap.

  He’d always thought they’d be the ones bringing a ton of baggage into any future relationship they had. I was wrong about that.

  And look how close to not being with her they’d come. If Marston hadn’t killed their parents, sending Liam running to draw him away from Elain and her birth mother…

  I shouldn’t think about that.

  Part of him wanted to sell everything, the whole Florida operation. Just pack up and move to Bolivia with the jaguars. Say screw it, and happily live with Elain and his brothers and spend the rest of their lives raising orchids or something peaceful like that.

  They had the money that they could easily do it, too.

  Or even travel the world.

  He suspected Elain wouldn’t be happy with either option. Not when she was now finally able to enjoy having a family for the first time in her life, someone other than Carla.

  Her father.

  In sleep, Elain had snuggled up against Brodey. Ain rolled to his other side on the edge of the bed.

  I need to quit being selfish. Elain wanted this holiday celebration, wanted everyone here.

  All he wanted was her. She was all he needed.

  If it hadn’t been for her insistence, they wouldn’t have even put up a Christmas tree. Ever since their parents died, he didn’t have the heart to do it. Their mom had always been the one to make Christmas a big affair for them and had never brought up their seemingly impossible search for a mate.

  I wonder if that’s why she always insisted they move near us? They weren’t the youngest, but they were the only ones Mom wanted to move to stay close to. Any time they moved, within a few months, their mother had packed their home up and settled herself and their father within an hour or two of them.

  Did she feel sorry for us? Maybe she’d thought they’d never find their One and wanted to keep an eye on her boys.

  He closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. I wish you could have met her, Mom. I think you would have loved her.

  Thinking about his mom brought back a lot of old memories he’d left shrouded in mental cobwebs for many long years. As he drifted to sleep, he once again tried not to think about his three sisters. How after their deaths their mother had never been the same.

  How he himself had never been the same after extracting vengeance on the cockatrice who’d murdered them.

  And how he’d never revealed to anyone, not even his two closest brothers, what he’d done to fully extract that vengeance.

  He prayed Elain never found out, either.

  Chapter Seven

  The next afternoon, two days before Christmas Eve, Elain was still trying to ignore the disquiet the vision from the night before had left in her brain.

  At least she’d gotten a good, solid, uninterrupted night’s sleep. No covert coffee klatches with Baba Yaga, either.

  Bonus.

  Blackie and Callie arrived along with Wally and Kitty. Everyone gathered in the living room to discuss the latest events with the cockatrice, as well as the revelations Elain brought back from her chat with Baba Yaga.

  Blackie listened to Elain, an unreadable expression on his face. When Elain finished, he slowly nodded.

  “Congratulations,” he said to Mai.

  “Thanks,” she softly said. “I think.”

  “So the old fucker’s still alive, huh?” he asked.

  “Please, Sir,” Callie begged from where she was sitting on the floor next to his chair. “Please let me go look for him.”

  He smiled as he reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Down, pet. We don’t know who has him, or where they are. I won’t put you at risk over a wild-wolf chase.”

  “If it was someone on our side,” Ain said, “surely they would have spoken up by now, right?”

  Kitty shook her head. “I’m not so sure of that. Just because they’re not a fan of Abernathy doesn’t mean they’re on our side. I know it’s a comforting thing to think, but there are plenty of bad guys who hate Abernathy just as much as we do. He’s an equal opportunity screwer-over of folks. Has been his entire life.”

  “Can we call Ryan Ausar?” Callie asked. “He helped us before.”

  “We can try,” Blackie said, “but I don’t know if this is his area of concern. He can’t help us with everything.”

  Elain studied Blackie’s face. There was something deeper there, a worry he hadn’t given voice to yet. As Elain watched him, he unflinchingly met her gaze and then glanced back down to Callie.

  She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know whatever else was bugging him had to do with Callie. Or that he didn’t want to discuss whatever it was in front of everyone else, including Callie.

  They spent an hour or so batting around ideas without getting anywhere. Finally, Brodey stood and stretched. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m dying to put those damn steaks on the grill. I declare it beer o’clock, and the yak fest closed until after dessert. All this mental masturbation has my appetite fired up.”

  Elain remained where she was as most everyone else got up. When Callie stood and turned to Blackie, he smiled and pulled her in for a kiss. “Go on, pet. I need to wrap up a couple of loose ends with the Seers. Clan Council business.”

  She frowned slightly but glanced at Elain before following Carla, Kitty, and the Lyall men to the kitchen.

  Lina and Mai hadn’t gone far and now walked over to the couch. “Spill it,” Lina said.

  Blackie stood and looked around, finally pointing at Cail’s study. The four of them walked into the room, Blackie shutting the door behind them.

  “What is it?” Elain asked. “What’s wrong?”

  He sat on the edge of the desk. The usually confident wolf looked nothing like his normal, in-charge self. In fact, he seemed lost.

  When Elain reached out to him, he stared at her hand for a second, making her pause. Then he extended his arm for her to take.

  After a deep breath, Elain wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

  Worry immediately washed over her, heavy, nearly suffocating. It took every ounce of will she had not to release his arm. If this was what the man had to deal with on a daily basis, she felt desperately grateful Ain didn’t hold the leadership position.

  Then sh
e saw Blackie, awake in bed, lying on his side and watching Callie sleeping.

  It wasn’t a peaceful sleep. Anything but. She thrashed, crying out in a nightmare. Then he finally gathered her into his arms and held her tightly until Callie’s eyes popped open.

  Blackie’s intense green gaze held hers as Elain emerged from the vision. “She can’t remember them when she wakes up,” he said. “And they’re getting worse. Not even edicting her to remember them helped. I know she’s not lying to me—”

  “Because she’s not capable of lying to you any more than you’re capable of lying to her,” Elain softly said as she released her hold on his wrist. “She’s your mate.”

  “She doesn’t know what’s going on. I believe her. I even asked Ryan Ausar to look into it for me. Again, no help.” He studied his hands for a moment. “What bothers me is that her nightmares, and her inability to remember them, concern him, although he can’t tell me why.”

  “Can’t?” Elain asked. “Or won’t?”

  He cocked his head in contemplation. “No, I think it’s more an issue of can’t. He struck me as being as concerned by it as I was.”

  “What about Baba Bitchy and Gigi?” Lina asked.

  “Nothing. And,” he quickly added, “Baba Yaga is genuinely concerned about it. She didn’t give me fortune cookie answers when I asked her.”

  Mai chewed on her thumbnail. “I haven’t had any dreams about it. What if we talk to her? Callie, I mean. Maybe we can…I don’t know. Maybe we can see something.”

  “I’m thinking with the latest revelations, that might not be the worst idea.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I know what the three of you are supposed to do, the role you play in guiding our Clan. The new mega-Clan. I still feel like crap asking you guys to step in when it might turn out to be nothing. You’ve got enough to deal with.”

  “We’re friends,” Elain said. “That’s kind of what we’re supposed to do, you know.”

  “But Lina’s busy with the Beasts. And Mai, I know you have your hands full with BettLynn. I hate dumping more on you than I have to.”

  “I’d feel worse if you didn’t and we find out later it’s a huge shitstorm of trouble,” Mai softly said. She walked over and hugged him. “You’ve been amazing to me. Like a big brother. I’m beyond grateful to you and everyone for sticking up for me. You didn’t have to. You could have handed me over to Abernathy and been done with it.”

  “Over Blackie’s dead body,” Lina snarked. “Literally. I would have killed him had he tried.” She flashed him a sweet smile. “But I had faith in you, dude.”

  Blackie smiled. “Yeah, even if that option had crossed my mind, which, believe me, it didn’t, I know I would have faced serious backlash from everyone else.”

  Lina snorted. “Backlash. That’s an interesting euphemism for being eviscerated and fireballed all at the same time.” She grinned. “Lucky for you, I like you. I would have killed you first before the fireballing and evisceration commenced.”

  He arched an eyebrow at her.

  “Well, okay, maybe I would have killed you first,” she said. “Stranger things have happened, ya know.”

  Blackie chuckled and hugged Lina. “Yes, very lucky for me. Jocko and Lacey haven’t been able to give me any information. They don’t know what’s going on with Callie, either. But if the three of you don’t mind talking to her about it, then I’d be really grateful if you could look into it for me.”

  “Of course we don’t mind,” Elain said. “She’s our friend. I think after dinner we need a girls-only walk.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Mai agreed. “Get Mom and Kitty out there, too.”

  “Really?” Blackie asked.

  “Duh,” Lina said. “The time to keep secrets has waaaay passed us by. Just because they aren’t in the Seer club doesn’t mean we’ll exclude them from our Scooby gang.”

  “I think we’re more like Charlie and his Angels,” Mai quietly joked.

  Blackie laughed and hugged her once more. “Too bad Lacey won’t be here until tomorrow,” he said.

  “Hopefully we’ll have some sort of an answer by then,” Elain said.

  * * * *

  In fact, after dinner was when they did it. They figured Callie likely knew something was up, but she didn’t demand an explanation. Elain, Lina, Mai, Carla, Kitty, and Callie all grabbed their beverage of choice and headed north out of the backyard and along the main path through the large wooded section behind the house.

  Elain led them, their comfortable silence accompanied by the sounds of birds, the dying evening breeze rustling the tops of the pines and cypress trees, and a chorus of frogs making their presence known.

  She couldn’t help but feel like they were being watched, but since it didn’t feel like a threat, she did her best to push it aside. Likely it was one of their other guests out for an evening run

  They ended up by the small lake, more like a pond at that moment. With the drier winter months, its edges had shrunk, leaving the shoreline firm and dry.

  Callie sat on a fallen log. “So, what’s up, gang? I’m guessing this has to do with me?”

  Lina and Mai deferred to Elain. “Blackie asked us to see if we could figure out your nightmares.”

  Callie deflated a little. She took a long pull from her bottle of hard apple cider. “Yeah. I figured maybe it was about that.”

  Elain sat next to her on the log. “It might be nothing. Then again, maybe we can help you with them. At least see what’s causing them. If so, maybe we can eliminate if there’s anything to worry about or not.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone about having nightmares?” Carla asked. “We think of you as family. You know you can always talk to us.”

  The former Immortal looked a little sheepish. “In the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t worried about it. It was bothering Sir more than it was bothering me. We sort of had bigger fish to fry. But now…” She shrugged. “Maybe there’s more to it. I don’t know. The longer it goes on, Sir says they’re getting worse. I can’t remember them at all in the morning. I didn’t think it had anything to do with what we’re going through right now.”

  Kitty sat on the ground, cross-legged, and propped her beer bottle in her lap. She ticked off points on her fingers as she talked. “Abernathy’s not dead. Someone has him hostage. The cockatrice are asshats—love that word, by the way, Lina—”

  “Thanks!”

  “You’re welcome. We had an unprecedented issue with cockatrice in Louisiana just after Thanksgiving. But on the other hand, it helped cement relations between different shifter groups and our new mega-Clan and brought more people on board. You three are now the new Triad. Baba Yaga has apparently been plotting for a long, long time to bring all this about. And, now, Callie’s having nightmares.”

  Kitty focused on Callie. “I’m sorry, maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I’m inclined to think there are larger ramifications here. If nothing else, we need to eliminate it if it’s not related. And if it is, we need to deal with it.”

  Everyone nodded.

  Kitty indicated Elain. “Try your stuff. Maybe none of it’s connected. Maybe it’s all intertwined. One of you should be able to tell if it is. My money’s on Elain.”

  Elain looked at Callie. Callie shrugged and held out her arm to Elain.

  Elain handed off her wine cooler to Mai before she wiped her palms on her jeans and reached out with both hands. Gently, she encircled Callie’s lower arm with both hands and closed her eyes.

  At first, she didn’t see anything. Didn’t feel anything, either. It was then she realized she’d never felt awash in emotions when hugging Callie like she sometimes experienced with others.

  Slowly, a dim image came into view, of Baba Yaga, Brighde, and a woman who didn’t look like her friend appeared now, but who she knew was Callie.

  The three of them danced and chanted in a circle around…

  A hot blush filled her face. Lina, Rick, and Jan, were in the middle of the ci
rcle, busily engaged in some sexy action. Elain sensed the scene she was watching was about more than that.

  Forcing herself to remain in the vision, Elain waited it out. It dissolved into a different scene, of Callie, again looking different but this time engaged in some sexy time of her own with a guy. From the look of the room, it was ages past.

  Riding that scene out as well, Elain waited for more. It, too, eventually faded from view, filled by a woman’s enraged face. A woman looking through a window, watching Callie and her lover.

  The scene faded and Elain’s eyes popped open. “Holy fuck,” she whispered.

  “What?” everyone said.

  She looked at Callie. “I think you were…” She didn’t want to say it. Then again, to deny it when so many other “impossible” things had suddenly become a part of her everyday life seemed ridiculous.

  “What?” Callie asked, worry filling her green eyes. “What did you see?”

  “She saw that you were cursed,” Lacey said from the path, startling everyone.

  Chapter Eight

  The women watched the old Seer step into the clearing. Carla was closest and stood to hug her. “We didn’t think you were coming until tomorrow.”

  “We weren’t, but I got our flight changed this morning after I had some visions of my own last night.” She pointed at Elain. “You just saw Callie sleeping with a guy in the past. Right?”

  Elain nodded.

  “I saw you doing that,” Lacey said. “I didn’t see everything you saw, but I watched you do it as if through your eyes.” She focused on Callie. “I never could figure it out when I tried to read this through or directly about you.”

  “I was cursed?” Callie asked. “Who the hell did that?”

  “I think so,” Elain said. “I saw you and a guy together, in the past. Someone was watching you through a window. A woman who looked really, really frakking pissed off.”