The Thing About Weres

But mortal-me? Not so happy. I was one of the following: angry, heart-bruised, or confused.

When in doubt, opt for anger.

Chapter Twenty

The master bedroom was a corner room, one door down the hall, dominated by a king-sized bed. The room had been frozen in time, its hour hand unmoving beyond the night Mannus lost both his empire and his head. The pale green sheets were still twisted from the activities of its last occupants; a dark sage comforter was kicked to the floor. Mannus’s scent lingered—a corrosive layer over older, half-buried ones.

Trowbridge’s hold slackened on my wrist, and I pulled free, pivoting in place, sniffing delicately. Ah—there. It was little more than a thin thread of woodland wafting from the easy chair in the corner—but it was there, part of the olfactory composition of the room. This cozy room with its fussy wallpaper also smelled faintly of Trowbridge’s father and his mother.

A muscle tensed in the current Alpha’s jaw as he stared down his nose at a pair of jeans lying in a discarded puddle on the floor between the massive bed and the doorway. At the sight of those abandoned Lees, my stomach roiled. Was it always going to be like this? I wondered, curving my arm around my belly. I’d run into a Mannus memento and find myself wanting to hurl as I remembered the night where my aunt’s mate turned me into a whimpering pile of woe?

I’d rather stay mad than feel small and lost.

Trowbridge hissed through his teeth and strode over to open the windows. The first double-hung resisted, and he said something harsh and sharp under his breath in my mother’s tongue as he tried to force it up without breaking it. “Shit!” he cursed, slamming the heel of his palm on the sash. Success. The window screeched upward, and cold fresh air poured through the opening.

He braced his arms on the windowsill and bent to stick his head outside. The man’s too thin. The skin over his taut belly pleated as he sucked in a deep breath. “Your brother said a lot of stuff downstairs,” he said gruffly. “Meant to destroy whatever we have going between us. Don’t let him.”

I hooded my eyes. Another don’t.

He half turned and froze—just like that—twisted at the hips, his mouth a little open, ugly hair brushing his sharp cheekbones. “I used to dream of you. Looking like you do right now.”

My heart stopped for a beat, then picked up.

He said slowly, “For nine years, I had the same dream. I stood buck naked in the Pool of Life. You stood under the apple tree.”

My breath caught. “It was a cherry tree.”

You died. Every night you dived under the water and never came back up.

“The nightmares started petering out this year,” he said tautly. “I haven’t had one in a month.”

But I dreamt of you last night, I almost protested. Then I thought of how a single day in this realm equaled many in Merenwyn, and remembered how the dreams always ended—with arrows raining down on the pond.

Yes. For both of us they were nightmares.

A light flickered in his eyes. “We always—”

“Argued.”

I looked down at my blistered sooty fingers. Silence stretched. When I glanced up, I caught him staring at me moodily. The front of his pants was tented. He blinked then his features rearranged themselves back into his new default expression. Broody Alpha with a touch of Neanderthal.

“Yes,” he said, adjusting his jeans. “We always fought.”

“But the dreams stopped. Maybe that’s the problem with fairy tales in the real world,” I said quietly. “Sometimes the princess doesn’t get the right frog, and sometimes the prince is having too much fun slaying dragons to come back home.”

Irritation thinned his mouth. “You know why I didn’t accept your brother’s first offer.”

“Right. Obligations to your Raha’ell and all that.” Then I cocked my head. “You just vowed to this pack that I would stay here forever. Knowing that they tried to kill me.”

“Yes, I did,” he said flatly.

“What if I don’t want to play housemother to a bunch of murderous wolves?”

“Well, that’s the thing about vows,” he said, his tone hardening. “Sometimes other people can make them for you.”

To bring up the mate issue so casually. My cheeks heated as I searched for a good comeback. There wasn’t one. Instead, I studied his body and face, searching for ammunition. Some men were meant to walk around barefooted and shirtless. He was one of them.

So I said, “I hate your hair.”

“I’ll add that to my list,” he drawled.

Fraud, I thought. He was shooting for cool and detached but his frustration was evident in the glitter of his eyes and the flush across his upper chest. It had sharpened his scent, too—if his had shape and form, it would be curling into a fly swatter.

He blew air through his teeth and muttered, “No one can push my buttons like you.” Then he jerked his chin at my swollen hand. “Can’t Merry fix that?”

That would be a “yes,” except Merry hadn’t offered.

“I’ll heal on my own,” I told My One True Thing.

“Hmph,” he replied.

But I heard him mutter, “Stubborn as a mule,” before he set to a bit of energetic housecleaning. He tore the sheets off the bed, wadded them into a ball, and tossed them through the window without so much as a heads-up. A second later, the jeans went sailing after them. From the side table, he grabbed a book, a mug, and a yellowed newspaper. Those were pitched too, with more force than required—the I ¦ CREEMORE mug bounced along the roof of the portico before it fell to hit the walkway with a sharp crack.

I stalked over to the bedroom chair and picked up the woman’s blouse that had been left draped over its arm. My aunt Lou had worn one like it—I frowned. Was it this shirt? If so, remnants of my lying aunt could go with the detritus of his land-obsessed uncle. “Here, chuck this, too,” I told Mr. Clean, tossing it to him.

He caught the shirt, balled it, and made a free throw. “So, this place Threall, it exists? The fog, the big motherfucking trees, and all the lights in the sky?”

“Not lights, soul balls.” I ruthlessly banged the seat cushion free of dust and then collapsed into the chair, curling my legs under my ass. “Yes, Threall definitely exists.”

Evidently, the correct answer for that would have been “no.”

Grim-faced, he strode to the bathroom, where he continued his ruthless eradication of all things Mannus. Cabinets were emptied, shelves ransacked. When he was finished, he’d filled an entire drawer with rejected personal-care items. He exited with it balanced on his hip. For a second he stood there—Suzie Homemaker in blue jeans and a beard—eyes choosing his next target. Aha. The cherrywood dresser. One quick swipe of his forearm swept all the surface litter—a beer bottle, a stack of road maps, another mug, and probably an inch of dust—on top of the now brimming drawer, before he padded barefoot over to the windows for another purge.

Good-bye, Mannus. The new Alpha shook the contents of the drawer outside.

Outside someone said, “What the hell—”

“It’s the Alpha,” answered another.

Trowbridge stuck his head out the window. “Hey, you. What’s your name?”

“Jeff,” came the answer.

“Tell Harry I want all this shit out of here in the next ten minutes. And Jeff? I want the downstairs scrubbed down right away. Also get him to send someone for a few of those candles that smell good, too. Something with