I hate feeling so unsure, but if I am going to bare everything to them, I want to make sure they know where I stand. I have to make them see how much I care about all of them, even if what I am about to tell them makes them question whether or not I belong here. My bag sits on the bench near the door. I toss open the flap and pull out three little packages and hurry back down the hall.
Van stops at the bottom of the stairs and waits for me to pass. I stop short and look up at him, holding his gaze and willing him to stop scowling at me. If he can’t smile, then maybe he can just go neutral instead of always being so angry at me.
“I have something for you,” I say, feeling my face flush.
“Okay,” he says, still standing on the bottom step. He seems neither curious nor interested. It’s like he can see into my thoughts.
Suddenly my small gifts feel stupid and meaningless. “For all of you, I mean.” I wrestled with myself for days about whether to give these gifts to them, but after what Kate said earlier today, I know that I have to. I step back into the living room and drop onto the couch, waiting for Van to come back inside.
My mouth has gone dry. “I have something for the three of you. It’s nothing much. But I wanted—”
Van appears at the door. “Joely, wait. Before you do that. I… We need to give you something first.”
Marco’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? I thought you said…”
Van moves over to the large wooden desk near the window and pulls open the drawer. “Never mind what I said. I’ve changed my mind.”
Angus looks at Van with real surprise on his face. “After everything? Are you shitting me?”
I have no idea what they’re talking about, but whatever it is, it’s obviously important.
Van shakes his head at Angus and sits on the edge of the coffee table, holding out a small box wrapped in red paper with a shiny silver bow. “I need you to have this before you do whatever it is you’re about to do.” Van’s face is almost soft as he hands the box to me.
I look at each of them in turn, an odd sense of worry washing through me. But he’s handing me a present, so I shouldn’t be nervous, right? Marco smiles warmly and rubs my knee. Angus looks like a little kid about to meet Santa Claus.
I pull on the edges of the silver ribbon and undo the bow, letting it fall to the floor as I tear open the red paper. It’s a square cardboard box, no larger than a paperback novel. I lift the lid and find a green velvet jewelry box inside. I look at the three of them again as I flip the box open.
Inside, laid out on a green velvet cushion, is a circular medallion on a thick gold chain. The medallion is about the size of a silver dollar and it depicts a wolf and a raven in a yin and yang design, with the wolf howling in profile and morphing into a blackbird mid-flight. The two are joined together as one being as they circle around and around.
“The chain is like ours,” Angus says, running his hands over his own necklace. The necklace they all wear. The one Salma made for them that kept them in their human forms so they could conceal their wolf natures from Damon’s tracker.
“It’s…” I don’t know what to think. It’s too much. They should wait until they know who I really am before they give me anything so valuable.
“Salma made this for you,” Van says. “For the Nightbird. The gold is imbued with protection. She knew you would find us one day, and she wanted you to have this.”
I pull the necklace out of the box and fiddle with the clasp. My hands are shaking, and I don’t have any words, but I feel like something very big is happening here, some threshold has been crossed for me and Van. I don’t know why, but I want so badly to make him happy.
Van takes the necklace from my shaking hands. I shift on the couch and pull my hair over one shoulder so he can place it around my neck. His fingers brush softly against my neck as he does the clasp. “There.”
As soon as the metal settles on my skin, a ripple of magic rolls through my body. It’s like I’m made of water and the medallion is a pebble dropped into me. The magic undulates up over my head and through my hair, down my torso, and out to my fingertips and the bottoms of my feet. I close my eyes and take in the sensation and I’m bombarded with the sense of them. The power of these men, these wolves. They feel like a field of impenetrable energy. And it’s not just the three of them. I feel something else too. It’s new and at the same time familiar. It’s…
“Tobias.” Angus gapes at me. I meet his gaze and I feel the sense of desire and awe wrapped in his earthy essence. It’s like his energy has become a physical thing, joining with mine and grounding me right here in this moment.
Marco gasps as he stares. His bubbly airiness surrounds me and I swear I can feel it brush against the tiny hairs all over my skin. He falls back against the cushions, stunned. “Amazing. It’s him. Can you feel it? Can you
