The Wolf & The Witch (The Wolves Of Winter Valley Book 2)

Chapter 2 - Home Fires

Natasha POV

Sleep was just as elusive that night as it had been every night since Izzy disappeared. Honestly, I didn’t know why I even bothered to try. I rubbed the grit from my tired eyes that refused to stay closed, then inched my way out of the bed careful not to disturb Harmony and Seth.

I failed.

Harmony pushed herself up to her elbows. “Babe? Where are you going?” she whispered, then yawned.

“I can’t sleep, so I’m going downstairs for a bit.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Standing up, I came around to her side of the bed and touched my lips to hers. “It’s okay, baby. Go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

She started to argue but sucked in a breath instead. It was pointless to argue. She knew it would make me feel worse if she went without sleep just to keep me company. I lightly brushed the back of my knuckles over her smooth mocha cheek, then plucked my robe off the chair by the door and slid into it before easing my way out of the room. I tied the belt as I padded down the hall to the stairs. The foyer light was on, making me hesitate. Was Drake not back yet? Slowly, I descended the stairs, my hand gliding over the polished oak rail.

I heard a noise.

Stopping halfway down, I leaned over the rail and peered into the dark toward the kitchen. There was a faint golden glow at the end of the hall that I immediately decided was coming from the light over the sink. Curious, I continued down the last few steps and followed the light. Drake was sitting at the table, rolling a tumbler of orange juice between his hands. His sandy blonde hair disheveled, undoubtedly by him repeatedly running his fingers through it.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” I asked, stepping into the room.

He glanced over his shoulder, fatigue and worry clear in his lake green eyes. “Sleep? What’s that?” he asked, then nudged the chair next to him out in invitation.

I grabbed a glass from the cabinet as I passed and went to the refrigerator to fill it before joining him.

“I don’t think I’ve slept longer than an hour at a stretch since she’s been gone,” I said quietly.

“Me either.” Drake took a long drink and set his glass back down. “Do you really think she’s dead, Nat?”

A lump rose in my throat and I brought my hand up to it in a futile effort to force it back down. “I don’t know. I am trying so hard to cling to the belief that I would know. That we are close enough that I would feel it if her life was taken, but I don’t know.”

“It sounds strange considering she and I haven’t spent as much time together as you two have, but something inside me keeps telling me that she’s alive. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like a tiny tug in the back of my mind,” he said and sipped his juice.

I studied him for a long moment. “You’re in love with her.”

He met my gaze and nodded, then scrubbed his hands over his face. “Goddess, save me, Nattie… I tried not to, I tried to do the right thing. I went home to await my birthday and prepare to meet my destined mate, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The more I thought about her, the more I wanted to be with her, and the less I cared about meeting my mate. When I came for your wedding, I’d decided that I was taking control of my own destiny and I was going to reject my mate. I even told my parents. Dad was not happy. He’s a traditionalist. He said if the Goddess had wanted us to mix with other species, she’d mate us with them.”

“Who’s to say that she hasn’t?” I asked, tilting my head to one side in speculation. “Just because we haven’t heard of interspecies mate bonding doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any. How does he explain all the interspecies couples out there?”

“He thinks they either rejected their mate or were rejected or their mate died. He does not believe the mate bond exists between them.”

Shrugging, I sipped my juice, then said, “It’s a shame we don’t have an interspecies couple in the pack to confer with.”

“It’s not important to me. I don’t need the mate bond. I love Izzy and when we find her, I’m going to do everything in my power to convince her that we belong together,” he said with the strength of his determination clear in his voice. “If I had been quicker, we’d be together now, planning our future. Instead, she’s Goddess only knows where going through Goddess only knows what while I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs because there’s nothing else I can do.”   

“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself, Drake. I honestly don’t think your timing would have changed anything. It may have delayed whoever took her, but I don’t think it would have stopped them,” I said, laying a hand over his.

He turned his hand over and threaded our fingers together. “I know. I just need to blame someone and right now, I’m the only available target.” He leaned over, kissed my cheek, and stood up. “I think I’m going to go try and get some rest. You should too.”

“I will in a little bit,” I promised. Drake gave my hand a squeeze before releasing it, then picked up his glass, set it in the sink, and left the kitchen.

Picking up my own glass, I went to the common area to watch tv. I just wanted something that would distract me from Isabella’s absence.

Harmony POV

When I opened my eyes and saw that Natasha had not returned to bed, I rolled to my back and picked up my phone.

It was 3 a.m.

I contemplated going downstairs and sitting with her, but she would have sent me right back upstairs. It didn’t matter how much she was suffering, she still worried about us taking care of ourselves.

Her reasoning was sound.

She drew comfort from knowing we were okay, but it also wouldn’t be good for the pack to have the Alpha, Luna, and Beta all down at the same time. So, Seth and I relented for the sake of the pack and to prevent any additional stress from being laid at Natasha’s feet. Sitting my phone back on the nightstand, I rolled back to my side and hugged Natasha’s pillow to my chest. Tears slipped past my lashes and dampened the pillowcase. Natasha wasn’t the only one scared for Isabella. Though my fear would never come close to matching Nat’s, I cared deeply for Izzy. She was my friend as well as my sister-in-law. The three of us had been thick as thieves since a few months after she arrived in Winter Valley. She was the first person Natasha and I told about our relationship, the first to offer us support. I sniffled lightly and buried my face deeper into the pillow, trying to will myself back to sleep.

“Come here, baby,” Seth said suddenly.

Bringing her pillow with me, I scooted across the bed and snuggled into him. “She went downstairs two hours ago.”

“I know. I heard her leave.” He wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips to my forehead. “She’s not going to sleep much until Isabella is home safe, you know that, and there’s nothing we can do to change it. All we can do is be there when she needs us and do what we can to keep her load as light as possible.”

“I just hate to think of her sitting down there all by herself with no one to lean on when her thoughts turn dark,” I said, then pushed my face into her pillow again and breathed in her scent.

Seth lay his chin on my head. “I hate it too, but this is how she’s always dealt with stress. She is getting better about leaning on us, but it’s still a new concept. It’s going to take more time for her to get used to not having to carry these burdens alone.”

He was right. Natasha learned to carry the weight of her stress alone beginning with the gruesome murder of her mother when she was 10 years old. Her father had been too blinded by his own grief to understand that his little girl was severely traumatized. My dad had been the one to swim out into the ocean, where she’d been treading water on autopilot, and bring her ashore while the Alpha stood on the beach oblivious to everything, but the charred remains of his mate. After the departing, he didn’t notice that she didn’t speak or cry for days from the shock of it. He didn’t see his baby overwhelmed by her grief when the shock wore off. If it hadn’t been for Seth’s mother, the Beta female at the time, and Elvira Keller, the Gamma female, Natasha may have never recovered. Still, she didn’t walk away unscathed. Her father’s emotional absence during her worst trauma taught Natasha that she couldn’t lean on anyone else during difficult times. It was something that I’d been trying to get her to unlearn since our relationship began almost seven years earlier.

Events several months before drove her to her breaking point and beyond. It took both Seth and I to finally get through to her and, as he’d said, she’d been improving. Isabella’s disappearance had thrown her back into old habits, but all it took was a gentle reminder to have her consciously allowing us to take some of her burden. In this case, we had been taking over most of her daily responsibilities, freeing her to focus on the investigation and allowing her to be available for any call, text, or email that might provide an important update. That didn’t mean we couldn’t help in other ways. She just had to allow it.

“She needs to be up here with us,” I said. “Even if she can’t sleep, she will, at least, be comforted by the mate bond.”

“You’re absolutely right, love. I’ll go down and get her,” he said, then kissed the top of my head before rolling out of bed and leaving the room.

I sat up and turned on my bedside light. Seth didn’t say he was going to ask her to come back upstairs, making it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer. That meant he was likely going to manhandle her to force her compliance. Natasha was not going to be happy and she was likely going to struggle against his hold, throwing him off balance. The least I could do was make sure he could see the obstacles when he returned with his wriggly bundle.

Seth POV

I was not looking forward to forcing Natasha to do something she didn’t want to do, but Harmony was right, she needed to be upstairs with us allowing the mate bond to soothe her. That was one of the many benefits of the mate bond. Just being near our mate, or mates, had a calming effect. It eased our grief, our stress, and any other unpleasantness we carried around. Natasha had carried more than her fair share over the years even before she was old enough to feel that mate bond. You would think that she’d welcome the peace that having two mates brought, but she was still hesitant, she resisted it, and she refused to admit it, or explain why.

It was clear, once I made it half-way down the stairs, that the fight I had been expecting was not to take place. The tv was set on some classic sitcom, the volume barely loud enough to be heard and Natasha was curled up in the corner of the couch sound asleep with her left arm curled over her head, holding her riot of black curls away from her face. Jogging down the rest of the stairs, I skirted the couch and came to stand in front of her. After turning off the tv and dropping the remote on the couch, I gently lifted my wife into my arms. She stirred only briefly, then snuggled against me and went lax again. As elusive as sleep was for her, I’d loathe to wake her, so each step I took was slow and carefully measured.  

While I navigated the stairs, I channeled Harmony to open the bedroom door.

Her timing was impeccable.

As soon as my foot touched the top step, the door silently swung open, and Harmony stood waiting to close it behind us.

I managed to pick Natasha up and carry her upstairs with her barely stirring, but the moment I started to lay her in the bed, her eyes flew open.

“Seth? What are you doing?” she asked, her head pivoting around, orienting herself to her surroundings.

“I’m putting you to bed, my love…”

“What? No… I can’t…” she interrupted. “She needs me…” Natasha shoved me to the side and jumped up.

I caught her before she could go running from the room. “Nattie, you were asleep sitting up. You’re exhausted. You need to get some sleep.”

“I can’t…” Driving her fingers into her hair, her eyes wheeled wildly. “She needs me. I have to go.”

Harmony came over and lay a hand on Natasha’s back. “Go where, boo?”

She froze. “I don’t know,” she whispered after a long silence. “Oh, Goddess. Where is she? Where are you, Izzy?”

Her pale porcelain complexion became almost translucent, then her knees buckled. I caught her before she could slide bonelessly to the floor and sat her on the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of her. “Sounds like a hell of a dream, sweetheart. Why don’t you tell us about it.”

“Dream? No, it couldn’t have been. It was…” Her words died away when there was a knock on our door.

Harmony opened the door to a sweaty, pale, and sleep rumpled Drake.

“Uh… I’m sorry to wake…” He began as he stepped into the room. His eyes fell on Natasha, then swung to meet mine and Harmony’s. “I didn’t wake you.”

“No, you didn’t wake us. Seth went down to get Natasha and when he tried to put her to bed, she woke up from an apparently vivid dream about Isabella. It has her pretty freaked out,” Harmony told him as she closed the door.

He came over and sat down next to Natasha. “Tell me about it.”

“I could see her running. It was dark and she was scared. She was in pain, but she wasn’t letting it slow her down,” Natasha said closing her eyes as she often did when she was trying to recall details. “There were a lot of trees… I swear I heard her call my name.”

Drake’s eyes locked on mine as he spoke to Natasha. “I had the exact same dream, so either you and I have managed to forge a link between our minds, you’ve added telepathy as a power, or Izzy is reaching out somehow.”

Natasha turned to look at Drake. “Think something,” she demanded, staring into his eyes. After several seconds, she shook her head. “I’m not getting anything. Your turn. What am I thinking?”

Again, the two of them sat there silently staring at each other unblinking for several seconds. This time, Drake shook his head. “Nothing.”

“She’s alive,” Natasha said almost reverently, then threw her arms around Drake. “She’s alive!”

“Yeah, now, where the hell is she?” He asked as they parted.