She Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 2)

Chapter 18: Jason

When I get to Clarice’s, she takes one look at me and seems to know why I’ve come.

“Follow me, and don’t let your wolf knock anything over along the way,” she directs me, turning and disappearing into the room beyond the curtain.

“I just need to –” I start to explain as I follow her down the hall, but she turns and shushes me.

“I know. I can see him in your eyes, and I know it can be a bit of a bother to find a space to run around here that is away from humans. I’ll let you use my sanctuary, but only because you’re important to Veronica, and she is important to me.”

“Thank you,” I tell her gratefully, exhaling my relief.

Finn only became more agitated on the short drive over here, not less, even after I promised to find him someplace to run. He needs let out now, or he’s going to force me out of his way and let himself out.

“Fenawin!” she calls out to her husband, the vampire I met before.

“I’m right here, and you know it,” he scolds her playfully, having stepped out of one of the doorways as we were passing by.

“We’re heading to the sanctuary. I thought you might like to come,” she tells him casually, though I notice the two of them exchange a brief worried glance over my shoulder.

With her in front of me leading the way, and him right behind me bringing up the rear of our procession, it occurs to me that I’m pinned between them. I wonder if that’s intentional. Maybe they’re more worried about Finn getting out than I am. Her husband might be tagging along mostly to help her keep me in check.

I honestly don’t blame them. I did disclose to her the other day that my wolf is a berserker and can be a bit of a handful when he gets agitated, though I assured her that most of the time I have good control of him. Now would not be one of those times, however, and she seems to intuitively recognize that.

She brings me to a heavy door and pauses for a moment to use a series of different keys to unlock it. Once it’s open, I realize we’re going downstairs. That means underground, which makes no sense.

She seems to read the doubt in my expression, reaching out a calming hand to grasp my forearm.

“I promise this is not a trick or a trap,” she assures me. “We must go down and through a tunnel to get where we’re going. It’s a place no one else can go, not without me to take them there, and it is safe. Private too, so you can yell and howl all you want once we get there.”

Assuming that she means she is taking me someplace that she uses her magic to access, I feel I must ask, “Will my phone still work where we’re going? I need to keep an eye on the time so I’m not late to work.”

“It won’t. You’ll need to leave it here, but Fenawin will keep track of time for us,” she offers.

“What time do you need to be to work?” Fenawin asks me, and I glance over to see him fiddling with an old pocket watch.

I don’t think it’s a normal pocket watch. It has an eerie, steampunk look to it and makes a strange ticking sound.

“Two o’clock, but it’s here in town so I don’t need much time to get there,” I explain.

“We’ll be sure you make it on time,” he promises me, fiddling with his pocket watch as if setting a time.

When he says “we,” I don’t think he means him and Clarice. I think he means him and the watch, which he kisses before tucking it away in his pocket. Then he takes my phone from me and sets it in a small basin placed on top of a nearby accent table.

“It’s your choice, but you may want to leave your wallet and keys behind as well, just to be sure they don’t get lost,” he suggests.

The two of them know far more about where we’re going than I do, so I take his advice and hand those over as well. He sets them in the basin with my phone, and then taps twice on the rim. The basin spins around a few times before it starts to sink right into the surface of the table, completely disappearing only a few seconds later.

“Never a dull moment in this house,” I comment, shaking my head about how quickly I seem to be adapting to their quirky lifestyle.

It surprises me, but I’m not bothered by it. I suppose it’s just par for the course when a witch and an ancient vampire shack up together. I do find it interesting that these are the people that Ronnie is most drawn to, though. Interesting, but also comforting. If she’s cool with all this, then living with a pack of werewolves will be a breeze.

“Come,” Clarice beckons from the doorway, keeping me on task.

She leads us down an exceptionally long, narrow set of stairs that opens at the bottom into a room that I suppose could be considered a cellar. But it mostly just reminds me of the underground bunkers the rogues were using at the start of the war. That impression only grows stronger when she opens the next door, which leads to a long tunnel.

Finn seems to agree with me. This feels familiar in a way we don’t like, especially considering that he was already on edge when I brought us here.

“Hunt,” he growls, forcefully exhaling through my nose.

I’m losing that tiny shred of control that was left. Correction, I lost it.

“Bad hunt,” he tries again to get Clarice to understand that this is somewhere hunters might be lurking.

He doesn’t like the feel of this place. It looks too similar to the bunkers and tunnel systems back home that were originally built by hunters and then eventually landed in the hands of the rogues.

“I think we need to let him go from here,” Fenawin suggests to his wife. “He doesn’t like this, doesn’t trust it. Let him out, let him investigate for himself.”

“Alright. Strip, and hand your clothes to Fenawin,” she instructs me, or rather Finn. My control has slipped enough that I'm not sure I even have any remaining influence over my own body at the moment.

He hurries to pull my shirt over my head and get my jeans off, struggling a bit with the clasps and buttons on things but hopefully not breaking anything so I’ll still have something to wear to work. He bunches it all up and thrusts it at Fenawin, wasting no time shifting after that.

When it’s him in control of a shift, he always does it so fast that it would hurt enough to black out if it was me doing it. He doesn’t care about pain, though. He's vaguely aware of it and feels it to a degree, but it doesn’t bother him.

It seems to startle Clarice how quickly we change forms, though. She has a wolf. She knows what it’s like. Fenawin, on the other hand, seems amused.

“I bet just the sight of him doing that during a battle is intimidating,” he chuckles.

He’s not wrong. Rogues are brutes and more beast than man, but they’re also something that enrages Finn on sight. He did a lot of rapid shifting during the rogue war, and it almost always resulted in at least a handful of them submitting rather than facing his wrath.

“You can run from here, or sniff around if that’s what you need to do. At the other end of this tunnel is where we’re going, but you’ll need me to let you through. I’m right behind you,” Clarice says, gesturing with her hand that Finn should go on ahead.

He tears off into the tunnel, searching for enemies in every nook and dark corner. It really does look like this tunnel could have been built by the same people who built the ones the rogues were using back home. It not only has the same feel to it, but it’s a similar design. Finn already knows where to slow down and prepare to clear a room because the openings are exactly where he expects them to be.

I don’t know whether he feels relieved that we make it all the way through without finding anyone, but I think he might be a little disappointed. He was in the mood for a fight. But there’s nothing in the tunnel. No person, and not a single thing beyond cobwebs and dust bunnies.

The end is startlingly different than we're used to, though. There isn’t one. Clarice is waiting there when Finn finishes searching the tunnel, and she seems to have already done whatever she needed to do to let us through.

The tunnel angles up and opens into a clearing in a forest. There’s no bunker or hatch, just a gentle slope that brings us outside.

Finn takes off before anyone can tell him not to. He runs as fast as he can for a few minutes, until some of the trees catch his interest and he decides to claim the area for himself. I don’t know how Clarice’s wolf will feel about that, but she had to know it was a risk before she brought him here.

Then he’s off chasing after a rabbit, though I don’t get the sense that he feels much like hunting today. Even after he catches it, he only seems to want to bop it on the head and send it on its way. He takes an interest in pretending to hunt a bird for a little bit, but even that eventually loses its appeal.

He stops at a stream for a long drink and watches some fish swimming for a few minutes. They’re tiny, silvery little fish, and I get the sense that he thinks they’re beautiful.

It’s not long before another wolf catches up to him, but he can already sense that it’s Clarice’s wolf. She’s rather unique. Her coat is a light gray that borders on a lavender hue, and her eyes are a vibrant green. Everything about the wolf is elegant and unlike any wolf I’ve ever seen, from her dainty little paws to the exquisite shape of her eyes.

But interestingly, though her wolf is much smaller than Finn and has a lithe, streamlined build to her, she feels like an Alpha. There’s that vibe that comes from being in the presence of a strong, formidable wolf, though she doesn’t look it. And Finn didn’t sense it either. He should have been able to smell that about her just from being in her territory.

But she greets him as a friend, seeming not to mind that he’s been claiming so much of her territory for himself. Maybe it’s that she’s a lone wolf with no pack. Or maybe it’s that she’s seen what an animal he can be and knows better than to challenge him.

Then she nips at him playfully and tears off into the trees, with him chasing after her. They play like that for quite some time, until I finally feel Finn calming down some. He was angsty and depressed when we first got here, but spending some time playing with a friend seems to have done him a world of good.

“It’s probably about time to be wrapping it up, Jason,” I hear Fenawin call out.

It stops Finn in his tracks because it felt like he was speaking from nearby, but he’s nowhere in sight. Luckily, instead of allowing himself to get all worked up again, Finn manages to shake off his unease a moment later when Clarice’s wolf comes and nudges him to get going. She leads him back to the entrance of the tunnel, which feels like an impossibly short distance considering how far Finn seemed to travel from it.

Content that the tunnel is not the threat he feared at first, he follows her back to the cellar, where Fenawin is once again waiting for us with our clothes.

“Your wolf is stunning,” I feel compelled to compliment Clarice as we’re changing. “I’ve never seen that shade of gray before, or eyes that green.”

“Well thank you, though it’s the mage in me that’s responsible for both,” she explains. “But you seem to be much calmer than when you arrived, so that’s good.”

“I am, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you did this for me.”

“You’re truly welcome, and I mean that. It was nice to have a companion for once, and I wouldn’t mind doing it again, even if you aren’t on the brink of losing control next time.”

“Thanks, I’ll definitely be taking you up on that. I’m not used to being away from my pack.”

“I only wish I could have one,” she says wistfully, a hint of sadness creeping into her eyes.

“You could join mine. Hopefully, I’ll convince Ronnie to join me there someday, and you already know Alpha Aly too. It only makes sense for that to be the pack you join.”

“I’m a witch, Jason. A mage. Werewolves and mages don’t mix.”

I shoot her an incredulous look, gesturing up and down her body as I retort, “Look in the mirror and try saying that again.”

“You know what I mean,” she laughs. “There’s no place for a hybrid in a pureblood pack.”

“Well, maybe so, but that would mean there’s no place for humans either, and we have a few of those already,” I point out. “In fact, I think there are only a handful of actual pureblood packs left in existence, and they’re kind of our more fringe elements. The rest of us find them to be a bit too intense.”

She gives me a look that’s a bit hard to read, like she wants to believe me but feels it might be too good to be true or something. I’d stay and argue more about it with her, but I have to get upstairs and hope there’s still enough time for me to freshen up a little and make it to work on time.

Fenawin is already working on releasing my personal effects from his weird table, and he hands them to me as I come into the room. I don’t know how long I was down there with Clarice because I didn’t even bother to note the time when I came in, but it’s probably been at least an hour. It’s a longshot, but I decide to check if Ronnie has sent me anything anyway.

As it turns out, I have seven unread messages from her. It’s a mix of excitement and hope along with worry and dread that I feel as I wait the agonizing few seconds to unlock my screen and open my conversation with her.

“No,” I exclaim, barely more than a whisper of shock and disbelief as I speed read through the content of those messages. Then I read them again.

“No, no, no,” I say much more loudly, fighting the urge to throw my phone.

“Whatever’s going on, you haven’t the time to be letting that wolf of yours back out,” Fenawin cautions me lowly.

I know that. Believe me I know it. But I have nothing but regret now for letting him out in the first place, because it turns out that Ronnie wanted to talk to me for pretty much that entire time. No, not want, she needed to talk to me. She must have thought I was ignoring her this whole time.

I’m such an idi*t. Why didn’t I text her to let her know that I needed to take Finn for a run? That’s all I had to do to prevent this.

I can’t help myself from reading her last messages over and over, wondering what in the heck I can ever say to fix it now. All it took was less than an hour of me not responding for every negative thing she has ever thought about us to take over her mind again, and how do I undo that?

I don’t know the answer, but the bigger problem is I can’t say anything if she won’t even talk to me. Please, please don’t let her have already blocked me. As long as I’m not blocked, I still have a shot at this.

So, I try, despite how hopeless it’s already starting to feel:

Ronnie, no. I wasn’t ignoring you. I just thought you were upset with me and didn’t expect you to want to talk already. Finn was getting restless, so I went to Clarice to find out where she goes running. It’s someplace where I couldn’t take my phone with me, so I am just now getting your messages. I am so, so sorry! But I’m here now. I need to leave for work, but if you’ll just talk to me, I’ll call in. I don’t care about that job. Only you. Please, don’t give up on me.

“It’s Ronnie,” I finally answer Fenawin out loud. “We had a really weird morning, which was what upset Finn, but I thought she was mad at me. I didn’t expect her to text me yet. But she did, and I didn’t answer, and she thought I was ignoring her and cut off contact with me.”

“Oh, Ronnie,” Clarice sighs. “That poor girl. Her worst enemies live in her head, the next door neighbors to the demons of her past. Or more like her mother’s past.”

“If she won’t talk to me, will you talk to her?” I practically beg Clarice, who already told me she doesn’t want to get involved, but this feels like something she should make an exception about.

“I can try. But Ronnie can only listen when she’s ready to listen. All that noise in her head gets in the way otherwise.”

“I’m only asking you to try.”

“And I will,” she assures me, patting my arm. “But for now, perhaps you should get going to that job of yours and try to distract yourself. I’ll see what I can do about her in the meantime.”

“Thank you,” I tell her gratefully, accepting the hug she is offering and fighting back my tears. “And thank you too, Fenawin. I appreciate you both.”

I glance down at my phone again trying to determine whether I’ve been blocked, but I can’t really tell. She hasn’t responded yet, but the little send notification didn’t turn red either.

It’s a battle in my head debating between sending her more messages to try to explain myself better and plead with her to change her mind or leaving it alone for now so she doesn’t get annoyed if she did get my message already but is just ignoring it. But somehow, miraculously, I manage to get myself back in my car and all the way to Reggie’s, though I did forget to freshen up first.

Not that I care. The only person I’m here to impress won’t even talk to me anymore.