She Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 2)

Chapter 23: Ronnie

When I arrive at the airport Friday, fresh off the flight Aly booked for me, I’m pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face waiting for me. It’s my old friend Clarice. I knew she had joined Aly’s pack, but I didn’t expect that it would be her coming to get me.

“It’s so good to see you again at last,” she greets me with a gentle hug. “Alpha Aly picked me to be the one to bring you back, knowing that we’re good friends and she couldn’t get away from her responsibilities in time. I have instructions to deliver you home to your guest suite to freshen up, and then accompany you to dinner afterward.”

She laughs when she says that, so I’m guessing Aly told her about dinner in much the same way that she informed me.

“Let me guess, ‘I expect you in my dining room for dinner tonight.’ Is that about how it went down?” I laugh, recalling Aly’s demands for me when we were on the phone last weekend.

“Well, no, but it’s not far off,” she chuckles. “She’s missed you, that much is clear, and she just wants to be sure nothing manages to scare you off before she gets to see you.”

Clarice waits with me and helps me collect my luggage, which is a bit of a process. I had to pack all my things from my apartment and bring everything that I couldn’t sell or bear to part with. And this is just the stuff that I felt comfortable taking on a plane, about five suitcases worth of clothes and smaller belongings plus my carry-on. Aly helped me pay to ship the rest to her packhouse because I couldn’t imagine lugging all my books around an airport, and there are a lot of things you just can’t take on a plane.

Once we’ve got it all and load it up in her car, Clarice turns to me with a devilish smirk on her face and asks, “Do you want to drive, or should I? This is your car, after all, so you decide.”

“No, it’s not,” I laugh, wondering why she would joke about that. “I sold my car a year ago.”

“And now you have this one, a gift from your friend Alyssa,” she explains. “She didn’t want you to feel trapped without some way to get around on your own. There are no taxis where we’re going.”

“I suppose there’s no point in arguing it with you then,” I concede with a sigh. “I’ll have to take it up with her later, but for now, you drive. I’ve only been there once and don’t really remember the way.”

“Why yes, madam, I will gladly escort you,” she teases, leaving me shaking my head as she makes her way to the driver’s side.

“It is a nice car, though, you have to admit,” she comments once we’re both inside and buckled. “I’m not sorry for a second shot at driving it.”

“Too nice. I don’t need all this,” I gesture around at all the buttons and knobs and options that cost extra when purchasing a vehicle.

I bet this thing even has heated seats, and a remote starter, and all the things that people brag about but I’ve never cared for. I paid five hundred dollars for my last car, and then another grand to have a mechanic do what he needed to do to make it drivable. My mom would argue that I’m far too proud of how far I’m willing to go to deprive myself in favor of a low price tag, though.

“Well, no one needs all this, but it sure is nice. And nice is a good thing,” Clarice argues, sounding a lot like my mom, not to mention my therapist.

We ride in silence for a time, though it’s a comfortable silence. It reminds me of why I always liked hanging out with her in the first place. She’ll say things to challenge me like that, and then she lets me mull it over in silence. She’ll push a little, and then leaves it up to me whether I do anything about it. She also seems to be able to sense when I can handle her challenging my thinking, and when I mostly just need peace and reassurance.

Eventually, my thoughts drift to other things. Werewolf things, since that’s where we’re going, but also some witchy things. I hope that since Clarice lives with Aly’s pack now, we’ll be able to hang out like we used to. No matter how many times she tells me that there isn’t much that a human can learn without the magic in her blood to support it, she always seems to be able to come up with new things to show and teach me.

And then my mind shifts to thinking about her husband and the few things he was able to teach me about vampires. One of them is that they don’t tend to get along very well with most werewolves, though there are those rare few exceptions. Clarice, obviously.

“So, what does Fenawin think about living with a pack of werewolves?” I ask her, wondering what the experience has been like for an ancient and solitary vampire living among the natural enemies of his kind.

She glances over at me as she drives, giving me a strange smile.

“We decided to part ways,” she reveals what she has failed to mention in any of the letters and texts we’ve exchanged since her move. “I was always kind of like a leaf on the wind to him, and I’ve known that all along. He’s lived a long time, and loved a great many women, but only one of those was forever.”

“Roselyn,” I name the woman she speaks of, who I know was Fenawin’s true mate.

He’s told me of her before and showed me the pocket watch where he keeps her essence. I don’t know exactly what a vampire’s essence is made of, but I do know that watch has a strange vibe to it. He’s told me before that it’s how his mate ensures that he’ll never again fall for another vampire. I don’t know what that means either.

“Yes,” she nods her confirmation. “It was something we agreed on long ago, that if ever I were given an opportunity to be accepted among my kind, be it mages or wolves, he would not be the thing that stands in my way. Alpha Aly assured us both that he would be welcome, though of course, that doesn’t mean that her pack would be happy about it. It’s enough that I’m already different from the rest. Fenawin didn’t want to cause me to stand out any more than that, and he’s rather attached to that old house anyway.”

“What about your shop?”

“I packed it all up and brought it with, along with my personal library. But I don’t have intentions of opening another shop, not in a werewolf village, and I’m nervous about doing so even outside the pack territory. This area was once rife with hunters, and my old trick of hiding in plain sight is too dangerous to try here.”

Now I’m left wondering why she even bothered coming here. She had to give up so much, her husband, her shop, and probably even a significant part of her lifestyle. Why would she do that when she had such a good thing going for her back in Maine?

“Then why did you move here? I don’t understand what’s appealing about it,” I voice my thoughts.

“A lone wolf is a miserable wolf, Ronnie,” she begins to explain. “I’ve lived a long time without a pack, or a coven, or any sense of something to belong to. And Fenawin, though he is dear to me and we’ll always be friends, he is not my mate. Living among my own kind, it brings a sense of peace that I’ve never felt before, and it opens possibilities for me. I do have a mate out there somewhere, and I’ve just increased my odds of finding him.”  

After a pause, she goes on, “A mate, Ronnie, that’s something precious. And a pack, even one that is still mildly put-off by the mage in me, that’s something invaluable. My shop was my way of coping, of keeping busy and making it through day after day. My way of feeling like I was doing something important and productive, but it was only a distraction keeping me from what I really wanted. I’m an old woman now, but I feel like it’s never too late. I’m home now, and that means so much.”

I don’t really know what to say to all that. I can’t wrap my mind around why she thinks she’s better off alone in a place that’s “mildly put-off” by her, or what she manages to fill her time with now that she doesn’t have her shop. I also can’t help wondering if she’s exaggerating a bit to demonstrate a point. Some of that felt like it was directed at me, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why it felt that way.

“I am glad you’re here now, Ronnie. I’ve missed you,” she adds after a few quiet minutes. “When Alpha Aly called me over and told me the good news, I was ecstatic. Over the moon. It feels right, you being here with me. It’s like all the pieces of some age-old puzzle are finally falling into place all around me, and what’s even better is that it’s me who was selected to bring you, so I can be present for this moment.”

“What moment?” I can’t help asking, falling right into her trap because I know it’s what she wanted me to say.

“This one,” she says as she switches on her blinker, preparing to turn into the driveway that leads to Aly’s pack grounds.

She slows our speed once we approach the tree line, smiling broadly as we drive across some imaginary boundary that only she knows about.

Exhaling with relief, though from what I can’t be sure, she tells me, “That moment. The one where I bring you home.”

That sense that she’s driving at some bigger point that I’m not yet grasping is only growing stronger, though I’m starting to suspect I know what it is. I think she’s hinting at this being my home too, probably because of Jason. I know she’s friends with him now too, and she probably knows far better than I do how he’s been doing over the past couple years.

This could be some elaborate matchmaking scheme where she’s trying to get in my head and make me question this whole fated mate thing and exactly how far the concept of fate might extend, maybe not just to a person but maybe even to a place … and the fact that I’m sitting here contemplating that now shows just how successful of a scheme that would turn out to be, if this were a scheme.

But I also know her to be sensitive in ways most people aren’t. Because she’s a mage, and an empath at that, she has senses that most people don’t have, and it’s how she manages to read a person or a situation intuitively, drawing conclusions most people wouldn’t. She does get feelings like what she’s describing. She is able to tell when something’s not quite right, and when it is. So, maybe I’m the one getting in my own head and making this conversation into something it’s not.

Maybe she really did listen to Aly asking her to go pick me up from the airport, the whole time feeling like it was part of some grander plan that she was honored to be made a part of. Or maybe she’s just happy to finally have a home among a pack of werewolves, and glad to be able to bring me to visit, and I’m making a lot out of nothing.

“It’s pretty much how I remember it,” is all I can think of to say.

And it is. First we pass through some of the homes along the outskirts of the village, and then we follow the path along the far side of the main part of the village until it winds all the way back to the massive mansion of a packhouse.

There’s a growing part of me that’s glad to be back after all these years, beyond just feeling eager to finally see Aly and her family. The things I remember most about this place are all the food and the huge soaking tub in the guest bathroom, not to mention the library and the big, comfy bed. There’s not a single thing on that list that I’m not looking forward to experiencing again.