Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) Read online

  A breathalyzer test had been administered but, because it had not been done immediately after the accident, I’d passed it and there was no real way to say whether I would have failed it if it had been done sooner.

  It had been my word against theirs. The Regional Council had wanted to rule against me. My punishment would have been expulsion from my pack and a mandatory two-year prohibition against attending Great Pack events and bonding with someone—plus the everlasting and eternal shame.

  Allerton, as a member of the Great Council, had persuaded them it had been a tragic accident that was no one’s fault. He did this I now knew because even back then he suspected something was wrong within the Great Pack. There were too many of these tragic accidents and something didn’t feel right to him.

  So I had been cleared. However, my pack was free to sever ties with me anyway, and that’s what they’d done as soon as they could. I was told to get the hell out of Connecticut and never come back.

  As a non-voting member of Riverglow due to his advanced age, Grandfather Tobias had not been formally involved in my former pack’s decision, but when I’d gone to his home, desperate and grieving, wanting him at least to comfort me, he had refused to answer the door.

  His front window blinds had been up when I’d knocked on the door. I’d seen him peer out and when he’d recognized me, the blinds had gone down with a whoosh and the last, dim speck of hope and self-esteem I’d had left had been extinguished. Up until that point, I’d let myself believe I was a victim of a tragic, horrible accident, but after that the doubt had started to creep in and the blame I had struggled not to give in to had swept across me and drowned me.

  I’d always known Elena and Grey would not have blamed me—even if I had been drunk. They had loved me. I’d thought Grandfather Tobias had loved me too.

  Technically, I was free to join another pack whenever I wanted, but after Grandfather Tobias rejected me, I’d wanted to punish myself. The worst I could think of was exile from the Pack.

  I’d gone to the safe house in Hartford, where Allerton had been staying, and he’d invited me up to his room on the second floor so he could finish his packing. His expression had been grave and full of compassion, and I’d followed him up the stairs. Saturated with guilt, I’d barely been able to lift my feet from one stair to the next, wanting only to curl up in a ball, go to sleep and never, ever wake.

  * * * *

  “I think, Councilor. I think maybe I was drunk. I think maybe I did kill them. Not on purpose, but it’s my fault.” I look at him, full of shame and self-hatred, wanting him to punish me even though I am already punished.

  He stares at me and doesn’t say anything.

  “Elena has left you nearly three hundred thousand dollars,” he says after a moment.

  “I don’t want it.” My lips are numb. My body is too and I want to sit but this is not my room and, anyway, I deserve no comfort.

  “Nevertheless, it’s yours. She wanted you to have it.”

  “Before I killed her. If she could do it over, she’d leave it to somebody else,” I say.

  “She left it to you. Not Grey. You. I think that says a lot about your bond.” Allerton zips his suitcase shut and straightens the cuffs of his Dolce and Gabbana ice-blue button-down shirt. A dark gray suit jacket is draped carefully over the back of the chair in front of the desk in the corner. His pants match the jacket. They are perfectly creased and fit him as if they had been tailored. His shoes are shiny black Gucci loafers. Even though I love shoes, today I feel nothing when I look at them except that one of the tassels is crooked. I long to fix it but I stand still.

  “I need to be punished,” I whisper in a dreadful voice. I will not cry. I promise myself I will not cry in front of this man.

  He lifts his suitcase off the carefully made bed and puts it down beside his feet. The leather tassel is still crooked. He does not notice. Maybe these things don’t bother him.

  “What more can I do that hasn’t already been done to you by your pack?” His voice is neutral and I can’t tell what he is thinking. He smells only of Armani cologne. He hides his emotions well, but then he is a Councilor.

  “I killed them,” I insist.

  “On purpose?” He fixes me with keen blue eyes that see everything.

  “No,” I falter. I squeeze my hands together in front of me. I feel sick and disconnected.

  “So I cannot punish you any more severely than your pack has already done.” He allows a small amount of impatience to creep into his voice. He glances at his watch—a quick gesture, but I am meant to understand he is in a rush and has other places to be. I am wasting his time. Shamed, I look down.

  “You could make it official,” I tell him. I lift my gaze from the crooked leather tassel on his shoe to stare him full in the face.

  “If I do that—” All the impatience left his voice. “—chances are you’ll never find another bond mate. You’ll never find a new pack. You’ll be an outcast all the rest of your life, Constance.”

  “Yes.” I nod rapidly. Finally, he understands. “Exactly!”

  “I can’t do that,” he says as the tears of shame and grief ignite in my eyes like acid. “I won’t do that. Take that legacy, Constance, and go live somewhere by yourself. In two years I want to see you at the Great Gathering. Time has a way of giving you perspective and...”

  “I don’t need perspective!” I shout. I tremble so hard my bones ache. “I have nothing left because I killed what mattered most. Time won’t change that or bring them back!” I do cry then, cursing myself, and with an inarticulate noise, I whirl to run away.

  That’s when I feel Allerton’s arms go around me and he hugs me, murmuring vaguely comforting things to me as he rocks me and I ruin the front of his Dolce and Gabbana shirt with my tears and snot.

  Until then he has been this looming, authoritarian figure. Bigger than life. Bigger than me. Untouchable and remote. Now he reveals himself as human. I cry like I am being destroyed and he is the only thing between me and annihilation.

  I take the three hundred thousand dollars. I use most of it to buy a condo in Boston where I live by myself for two years until the next Great Gathering.

  I remember his words when I receive my invitation in the mail—on thick parchment paper inked with the date and location. My self-imposed exile is over if I want it to be and two years into the future, just as he’d predicted—I want it to be.

  * * * *

  The mouthwatering scent of frying bacon permeated the entire condo when I emerged, red-eyed and shaky, from the bathroom. Murphy was making breakfast. He always fed me when I was in crisis mode. It was endearing. It didn’t hurt that he made scrambled eggs and bacon in the style of the best greasy spoon diners.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a black turtle neck sweater and went in search of gustatory bliss.

  I couldn’t decide which to drink first, coffee or orange juice, but the coffee needed milk and sugar so I went for the OJ. Two gulps and it was gone. The resultant sugar rush made inroads on the empty feeling inside me. It felt as if I’d been hollowed out by a huge ice cream scoop from hell.

  He piled my plate high with eggs from the pan and gave himself a noticeably smaller portion. When he turned his back to get the bacon, I scooped some of my eggs onto his plate to make it a more even distribution.

  He knew I did it, but he didn’t say anything—just gave me twice as much bacon as he gave himself.

  Wheat toast popped up in the toaster and when he was busy buttering it, I gave him half my bacon.

  “Stop giving away all your food and eat some of it,” he suggested, the butter knife scraping against the toast. Melted butter smelled like childhood to me—breakfast from the past—being little and my feet not reaching the floor.

  “Come sit down and eat with me.” I helped myself to the bottle of ketchup and doused my eggs with it. I adored ketchup. Elixir of the gods.

  “The toast won’t butter itself, woman,” he told me, and I stuck out m
y tongue. I poured milk into my coffee and spooned in two teaspoons of sugar. The spoon clacked against the side of the pottery mug and that was a sound that comforted too.

  “Is there peanut butter?” I shoved back my chair so I could search in the cupboard. We’d bought a ton of groceries the day before, but I couldn’t remember if I’d put a jar of peanut butter in the basket.

  “Sit down and eat.” Murphy put the plate of toast on the table. He went to the cupboard to look for me. I devoured one slice of bacon then another.

  I had one left by the time he came to the table with the jar of peanut butter. Total elapsed time—thirty-five seconds.

  “You make the best damn bacon,” I said around a huge mouthful. I swallowed and gave a contented sigh.

  Murphy pulled out his chair and sat. His hair was tousled and needed to be brushed and razor stubble dotted his cheeks, but he was sexy as hell in spite of it, or perhaps, because of it. He had a long, narrow face with a chin more pointed than round. His cheek bones were high, his mouth dreamy and sensuous. His brown eyes were penetrating and full of intelligence and lively humor. Right now his expression was pensive. The look he gave me measured my mood and, while I think he was pleased I was eating, I don’t believe he was entirely satisfied I was all right.

  I crunched up my last piece of bacon and he reached out and transferred half of his to my plate, never glancing away from my face.

  “I’m going to get fat,” I predicted, but I ate one of the pieces A small smile quirked the corners of his mouth.

  “Never happen,” he drawled. “Your wolf will keep you in shape.”

  I thought back to the night before. After my wolf had come up with the word for ice, Murphy’s had led us off on a wild chase through the winter woods. We’d had such fun.

  Instead of champagne at midnight, we’d thrashed through fallen leaves, churning up wet cold clumps of them stuck together. We’d tussled in a clearing, ringed around by pine trees forty feet tall. The wind had blown through the pine needles creating a rattling, wintry sound. That’s what we’d heard instead of Auld Lang Syne.

  My wolf had bared her throat to his and he’d taken it in his jaws, exquisitely gentle. My wolf had infinite trust in him. She adored him. I think his wolf adored her. At least I hoped so. He was very, very kind to her and patient as she blundered through lessons most Pack’s wolves had learned the first ten times they’d shifted.

  I’d never learned, had never wanted to learn. My wolf was headstrong and stubborn. Free and innocent. She loved to run and play and exist without much coherent thought.

  Well, she used to. Now she hungered for words, for the names of things. Running and playing were things she did after she taught herself words. Most times now she forgot about running and playing until Murphy’s wolf reminded her.

  She always had been an obsessive creature who fixated on one thing. Before it had been pleasure, now it was knowledge.

  “She taught herself the word for ‘ice’ last night,” I told him with pride. “She’s getting so much smarter thanks to your wolf, Murphy. And you, telling me how to do it before we shift.”

  “She still getting mad at herself when she can’t think of the word right away?” He sounded both indulgently pleased and concerned. He didn’t like her to push herself too hard.

  “She was furious and frustrated for a while last night,” I admitted. I selected a piece of toast and spread it with peanut butter. It was the creamy kind. Damn. I’d meant to pick up chunky.

  “I know.” His eyes were sad for a moment. “She was pawing at her head. You’ve got a scratch on your cheek right now.” He frowned as he looked at it.

  I put a hand up to my cheek and my fingers encountered the thin, rough outline. It stung a little and I made a mental note to put peroxide on it.

  “She was trying to scratch the mad out of her head so she could think,” I said with a rueful smile. “She’s so literal. The mad was taking up all the space in her head and there was no room to think about the word for ice.”

  “Constance,” Murphy said, and I knew he was gearing himself up to lecture me again about pushing too hard.

  “It’s not use talking to me about this.” I raised a protesting hand. “She’s the one who gets that way.”

  “Where does she get it from? Who’s telling her she needs to think so hard to find the words?”

  “Me?” I shook my head. “I’m so far buried in her psyche when we’re shifted that I doubt I have much influence over what she does.”

  “Bullshit.” He dumped a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee and stirred. The spoon hitting the sides of the mug was pure frustration expressed in sound. “You persist in thinking there’s such a separation between you and her and there’s not.”

  “I don’t see it. I am not me when I’m her.” This was a well-worn, frequent discussion between us. He could tell me a hundred million times that I was my wolf and she was me, but I thought of us as distinct entities. While I was inside her and she was inside of me, when I was in human form, she did not influence me and I damn sure didn’t have any influence over her when she was wolf.

  Murphy drummed his fingers on the table top and drank his coffee. He kept his gaze fixed to the cupboards to the side of the table and not on me.

  I took a bite of eggs but I wasn’t hungry anymore. I managed to swallow what I had in my mouth but I knew I was done. I hated to disappoint him, but I couldn’t see it his way and I couldn’t lie to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The drumming ceased. I got up and brought the coffee pot to the table and refilled his mug. Mine was still full, but I put a little bit in anyway to warm it up and then crossed the room to put the pot back on the burner.

  “I push you harder than anybody, don’t I?”

  I couldn’t agree with him, but if I did he’d argue and I didn’t want to. My wolf frustrated me, but I didn’t want him to know how much because he’d blame himself since it had been his idea to work with her.

  I sat back down without answering and picked up my mug.

  “When do we leave for Connecticut? You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” The idea that he wouldn’t be with me made the bacon in my stomach roll over queasily. I needed him.

  “Of course I’m coming. You don’t have to face that bastard alone.” Outraged shock spread across his face. “Besides, I’m dying for a chance to punch that asshole, Jonathan Archer, in the nose. You think I’d miss that opportunity?”

  I gave him a suspicious look because I couldn’t tell if he was serious. He probably was. Jonathan was the Alpha male of the Riverglow pack. He’d never liked me and he’d led the crusade against me after Grey’s and Elena’s deaths. I’d told Murphy a few stories about him and, as a result, Murphy hated the man like poison.

  “Don’t punch Jonathan in the nose,” I said. Then I grinned. “Kick him in the ’nads. It’ll hurt more.”

  Murphy burst into laughter as I’d intended and I joined in too. This was one of the shittier mornings of my life, but I least I could still laugh about it.

  Chapter 3

  It had been Murphy’s idea to take the road trip from Houston to Boston. Instead of renting a car, he’d bought a used charcoal-gray Honda Prelude from a Houston CarMax. He’d surprised me with it at the hotel where I’d been packing our things. I had been in one hellish hurry to leave Houston after Murphy’s near-fatal overdose.

  After he’d been released from the hospital, we’d rested in the hotel for three days. Well, he’d rested. I’d paced around until that drove him crazy and he sent me out shopping where I bought seven pairs of shoes only to return five of them the next day. Murphy hadn’t said one word, but his expression had spoken for him. He thought my shoe fetish was bordering on clinically insane. This from the man who would wear the same pair of shoes for an entire week in a row. That was just plain weird, if you ask me.

  On our trip east, at the beginning of each new week, I’d sneak a new pair of shoes for him into our hotel room and substitute them for
the pair that was driving me nuts. The man never even noticed the difference until I pointed it out to him in exasperation twenty miles down the road.

  “It was dark in the room when I got dressed,” was his most used excuse, closely followed by, “As long as they fit on my feet, what do I care?” That pronouncement usually threw me into a sputtering fit of incredulity which he laughed at as he continued to serenely drive down the interstate.

  Today we drove down the Mass Pike, each wrapped in a cocoon of our own thoughts and, for myself, fears of the unknown and yet to come.

  It was a gray, overcast day. Dirty, salt-encrusted snow crouched on the sides of the interstate interspersed with bald patches of muddy, winter-brown grass. I had the Prelude’s heat cranked up because I was perpetually cold. I think it had something to do with how often I was shifting. I got so damned chilled when I shifted back naked in near freezing temperatures. It took me hours and a long hot shower to shake the cold and the next day it seemed as if I could never get comfortably warm.

  Murphy didn’t seem to suffer the way I did. As the interior temperature of the car crept higher, he unbuttoned his black pea coat and loosened the gray scarf around his throat. After we merged onto I-84, he peeled off his gloves and stuffed them into the compartment between the seats.

  He’d shaved, and brushed his hair, and his expression was introspective as he drove, his mouth almost as tight as his fingers clenched around the steering wheel.

  He drove well, but I was always jumpy in the car, even after two months on the road.