But if the bloodling had the willpower to restrain himself from forcing me to stay home the way any other alpha would have, why didn’t he also have the willpower not to attempt attacking Chief Wilder? It didn’t seem possible that Wolfie’s uncontrollable shifts and his lunges against the rope leash had been an act this afternoon, although that was the obvious conclusion. Perhaps the young alpha really was that skilled of an actor?
But if Wolfie’s behavior had all been a farce, played out for my father’s benefit, what was the purpose of the subterfuge? While I would have loved to think that Wolfie was simply buying time so he could come up with a longer-term solution to our problem, I wasn’t so sure that Wolfie could still want me back after my inflammatory words. But, Quetzalli’s presence suggested that the young alpha wasn’t done with me just yet, which sent a tiny surge of hope flickering through my deadened soul.
The only clue I had to begin deciphering the puzzle was Quetzalli herself, so despite her angry silence, I attempted to draw the werewolf back into conversation. “How long are you staying?” I asked, breaking the extended silence at last.
Ever since joining me in the attic room, Quetzalli had seemed completely in control of her wolf, so I was surprised when I felt the first hint of a change in the air. The woman spun back around to face me, fur already beginning to elongate across her body. “I don’t know that yet,” she ground out between her teeth, face flushed with anger. “Look, I really don’t want to talk to you right now,” she continued, the words mangled as the shift overtook her. “But do bring me up some meat from dinner.” Then a large, surly wolf was lying on the spare bed.
Great. Life in Haven had turned out to be even worse than I’d originally imagined.
Chapter 17
I kept expecting Wolfie to batter down the door and come to get me, so as the hours and then days passed, I became more and more agitated. Even though Quetzalli hadn’t coughed up any more information, her presence—no matter how unpleasant—initially gave me hope that I hadn’t been entirely written off by Wolfie’s pack. I figured their alpha would just need a day or two to calm down and get over the events of Keith’s retrieval, which surely meant he’d be here at any minute.
Not that I wanted to draw Wolfie back into this mess, I reminded myself. In fact, the theory behind my betrayal was still sound. I couldn’t see any way short of a physical challenge for Wolfie to extract me from my childhood home, and that brought me back around to the whole reason I’d rejected the young alpha so publicly in the first place—I needed Wolfie to think I despised him so he would leave me alone and not get himself killed. In fact, I was so conflicted, between wishing to hear Wolfie’s voice and yet dreading what would happen if he did show up, that I was a bundle of nerves by lunchtime.
My second day in Haven, Quetzalli had deigned to shift back into human form, so I followed Cricket’s advice and took my roommate on a tour of the pack’s land. Yesterday, I’d been so intent on retrieving Keith and on my own role in the drama that I hadn’t taken the time to really look at the houses and people we’d passed, but now that I peered more closely, I saw that the village had turned into a strangely skewed version of the community I remembered. During my childhood, lawns were always mowed and houses shone with fresh paint, but now porches were leaning away from dwellings and a pall seemed to hang over Haven.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Quetzalli muttered, her words mirroring my thoughts. Yes, Haven had been restrictive when I’d lived here, especially if you were born female, but many people had seemed happy then. I remembered my neighbors singing as they worked when I was a child. There had been barn dances and community dinners. Now, I couldn’t quite imagine any of these werewolves laughing or dancing—the Haven werewolves today seemed to be barely managing to carry on their daily lives.
As Quetzalli and I walked through the middle of the green and took in the depressing sights around us, I was startled to hear my wolf chime in her two cents’ worth: Look to the alpha. It had been so long since I’d heard so much as a whisper from my wolf that I stopped in my tracks to take in her words. I reached inward, but the lupine consciousness slipped away through my fingers and I almost believed I’d merely imagined her voice in my head. Almost, but not quite.