Vera stood frozen like a statue, staring at him as though she’d never seen him before. “Who?”
“The one. Someone I shouldn’t have met so close to the end. She deserves better than what’s coming for her. She told me to get my shit together and own what’s happening.”
“I like her already.”
“Chhh,” Link said, hooking his hands on his hips and glaring off into the woods. “She doesn’t understand.”
Vera arched one delicate eyebrow. “Or she understands better than you.”
“Fuckin’ riddles,” he muttered. When his chest rattled with a snarl, he didn’t even stifle Wolf. He felt the same damned frustration with the women in his life right now.
“Eustice McCall died when I tried to fix him—”
“Yeah, I know, Vera. I get it. You already said you couldn’t fix me. I don’t want to hear about his death.”
“Eustice died—”
“Vera!”
“You shut the fuck up, Lincoln McCall. You’ll listen to what I have to say because while you’ve been running and spiraling, I’ve been here working. Alone.”
“Working. You mean planning your wedding?”
Vera shook her head, her eyes never leaving him.
Link swallowed down the damned hope in his chest. “On deliveries with Tobias?”
Vera shook her head again.
“On me?”
Vera dipped her head. “I couldn’t cure Eustice. Couldn’t. He had nothing tying him to this world but me, and I wasn’t enough. He had no reason to get through the pain and land on the other side. He gave up. Hanged himself. I found him—fuck.” Vera whipped her hair out of her way and angled her face away, eyes still on him. “He was my best friend on Perl Island, Link, and I lost him in an awful way. And when I met you, I thought trying to cure you would mean that someday, I would find you the same way—dead on purpose. And I was scared. But you aren’t Eustice. You’re stronger. You’re good. And now you have someone to anchor you. Someone to fight for.”
“Can you fix me?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, “but I can try.”
Link huffed a harsh breath as he shook his head over and over in disbelief that he was going to do this. In disbelief that he was really going to get his hopes up again after everything he’d been through. He’d accepted his fate, and it hurt less. Hope was a destroyer for a doomed man like him.
But we have Nicole now.
Wolf was right.
Nicole had changed everything.
She’d burned his white flag of surrender and spat on the ashes.
“What do you need from me?” he asked low.
Vera lifted her chin, and a proud smile slowly stretched her face. “I need your blood.”
Chapter Nine
Three days.
It had been three days since Nicole had left Link, and in that time, her cabin had stayed quiet. There were no fresh wolf tracks or boot prints in the snow. There was no howl in the woods, and no new dead game on her porch. She crossed her arms as she stood in the middle of her front yard, staring at the tall trunks of the evergreens and wishing he would appear from behind one.
She’d imagined him a hundred times. Every leaf flutter was the tail of her wolf sprinting through the trees. Every sway of tough winter grass peeking through the snow was her wolf’s fur.
Nicole had made a mistake and pushed him too hard, too fast and now, she’d lost him.
When she’d driven to his cabin, he wasn’t home, and more disturbing than anything, when she’d opened the door, the fire was out in the stove and the inside of his home was almost as cold as outside. He was gone.
In a panic, she’d driven into town, but he wasn’t there either, and no one she talked to had seen him.
She’d never felt so alone.
Full of regret, she made her way onto the front porch and opened the door to Buck’s cabin, but a soft sound halted her steps. She angled her face to the road and waited as the sound grew louder. It was the loud whine of a snow machine engine. With a frown, she stood on the top porch stair as a mixture of dread and hope unfurled inside her.
Link stood up on locked legs as he maneuvered the snow machine up the thick packed road. He pulled to a stop near her truck and hit the snow without hesitation.
“Oh, my gosh,” she murmured as she bolted off the stairs and ran for him.
Link caught her and lifted her off the ground, crushing her to him so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“I missed you, I missed you,” she chanted. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You were right.” Link eased back enough for her to pull his sunglasses off.
His eyes were darker, more gray than silver today. Squeezing her eyes closed, she kissed him and reveled in the feel of his lips moving against hers. It had been so scary thinking she would never have this connection with him again. She laid little kisses on his cheeks, then rested her chin on his shoulder and hugged him as tightly as she could.
“I’m going to fight for us, Nicole, but you have to know it might not work. You have to come to terms with that, okay? I can’t do this thinking if I fail, you’ll be destroyed.”