I stepped away from the mirror. With my wings trailing behind me, I walked into what was the living room of the caravan. My clothes were still drying by the electric heater. I stood in the centre of the poky room and let my wings open on either side of me. In a strange way, I felt a certain kind of freedom being naked and in my true form.
It was like I was no longer hiding what I truly was behind clothes, secrets, and lies. This was me – wings, claws, fangs and all. And what about the wolf inside of me? I didn’t know how I felt about that. Did it make a difference? It had always been there, right? I had just never known about it. But there was a part of me – somewhere down in the basement – which feared it.
Wanting to totally feel free, I took the coat from the chair and reached inside the pockets.
They were empty.
“Where is it?” I fretted out loud. “Where is my iPod?”
I threw the coat to one side and checked the trouser pockets. Nothing. Then taking a deep breath, I realised I must have left my iPod in my other coat pocket – the coat that I had stuffed under the seat at the back of the police van. The police van that was now a day’s drive away.
I couldn’t go on without it. I would be lost without music. I needed those songs to listen to when I couldn’t sleep, when I felt unhappy, when I tried to make sense of each new day. I had to go back for it. I would fly if I had to. But what if I started to crack up again? What if I fell out of the sky like I had done before? Potter and Murphy wouldn’t know where to find me. I would tell them then.
“They’re not going to agree to go all the way back there,” I muttered, starting to feel panicked. “That place would be swarming with Skinwalkers by now. Murphy would say it was too dangerous.”
I looked at my claws, touched my face, and checked the flat of my stomach for any signs of those cracks. There weren’t any – but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t return at any time. I couldn’t risk dropping out of the sky like a stone.
But I had to go back. I had to risk it. Turning, I reached for the door and opened it and gasped out loud. Potter was standing in the darkness outside my door.
“Where are you sneaking off to?” Potter asked.
Chapter Ten
Potter
Kiera stood in the open doorway. The dull light from within the caravan made her wings sparkle as if showered with glitter. She looked breathtakingly beautiful – like a dark angel standing before me. Her thick, dark hair shone blue, her pale skin like perfectly smooth marble, and her breasts so pert I could have hung my coat from them. The last time I had seen her look like this was when we had made love in the summerhouse back at Hallowed Manor. I just wanted to hold her in my arms again, to feel her soft skin and wings against mine. I desperately wanted for both of us to be together in our true form. Whatever Kiera truly was, half-breed, half and half, there was no mistaking she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
Fighting my first instinct to race up the steps and hold her in my arms, I took a deep breath and said, “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere important,” she said.
“So unimportant you forgot to put your clothes on and hide your wings?” I half-smiled at her.
Realising she was standing naked in the doorway, Kiera gasped, letting her wings fold about her like a blanket. She stepped back inside. I climbed the steps, entered the caravan, and closed the door behind me.
“Did I invite you in?” she asked, standing before me, now hidden beneath her wings.
“I just wanted to talk, Kiera,” I said.
“Look, I don’t have time to talk now,” she said impatiently. “It will have to wait until tomorrow.
“What do you mean you don’t have time?”
I asked with a frown, sensing that she wanted rid of me. “What else have you got planned in the middle of nowhere?”
“If you must know, I left my iPod back at the van and I’m going to go get it,” she said, staring at me.
“Have you lost your mind?” I asked, not wanting to sound belittling in anyway. I knew how important her iPod was to her.
“I can’t go on without it,” she said, a desperate look in her eyes. “I need it back.”
“You can’t, Kiera, that place will be swarming with wolves by now,” I tried to convince her.
Looking close to tears, Kiera said, “But I’m lost without being able to listen to music.”
I put my hand in my pocket and wondered if for once I hadn’t been cut a break. I had planned to use the iPod I had found to hopefully woo Kiera back, but this turn of events was working out far better than I could have ever imagined.
Slowly, I took my hand from my pocket and said, “You don’t have to feel lost anymore, Kiera.” I uncurled my fist to reveal the iPod.
Kiera looked down at it then back at me.
“Where did you get that?” she breathed.
“The wolf-boy who helped set me up with that teacher, Emily Clarke, had it. He used FaceTime on it so you could see me with her,” I explained, offering it to Kiera.
Slowly, Kiera reached out and took it from me. She turned it over and over in her hands. She dragged the tip of one claw over the crescent moon logo on the back of it.
“There weren’t any songs on it,” I told her. “So I downloaded one for you.”
Kiera looked at me. “Really? What song?”
“Listen to it when I’m gone,” I said, fighting the urge to break her stare. I was never very good at this sort of thing. But I kept hearing Murphy’s gruff, angry voice in my ears. “The song says how I feel.”
“About what?” Kiera pushed.
“You,” I said back.
“Why can’t you say it?” Kiera asked.
“Because I don’t know how many ways I can say I’m sorry to you for what I’ve done,” I started to explain. “Murphy says words aren’t good enough. He said I have to show you, but I don’t know how, Kiera.”
“You’ve spoken to Murphy about us?”
Kiera asked, sounding cross.
“No, he spoke to me about us,” I said. “I guess he was sick of seeing me wandering around like a tit in a trance.”
“What did he tell you?” Kiera asked, some of the frostiness leaving her voice.
“The truth,” I said, looking straight back at her. “It was only what I already knew in my heart, but was too arrogant to admit. I haven’t treated you right, Kiera, and I’m ashamed of that. But although I’ve hurt you, I never meant to. That was the last thing I wanted to do.”
“And what about now?” Kiera asked, her voice soft like a whisper.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Now that you know I’m half wolf – doesn’t that change how you feel about me?” she asked, her voice sounding kind of scared. “I know how much you hate wolves.”
“But I don’t hate you,” I tried to convince her.
“I’m not who you thought I was,” Kiera said, a single tear spilling onto her cheek and sliding slowly down her face.
I wanted to go to her, but I stopped myself. I didn’t know if she was ready to be held by me just yet – if ever again.
“I was stupid to have given you my heart,”
Kiera whispered.
“Don’t say that,” I said, I couldn’t bear it.
“Never say that, Kiera.”
“Why not?” she asked, arming away that single tear from her chin.
“Because I couldn’t give a crap if you were half toad and half orangutan, I would love you all the same,” I desperately tried to convince her. “I might not have a heart anymore, Kiera, but it aches all the same to see you so sad. I’m so sorry for how I have treated you.”
Kiera looked at me, her face now streaked with silent tears. “You think you can come in here and say all the right words and it will make it all better? It doesn’t work like that,” she whispered.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I’m scared,” she said.
“Of what?”
“Of giving you everything, only for you to hurt me again,” Kiera said, choking back her tears.
“But I’m scared, too,” I told her.
“What have you got to be scared of?” she asked me, her wings gleaming black and folded tightly around her like a shield.
“Of never being able to hold you again,” I confessed. “I’m so fucking scared, Kiera, I might have to spend the rest of my life without you being the most beautiful part of it. Over the years I’ve been hunted, chased, beaten, even murdered, but nothing has made me feel as scared as I do now. I should have known better than to break your heart. But it’s done now and I don’t know how to mend it.”
Slowly, I turned away. I couldn’t bear to look upon her tear-stained face anymore, knowing it was me who had made her cry. I opened the door, stepped back out into the night and left Kiera alone.
Chapter Eleven
Kiera
With my wings still folded around me, I went to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. I drew my knees against my chest beneath my wings. My body shook with sobs. Half of me wanted to go to the door and call Potter back. I wanted to take him beneath my wings and let him make love to me. But the other half of me, the half that was scared of the hurt that being in love could bring, refused to give me the courage to go after him, however much I wanted to.
As if my wings were a blanket, I hid beneath them, too scared to come out again. Being in love with Potter was so hard. It was like an obsession, and that’s what I truly feared. I knew I would never stop loving him, but that just opened me up to a world full of hurt. That’s what guys like Potter brought to the party. But I couldn’t imagine my life without him. My feelings for him hadn’t really changed. If I searched them, I knew I had fallen in love with him the moment he had opened his arrogant mouth and called me Miss Marple. Luke had been nothing more than a distraction for me – a Band-Aid temporarily holding back the flood of feelings I secretly had for Potter. Potter had always been the man I had wanted. And I still wanted him now – the pain he had caused me hadn’t changed that. I hated myself for feeling how I did. So why didn’t I just take him back? Because I knew Potter wasn’t mine to have. He was Sophie’s – he always had been, and always would be. The Elders had told me I wouldn’t go back with the others. This was a one-way trip for me. They had shown me those statues of my friends. I had seen Isidor with Melody, Murphy with his daughters, Kayla with Sam, and Potter with Sophie. Ultimately, they were going to be together. Not in this pushed world, but the one they were going back to when I put this mess right.