Once rejected twice shy, p.5
Once Rejected, Twice Shy, page 5
Flicking the curtain back with two fingers, he glanced out the small window. Faith’s Cadillac CTS—even though Luke’s family felt Faith was beneath them, they’d insisted she drive a nice car—appeared intact, tucked away from the relentless sun, under the roof of the carport.
“Do you have your car keys?” he asked as he scanned the area outside for any threats.
“I do. Am I following you back to your place?”
He shook his head. “You’re driving us both.”
“Where’s your car? How did you get here?”
Living in this world, he’d been forced to learn how to drive, but that did not mean he’d ever learned to enjoy it, and truthfully, did it as infrequently as he could get away with.
“Stay here.” Yet again, he ignored her questions. How long before she dug in her heels and insisted he start providing answers?
Slipping out of the house, he strode around the vehicle, searching for any obvious signs of tampering, while at the same time opening his senses and checking for traces of magic. Watchers were not normally given the ability to use someone else’s magic; however, even wolves could tell if others had used magic recently. There was always residual…something.
Satisfied that the attackers had not thought to damage the car, Mikail opened the driver’s side door and motioned for Faith to get in. She obligingly darted from the house to the vehicle, leaving her bags for him to load into the trunk, before sliding behind the wheel.
Once he was in his seat, she backed out of the driveway, and he checked the front porch, where three dark red splotches on the wooden surface were the only indication anyone had been attempting to use force to get into Faith’s home. He vaguely wondered what Dru had done with the carcasses, but he didn’t dwell. She knew what she was doing, and he trusted her explicitly.
They made it to the bar before the questions started up again.
In earnest.
“Faith,” he interrupted as he pulled two incredibly heavy suitcases out of the trunk. “Stop. I cannot tell you all you want to know.” He lugged her bags up the stairs, knowing she’d follow.
“Why not?”
“It’s for your own protection.”
“From what?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Forty years ago, he’d argued with her mother over the idea of stealing her away to another world, of suppressing her magic, of lying to her about who she was. He’d felt Faith should have been made aware from the beginning so she could protect herself if need be. Ariana, he believed, had been reacting out of fear, not logic.
He hadn’t won that battle, and now, forty years in, he had convinced himself this was the right way. Or at least the one he had become most comfortable with.
To enlighten Faith at this stage of her life would be disastrous.
She has to learn at some point, his wolf whispered.
The damned animal was right. If she were to become their ruler—if he wanted to ever return to his homeland—she had to know what she was, who she was, and most importantly, how to wield her own magic.
He wasn’t ready to teach her. Hell, he wasn’t the right person to do so. Yes, he had been gifted the use of her magic, but he only ever used it to maintain the wards around her home and his. And he had access to only a small amount of what she was truly capable of. No way could he handle helping her harness the power she had inside her.
If that wasn’t enough, taking away the suppression spell hiding her magic would expose her to the dangers they’d been hiding from all this time.
He definitely was not ready for that.
Chapter Five
“What do you think you are doing?”
Faith froze reaching for the doorknob. She’d been a good girl up to this point. Staying put in Mikail’s apartment, which he claimed was the safest place for her at the moment.
The plumbing was questionable and he had no decent snacks, but his bed was comfortable and his pillows were soft and he let her control the thermostat. It hadn’t been a terrible weekend, all things considered.
She’d caught up on every Netflix series she’d not gotten around to watching until now. She’d cleared out her email inbox. She cleaned his apartment—not that cleaning was fun, but it gave her something to do and also gave her an excuse to nose around, searching for clues as to who he really was.
She didn’t find any.
Frankly, she was still being a good girl. Good girls who sold bathroom fixtures for a living went into the office on Monday morning. Even if they knew damn well their “protector” would protest.
“I have to go to work.”
“I don’t think so.”
Barely reining in the flash of temper that, since she’d essentially moved into Mikail’s apartment, had begun bubbling just under the surface almost nonstop, Faith dropped her hand to her side and turned to face him.
He stood a few feet away, hair in disarray, eyes sharp, thick stubble coating his jaw. He was bare chested, a pair of gym shorts riding low on his hips, his feet also bare.
Like an ice cream cone for adults. She wanted to lick him from head to toe.
Wait, no, she didn’t. At this point, she could barely tolerate being in the same vicinity with the man.
As it turned out, those books she devoured were real. Or at least, based on ideas that were real. Magic existed. Shapeshifters existed. And Faith was somehow tied to it all.
By “somehow,” she meant she had no freaking clue, because Mr. Hottie Pants over there refused to give her any information. For her own good, he said. Her mother used to say that when she grounded Faith for getting into trouble at school.
“My mother,” she said, her mind bouncing to a particular aspect of her life that it hadn’t occurred to her would be affected…until now. “Holy shit.” She pressed her palm against the door, suddenly needing the support.
Mikail had obviously guessed where her mind went, because the harsh lines of his scowl morphed into a pained expression, and he held out his arms as if he thought she might collapse into them. If he were anyone else, she might have considered it. Hell, even Luke would be preferred at this point, although…maybe not.
“She isn’t my mother, is she? My dad… If I’m from some other world, I can’t be their daughter. I’m right, aren’t I?”
She expected any one of the same supposedly stoic answers he’d been giving her all along. “It’s for your own protection” or “I can’t tell you that.” Those two sentences had been his damn mantra for the past three days.
“Yes,” he said, wearily.
Faith turned, fell back against the door, and then slid to the floor, pulling her knees up and hugging them to her chest. She sensed rather than saw Mikail move, and when a thick arm corded with muscles wrapped around her shoulders, she hesitated only briefly before resting her head against his pec.
“I am truly sorry you had to find out this way,” he said after a long pause. “I do not know if this will help, but they love you very much. They believe they adopted you through normal, human means. They were unable to conceive and had been investigating other options when I found them and arranged for them to adopt you.”
That actually did make her feel better, not that she was inclined to tell him as much. “They really did adopt me as an infant?”
She felt him nod. “You were a week old when I placed you in your mother’s arms.”
Her mother. But what about her biological mother? Who was she? And her father? Had her parents willingly given Faith up? Did this mean Faith now had two mothers, two fathers? Well, she always did, didn’t she? She just hadn’t known it.
Instead of asking all these questions—he probably wouldn’t answer them anyway—she said, “You placed me in her arms?” then lifted her head off his chest and peered into his face.
There were lines, to be sure. Brackets around his mouth, probably from scowling too much. And small spiderwebs stretching from the outer edge of his eyes, suggesting that he laughed a lot, too. He hadn’t done that at all since she’d moved in with him, but she recalled from her many visits to the bar downstairs that he had quite the musical laugh.
All that aside, he did not look all that much older than her. And he’d have to be much older if he’d been the one to hand her over to her adoptive parents. Like sixty years old. Maybe more.
He definitely did not look like a sixty-year-old man.
“How old are you?” she asked, still searching his face for clues.
He winced, which added a temporary line between his brows.
“Wait, let me guess. You can’t tell me.”
He sighed heavily and leaned his head against the door. “More like I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Mostly because you’ve been raised as a human, and if I tell you, you’ll suddenly feel hugely uncomfortable about us having slept together.”
She snorted. “No worries. I already feel that way.”
He arched his brows. “Really? Why?”
Okay, emotional neediness time was over. She inched away so that they were still seated next to each other, but he was forced to pull his arm from around her shoulders and they were no longer touching.
“Are you serious? How about the fact that you rejected me the morning after?”
“I didn’t reject you, Faith. I simply reset the boundaries that we never should have crossed in the first place.”
Which was a fancy way of saying he’d rejected her, but whatever. “Tell me your age.”
The force behind the words surprised her, for certain, but even more surprising was the way he reacted. His eyes went wide and his entire body went rigid and he spoke almost as if he were a robot. “I’ve lived for 286 evolutions around the sun.” He snapped out of it and narrowed his eyes. “How did you do that?”
“Wait. Can we go back to—did you say you are 286 years old?” She scanned him from head to foot. “Damn.”
“Faith—”
“So you’re, what? Immortal? Or do you just live for a really, really long time? And what about me? Will I live for 286 years?” He was about to shoot her down again. If she’d learned one important fact since her house had been attacked, it was that Mikail did not like to answer her questions. Which meant she hadn’t learned much at all.
“If you survive, yes. We are both immortal beings.”
Holy shit, this was more information than he’d given her all weekend. Granted, he’d spent most of the weekend either at the bar or sleeping, so there had been little opportunity to pepper him with questions, but she’d still tried every moment she could.
“If I survive? No, wait.” She lifted her hand, palm facing him. “You’re about to tell me you can’t tell me any more.”
His lips twitched with the teensiest smile. “You are as stubborn as your mother.”
Her mother wasn’t stubborn at all. She was the sweetest, gentlest woman Faith knew, which, honestly, made her feel guilty for all those times she’d pushed at the limits her parents had clearly defined for her.
Oh, wait, wrong mother.
“You knew my biological mother.”
“Know,” he corrected. “I haven’t spoken to her in forty years, but I have to believe she is still very much alive.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
He side-eyed her. “If she were not, someone from our world would have arrived here to collect you, either so you could take over her role or to imprison you, depending upon how she died and who killed her.”
Take over her role? What did that even mean? And when he said “our world,” what did that mean, exactly? Like, outer space? Was she an alien? “But what about whoever attacked my house?”
There went that grimace again. “It is certainly worrying that they figured out where you live; however, the attack was so ineffective, I cannot imagine it was instigated by someone who managed to overthrow the queen.”
She was tempted to ask why he was suddenly opening up to her, and she didn’t like the idea that his explanation made it sound like there was probably more than one threat to her life, but, more importantly, “Did you just say my birth mother is a queen? Like…I’m royalty?”
If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she probably would have missed the slight wince before he smoothed his face into an impassive look.
“I am. Holy shit. That’s why you’re protecting me. I’m, what? A refugee? Have I been granted political asylum? Oh my gosh, this is so exciting!”
“It is not exciting,” he said through clenched teeth, his face going ruddy. “It’s dangerous. And now you see why I did not want to enlighten you.” He uncurled himself from the floor, climbing to his feet like a cat. Only, she was pretty sure he was a wolf. Unless, of course, there were different sorts of shapeshifters in his—their—world.
Now was not the time to ask.
“No, I don’t see why. Why wouldn’t you tell me? Don’t you think I should be aware of my surroundings, aware that someone—or something—could show up and kidnap me at any moment?”
“Until very recently, I had zero fear of that happening.”
“What happened very recently?” She started to climb to her feet, and he stretched out a hand. Warring with herself—she could get up by herself, and besides, she didn’t like touching him because she really liked touching him—she finally placed her hand into his and allowed him to pull her upright.
“Thank you,” she said primly, brushing imaginary dust from her skirt. See? She could play the role of a royal. It was probably inborn.
“If you are imagining the British royal family right now, I can assure you, our world is nothing at all like that,” Mikail said, equally as primly.
Well, then.
“So what happened?” she asked again, hoping against hope that he would not stop feeding her information. “I promise not to go to work if you tell me.” A little bribery couldn’t hurt, right?
He arched a single brow. “Go ahead and try. I will ensure you do not leave this apartment.”
The idea of him tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her into the bedroom, where he would drop her onto the bed and then ravish her should not be so incredibly tempting. And besides, did she really believe that was how he’d prevent her from leaving?
No, of course not. Because this was reality, not a romance novel.
Damn it.
“Why am I suddenly in danger?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face and then motioned at the sleek and modern kitchen to her right. “Is there any coffee left? I do not normally drink the stuff, but this morning might be a good time to start.”
He was offering an olive branch. She had no earthly idea how far the branch would extend, but anything was better than nothing. Besides, if she were truly a queen-in-hiding, did she even need to go back to a job she didn’t hate but was going nowhere? Queen sounded far more enticing than bathroom fixture salesperson.
She left her purse by the door and led the way into the kitchen.
Moments later, she was sitting at the island sipping coffee while Mikail stood at the counter making breakfast. Turned out, this kitchen wasn’t just for show.
Faith was so enthralled with watching the play of muscles across his back and shoulders as he chopped and whisked and cooked, she gave a start and spilled her coffee when he suddenly started speaking.
“I don’t know.”
That’s it. That’s all he said.
“About what?” she asked while using a paper napkin to wipe up her mess.
“I don’t know what triggered someone finding you here. I don’t know how it happened. And I don’t know who is after you.”
“That’s a lot of I don’t knows.”
He turned around with a plate in each hand. After placing one in front of her, he sat next to her and stabbed his fork into what looked like polenta with fried tomatoes and an egg on top.
Damn. Was the man aware that cooking for her was a sure-fire way to her heart?
No, of course he wasn’t.
“It is,” he said after swallowing and chasing that bite with a slug of orange juice. “And for the record, that is not usually how I work. I make it a point to always be aware of everything going on around me.”
“If that’s the case, how come it was so easy for you to keep me entirely in the dark?”
He waved his fork at her. “First, it wasn’t easy, by any means. Second, it wasn’t my decision. And last, despite all that, the process worked because I was always so aware. And now that I haven’t a clue what’s going on around me and you are aware of your real nature and we’re fully aware that there is a threat, somewhere, my job just got a hundred times harder.”
“And your job is to…?” She knew—she was pretty sure she knew, anyway—but she wanted to hear him say it. Needed him to.
“To keep you alive.”
Chapter Six
She’d handled what little Mikail had told her so well. And she’d followed his instructions and hadn’t left the apartment despite, he was certain, being stir crazy. He was certain because his apartment had never been so clean in forty years and cleaning was not generally high on Faith’s to-do list. Luke paid someone to take care of that pesky chore.
Maybe he should tell her more. Give her the entire, sordid tale.
That’s what Dru suggested when she bellied up to the bar on Tuesday afternoon, causing a stir she was all too aware of as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on the shiny wooden plank, her leather-covered ass causing the frat boys at that table behind her to froth at the mouth.
“Bored, Dru?” he asked, evading. He’d become quite the expert at it, he had to admit.
“I’ve been bored for forty years.”
Dru was an exceptional Watcher, the best he’d ever trained. So when Ariana told him to choose one Watcher to accompany him on this task of hiding away her daughter, he’d naturally selected Dru.
Unfortunately, Dru preferred being on the edge of danger to being secreted away in an entirely different world where she had to be careful to shift only when no humans were around, and while there was plenty of warring, none of it was tied to her, so she wasn’t allowed to participate.
