Chapter 36: Set Into Motion

Willow drove home quickly after hurriedly locking up the café. Fat snowflakes began to fall as she tore down the road to her house. Her grandmother’s truck wasn’t there. She must still be visiting whatever random relative she rushed off to see.
She would need to pack as much as she could fit into her few duffle bags. Thankfully, she wore the same few pieces all of the time so it would be light. As she opened her front door a scent hit her. The alpha had been here. Her thick musky scent lingered in the air.
“Shit,” Willow said aloud and ran to her room. She pulled her bag from underneath her bed and began shoving clothing into it. She was clearing out her toiletries when she heard the front door open.
“Willow?” her grandmother’s voice floated up the stairs.
“Up here!” she called back and threw her bag into the closet, shutting the door. Her grandmother’s face looks tired. Her eyes glanced around the bedroom, noting the half-open drawers.
“They summoned you?” she asked and sat on the edge of Willow’s bed. Willow nodded, deflated.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said and sat down next to her grandmother and laid her head on her shoulder. Loriann wrapped her arm around Willow’s shoulders and hugged her tightly.
“Well, I think you should discuss your options with Garin first since it affects him too,” she replied. Willow pulled away and looked at her, her eyes surprised.
“I’m sorry I lied to you. I just…didn’t want to hurt you especially after you told me about my parents. I knew I already loved him then, I couldn’t just walk away,” Willow said, woefully.
“I understand. We love deeply, especially once we’ve imprinted,” she replied and stroked Willow’s hair.
“What does imprinting feel like?” Willow asked. “I’ve heard mention of it, but no one ever talks about what it feels like.”
Her grandmother looked pensive, searching for the right words.
“Well, it isn’t as common as you would think. I think due to the diluted bloodline, it is rarer than it has ever been. But when you imprint on another, your whole world shifts to that person. Everything feels chaotic and yet strangely calm at the same time. They are your world and everyone else just falls to the side. It sounds obsessive but it isn’t that it is just the deep knowing that you are entirely matched to this other person.”
Willow mulled the words over in her head, feeling a strange sensation in her chest.
“So, are there fireworks or what? The elders always made it sound like a movie,”
Loriann scoffed.
“No, there are no fireworks nor does a crescendo of music crash down around you. It is more like if someone lights a fire here,” she touches Willow’s chest gently, “and it burns steady and strong.”
“You imprinted on grandfather?” Her grandmother smiled at her, looking years younger.
“I did.” Willow laid her head back against her shoulder.
“Is it possible…to imprint with someone other than a wolf?” Willow asked tentatively. Her grandmother stiffened.
“There is lore about it but no, I don’t believe so,” she said, her voice shaking. If Willow had imprinted on Garin, things were about to be much more complicated.
“Call him, figure out what you want to do. I won’t force you either way. I don’t want to lose you like I did your mother,” she kissed the top of her head and gave her hand a squeeze before she left the room.
####
Lyall watched as Willow dashed from her house, a bag slung over her shoulder. She had been leaving every weekend now for weeks. He wondered where she had been going. He noticed that she had purchased a car so she must be leaving.
Maybe she was going to the cabin. He flicked off his headlights and followed her car out onto the highway. He smoked as he drove, the nicotine soothing his frayed nerves. He had been on edge since that night, weeks ago. He also knew that the scent of the cigarettes would cover his own, making it difficult for Willow to sense him.
The snow was starting to come down heavier now, but Willow drove carefully without slowing. She had been driving in this weather since she was able to reach the pedals and her new tires cut through the snow without issue.
Lyall kept his distance far enough back that she wouldn’t see him but close enough that he could keep his eyes on her. He ran a hand through his stringy, unkempt hair and scratched the thick growth of hair on his face.
He needed a shower and probably sleep but he felt unhinged and out of control. Everything had been going along nicely, even if it was a bit slow until that damn hunter scum turned up. He couldn’t believe Willow would be so stupid as to be with the likes of him. It disgusted him. But it was no matter, he would get this settled and demand that the council reapprove their marriage.
After her antics with the hunter, he figured they would be more than happy to marry her off to one of them. And then he would take her far away from here and she would be his. Only his. He flicked the butt of his cigarettes out of the window and contemplated another one. He dug one from his pack and lit it.
With his eyes back on the road, he noted that they had passed the turnoff for the cabin.
“Where are you running to, little Willow?” he mused aloud and followed her tracks carved into the snow.
What felt like hours later, she took the exit for Missoula and wove through the town, stopping at a nice, neat neighborhood full of townhomes. He parked in the guest lot and watched as she drove right to one of the unremarkable homes.
She strode up to the door and didn’t knock, instead, she pulled out a key and let herself in. Before the door closed, Lyall got a glimpse of the person inside.
It was the hunter, Garin. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel, forcing his wolf back down. With a shudder, he had it under control again, but barely. She had not only continued seeing him, even after Lyall warned the council, but she had a fucking key to his house!
He sneaked across the parking lot towards the townhome. He needed more proof or else he was liable to look like a jilted lover. He fought the urge to rip the door off the hinges and then Garin’s head from his body. The curtains around the front window weren’t pulled down all the way. He peered through and growled at what he saw inside.
Garin’s arms were wrapped around Willow, her head pressed into his neck. Lyall took a quick picture and ran back to his truck, breathing heavily and swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. He wouldn’t look at the picture again. He was teetering on the edge as it was. It was bad enough the image of that hunter’s arms wrapped around her was burned into his mind. She had never let Lyall hold her like that.
He whipped his truck back onto the road, the engine covering his roar of rage as he tore through the neighborhood. If the council didn’t scare her enough, he knew who would. He pushed his truck to its limit, skidding around the sharp turns of the highway back to Whispering Pines, his eyes set for the Brochade Estate.
####
Ava paused, her martini glass halfway to her lips. She could have sworn that she heard a light knock on the front door. Her eyes flashed quickly over the room. Everyone was accounted for. Well, except Garin. He had always been the most stubborn of her children. She had spent the past two days smoothing over his little outburst with the McClennan’s. She knew that it didn’t take that much smoothing. They were practically falling over themselves to join the family, thrusting their insipid daughter towards her.
Eventually, Garin would come around. She had her ways of persuasion. She fondly stroked the silver chain at her neck. She felt its cool links rattle down the entire front of her, it’s bladed tip ending just above her navel.
She excused herself from the table and walked towards the front door. No one was there but she spied something shoved into the frame. Looking over her shoulder she pried the envelope from the door and quickly shut it behind her. The envelope reeked of wolf and a fragile one at that. It had the acrid scent of a male going berserk. Interesting, she thought and opened it.
There was just a fuzzy picture, obviously taken from a phone. There was nothing written with the photo. She looked at it closer and felt the sweet prick of murderous rage trickle through her veins. She dropped the photo and ground it underneath her heel, the spike going through the red head’s pretty face.