Almost Midnight (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3.5)(96)

Thankfully, Lucas Parker’s dad had taken pity on her and assigned one of his pack matrons to watch over her. Not that there had been any love there either, but the woman had never dared mistreat her, for fear of Mr. Parker’s retaliation.

“I, uhh, had a few things to give you.” Marissa held an envelope but reached into her purse and handed Fredericka a small strip of photos. The pictures felt thin, aged. Fredericka didn’t look at them—didn’t have to.

She knew exactly what they were. She’d been five and her father had taken her to a mall where there had been one of those photo booths. He’d put his money in and they’d made funny faces as the camera took their pictures. It was one of her favorite memories and it had been captured on film.

Fredericka’s breath hitched in her lungs. Just holding those images threatened to unearth her vulnerability and lack of self-worth she fought so diligently to deny.

“He loved you, Ricka. I know he didn’t show it all the time, but he carried those four photos with him forever. He never carried one photo of me, or the other women he called his own. And when he came to me these last eight years, he would always ask me, “Do you think she’s happier, there?”

Loved? He’d abandoned her.

Strangely, the most Fredericka had ever felt loved by the man was when she saw him kill Donique after she showed him the burns on her arm. But that had done a number on Fredericka, too. And she’d never told him any of the things his next bitches did to her. Then their deaths would have been on her, just like Donique’s, like her own mother’s.

“Thank you for letting me know.” Fredericka stood and shot out.

She heard Holiday call her back, but no way in hell would she turn around.

No way in hell would she cry either! She wouldn’t. Folding the pictures, she tucked them in her pocket and ran back to the workshop, determined to make another display board. One where the nickname her father had given her wouldn’t appear. If she never heard that name again, it would be too soon.

As her feet hit the hard cold earth, her thoughts echoed from her head to her heart. He’d been alive. All this time, he’d been alive. All of those birthdays, Christmases, when others clung to their families, she’d been alone. He could have been there.

“Rest in hell, Daddy,” she muttered.

She got to the workshop and dug into her pockets for the key. First the right pocket, beneath the photos. It wasn’t there. Then the left. It wasn’t there either. What the hell had she done with it?

She considered just breaking down the door, but that door didn’t belong to her. Holiday and Burnett had entrusted her with the shop. Destroying it would have been unacceptable.

She searched the ground, thinking she might have dropped it. Even got on her hands and knees. The position tugged at her inner wolf and she longed for the full moon that was less than a week away. A time when her spirit felt free of the emotional ties of the human world.

That’s when she heard it again. The rush of water cascading down.

It grew louder and louder.

“Come get the key,” a voice echoed from the sound.

She looked down the trail. The death angels had taken it? What right did they have to take something that didn’t belong to them? She stood up, her fear of the death angels shattered. Nothing but fury motivated her now.

Did they want to condemn her for how she’d turned out? Hold her responsible for her inability to trust, to let people close? For occasionally shooting life the middle finger? Where were they when she’d been young?

The anger and a shitload of resentment had her running down the path, ready to offer a little comeuppance to anyone who dared to judge her.





Chapter Two


The sound of the falls grew louder and louder. Fredericka veered off the path and let her ears and her own hostility guide her. Pushing through thick brush and low-hanging trees, thorns clung to her jeans and occasionally caught hold of her long hair. She kept hearing Marissa’s words. He loved you, Ricka.

Lie. Lie. Lie!

The rumble of the falls vibrated the ground. Suddenly the forest ended and she came to an abrupt halt. The falls stood twenty feet from her. Water roared and rushed down into a pond that looked so serene she wanted to toss a rock at it.

Tiny drops of water danced in the verdantly scented air. The trees, the plant life, they all looked … fresh. Fresh like spring, but it wasn’t spring. It couldn’t be real.

Then she felt it … an aura that she could only define as hope. Like how she felt when she was just beginning a jewelry project, when the thrill of making a new piece hit. Before she was blindsided by her own limitations.

A shadow moved behind the wall of water. She could swear it motioned her inside.

She didn’t trust it, but just to prove she wasn’t a coward, she stepped into the pond. Her breath caught when she moved but the water didn’t.

She pushed on, walked through the wall of white cascading water.

The wet coldness prickled her skin. Her hair hung limp past her shoulders, and water dripped from the dark strands. The person, or spirit, whatever it had been that had waved her inside, wasn’t anywhere to be seen. A serene quietness invaded the space.

“What do you want with me?” she yelled, hoping to prove she wasn’t afraid—or maybe that her fury outweighed her fear. Either way, she was here. Let them throw her sins at her like stones. She’d take it, and then she’d throw them back and remind them she hadn’t asked to be like this. The world had shaped and molded her into who she was.