Island of Glass (The Guardians Trilogy #3)(25)

She could have run and explored for hours yet, but dawn came early, and she’d need rest before it did. She thought of her family, her pack, so far away, and missed them like a chamber of her heart. Their scents, their sounds, that elemental bond.

Through the trees she saw the glimmer of lights, caught the scent of peat smoke, of roses. Everyone would be asleep by now, she thought, but they’d left lights on for her. Unnecessary, of course, but considerate.

She cast a glance back, tempted to get in one more run, watched the owl swoop over the path, its wings spread wide in the moonlight. It pulled at her, as did the night. She nearly turned, raced back, but she caught another scent.

It, too, pulled.

So she moved to the edge of the woods, looked through the shadows to where Doyle stood in his family’s graveyard.

The wind kicked just enough to billow his long coat while he stood, still as a statue in the drenching blue moonlight. His hair, dark as the night, tumbled around a face roughened by a few days’ growth of beard.

In wolf form, where everything was heightened, she felt the lust she managed to tamp down otherwise. She could imagine his hands on her, hers on him, a tangle of hot bodies giving in to the animal and taking, just taking in a frenzy until needs were met.

And imagining, those needs clawed and bit inside her.

She quivered with it, shocked, angry at the intensity, at her inability to shove it down again.

She’d run after all, she thought, but before she could move, he whirled, the sword on his back out of the sheath and into his hand with a bright shiver of metal.

His eyes met hers. Hers, keen, caught the embarrassment, then the annoyance in his before he controlled it.

“You’re lucky I didn’t have the bow. I might’ve shot a bolt.” He lowered the sword but didn’t sheathe it. “I thought you’d be inside by now. It’s past one in the morning.”

As if she had a curfew.

“Bran dealt with the door, so you can get in on your own. And as you didn’t think of it yourself, Sasha opened your bedroom door, shut the ones to your balcony.”

He wanted her to go—she could plainly see—and her preference was to give him what he wanted, as she wanted the same. But he looked unbearably lonely standing there, the sword shining in his hand, with his family buried under his feet.

She moved toward him, through the headstones, over the uneven grass.

“I’m not after company,” he began, but she simply stood, as he did, looking down at the grave. Lichen had grown on the headstone, pretty as the flowers beneath it.

Aoife Mac Cleirich

“My mother,” Doyle said when she sat beside him. “I came back and stayed until she died. My father, there beside her, died two years before her. I wasn’t here for her when she lost him.”

He fell into silence again, finally slid his sword back in its scabbard. “At least you can’t talk me blind or argue.” Doyle lifted his brows when she turned her head, stared coolly. “You do just that, at every possible opportunity. You see there she was sixty-three when she died. A good long age for the times she lived in, for a woman who’d birthed seven children. She outlived three of them, and each who left the world before she did left a hole in her heart. But she was strong, my mother. A strong woman.

“Beautiful,” he added. “You saw that yourself from Sasha’s drawing. But that wasn’t the image of her I’ve been carrying with me all this time. That one was of age and illness, of a woman ready to move on. I don’t know if it’s good or not to have the image replace that of her young and vibrant and beautiful. Does it matter at all?”

She leaned against him a little, a kind of comfort. Without thinking, he laid a hand on her head. And she let him.

“I believe there’s an after. With all I’ve seen there’s no choice but to believe it. And that’s a hell for me knowing I can’t reach it. But it’s helpful to know they have. Or sometimes it’s helpful. It’s easier not to think of it at all. But today . . .”

He broke off a moment, took a breath. “You see there, how Annika laid the flowers and the stones on every grave here. On my mother’s she put them down in the shape of a heart. Christ but Sawyer’s a lucky man. He’ll have a lifetime of sweetness. So Annika came out and gave them this respect, this sweetness, this remembrance. How could I not come and stand here, even knowing they’re not here?”

He looked down, stared at his own hand a moment, then quickly lifted it off her head, stuck it in his pocket. “We need sleep. I’m going to work your asses off come morning.” At her snort he gave her a thin smile. “I’ll take that as a challenge.”

He turned with her, walked back to the house and inside, switching off the kitchen light as they walked through.

Up the back steps, he as quiet as the wolf.

She veered off to her room, gave him one last look before nudging the door closed.

He walked to his own, wondering why he’d said so much, why he’d felt compelled to say so much. And why now he felt lighter of heart for having done so.

In his room he opened his doors to the night, lit the fire more for the pleasure of having one than for warmth. As a matter of habit, he propped his sword beside the bed, within reach, with his crossbow and a quiver of bolts beside it.

He expected no trouble that night, but believed, absolutely, in always being prepared for the unexpected.