Chapter One Hundred and Twenty
Havermouth, Present Time
As Aislen passed the bathroom, doing up the last buttons on her shirt, she heard water running and laughter – Cameron and Rhett were sharing the shower. She smiled, their play warming her heart.
Tyler was cooking pancakes in the kitchen as she entered, and Heath sat at the table drinking coffee, somehow immaculate, despite being in clothing worn the day before to paint in. His hair was still wet from his shower, slicked back against his skull in contrast to the golden stubble that was just beginning to show through his skin.
Talen followed her into the kitchen, still towel drying his hair from their shower. “Good morning, Tyler,” he smiled. “How was your night?”
“It’s been years since I slept in a single,” Tyler replied. “I think I regressed a little overnight and rediscovered my inner child, so it’s chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.”
“If you’re ready, Aislen,” Heath took his coffee cup to the sink. “We will grab something out.”
“Heath’s not a chocolate chip fan,” Tyler wasn’t bothered. “I offered to make him one without, but he declined. His loss.”
“Cameron will eat my share,” Heath predicted with a smile.
“Bye, daddy,” Aislen lifted her face for Talen’s kiss, pressing her hands against his chest. His hand cupped her skull as he bent over her, his lips lingering. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t whilst I’m gone,” she winked at him.
“Which leaves quite of list of things and people that you can do,” Heath observed dryly.
Talen chuckled. “I am sure things will be tame here in your absence, little demon.”
She blew him a kiss as she followed Heath out the back door. They crunched their way over the gravel to Rhett’s car and Heath muttered under his breath as he adjusted the volume of the music and reversed out of the drive.
“Car smells of incense and fucking chai lattes,” he complained. “I swear, I preferred it when he smoked. Now, he’s discovered his inner hippy and mangled that in with his goth aesthetic. It’s all Buddha bowls and crystals with him at the moment,” he flicked a finger against the amethyst that dangled off the rear-view mirror.
Aislen opened the ashtray to discover that Rhett was still smoking, just not cigarettes. “Mhm,” she lifted an eyebrow at Heath. “Not incense, Heath.”
Heath laughed. “He’s a sneaky bitch, sometimes.”
He pulled over at the coffee shop and they queued to get to the front, the other patrons, especially the werewolf ones, staring at them in open curiosity and concern. Heath’s frown darkened as he contemplated whether the pack could be behind the spray painting and Molotov cocktail attacks. (It wasn’t the style of an organized pack hit, but it was possible that it was unsanctioned, by pack members taking matters into their own hands. Molotov cocktails and spray paint – young, hot-headed alphas, acting on overheard conversations by their elders?)
“You have to stop excusing bad behaviour as being normal,” Aislen scolded him under her breath. “It is not.”
“Get out of my head, Aislen,” he muttered back as they reached the front of the queue.
Diana had their coffees ready with a wide smile. “Hey, Aislen,” she said.
“We’ll grab two of the veggie breakfast wraps, too, please, Diana,” Heath said, pulling out his card.
“Sure thing,” she altered the price and used tongs to place the pre-made wraps into two paper bags whilst Heath paid. As she handed Aislen a bag, she raised her eyebrows. “If you’re free tomorrow night, Aislen, a group of us are meeting for drinks at the Fletch and Arrow at five. You should join us. You’ll know everyone from school. It will be like a high school reunion.”
“I’ll think about it,” Aislen replied lightly, without any intention of doing so. A night of sex and alcohol with Talen and the Triquetra, or drinks with the girls who had been bitches to her in high school – it wasn’t a hard choice, she told herself. “Thanks for the invite.”
“You should go,” Heath said as they returned to the car.
“Yeah, and I should eat more vegetables,” she replied, peering in the bag at the vegetable wrap with resignation. Of course, Heath had ordered something healthy. “And probably visit the dentist more frequently, but I have this strange habit of avoiding doing unpleasant things.” She took a bite of the wrap and raised her eyebrow. It wasn’t that bad, she decided.
Heath drove with one hand on the wheel, eating neatly with the other, passing by the MegaStore and heading out of town in the opposite direction to the river house.
“Where are you taking us?” She asked him.
“Havermouth’s shops are okay, but Redbank’s are better,” he replied. “And closer to Charlotte. We will get what you need and then visit her on the way back through – something that I still think is a bad idea, by the way,” he added with a sigh.
“Why? Can’t have one sex toy talking to another? Afraid we might gang up against you?”
He grimaced. “Charlotte was a mistake that I made, and that Rhett has paid the consequence for,” he said quietly. “It was my decision to use her to try to frighten you into compliance. Whilst it seemed to work at the time, the price was too high, and if I could do it differently, I would.”
Aislen lost her appetite, closing the bag around the rest of the wrap, and reaching for her coffee instead. “People aren’t disposable, Heath,” she said grimly. “Werewolves seem to have this belief that humans are to be used and discarded. I’m sorry that this bit you in the arse, but I’m sort of glad at the same time. You deserved to have your disregard for the feelings and well-being of the girls that you abused rebound on you.”
A muscle in the corner of his jaw twisted as he bit back on what he wanted to say, but she could guess what it was, because she’d heard it before, with frequency.
“Alright then,” she said to him. “If I don’t understand you, why don’t you explain it to me?”
“Are you in my head again?” He glowered at her.
“No, I just know what you’re going to say because I’ve heard it before,” she told him, leaning back in the seat. “So, go on. Justify to me why it’s okay for werewolf medical professionals to betray the confidentiality of their patients and produce lists of girls on contraceptives for randy werewolves to fuck. Explain to me how it’s reasonable for werewolves to bully, gaslight, and flat-out force human girls into sexual acts that they know they’re not ready for, and then to humiliate those girls for having been abused. Because I’m dying to hear you justify it.”
“Aislen,” he said softly. “These things are never simply as black and white as you are trying to make them.”
“They are for the girls involved, Heath. I have an idea for Havermouth’s pack that might seem revolutionary to you. How about your randy young men meet Mrs. Palmer and her five daughters,” she held up her hand and wriggled her fingers. “You want to know the safest way to have sex? Yeah, it’s to do it alone. No one gets hurt that way, and there’s no mistakes that require child support for the next eighteen years.”
He heaved his sigh, implying in a single breath that she was being unreasonable. “We don’t pay child support,” he said as he pulled over. “If we know that a child is werewolf or if we even suspect that it may be, that child is acquired as soon as possible and adopted into the pack. Rohan and Lilly are raising Rhett’s son amongst their own children. As far as he knows, he is their eldest and he is happy there.”
“And Charlotte?” She asked him angrily. “She carried that boy for nine months. She obviously intended to keep him.”
He twisted in the seat. “I know that some of our ways seem… harsh to you, Aislen, but we have existed this way, maintained our secrecy this way, for centuries. It works. And the welfare of the pack outweighs the feelings of one human girl. No,” he cut her off when she opened her mouth to argue back. “No, Aislen, if we continue this discussion, we’ll end up arguing, and have a miserable time shopping. Let’s just table it as an agree-to-disagree for now. I promise to give you ample opportunity to vent your anger at me at another time, but not now. Please?”
She dragged in a breath through her nose and released it grudgingly. “I will resume this argument at another time,” she warned him. “This isn’t surrender, it’s just a cease fire for the time being.”
“I’ll take it,” he said readily with relief. “Thank you.”
Aislen watched him with narrowed eyes as he got out the car and circled to her door. “A cease fire for now,” she promised herself. “To be resumed at a later time.”