It felt, she thought, like listening to God.
"Are you okay?"
Julia's attention swept back toward the voice, toward her room. Katherine was sprawled out on Julia's bed, her shoes still on, and staring at Julia.. Julia realized that her fingers were glued to the door frame. She probably looked to Katherine, and to the rest of the world, to be drunk.
"Yeah," she said. "I'm fine." She shook her head and plastered a grin onto her face. "Whew! Just haven't had my tea yet today."
"I've been looking through this," Katherine said, waving a folded-back course catalog in the air. "I already have a good idea of what I'm going to take. Well, a couple of classes, at least."
"Really?" Julia asked. "Which ones?"
"Botany, maybe. And math."
"Math?"
"I'm going to start with the most basic algebra, I think. I never studied it in my old pack, so I'm not sure how I'll do." Katherine ran her finger down the course description. "Linear and quadratic functions, systems of equations, graphing equations ... "
"Sounds fun," Julia said, plopping herself onto the bed next to Katherine. When she'd first met Katherine, she'd thought that the slim blond beauty had been standoffish. It was a happy surprise to Julia to realize that Katherine's chilly exterior was merely a product of her shyness. She didn't talk much because she didn't have much to say, and because she hated to be nuisance. Julia got the sense that she'd been told to be quiet enough as a child that she'd absorbed herself into silence that came out as indifference. After a few conversations, though,Katherine became more open with Julia, sharing her thoughts and worries.
"I don't want to do too much, just in case ... you know." Katherine nodded her head toward Julia.
"Know what?"
"You're trying to have a child too, aren't you?" Katherine asked, looking up from under her brows uncertainly.
"I—well, I suppose so. Yes." Julia felt strange talking about it. The students at the college she'd met had been Katherine's age, but they all seemed so much younger, more immature. Here was Katherine, at age eighteen, talking about starting a family.
"It will be so nice when we're done building our cabin, to have a home here. Not that your house isn't nice," she said to Julia, quickly, not wanting to offend. "But it would be nice to have a bit more privacy."
"I understand," Julia said, laughing softly. She'd walked in on Katherine and Kyle kissing on the living room couch too many times to count.
"But then we'll have some pups in the pack. I can't wait."
"You're not nervous?”
“Nervous about what?” Katherine looked up expectantly.
"About having a kid. I mean, we're pretty young, aren't we?"
“My mom had me at sixteen.”
“To have a kid while we're in school, though. Won't that be hard?” Julia asked.
“Why? Is college hard?”
“I don't know,” Julia said, amused at Katherine’s innocent question. “I guess I always thought it would be. And having a kid is hard.”
“Now that's something I don't understand about humans.”
“What?”
“Why you don't have packs. It makes things so much easier. Like kids. You just let them run around together, and the whole pack keeps an eye on them. I was talking with Dee, and she said that most humans leave their families behind before they start having babies.” Katherine shook her head. “Crazy, if you ask me.”
“So you've always known you wanted kids?”
“No! I never did, not before Kyle. I mean, if I didn't have a mate, it would be fine to wait on it, but now that I've found him ... ” Katherine shrugged. “It was different with Damien.”
“You didn't want to have a child with him?” Julia said, swallowing. It still made her uneasy to think about Katherine and Damien as mates.
“No, no, it wasn't like that. It was—he saved my life, and I would have done anything for him.” Katherine looked up quickly. “But we didn't share the connection. You understand. It was loyalty, not love.”
“I guess I do. Now I do. I've never been in love with anyone else, though, not really. I never dated anyone before Damien. I don't know what that kind of relationship would be like.”
“Not being connected? Not being able to share emotions?”
“See, I can't sense him the way he senses me. The way you and Kyle sense each other.” Julia flushed, since the admission wasn't entirely true, not anymore. She'd sensed ... something from Damien today. She didn't know exactly what it was.
“That would be hard, I guess,” Katherine said.
"What do you mean, she left?"
Damien's voice resounded up to Julia's room from downstairs. Julia and Katherine looked at each other with alarm. Moving in synchrony, they got up and looked down to where Damien and Kyle were standing in the living room.
"It was a race. She won. I thought she would come back here." Kyle looked up at Julia and Katherine, an expression of guilt on his face.
"She's not back here," Damien said.
"Well, then where is she?"
"I thought you would know," Damien said dryly. "You're supposed to be keeping an eye on her, after all."
"I'm sorry—"
"Let's search out, see if we can track her scent," Damien said.
"Her scent's everywhere in this territory," Katherine interjected. "We've been running around scouting."
"Well, we're not going to find her standing here," Damien said. "You take the western route, I'll take the east. Where's Jordan? And Dee?"
"Out," Julia said. "They were going—"
"If they get back here, tell them what happened. Tell Dee to take the north, Jordan the south. We'll be circling, they'll know the routes." Damien's voice was commanding, a leader's voice, and it was the first time since they'd bonded that he'd cut Julia off when she talked. She was taken aback.
"Should I come?" Katherine asked, taking a step down the stairs.
"No," Damien said. "You stay with Julia."
"Is all of this really necessary?" Julia asked. "She might have just gone wandering in the woods."
"She's the only one who knows that you're here," Damien said, his words heavy with meaning. "I'm alright with her leaving, but not unless she tells us why. And where."
It was then that Julia felt the connection again, felt a twisting of emotion through her body that was not hers. It was Damien, and the emotion shocked her. For although intellectually Julia had known that there was danger that Trax's pack would find her again, the weeks that had passed since her kidnapping had been so calm that she'd grown complacent. Trax was dead, wasn't he? And none of the other wolves knew that Julia, a purebred female, was here. None of the wolves, except for Mara.
But the emotion that now arced through her nerves made her shiver, and she knew for certain what Katherine had meant by being connected. She was connected to Damien now, and she knew what he felt, and what he felt made the hairs on her arms stand on end.
Damien was afraid.
CHAPTER SIX
Damien
Damien wanted to fly out of the door and run as fast as he could as soon as he heard that Mara was gone. He forced himself to keep calm while he was talking with Kyle. If they had a plan, it would be more likely that they would find her. In his mind, he saw Mara racing through the forest. She was fast—she had outrun Kyle. How would they catch up with her? Quickly he set Kyle off on one trail. He would take the other one. He would—
"Damien, wait!" Julia's voice tore his attention back. She hurried to him, took his hand.
"I need to go now," he said. "She's faster than we are."
"You should wait for Dee," Julia said. Her fear came like a current through his body.
"There's no time," he said.
"Then take me with you. I don't want you going alone."
"Julia," Damien said, pressing her hand with urgency. "I'll be fine. We need to find her."
"Why can't I—"
"You're a human!" Damien said, too forcefully. The shock of anger radiating from Julia struck him back. "Julia, I'm sorry. I just want to move as quickly as possible."
"And I can't keep up."
"Julia—"
"I'm not part of your pack," Julia said. Her frustration pulsed outward, mixed with sorrow.
... alone ...
"It's not that," Damien said, her words tearing at his heart. "Please. I need to be able to protect you."
"And I need you to protect yourself," Julia said stiffly. "Be careful. Why don't you go with Kyle?"
"We'll cover more ground this way," Damien said. "I have to go now."
"But—"
"Julia, I have to go."
Julia turned away from him then and walked back to the house. He felt the sting of her anger even as she retreated.
... alone ... abandoned ...
There was nothing he could do for her now. He wanted to run to her, to tell her that she was the most precious and important person in his life, that he would do anything at all to keep her safe, and this was something that needed to be done. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he would never leave her alone. But she was so angry that any words he gave her would be lost.
Instead he turned and shifted, his limbs twisting into wolf form, his body stretching into that of an animal. The scent of one of Mara's trails hit his nose. He would find her. He would protect Julia.
He ran into the forest, blind to everything except the scent of the trail ahead of him.
The territory they had already tracked was well-worn, and Mara's scent was indeed on multiple trails. Damien picked out the strongest, freshest one to follow. He loped through the forest, following the scent at an angle toward the edge of their territory. If she'd gone back to Trax's pack, this direction would make sense.
Kyle and Damien had done plenty of scouting runs to establish the edge of their territory, since Damien needed to learn the contours of the land under his watch. He was able to move quickly through the places he'd already been. This rock, that gully. He urged his body on faster, until he was moving too quickly to remember the layout of the land. He yipped in quick succession as he ran, though, and the echo of his voice off of the trees alerted him to obstacles ahead. Twice he had to dodge fallen branches that had not been there before, but his yips showed him the clear path, the path where there were no echoes.
Then he reached the edge of the territory, and Mara's trail continued past their scouting region. It was slow going in these places that he did not know, but the trail smelled so fresh that his legs often pressed him on too quickly and he fell forward, his feet scrabbling on unknown surfaces. Out here he worried about competing packs, even though there was no scent besides Mara's. The run in with Trax's wolves had showed him that purebred shifters could hide in human form without being detected by anyone who wasn't purebred themselves. He wished that Dee were with him, so that she could tell whether there were others around that he couldn't scent.
He wondered about the sensation of Calling. He was Called to Julia, but it seemed as though part of that—the simple act of sensing her presence—that was something that purebred shifters could do all the time, even with one they were not Called to. He wondered if Julia would be able to have that sense once she learned how to shift.