Chapter Seventeen
Jillian
Life was looking better all the time. Better than I’d ever expected. Or thought I deserved. After living all alone for years and struggling to get by, I had a housemate who not only had cut enough wood to last us through five winters, he was using his earnings to supplement our needs. He wanted to just give me all he earned, but I refused. It wouldn’t be right.
Still, in a relatively short time, my efforts to make our little home cozy were overshadowed by his offerings. The little table and chairs remained in the corner, but my poor excuse for a bed and his pallet on the floor had been replaced with a queen-sized bed and a trundle that pulled out from underneath and popped up. I tried to get him to sleep in the bigger bed, since he was much taller than me, but he refused. Lots of refusing going on. And self-denial.
Because truthfully, I wanted to share that queen-sized mattress with him. Every evening, as we sat on the comfy love seat—another new addition—in front of the fire, the heat between us grew until it was all I could do not to fling myself into his arms and demand he do...things to me.
I did know what men and women shared in privacy, but I’d never actually indulged. For some reason, it seemed to be a rule that no one could date me. And I hadn’t questioned it. One more mystery surrounding my existence as a member of this pack. Once or twice I thought about leaving, okay maybe more often than that, but it always came down to a question of where I would go. Functionally illiterate, and unable to speak, my communications were limited. I had no job skills to speak of, even if I’d been able to. At some point, I’d decided I was just one of those people fate had it in for. There was something intrinsically wrong with me, but no one wanted to tell me what that might be.
These thoughts followed me throughout my days, and today, as I traveled the forest, searching under fallen leaves for early growing herbs and other things hard to find in the later part of winter, was no different. Just one more long stretch of self-doubt amplified by the knowledge I was holding Dean back in his new life due to his association with me.
Something I couldn’t allow to continue.
I had turned around to head home, my basket only about a quarter filled, when the crunch of boots on leaves froze me in my tracks. The section of woodland I traversed was rarely visited by anyone. Which was one of the reasons I usually did better at finding what I sought. Wolves and humans alike tended to crush delicate herbs and fungi. So I spent my days off the beaten path. I hadn’t run into another person out here along the pack lands border in months. Looked like that was about to change.
“Who are you?” The man who stood in front of me demanding information was tall and muscular, his features unrefined, and he wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans that looked as if they hadn’t been washed in many wearings. His boots, however, were solid and reasonably new.
I could have gone around him, but he had managed to approach me in just the spot where the trail was narrow and the underbrush thick. I could have gone back, but that would have taken me away from the direction I wanted to go. Everything in me insisted I run for the safety of my home.
“Just tell me your name,” he insisted. “Then I will move.”
What the unholy hell? I wished I could call for Dean who was, last I heard, working with a crew plowing a field on the opposite side of the lands. All the men participated in that activity. So even if I could scream his name, he’d never have heard it.
“Name, girlie.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a tree to his right. “Or do I need to be more convincing?”
If I had reason to believe I’d encounter anyone, I carried at least my little pad with me, and a pencil, but way out here? Anyway, even if I could talk to this jerk, or write to him, I wouldn’t want to.
“Look, I don’t want to upset you, but I am looking for a young lady about your age. So...if you would kindly tell me who you are, maybe we can clear all this up.”
Enough. I had to get going, as far away and as fast as possible. Otherwise, we’d be standing here all day or until he did something worse. So I spun on a heel and took one step before the man’s hand closed around my upper arm.
“Just say something because my patience is going away fast.” His grip tightened. “Maybe I should just take you with me until you decide to talk. Your highness.”
I was struggling hard until those last two words. Not a thing he’d said up until that point was anything but rude, negative...so why the royal snipe?
But before I could react again, the hand was ripped away from me and I was sitting in the brush on the side of the path.
“You’re trespassing, and if I see you around here again, I will make sure you are escorted off in the least comfortable way.” Dean had the stranger in a headlock and was marching him back the way I’d come, toward the edge of our lands. He was berating the man who protested that he thought Dean’s wife was a battle axe, and Dean said that’s not my wife and the man asked who it was...and then they got too far away to hear well.
Your highness?What did he mean by that? Wasn’t it enough that I was no one without taunts that made it worse?