27

It was like a thunderstorm gripping my body. Thousands of little bolts of lightning stole through him and my heart pounded in my ears. They were more intense where my body touched Grayson. I leaned my head against his shoulder and let in what everyone was raving about.

The intensity of feelings his touch left behind was like nothing I had felt before. It was like a tsunami that rolled over me and I could hardly believe what was happening to me.

"Pebble," he whispered over my head and I just managed to nod weakly. His hands slid down my body and firmly gripped my trembling thighs, lifting me up.

I quickly wrapped my legs around his waist and listened to the footsteps that carried me back into the house. Grayson laid me on the sofa and looked at me with concern.

"I'm fine, very fine," I whispered. He felt my forehead and put a blanket over me like I was sick. Maybe it was me, because I was in love.

"I didn't know how to tell you," he murmured, kissing my forehead and placing the stone in my hand. He still had it and I wondered what it was about.

"I wasted my time with that," he murmured. "We're very close to where I first felt you. At first, I would pass the time waiting for you to come next time. You kept coming, but never close enough. Then I had I built the house after spending so much time here."

Feelings of guilt replaced the intoxication my body had just been in. I felt my heart flutter and the lump in my throat building.

"It's all good, Pebble." He gently stroked my forehead and sank down on the floor next to the sofa.

"They are everywhere here, not just in the lake. One was under my hand when you ran away." The words came so softly from his lips and yet he didn't say what I had done. I didn't just run away. I had left him dying.

"Grayson,--"

"Wait, Tara," his voice rolled low and dark across the room. There was no hate or blame in her. Still, I wondered how he had survived all this, if we were close to the borders here, the nearest town was very far away.

"I was hoping that with every stone I kept throwing I could forget you when you didn't come back. I didn't succeed." Grayson laid his head in my lap and his fingers caressed the rock, the pebble, as he called me, in my hand.

"I didn't expect you to come back last year, but you did and now I know why it took so long. You were in St. Vincent of Ice, that year. Still, you came back," whispered he.

I nodded silently and pushed back the tears that were relentlessly building up in my eyes. His eyes were on my hand and his fingertips gently ran over the back of my hand and took the small stone from my hand, which I was holding on to convulsively.

"I was just as shocked as you were when I first felt you. It was one of my regular patrols when you suddenly showed up. I've had a few weeks more than you to get used to the idea that mine Mate was a Stone." He might mean well by me, but the way I'd met him, he wouldn't have left me if I'd been in one of the traps.

"I didn't know at the time that the traps were poisoned," I murmured, as if excusing everything. "My beta didn't tell me until later," I mumbled.

"Me neither, you can't smell the poison that immediately paralyzes your body. It even forces you to transform back." I remembered the image that haunted my dreams so often.

"My beta said it's deadly," I murmured. "I always assumed that you--" I couldn't say it, nor did I want to think about it. "My family sent me to Alaska after the incident. It wasn't my decision," I blurted out.

"Yet you came back," he murmured as if it were straw he was clutching at. I didn't know what I would have done if he had stood in front of me then instead of Caspian. I had asked myself that so many times. I came because of him and met Caspian.

"I was so mad at Luna. I blamed her. I couldn't understand why she tormented us like that with you Alaisters. First my brother, then me. I mean you know what happened to my brother's mate," sobbed I. "I am so sorry."

"What exactly? That we were born into our families' strife? That their hatred caused us all nothing but suffering?" Grayson shook his head and took the stone out of my hand. "You're here now, that's all that matters Pebble." He slipped the stone into his pocket and gently stroked my cheek.

"Do you know about me?"

"No," I said in my mind. I was so ashamed of myself. Alaiser or not, my brothers would never have left anyone hurt in the woods. Eventually I would have to tell them and who knows what would happen then.

"Yours?" I asked back.

"Well, you already know Trevor and Taylor. They were there when you met Caspian."

"I thought you were there and then you weren't," I replied, thinking back to the day.

"Well, we're very similar in smell, so we hid it when we got to uni. Must be some quirk of twins, triplets. They even share a mate sometimes." Grayson had turned his head towards the ceiling so that I could only see his profile.

"I told Trevor and Taylor about it first. Actually, it didn't really need to because they felt it straight away. I told my father and my brother Wyatt about you that same evening. The excitement about it was,.. rather one-sided. "

"I can imagine, and I gave them the reason why, too," I murmured as Grayson started rolling the little rock on my stomach.

"They didn't allow me to go to you. On the contrary. From then on I had constant companions, cordoned off borders, guards stopping me. Until the day I thought I was smart enough and then something rushed after you."

"How did you survive that?" I whispered. I sat up and Grayson looked over the edge of the sofa at the lake.

"There is something special about us in the family. We heal a little better than other wolves." I saw him struggling to tell me something, but it was okay if he didn't. I was glad it was.

"Good genes then," I sighed. "Never thought I'd say that about an Alaiser." Grayson looked at me and the gloom between us eased a bit. He came up to me on the sofa and pulled me into his lap.

"You and Caspian, how did that happen?" I asked, finally putting everything between us behind.

"He took every wolf who was there when he met you to Paris. Since I'm a set of triplets, I had to go too, even though I wasn't there. I knew about it from Trevor and Taylor, anyway. I thought at first it was just about keeping secret all the things you threw at him." It kind of made sense. Caspian didn't want anyone to know I was his mate.

"I didn't expect to ever see you again, so easy to see you again. When we were in Paris it seemed like we were going to stay there forever, at least until I finally saw you by his side. When it was said, we'd have to go to St. Vincent of Ice to protect you, it couldn't get any crazier."

"You thought it was casual how we met again?" I wrinkled my nose a little. I remembered how he put his heavy hand on my shoulder after I stood in front of the university for hours in the cold. How he was always with me from day one.

"Why did you come back here again, Tara?" he asked me, hugging me tighter on his lap like I was about to run away again. I knew he wanted to know if it was because of him or because of Caspian. I also realized how difficult it was for him to ask me that question.

I brushed his blond curls away from his face and turned on his lap so that we could now look into each other's eyes. I wondered what was going on in his mind, how he endured being with me these last few weeks.

"Why do you think I returned to the place I left you? To find someone else?" My words grew bitter as I realized what I was saying. In the end it was exactly like that, I met Caspian there instead of him.

We looked into each other's eyes for a long time, neither of us saying a word. It would have been so easy to look away, to deny the guilt that nagged at me. I've regretted a lot of things I've done and in a strange way I wouldn't be here if things hadn't turned out that way.

"And Trevor and Taylor agreed with everything?" I asked, trying to finally understand everything. Right from the start, the two were much more open-minded and carefree in dealing with me.

"Of course not," Grayson laughed, taking my melancholy away. I had never heard him laugh so heartily, nor did I think he could.

"But now they love you for it. If you hadn't run away, they would have met Esme and Jade much later or maybe never. Maybe they'll tell you how they called you names when we drove there and how they made you up in a second loved the next one when we got there." Grayson's shoulders vibrated under my hands as he started laughing louder and louder and I couldn't help but laugh.

Trevor and Taylor seemed like the most carefree men I had ever met. They were the opposite of Grayson. Always in a good mood and carefree. Esme and Jade were the complete opposite, scanning their surroundings for potential danger wherever they went. The two would not have it easy with them.

"Don't you listen to everything big brother asks of you?" I teased him.

"Actually, I'm the youngest of the three of us." Grayson pulled me to him and slipped his hand under my shirt. I flinched at the sudden and unfamiliar touch.

"Let me just enjoy it a little," he murmured. "Just a little before my big brother gets here," he grinned into the back of my neck.