Page 6 of Wolf's Fate

The sudden ringing of my phone made me scream in fright, and it clattered into the sink as I dropped it. Scooping it back out, it took me two attempts to answer it.

“Royce?” I stared at my reflection as I answered the call.

I heard his huff of relief. “Is the house clear?” he demanded.

“I haven’t gone into my bedroom.”

“Why hav—” I heard him cut himself off as he took a deep breath. “Willow, are you armed?”

I saw the surprise on my face as he asked the question. If I’d ever wondered in the past how I would react in a stressful situation, the answer seemed to bestares at herself in the mirror.

“Willow?”

His sharp voice brought me back to the present. Again. “No!” I lowered my voice. Stupid really. If they were still here, they heard me the moment I came home. “I don’t…don’t have a gun.”

“That’s fine. I wouldn’t expect you to. Get a knife.”

A knife? That meant I would need to be close to them. Suddenly a gun seemed more appealing, and now I knew I had lost any sense of normality because I was considering the benefits of buying a gun.

“Willow, go to the kitchen and pick up the biggest knife you can.” His tone was calm and patient. It made me feel normal. Caleb would have shouted, which would have also been welcome.

“Okay.”

Once I was armed, Royce asked me if the back door was broken or damaged, and when I told him no, I could almosthearthe look he would have shared with Ned.

“This wasn’t Caleb,” I told them, walking to my bedroom door.

“Willow—”

“I know him.” It was my turn to talk over Royce. “I know when he’s been here. This isn’t him. I’d feel it.”

“Or she’s delusional because she’s in love with him.” Ned’s snort of contempt and low murmur probably wasn’t meant for me to hear, but that didn’t mean I didn’t.

“I’m not in love with him.” I was outside my closed bedroom door. “Do I open it?”

“Yes.” Royce hadn’t become distracted from the situation at hand. “Don’t be a hero,” he added.

If that was his advice, I should have gone back outside and called the police. Not gone and got a knife and then lingered in my hallway, bracing myself for whatever, orwhoever, was inside my bedroom.

“I’ll never be the hero,” I whispered, realizing I needed a hand to open the door, and my options were to let go of either the phone or the knife. I stared at the chef’s blade in my hand and could hear Caleb in my head, telling me that I was more likely to cut myself with it than anyone else.

Bending low, I placed the knife on the floor.

Straightening, I put my phone in my back pocket, still on the call to Royce. My door swung open slowly, and had I not been in this moment, I would have remarked on the added dramatic effect. However, right now, it only added to the building anticipation that there was someone in my house waiting to kill me behind this door.

There wasn’t.

There was, however, a clear indication of how they had gained access to my house, because my bedroom window was open as far as it would go. Like my studio, everything was shredded. Literally shredded in this room. Feathers from myduvet still floated in the air, and I knew that it was because I’d just opened the door.

I didn’t check my bathroom because I knew I was alone. I wished I’d known that before I called for help. I would have still called, but I wouldn’t have had to admit I hadn’t checked my house first. But then curiosity got the better of me to see if they had done anything in here. The bathroom cabinet hung off the wall, it had my hygiene products in it. Tylenol and tampons covered the floor I wasn’t sure what my sanitary products could have possibly been hiding, but I stooped to pick up the discarded tampons from the floor.

Remembering they were waiting for me to confirm my situation, I fished the phone out of my pocket. “There’s no one here.”

“You need to call the police.”

“You don’t want to come here? See it?” I felt weirdly disappointed.

“We’re coming,” Royce confirmed. “But you need to call the police and report this.” He let that sink in. “Have they taken anything?”