Savage Hunt

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: The lake house

Tillie

It felt like the air around me was changing as I drove along the road that led up to the lake house. I didn’t know what it was about this place, but it always filled me with a feeling of coming home. A sense of peace that I didn’t get anywhere else. It was like just being here in the woods, close to my stepdad’s childhood home, was recharging my mental batteries.

Thick trees lined the roads and even though I wasn’t driving slow enough to see them, I knew that there were all kinds of wildlife creatures in the forest. It made me think of the wolf that I had seen last night.

Well, wolf wasn’t quite right. She was a shifter and Jason had told me her name was Mira.

Were their shifters out there in the woods, watching me now? I hoped there wasn’t. I didn’t want there to be, for now, I just wanted to relax and not think about anything that had happened yesterday and this morning.

The people closest to me had lied to me and even though I had told Charity that we would be fine. I worried that we wouldn’t be. She was a shifter and had kept that secret from me. My best friend had known that she was sending me off with two wolves last night and she hadn’t told me.

It stung.

Yes, it had been my choice to go with them. And I was a big girl, but I didn’t have all the information she did. I didn’t know what they were and a heads up would have been nice. If the roles were reversed, I didn’t know if I would handle things the way that she had. I didn’t have any secrets from her and it hurt that she would keep something this big from me.

I didn’t want to lose my best friend over this, but it was something that we were going to have to work out. Just like there were things that I was going to need to work out with Travis, Jason, and Ryan.

Letting out a long sigh, I reached over, rolling the windows down to let the cool afternoon air feel the car. The air smelled crisp and clean, with hints of the forest that surrounded me. My hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of my head and the wind whipped around me and I took a deep breath, trying not to think about wolves, shifters, and everything else that could be out there that I was learning were real.

I pulled into the driveway. It was a bit overgrown and I was going to have to come out here sometime soon and trim the trees back. The two-story log cabin came into view and I felt something inside of me relax. The wood was stained a deep dark brown and the shudders were painted a deep shade of green that made it just feel perfect. The way that it sat framed by thick pine trees looked picturesque.

Just seeing the lake house made my worries feel a little less like they were overwhelming. It brought me a sense of peace that right now I needed. Since my mom and Scott had gotten married when I was a teenager, we had spent a lot of summers here. The cabin was much too big for the three of us and mom wouldn’t be giving Scott any children.

It wasn’t something that had ever seemed to bother my stepdad. Which I appreciated. It wasn’t that I didn’t want my mom and him to have any kids. I just knew that she couldn’t. My birth had not been an easy one and a mix-up had happened during my mom’s cesarean. She would never be able to have any more children after the doctor had removed her uterus.

Growing up, I wished that things could be different. That something would happen and mom would get pregnant and be able to carry the baby to term so that I could have siblings. She never acted like not having more children bothered her, always telling me that I was more than enough for her. But I couldn’t help but wonder if she could have more, would she?

Scott had always told me that I was his daughter. That if he could have had one with mom, he wouldn’t have asked for anything different. Well, maybe one that talked back less. He had never pushed mom

about adopting or anything else like that. He was the best father figure that I could have asked for and he always made me smile when he joked around with me. There were plenty of times when I wished that he could be my dad.

I knew that this lake house had been passed down to Scott from his father and I wasn’t sure what he planned to do with the house when the time came for him. I hated thinking about it being sold off and a part of me hoped that he would leave it to me. That i could live out my dreams in this house.

Waking up every morning and having coffee on the porch while watching the sunrise over the lake. How the leaves turned into beautiful shades of reds and golds when the weather grew cold. It made me long for autumn and cold evenings sipping chai tea

while I sat on the porch swing.

Would Jason like that? Would Travis and Ryan? The three of us cuddled together on the porch, a blanket thrown over our shoulders to fight off the chill that would come into the air as the wind blew over the water. Watching the sun rise and set was one of my favorite things about being out here.

I knew that I could spend the rest of my life here. Well, job permitting, I could spend the rest of my life here. I knew Tristian was cool with me taking a few days off. I doubted that he would be cool with me working remotely from the cabin. Or even if the internet would hold up to the zoom calls that I would need to make.

Shifting the car into park, I killed the engine. Leaning over the steering wheel to look up at my parent’s lake house with a smile on my face. It was good to be here again. If I did end up staying there, I knew that I was going to figure out a way to pay Scott back.

Maybe I could find someone who knew how to fix cars and see about starting payments to them to help him fix his Mustang?