Slip the Skin

by Shanley, Tera

  She shook her head slowly, in denial of the awful words that tumbled from her alpha’s mouth. Who were they to give up on him so fast? They were his pack, his brothers! “You’re wrong,” she said. “He’ll come back to me.”

  A beat of silence and Ned pulled a small pill bottle from his back pocket. “Hold out your hand,” he commanded.

  She gave him the injured one to look at.

  He wasn’t, however, healing her. Instead, he popped the top and upended it until a small, unassuming metal ball rolled into the palm of her hand.

  The pain was instantaneous, searing her skin like the fire of the sun, and she screamed as she dropped it. Scrambling as her wolf fought like some feral inner demon to escape, she cornered herself and gritted her teeth against the flames lapping her flesh. Ned, that rat bastard, had hurt her on purpose! She looked in terror while the welt on her palm turned black as layer after layer of her skin glowed like embers and faded. “Why did you do that?”

  “Because I wanted to show you what killed him, Linden. That,” he jabbed a finger at her pulsing black injury, “will scar you for the rest of your life, while that,” he pointed to Graham’s teeth marks, “will be a dim memory in two hours. It’s silver shot, and the hunters last night weren’t just out to shoot at the local wolf population. They were hunting werewolves and they did it right. We lost three of our pack last night. Three.” He twitched his head toward Graham’s cage. “Might as well have been four. You’re going to have to move on and I wanted to give you a reminder of what took him. He took six shots trying to give you time to get away last night. The damned fool attacked them instead of running. Six shots blasted through his body, two of which stayed lodged in him until we could cut them out and they burned and scarred his insides like that did to you.”

  She looked in horror from the lips that formed those words to the snarling, bleeding wolf in the cage. He’d endured unimaginable pain. Excruciating pain that he was likely still nursing and he’d done it for her. The shots might as well have pierced her heart and she sank to the floor.

  “Ned,” Tristan said quietly, kneeling in front of her and showing the alpha his neck. “Go easy,” he said, voice pleading.

  “She needs to get it out of her head he can be saved. She needs to know exactly what happened so she can move on without dragging this pack’s bond through the gutter. It’s better than coddling her.” With that, he left, taking the stairs two at a time. At the top he paused. “Say your goodbyes to him, Linden. He’ll be gone within the week.”

  “What will they do to him?” she asked Tristan. Her voice was choked and quiet, but he’d hear her.

  He still kneeled in front of her, facing away like he didn’t want to see her face. “They’ll release him into the wild. He’ll thrive there. Find a pack or stay a lone wolf, I don’t know. He can’t live his life here like this, caged. The wilderness is the only place big enough for him now.” Turning, he gave her his profile. “I’m not attached to many people in this world, but Graham was different. If I had friends, I’d say he was my best one. I’ll go with Ned, make sure he puts him somewhere Graham will be happy the rest of his days.” He turned and looked at her with the loss she felt swimming in the emerald hue of his eyes. “I swear it.”

  And with that he left her alone with the snarling wolf who used to love her.

  Chapter Four

  If anyone could help Linden sort through this kind of pain, it was Mom. She’d been to every doctors’ appointment, treatment, and surgery she’d had in the years she’d fought for her health. Mom had known heartache like this when Dad died. She’d been strong and stoic in the face of the annihilation of her heart, and Linden could use her words of wisdom now. She was spiraling. Maybe she’d drift forever until nothing good about her remained.

  Tristan shifted furtive glances her way in the cab of his pick-up truck, as if he were afraid she’d burst into flames at any moment. Maybe it was the smell of despair she seemed to be giving off. In the small space, her senses were filled with the grief and it set her own wolf on edge. And she’d seen Tristan around the other wolves. He was dominant, likely ranking as high in the pack hierarchy as Graham.

  Graham.

  His name was a saber, long with a deep cut that resonated through her severed heart.

  Tristan’s eyes churned silver when next he looked at her, but what could she do about it? She could no more control her grief than she could the blood that pumped her veins.

  When at last he pulled up to the curb of her childhood house, one that skirted the city, his hands were clutching the wheel like he’d never let go.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she murmured, gifting him with a quick exit.

  As she shut the door behind her, the sound of the window lowering turned her around.

  “Linden,” he said, in more growl than man’s voice. “It won’t always be like this.”

  “Is this the part where you tell me it will get easier?”

  Silver shadows churned in his eyes like the depths of some ocean undercurrent. “No, it won’t ever get easier. You’ll just get used to the pain.” With that, he pulled away, tires sliding on the snowy street.

  Maybe every werewolf understood her pain. Their lives were uncontrollable, volatile. Men, Hell Hunters, the pack called them, stalked and killed their friends. Killed their families. That was her burden now too, she supposed.

  Looking up at the home she’d grown up in, a sense of safety washed over her. This place had always been happy. Mom had made it that way. No matter what had been going on with whatever grim prognosis her doctors gave her, she would come home, Mom would pop popcorn and play a movie that would make them laugh, and for a little while, she was normal.

  She’d give everything she owned to feel that way again.

  “Linden?” her mom asked through a beatific smile as she opened the door. “I thought you guys weren’t coming until Sunday.”

  Linden didn’t say anything, just ran to her and folded into her open arms.

  “Oh honey,” Mom said over her sobs. “Was the change so bad?” Mom knew all about her being a newly turned werewolf. That was the term she’d set with Graham. If Mom knew what she was, then Linden could cope with it. “Come inside and you can tell me all about it, okay?”

  As Mom bustled around the kitchen preparing tea, the light played up the hundred hues of gray in her hair. Linden had put them all there, no doubt, but the color was actually beautiful on her. It played up Mom’s striking gray eyes, so much like her own.

  “It’s Graham,” she started, the words tearing from her lips like parting with her own flesh. “He’s dead.”

  Mom spun and dropped the porcelain cup in her hands. She couldn’t seem to find her words and sat slowly at the table across from her. And so she told her about the first change she’d gone through, from human to wolf. She told her of the happiness she found, and about the hunters. All of it. And when Linden showed her the burn on her hand, silent tears slipped down Mom’s eyelashes and kissed her cheeks.

  “I can’t feel our bond anymore, Mom,” she cried. “He’s gone to me forever.” Body wracked with weeping, she lowered her head to the table and cried for everything she’d lost. She’d had a second chance at life because of Graham. She loved him absolutely because he was everything she’d ever wanted and she’d finally been able to give herself to someone. She let him have all of her because she finally had time on earth to love a man like he deserved. And God! Now he was gone. Never again would she see his laughing blue eyes, or the dimple that only came with smiles she’d earned. She was doomed to walk this earth without him and she wished he’d just let her die with dignity like she’d prepared to. Not like this, burning from the inside out until she was as charred and ugly as the welt on her hand.

  He’d been her silver shot. She just hadn’t realized it until this moment.

  Damn him.

  Damn him for making her feel again and damn him again for throwing his life away for hers. Her love had killed the best
man she’d ever known and she’d walk this earth a shell because of it.

  Empty. Her life was doomed with emptiness.

  “Linden, quit it,” Mom said.

  She sniffled. “What?”

  “Have you given up on him completely then? Just like Ned? Just like Tristan? You won’t fight for him anymore? That doesn’t sound like my Linden. My Linden went through years of pain, fighting. Years of doctors poking and prodding for a chance at an extra day, week, month. My Linden is a fighter.”

  “But Ned said he’s gone. No human can survive what he went through, Mom. Ned said I have to move on.”

  Crossing her arms, Mom cocked an eyebrow. “Sounds like he doesn’t know Graham like you or I do. Your mate is like you. A fighter, a brawler. And maybe it won’t work. Maybe he’s gone for good, but are you going to let him go without trying?”

  Linden stared at her, unable to form a single coherent word.

  “The answer is hell no,” Mom offered. “Hell no are we giving up on him.”

  And that right there, that’s what had made Linden a fighter. She’d had the best trainer in the world.

  “Say it,” her mom said, leaning back into her chair.

  “Hell no,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “That’s my girl.”

  Chapter Five

  Linden’s phone trilled for the third time in a row and she glanced at the screen before hitting ignore again. It was Meredith, her best friend since age zygote, but she was right in the middle of speed grocery shopping and would have to call her back.

  It rang again. “Geez, Mere,” she muttered before she answered the call. Maybe it was an emergency if she was calling this much.

  “Stop screening my calls you skank,” her friend said with a smile in her voice.

  “Well, I’m going to call you back but I’m in the middle of something. What do you need?”

  “What I need to know is why you’re buying so much flank steak.”

  Linden frowned at the copious amounts of packaged red meat in her cart and scanned the store. Meredith leaned casually against rack of powered donuts with a Cheshire cat grin on her pretty freckled face like she’d been standing there for a while.

  Something lifted in Linden. Meredith always had a way of lightening the mood and she hadn’t seen her in a few days.

  “But really, why?” she asked again as she approached Linden’s cart with a scrunched up face.

  “Ummm—.” Somehow Linden didn’t think explaining that she was buying red meat to coerce her werewolf boyfriend to turn back into a human and care about her again was something Meredith would let go gently into that good night. “Barbeque?”

  “Lies, Linden, and you suck at them just as much as when we were kids. If this is some party for your new weird biker friends you are trying to get out of inviting me to, forget it. I’m coming.” She held up her phone with a map and two green dots on the screen. “I have an app to track you with. I’ll find the party and crash.”

  “Dude,” Linden breathed, squinting at the small screen. “That’s so stalkerish.”

  “What? No it’s not. I have you and Lauren and Diana on it. That way, if we’re in the same part of town, I can find you and we can randomly hang.” Her perfectly arched, strawberry blond eyebrows lowered. “Well, it wasn’t stalky until you looked at me like that.” She pouted her lips at the phone screen. “Now I feel weird.”

  “Walk with me while I shop,” Linden said, pushing the cart toward the produce section. She’d at least make and effort not to look like she was stockpiling beef for an apocalypse. Maybe if she put a few normal items in her cart, Meredith would lay off glaring at the meat with that thoughtful look that said she smelled a rat. “You know, you don’t have to track me to hang out. We’ve had lunch three times in two weeks. I’m not avoiding you.”

  “You had a doctor’s appointment the other day. Remember? I was supposed to go to your treatment and you never showed up. I just sat in the waiting room forever and even the nurse said you never confirmed your appointment. What’s going on with you, Linden?”

  Crap. She was lower than low for leaving Meredith high and dry. She wasn’t sick anymore, and had no way of explaining that to her best friend and now she’d totally forgotten about an appointment. Meredith was awesome enough to offer to go with her while Mom attended one of her friend’s weddings, and she’d stood her up like a bad blind date. “Mere, I’m so sorry. I—,”

  “I’ll forgive you if you tell me what’s going on,” she said in a rush. Pulling Linden’s cart to a stop, Meredith clamped her hands around her wrists and searched her eyes, pleading. “Please.”

  Aw man, she was in it. She couldn’t tell Mere anything about her new life. It was pack rules and it was dangerous. If she ever mentioned it, the entire pack would be at risk, her included. But more than that was the worry over the Hell Hunters. They knew things about her pack, things they shouldn’t. Who knew what they would do to get information from anyone associated with them? Spilling the secret could get Meredith hurt, or worse.

  But the worry in her best friend’s eyes tore at her already frayed heart. She was messing this up big time, and couldn’t figure out a solution that wouldn’t hurt her worse.

  “If I tell you a big part of it, will you leave it at that, and trust that it’s all I can tell you?”

  “No, I want to know all of it. What’s happening? Why are you hanging out with bikers all the sudden?” Her voice dipped to a whisper. “Is this one of the symptoms?”

  “No.” Linden searched the empty aisle they’d stopped in. “All I can say is that I’m not sick anymore.”

  Moving forward, she escaped Meredith’s grasp and pushed the cart toward an end cap of refrigerated carrots. The wolf inside of her stretched and complained at the addition of vegetables to their pile of meats, and she squeezed her eyes tightly closed in hopes of not outing herself to Meredith as a monster.

  “Wait, so you’re saying you don’t have a giant tumor in your brain anymore.” Now she sounded annoyed and definitely not amused.

  Sighing, Linden turned. There was no escaping her tenacious friend that easily. “Nope, no more tumor.”

  Mere’s eyes narrowed to angry green slits. “Is this a symptom? This conversation right now? Because we went through the denial phase together, like, three years ago.”

  Linden’s eyes must be just fine and not churning silver if her friend wasn’t running away screaming, so she took a deep breath and leveled her a serious look. “The night of your holiday party? That was a goodbye night for me. Dr. Latham said I didn’t have much longer where I would be coherent. It was way worse than I’d let on to you and the girls. I’d been blacking out for weeks and I would wake up in the weirdest places. I couldn’t drive anymore and sometimes I couldn’t control my body. My days were numbered, and I knew that night was the last time we’d have to go out and have fun. I’m telling you, Mere. Something happened that I can’t talk to you or anyone else on the planet about. I’m better. One hundred percent cured. No more Toomy.”

  With a tiny lip tremble, Meredith cocked her head like she couldn’t believe something so wonderful. “Are you shitting me, Ashby? Because if this is a joke, I’ll beat Toomy to it and kill you my damned self.”

  Linden lifted her little finger. “I pinky promise.”

  Meredith’s eyes rimmed with moisture as she stared at the childhood oath she offered. Hesitantly, she hooked her little finger around hers and shook it, just before pulling her into a crushing hug. She didn’t say anything, and Linden understood. Mom and Meredith had been there from the very beginning, suffering with her and suddenly they didn’t have to do it anymore.

  “So,” Meredith said with a sniffle. She pulled away. “Are the steaks for a celebration?”

  “Relentless,” Linden accused. “Yes.”

  “Liar.”

  “Well stop asking questions so I don’t have to lie! This is enough for now, okay? I’ve given you the only answers I can.”

 
One nod and Meredith gave a cheery smile. “Lunch tomorrow?” she called over her shoulder as she sauntered away.

  A grin cracked Linden’s face. “Lunch tomorrow,” she agreed.

  For the first time since she’d known Meredith, she’d actually given in easily.

  Chapter Six

  How much meat could a werewolf eat? Well, Linden was about to find out.

  Hefting the floral bag with the raw steaks, which smelled disturbingly delicious, she marched up to Ned’s door and have it three crisp knocks.

  He answered the door in cotton sweat pants, a white tank top that showed off a plethora of tattoos up one arm, and a grimace. The last was aimed at her.

  “It’s ten o’clock at night, Linden. What do you want?”

  “Hey roomie,” she said, squeezing past him.

  “Roomie?”

  “Yep. I’ll be bunking in the basement with my boo. Holler if you need me,” she said, marching to the door that led downstairs.

  The front door slammed behind her, but she didn’t slow her escape. Maybe if she disappeared downstairs, he’d forget she was there.

  “You aren’t staying here,” he said, following her down.

  “Oh yes I am. I’m going to bring Graham back for you. You’re welcome. And while I’m doing my part in bringing dead pack members back to life, you can do yours and sniff out the traitor among us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Graham went wild when he saw them, snarling and snapping, and in the pain of seeing his cold and empty stare, she rounded on Ned. “Do you think those hunters just happened to be in the woods on the night we were scheduled to run, with silver shot in their rifles? No. Someone gave us up. Someone in the pack is leaking information and you need to find out who. I suggest you start with finding out why. That usually leads to who done it.”

  Arms crossed in a sign of complete alpha stubbornness, he scoffed. “And how would you know this? Reality television. You one of those crime movie watchers?”