“Of course. They’ll probably have a dozen pizzas. And some token tidbit for us.”
Madison grinned as she turned her back to the coffee maker. “So Isaac’s not the only one who can eat a pizza in a sitting and start looking for afters?”
“Definitely not. It’s a family trait.”
“So, the rest of you…” She glanced past me, along the counter to Jed, skulking at the doors, then back to me. “You’re human, and are others also half and half? Or only Isaac?”
“Half? They’re all shifters.”
“Right, but intermarrying parents? Like him?”
I had to think about that. I glanced around at Jed, who was frowning. “I’m … not sure what you mean… Like half human and half shifter?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no. Such births are possible, but it’s rare.” I faced her more, hoping Jed wouldn’t spot the heat in my face. “If there are offspring, they’re not shifters. One reason their numbers are so diminished.”
She looked at me for a beat, brows creased, checked behind and switched off the machine, then regarded me more. There was some sort of communication problem here and I sensed her working on it as well, though neither could quite solve it.
At last she said, “But … Isaac is.”
“Isaac is what?” I asked.
“Half human and half shifter.”
I shook my head, though also smiled a little—catching on. “Ah … he probably told you that trying to soften the blow. If he was, he wouldn’t be able to shape change.”
“Oh. Perhaps you’re right…” She did not look or sound even slightly as if she thought me right. “It’s only … that was the one thing he told me about in detail. About his parents and how he came to be where he was, as far as university and location, and who he was. This was when he first tried to explain. When I couldn’t decide what he was playing at. He told all about his mum, the human, and father, the … wolf person. How she’d had no idea he would be able to change, then wasn’t prepared for it, all that. It was an elaborate story to invent, but you must be right. If it doesn’t work like that maybe he had the story all ready to tell me to … whatever you like. Soften the blow, I suppose? Seem more normal, more human, saying he was half and half?”
“I guess so.” I had to look around again. “Unless I missed something?”
Jed shook his head, scowling and not looking at me. “It’s not possible.”
“That’s what…” Madison stopped, herself now apparently concerned. “I’m sorry. Never mind. I need to run upstairs. I’ll grab something when they’re back and go. Thanks, Cassia.”
She hurried from the room with her coffee, heading up the creaking stairs with her cat following.
“What was she going to say?” Jed cut a look to me, still glaring.
“That’s what Isaac said, maybe? Told her it was rare?”
“Not rare. It’s impossible.”
“How do you know?”
He opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, gaze darting around the room.
“Just because you’ve never heard of it? I bet no one else has ever heard of shifters living as total wolves in a forest in England.” I drank, looked outside, sighed. “It doesn’t matter. If Isaac wanted us to know something like—”
“It does matter.”
“What?” I glanced at him.
His voice was hushed, vicious. “If it’s true, if it’s possible, if he is one, it does matter. If he’s not even a wolf? If he’s deceived us—all the Sables? They’d throw him out—”
“What?” I repeated, shocked, unsure whether to laugh or gasp. “What on Earth…? He changes shapes, he’s a full shifter as far as anyone is concerned. What difference could it possibly make even if—?”
“What difference could it make to the pack to find out he’s not actually a wolf? That’s sharp ice—”
“It’s just prejudice!” I didn’t mean to raise my voice, but I was shocked, not to mention angry. I set down the cup, facing him. “If it quacks like a duck—”
“It’s how the pack would feel!” Jed wasn’t exactly shouting either, but voice loud and aggressive. “Not that it matters because there’s no such thing. But if—”
“If it were true it would be a miracle, Jed. Although I can see why, if there are wolves like him in the world, they’d keep it quiet. Goddess, what is wrong with you? I’m human—”
“Human. Not a hybrid—”
“Yet you all follow me.” I opened my left arm, not able to do much with the right.
“You personally have nothing to do with what he may or may not—”
“Nonsense. You don’t think it would bother me to think you’re bigoted about the idea of someone being half wolf and half human who comes across as a shifter? How do you feel about the child of a wolf and human who can’t change?” Now my voice was shaking. Along with the rest of me.
“Nothing wrong with that.” Quieter but still angry, his breaths fast. “That’s how it always works if there are offspring. The ability to change only passes through pure lines.”
“Pure lines?” Something melting, changing, tangling up inside me, warm becoming cold, light becoming dark. “Is that what bothers you with the idea that someone could look and act wolf, but really be ‘contaminated’ by human blood? Not be pure? Be able to fool you? Goddess … Jed…” Voice dropping with my stomach. “You’re sounding like a Nazi.”
“It’s not about that. It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no such—”
“That’s what it sounds like it’s about. Polluting a race?”
“This is mental.” Shaking his head violently. “There’s no such thing. He’d have told her that for the same reasons you said. He’s not really a hybrid.”
“Honestly … that’s becoming beside the point for me.”
We looked at one another—silent, barring heavy breathing—while something in the air between us shattered slowly to earth.
Jason pulled open the French doors, making Jed step away. Jason would not have left Kage, even for a moment, on a whim. Had he actually heard the words through the doors and out in the garden, or only the angry voices?
He looked around and stepped toward me, sideways, putting himself between us. Though the motion was subtle, perfectly normal that he might step to me, it wasn’t lost on me.
“Cassia?” His own voice soft, as if for my sickbed. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”
I don’t think he’d heard the words. Or only snatches—not the underlying story. What was the underlying story?
I’d kept thinking how I wanted to know more about these people. Who they were, what they did, what they believed, their values. Although I found their general prejudice about other forms of shifters disturbing, I admired plenty of other aspects of their isolated culture. At the end of the day, I’d thought we were all pretty much alike. Maybe not in the little things, but in the important ones. This, though? What was this?
I kept looking at Jed, kept feeling that break, something hollow in my stomach mixed with something else sharp in my chest.
The front door opened: the lunch collectors returned, bringing smells of basil, garlic, and sausage, talking to one another about the food.
Jed turned from us to get a pizza box. Jason still watched me.
I shook my head. “It’s okay, Jason.” Yet I didn’t feel hungry anymore.
Chapter 19
Isaac had news that successfully distracted me from a tense moment. While they’d waited on our lunch, a man named Orion had called him. A druid who lived near Dumfries, Scotland. Just over the border and a mere hour and a half from here according to Isaac.
“He’d had a call from Rowan. He says he’s heard of reavers and he’s talking with other druids about it,” Isaac said as he stepped back for others to grab boxes and bags, each deciding what they wanted purely by smell of a box. “He’ll ring back, or, in addition, he invited us to come up there. Would you care to go in the morning?”
“O
h, I don’t know… Doesn’t it feel like an imposition? I’ve wanted to see Scotland for years but now might not be the time.”
Zar handed me a light box that must be a salad.
“It seemed he was hoping to meet,” Isaac said. “Perhaps to hear more of an update on any progress we’ve made. More than Rowan could answer. He said … there’s been another death in the druids.”
“I see.” I shut my eyes for a moment. “Then he has even higher expectations of us than we have of him. All right. We’ll do our best to help each other. When he calls back tell him we’d be happy to come up there in the morning.” I looked for a fork, which Zar also handed over. “Madison is upstairs. She has to run back to work. I told her there would be enough for her to share.” A questioning look at the end and Isaac nodded.
Lunch did smell wonderful and I found I could once more get behind the idea, trying not to think about Jed and almost succeeding in the face of this news about the druids.
I followed Jason outside as he held the door for me. One large pizza and my spinach salad with walnuts and goat cheese between us. The pizza was loaded with meat, not a green pepper or olive in sight, but I took a slice as well with the salad.
We sat again on each side of Kage to eat. He’d eased over on his side and Jason had a flap of the blanket draped over him so his shaved wounds did not get sunburnt.
He sniffed, opened his eyes, but didn’t even lift his head at the pizza arrival. He was on a liquid diet for some time to come with his insides just having been patched together. For now, anyway, he didn’t seem to have an appetite, so miserable with pain—and dazed from the medications trying to cut some of that pain.
While I started to eat, Jason lifted a slice with his non-dominant right hand, chewed and swallowed a bite, then set the slice back in the box. He leaned over Kage’s face on his knees, breathing gently into Kage’s nose and giving him his greasy right hand.
Kage’s nostrils quivered as he sniffed his breath. He clasped Jason’s hand in his jaws, licking the grease on his skin. The blanket twitched from a weak wag of his tail.
Jason kissed the top of his muzzle and sat back to eat with his left hand, leaving the right to Kage. Even then he ate slowly. Human normal, but at a sickly pace by wolf standards, watching Kage all the time.
I didn’t agree with Jason on many points, including aspects of his relationship with Kage. Now, in these past days since we’d returned to England, I’d been gradually learning a whole new respect for that relationship. I may never figure Jason out—what lay at the heart of a dark star, and this particular brilliant mind—but that didn’t seem to matter lately.
We ate in silence for some minutes before I indicated my dressing cup in the box. “Would he like to smell this? It’s olive oil and balsamic.”
Jason withdrew his hand from Kage’s mouth. “Let him smell your breath so he can read what you’ve been eating. He likes that.”
So I bent also, breathed at his nose, and offered him my left hand with a dab of the oil on a knuckle.
Kage sniffed, licked my hand, and took it in his mouth, biting down in a tired sort of grip.
I stroked his head and soft fur of his ear with my right fingers, held close by the sling. “You saved my life. Again and again.” I kissed the fuzzy ear. “Thank you.”
He shut his jaws a bit harder on my hand, holding on when I sat back. I also watched him.
“Mouths are hands in fur,” Jason said after a pause. “It’s the only way we have to pick something up.”
I looked at him, but all his attention was on Kage. “Jason?”
He was still slow to look up.
“I’m sorry,” I continued when he met my eyes. “That me coming along has been hard on you. I’m sorry the communication hasn’t always been great between all three of us and I haven’t been more sensitive to your feelings. And I’m sorry this happened to him because of me—because he put himself in front of me. He’d never have been trapped like that without me there. I should have stayed back from him at the beginning. I knew that. But somehow I fell in love and I hardly saw it coming. So I’m sorry for that because it’s not been fair to you. And despite all of that you’re here: helping me be a better companion to him when you don’t need to.”
Jason looked at me, and Kage, for a long time and didn’t say anything.
Finally, he nodded. He rested his hand on mine, a couple fingers also in Kage’s mouth. In his silence, his acknowledgment—raising no objections—and his touch, it was the first time in weeks I felt completely certain he was being honest with me. Kage shifted his jaws to hold onto us both, eyes shut, and wagged his tail.
Yet it didn’t last. Someone inside was yelling.
Chapter 20
Obviously, I’d known Jed was angry. I also knew he could be nasty in skin—having heard disturbing comments from him in the past and also been the target of aggression. If he’d called someone out on something this personal and sensitive four weeks ago I would have been upset—not surprised. As it was, I was what they might call gobsmacked. Not to mention slow even to figure out what was happening.
Madison was gone—based on all the boxes having been cleared from the table and Storm being at the door where she must have just left. Jed had waited until everyone ate and she’d headed back to work, then apparently demanded to know from Isaac if it was true.
They were all in the kitchen: Isaac, Jed, Zar, and Andrew, voices raised, only Andrew silent. But what made it harder to figure out what was happening was that they’d slipped partly into Lucannis.
“Think about what you’re saying! It’s not possible!” From Zar, then I couldn’t follow.
“Right, ‘not possible,’ so why’s your fur on end?” Isaac snapped.
Lucannis from Jed, savage. Zar shaking his head, eyes wide, stricken. Even Andrew, though he said nothing, leaned back against the sink as if to get away.
Isaac answered again in English. “I’m not here to educate you. Think whatever you—”
More from Jed. I wanted to drag him out back and shake him by the scruff of his neck. Why hadn’t he just kept his fur on?
I stopped at the door, Jason beside me, looking from one to the next, taking in the story.
Intervene or not? All adults. This was an internal conflict. I didn’t even understand why the distress over this issue. No one was trading blows—yet—and I was also so angry myself at Jed as it dawned on me what he’d done that I knew I couldn’t contribute anything to help. I was just as pissed off as they were. Although not scared the way they were.
If you heard the tones, watched the faces and body language, you’d have thought Jed had started the altercation with something like, “So you’re actually the killer.” Not, “Is it true you’re part human?” Definitely scared.
“—made a mistake?” Zar mixed his languages.
“Of course.” Isaac’s voice dropped, low and scathing. He bunched his fists. “I only knew the woman for about two decades. I’m sure I just misread the signs. I bet she was a wolf and I never noticed. And, hell, she never noticed either.” Throwing up his hands. “Probably she adopted me and I didn’t know—”
“That could be—”
“Or perhaps I was grown in a laboratory, a genetic experiment by the well-funded mundane research group WOLFF—Wealth of Learning for our Furry Friends.”
Jed cut in with something else in Lucannis, clipped, sounding like an order.
“No!” Isaac shouted back. “I wasn’t adopted! Do you think when I learned to change I didn’t have a nose? Do you think I never tried to confirm that? I wasn’t fucking adopted! I’m not fucking mistaken!”
“Then you’re not a wolf,” Jed snarled in English.
“Not one like you. Thank Moon and God. Why do you think I was in the south in the first place? Because the Mountain Pack knew and they wouldn’t have me! Because they’re like the two of you!” At Jed and Zar. “You claim to hate Zacharias, yet you’re exactly like him. You’re bloody hypocrites and closed
-minded isolationists—like all the old Sable families who value a mate as close as possible to their own gene pool and a black pelt over brains or character. Mugraturs—” Almost spitting the last word, he turned from the kitchen, stalking down the hall for the front door.
I knew the word, yet it didn’t click for a second. Zar and Jed’s surname: a very old Sable name literally meaning “black pelt.”
“Isaac?” I walked past the brothers and the kitchen table. “Not alone. We may be watched. None of us should be—”
The front door slammed.
Andrew, who also still had his shoes on, snatched his phone from the table, slipped past me, and jogged after him.
I turned from the mouth of the hall to see Jed, Zar, and Jason staring, looks of mingled shock, horror, and rage playing from face to face. All dark faces, coppery skin, jet black hair: all the true old Sables. I was pretty certain they weren’t upset about the insults to their pack, though.
Jason muttered something to them in Lucannis, a question, while Zar nodded and Jed answered with a few snarled words that sounded like an insult—I caught busipa. My own anger flared afresh at this.
“Stop it,” I snapped, addressing Jason.
He flushed and dropped his gaze, still standing in the doorway. “I only asked … he’s saying he’s part human?”
Zar nodded to me instead. “That’s what Isaac said, Cass. But he can change so he’s not—”
I held up my good hand in front of my chest. “Before you continue, you should know that if you say anything along the lines of how human blood contaminates pure, perfect shifter blood it could have devastating consequences on our relationship.”
Zar swallowed. “Cass…”
“She called me a Nazi,” Jed said, still in a growl, but quiet now.
“I did no such thing,” I said. “Only that you were sounding like one.”
“And I didn’t say it was contamination. I said it wasn’t possible,” Jed snapped.
Jason was shaking his head. “It isn’t.” I’d never seen those two in agreement. What a time for it.
Moonlight Whispers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 8) Page 11
