I didn’t intend to let down our pack. Still, I glanced over her shoulder.
Luke wasn’t even looking at me. Instead, he appeared to be speaking to the driver.
I turned away just in time to feel the heat of his gaze swipe across my body. Then tires rolled across pavement and even that contact was gone.
THE RIDE HOME WAS STILTED and formal. I shared what I’d found—or, rather, what I hadn’t. Grace countered with a rehash of her conversation with the lady of the house.
“You look familiar. I know your mother,” my twin mimicked in a high falsetto. The social falsehood was funny because both of our parents had been dead for nearly a decade. Neither of us cared to laugh.
After all, Bastion was now failing in the exact same manner. A text from Justice offered the information that Bastion had been awake and alert an hour earlier. Now he was alternating between chills and heat flashes. Grace had been right to hurry us along.
By the time the cabbie dropped us off in our motel’s parking lot—refusing to take our money since Luke had already slipped him payment—the silence had coagulated like dried blood between us. Grace grabbed my hand and pulled me into the dark indentation by the ice machine where the overhead light had burned out.
“Strip,” she demanded.
“Can’t I at least go see Bastion?”
She shook her head, eyes glimmering reflected starlight. Her tone was as cold as the cubes of frozen water chilling in the bin.
“And, what, use your knife to solve his problem? Just like you pulled a knife in the middle of a black-tie affair?”
So Grace had seen me rescue her from the groper back at the Smythewhites’. But I’d been trying to help, not hinder. How had that made her so mad?
“It’s not a knife,” I rambled, trying to solve a problem that didn’t make sense to me. “It’s a dagger. Sharp on two sides rather than one.”
Grace snorted so delicately I barely heard the exhale. “You sound like Justice.”
For half a second, we were united in amusement over our pedantic cousin. Then, just as quickly, she hardened her tone.
“All Bastion needs from you is a pelt. He needs it soon and he needs it charged. You’re wasting time.”
Ten years ago, I would have snapped back. Would have called Grace on her bitchiness, maybe donned my skin and grappled with her until one of us ended up on the ground.
Now, though, our connection felt as tenuous as a spiderweb. Grace had no pelt to transform her into a scrappy animal and her lack was my fault.
So I bit my tongue and stripped. Stacked my weapons to one side, my clothes to the other.
“Did you at least see what happened to end the party?” I asked as goose bumps rose on my exposed body. It shouldn’t have been cold, not during the dog days of summer. Still, I rubbed my arms, trying to chafe in a little warmth.
“Some girl swan-dived off the second-story landing.” Grace shrugged. To her, the fate of a stranger was irrelevant in the face of our own family drama. But my body chilled further as I guessed who the girl had been.
What sort of desperation pushed a teenager into prostitution? And why had she hung around after being dismissed by Clarence?
Because, in retrospect, I was 90% sure the voices that made me knock my head on the bottom of the guest-room desk the first time had belonged to those two teenagers. What had happened during the twenty minutes between the girl leaving Clarence’s room and her death?
“Did you see...?” I started.
But Grace shushed me. “Go.” Her tone brooked no argument. Like Justice earlier, she refused to even look at me.
The memory of ten years ago rose between us, a lesson and a challenge. I’d failed the pack then. I wouldn’t fail them a second time.
So I dropped the thread of our conversation. I wrapped the warmth of my pelt around me. Then, four-legged, I ran.
RESIDUAL HEAT FROM the day had baked into the tarmac. Between that and my fur coat, the air had turned oppressively heavy. Shivers forgotten, I was panting by the time I made it to Jimmy English’s home.
I’d come here in an attempt to make myself useful, following up on a text that had arrived while I was wrapped up in Bastion’s agony the previous day. Slim had fumbled the catch, and I was the chosen fall guy.
“He jumped out the window and skedaddled,” my collaborator had griped. “What gives? If you want to be paid, next time stick around for the finish.”
I’d been cast out of my den to charge up my fur, so I might as well hunt the missing bail jumper. To cool myself down, I took my time sniffing for Jimmy’s presence beneath the treehouse. Underneath each window. In front of all the doors.
The wife beater’s scent was there, but old and cold. He hadn’t returned since yesterday evening. Instead, the musk of his anger slid across the lawn then faded into rubber at the edge of the road.
Jimmy had a vehicle. Or a friend willing to provide pick-up service? Whatever the reason, my nose wasn’t going to be able to follow that scent any further.
Still, criminals often stick to the familiarity of their own neighborhood. So I set off to run sweeps up and down nearby sidewalks, paying particular attention to alleys dark and deserted while doing my best not to set off too many outdoor dogs.
And at first, I thought that’s what was trotting toward me. A dark shape. Four-legged. A dog who’d slipped his leash or jumped his fence to enjoy a night of freedom.
Only...he ran with the lean grace of a hunter. His scent was subtly wild.
That was no dog. That was a wolf.
Chapter 8
He came at me sideways. All paws the size of dinner plates and eyes full of predatory intensity.
My heart pounded. It was too late to flee from his aggression. Instead, I stood my ground, the air so thick I could barely breathe it in.
And...the wolf didn’t jump me. Instead, at the last moment, he swerved to sniff at my hindquarters. Hot breath between my legs....
I spun. Bared my teeth. Barked out a comment. Rude.
He backed off. Head cocked. Ears pinned. Ruff lowering.
It was as if we spoke two different languages. He’d said “Hi” in Polish, I’d chewed him out in Chinese.
And in that instant, I understood that this wasn’t a woelfin. This was one of the skinless. The strange were-beasts we steered so carefully clear of.
Because werewolves—their term for their kind—were animal-like in their social structure. They formed ungainly mobs rather than tight family groupings. One alpha led them rather than four co-parents.
In human terms, they were a dictatorship. I backed up a single step. Carefully. Slowly.
He came after me. Teeth nipped at my shoulder. Catching fur. Tugging skin.
It didn’t hurt. It tickled.
I skittered back another step.
Now the skinless was swirling around me like a dervish. How could a beast so large be so light on his feet? He tangled me up in my own body. Twisted around until we bumped hips and necks and shoulders, until I fell down on my rump in self-defense.
Only then, when I couldn’t take advantage of the lull to sprint for freedom, did he shed his pelts. Well, no, that wasn’t right. The skinless didn’t have pelts—that’s why we called them skinless.
Instead, one moment he was wolf. The next he was human.
Tall. Broad. And thoroughly familiar.
This were-beast—this werewolf—was no stranger.
The wolf who had waylaid me was Luke.
I RECOGNIZED HIM. BUT apparently my lupine form was impenetrable.
“Who are you?” Luke knelt beside me, as touchy-feely human as he had been lupine. His fingers rubbed behind my ears as if I was a pet pooch.
I wanted to snap at him...but the contact was blissful. I leaned into it. Felt my fur mat against his naked knee.
And the heavens opened. Rain fell in buckets. His skin was slick in seconds, yet I barely felt the droplets seeping into my fur.
Lightning flashed. Thunder rumb
led. I remembered my family and was suddenly drenched.
I stood. Shook myself. Now that was rudeness. Still, Luke didn’t retreat a single inch away from the furry spray.
“Shift,” he suggested, water dripping off his cheekbones. Water from the sky combined with water I’d pelted him with. But he didn’t complain. Just added: “I want to talk.”
I shook my head. No way. This guy was too deep in my life already for someone who lacked a twin. Plus, there were reasons upon reasons why woelfins steered clear of the skinless.
Top of the list? Whispers of what werewolves could do with woelfin pelts. Murmurs of swiped furs—just like those belonging to my family. Powers the skinless stole when they donned our skins.
Luke must have sensed my reservations, although he couldn’t guess the reason. Because he raised his voice to be heard above the water cascading down a nearby storm drain. “Are you shy?”
His nakedness was lost in the thunderstorm darkness. Mine would have been also. But I nodded, taking the easy out. Knowing he’d feel the movement of my head up against the side of his leg.
Because I’d pressed back up against him after shaking myself free of water. And he hadn’t twitched away from me. Instead, he knelt rock steady despite the fur that must now be plastering itchily against his skin.
“Hey, I get it.” Honey slid into Luke’s tone, just like it had when we three stood outside the Smythewhite residence. “It’s tough being a lone wolf. I don’t have a pack either. At least not yet.”
For a moment, we were united, even though a skinless’s pack was nothing like a woelfin’s family. Still, family was family. Mine was broken. His was absent.
But maybe Luke wasn’t feeling what I was feeling. Because he rose then, my muscles tensing into a bone-deep shiver the instant his leg lost contact.
Rain had chilled me while I wasn’t paying attention. Only Luke’s heat had maintained me.
That heat was gone now.
His fingers reached toward my ears again, and it felt like I was drawing close to a fire. Then the damp cold returned as the same hand withdrew without a touch.
“I’ll turn around,” Luke offered instead of further contact. “How about that?”
His eyes bored into mine. Human, he shouldn’t have been able to see in near darkness. I should have been the only one with animal senses. The ability to smell beyond my wet fur and peer through the stormy night....
But wasn’t that one of the strengths of the skinless? No pelt, so they maintained their wolfishness even while walking upright. Their human nostrils and eyes worked as well as those of a wolf.
“All I ask is your word that you’ll stay long enough to speak with me. On your honor?”
I winced, slapped by the unintentional reminder of the name I’d so unwisely chosen. I wanted to argue that my honor was no longer worth betting on.
But Luke was waiting for an answer...and he couldn’t know that I was a woelfin. So, slowly, I nodded.
Luke’s smile was like the sunrise. He turned around while the storm picked up speed all around us.
The roar of rain on rooftops covered the clatter of nails on pavement as I beat a hasty retreat.
Chapter 9
It was dawn by the time I made it back to our motel, dirty and damp and dragging my feet. Memories I’d worked hard to squash now swirled around me like the storm that had recently blown over. Four parents gathered pridefully in our orchard with me in the center of both woelfin and trees....
“Have you chosen?” That was Aunt Promise, my cousins’ mother. When I was five, I’d begged to be the first to choose my self-name, and she’d made me an oath that I would be given that opportunity. So here we were, a decade later, with me leading my cohort in the ceremony of self-naming.
Moral of the story? Woelfin lived up to their names.
Not that I was thinking of Aunt Promise’s name when I turned fifteen and embarked on the self-name ceremony. Instead, I stood tall and proud. Bare feet on top of my pelt to ground me even though it was cold winter. Bare head open to the sky so I’d always keep a clear mind.
“I’ve chosen.”
“And what have you chosen?” Even Papa’s eyes smiled. He’d selected “Bright” as his self-name long before my conception. Every day, he brightened our family’s lives.
“Honor. I am Honor.”
A whoop of joy and agreement rose from my parents, my twin, my cousins. Ten years ago, I’d danced with the joy of their pride in me. Now, my pads scuffed against the pavement, my self-name soiled by betraying Luke’s trust.
It wasn’t the first time I’d put the good of my family above my personal honor, but this lapse stung deeply. Which may explain why I rounded the corner of the motel and started up the steps toward the second-story landing without once looking to see where I was going.
Of course, motel rooms have doors. And doors require hands to open. Soon, I’d need to shift if I didn’t want to stand outside barking and hope my family noticed before the neighbors did.
So I dragged my gaze off my claws...and froze as I took in the sight of a man leaning up against the outside of the door that shielded our temporary den.
HE WAS SO INTENT UPON whatever he was doing that he hadn’t seen me even though his body was twisted in my direction. As a result, I was granted a perfect view of his mini-potbelly...along with the bulge beneath his left arm that could be nothing other than a holstered gun.
The man was short, barely taller than me, and what I could see of his face seemed familiar. Still, I was more interested in the small black cylinder sandwiched between the door and his open eye.
A peephole reverser. A cute little gadget I had in my own possession, used to see the wrong way through a supposedly one-way peephole. Cheaper doors—like this one—were more likely to give up their secrets.
What was this almost-stranger doing prying into our den?
At the moment, though, his reasons for snooping were less import than my reaction. Mr. Potbelly hadn’t noticed me, but he might at any moment. So—slowly, silently—I backed down the stairs, padded across the parking lot, and made my way up the staircase on the opposite side.
Here, I paused long enough to regain my humanity. Yes, I could attack the guy in wolf form and have him running so fast he’d wet himself.
But I wasn’t into scare tactics. I craved information instead.
So I knotted the legs of my pelt tight around my waist to partially shield my modesty, ignoring the way the tension made my human calves twinge. Then I stepped lightly across rough concrete. Three doors away, two doors, one door....
Mr. Potbelly was half a foot taller than me and significantly heavier, but I was used to those physical disparities. As a woman, I depended on agility and speed and—in this case—on the element of surprise.
The peeping tom’s left arm was lax against his side as he used the other to grip the peephole reverser. Working fast, I snaked one hand up under his shirt to grab the gun....
“What?”
Predictably, he spun to face me as the weapon slid free of its holster. Less predictably, I used his momentum to my own benefit.
Pistol safely clasped in my right hand, my left hand bit into his wrist as I sidestepped his charge toward me. His body thudded into the motel wall, potbelly forward.
And, for the first time in hours, I smiled. The arm I’d grabbed was twisted upward so high even a kid could have restrained him. No wonder Mr. Potbelly swore so loudly that my family came pouring out.
BASTION WAS BY MY SIDE in a millisecond. Not the Bastion I’d left the previous evening. No, this was my familiar partner, strong and quick and brimming with health.
“Gun?”
I handed it over, adding my own request: “Zip tie?”
The thin plastic restraint exchanged hands in the opposite direction. Snick, snick, snick. Bumps slid through the rectangular opening until the end pulled all the way tight.
The man, whoever he was, hadn’t stopped struggling. But, between us, Bast
ion and I pushed him into our room and closed the door in less time than it would have taken to brush my teeth on a busy morning.
Problem neutralized for the moment, I stepped back and eyed my favorite cousin. Bastion looked so much better that I found it hard to take in the changes. His cheeks were pink, not from exertion but from vibrancy. His motion, as he tossed Mr. Potbelly onto a bed, was lupine smooth.
Bastion was also tuned in to me in the way we’d been before his health deteriorated. I raised my eyebrows in question—what happened? How could he be so healthy?
“Later,” he mouthed before jerking his chin toward Grace.
Unlike Bastion, my twin was just the way I’d left her—which is to say surly. Still, she tossed clothes at me while Justice finished latching the deadbolt.
Family accounted for, I slipped into shorts and a t-shirt while considering the man who’d been spying on us. “Who are you?” I asked, shivering as I realized I was asking him the exact same question I’d fled rather than answer two hours earlier.
Focus. I raised one eyebrow, Bastion’s cue to lift Mr. Potbelly off his face then perch him in a semi-seated position at the edge of the bed.
And now that I got a look at the spy head on, I knew the answer to my own question. He was familiar. In fact, I’d spoken to him quite recently.
But Bastion was the one who named him. “Slim?”
This was the local bounty hunter who’d pulled me in to help track down Jimmy English. The one who’d interrupted the domestic altercation two nights prior then lost track of the perp.
“You won’t get away with killing me too.” Slim’s chest puffed out, like a wolf trying to cover up his own terror. But his eyes slid sideways to where Bastion held the handgun laxly at his hip.
“Killing? Too?” I frowned. “You’re going to have to start making a little more sense.”
Slim’s bluster dialed up its intensity. “Don’t act innocent. I saw it in the paper. You’re not going to make me lose my license. I have proof that you were there....”
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