I’d signed up for this, so yes, I supposed it was. I refrained from pointing this out to August.
It dawned on me that instead of resolving this with violence, we could resolve it with words. Morgan was a smart woman. Surely wise, too. She’d understand that things had changed for our pack.
Besides, she’d told me to pay her a visit. I decided it was time I took her up on it.
The front door opened then, and Jeb walked in. He blinked as he took us in, bloodied towel and all.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
While I was trying to decide what to tell my uncle, so as not to worry him, August said, “Bar brawl with some Creeks.”
So much for not worrying Jeb. His light-blue eyes went as wide as doorknobs. “Creeks?”
I got up. “August will fill you in. I’m going to bed.”
As I stepped past August, he caught my hand, then flipped my arm around and inspected the wound. “Still not healed.”
“It’ll heal during the night.” I added a smile to reassure him, but it seemed to miss its mark, so I leaned over and placed a kiss on his forehead. “Don’t frown so much. You’ll get premature wrinkles.”
His forehead didn’t smooth out as I freed my hand from his grip and walked to my room. If anything, the grooves seemed to deepen. After washing my arm with soap and wrapping gauze around it, I pulled on my sleep shorts and a long sleeved tee to keep my bandage in place, then slid under the covers.
August and Jeb were still talking in the living room. I tried to stretch my hearing to grasp what they were saying, but however hard I tried, their words sounded like gibberish. Was the Sillin to blame for this too?
I pressed my hand against my abdomen. Would the tether also fade if I kept ingesting the drug?
My heart held still, then skittered, making my skin prickle from the release of rapid beats. I didn’t want it to fade.
I pressed the pillow against my face and let out a muffled cry of frustration, because I was so damn confused about everything.
If only one thing made sense . . . If only one thing could go right . . .
Mom would tell me to count my blessings, so I did. Evelyn was alive and happy. August was sticking around Boulder. My house was almost in livable condition. I was starting college on Monday. I was turning eighteen on Friday. Isobel had beat cancer.
I counted my blessings until sleep zippered over me.
27
Even though I’d dressed for the gym, Lucas texted me that there would be no working out this morning, which suited me perfectly. My arm had stopped bleeding but was in no shape to swing or block a punch. After a cup of bitter black coffee, I knuckled my uncle’s door and asked if I could borrow the van.
“Sure.” The word was garbled. He popped open his door, a toothbrush dangling from his mouth. “I’ll get Eric to pick me up. He was planning on helping me out at the house this morning anyway.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s the arm?”
“Still attached to my elbow, so there’s that.”
He took his toothbrush out, and pasty-foam dribbled out. “Is it still bleeding?”
“No.” I pushed off the wall I’d been leaning on and displayed my knitted skin. “All healed. Anyway, I’ll see you at the house later. I was going to oil the floors today.”
“Eric and I can do that.”
“You’re already doing so much.”
He let out a little snort. “Honey, I’m loving this project.”
I smiled. “I’m glad.”
As I headed for the front door, he asked, “Where are you going?”
“To campus. To pick up books I need for Monday.”
He nodded. “I keep forgetting you’re starting college. For some reason, I feel like you’re so much older.”
I felt way older too.
“Hey, it’s your birthday next week!”
I jumped from the intensity of his voice.
“Eighteen.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s . . . that’s it. You won’t need me anymore.” Sadness mangled my uncle’s tone.
“Aw, Jeb. Just because I’ll no longer be a minor doesn’t mean I won’t need you.”
His lips bent but then fell, and then his eyes became all glossy.
I strode back over and hugged him. “I’m not going anywhere. At least nowhere without you, okay?”
He didn’t speak but squeezed me hard. When he released me, I repeated that I wasn’t leaving, because he wore a look I recognized; it was the look of people who’d been repeatedly abandoned . . . who didn’t believe people stuck around.
“Love you,” he said right before I exited the house. I was pretty certain it was the first time he’d said those words to me.
“Love you too.” I was pretty certain it was the first time I’d said them back.
As I drove down the roads I knew only-too-well, I itched to phone Sarah and find out how her evening had gone, but what if she was hanging out with the Creeks and they saw my name appear on her phone?
Maybe she’d be at the inn.
When I started up the sinuous drive, my heart grew weighty with dread and something else . . . anticipation? Call me crazy, but I was looking forward to speaking with Sandra. Cassandra. I wondered why I hadn’t gone sooner.
I parked in the far corner of the employee lot; then, fully alert, I walked up to the revolving doors. The land had once belonged to my family, but not anymore. Now I was in enemy territory. When I pushed through the glass doors, I expected shifters to pounce on me, but no one pounced. No one was even here. I had to remind myself that this was no longer a public inn.
Nothing had changed. Except the smell.
The air still carried the odor of wood smoke, but it was barely distinguishable under the aroma of damp fur and warm musk. It was as though the Creeks spent more time in fur than in skin. Perhaps they did. I realized I knew more about the Rivers than I did about the wolves in my own town.
Heartbeats pounded behind the wooden walls. I heard them above me, below me, in front of me.
“Hello?” I called out, not wanting to spook anyone.
The shuffle of rubber soles had me jerking my face toward the back office. Emmy, one of the women who worked at the inn before it was annexed, froze on the threshold.
“You’re still here?”
I’d imagined she’d handed in her letter of resignation after the night the Creeks arrived.
She crossed her arms nice and tight. “Are you expected?” Her tone was so sharp that both my eyebrows jolted up.
“You’re mad at me?”
“I’m mad at a lot of people and things right now.” We stared at each other in silence for a long beat. Then, “Are you one, too?”
The desire to shake my head almost won over my desire to confess the truth. “Yes.”
She shuddered, and the row of tiny silver hoops adorning the shell of one of her ears glittered.
I moved toward her, and her body seized. She even took a step back. She was afraid of me?
“Why are you still working here?”
“Because I signed a contract.” Her gaze snapped to the entrance of the living room.
We were still alone.
“Emmy, you’re not trapped, are you?”
Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.
“Are you?” I repeated a little more insistently.
“Michaels offered me twice what your uncle and aunt were paying, so I signed on the dotted line. Skylar, she said the new management gave her the creeps, so she didn’t renew her contract. After I found out—” Her voice cracked and then tapered off. “After I found out what you all were, I told Mr. Michaels I didn’t feel comfortable working here anymore. I told him I wouldn’t talk, but he said it was too late. He said I should’ve read the fine print better.” She sniffed. “You know what the fine print says? It says that if I leave my place of employment or speak about my new employers’ nature, I would be taken into the woods. And not for a nature
hike.”
Without even realizing it, I’d moved closer to the bell desk, closer to her. “They threatened your life?”
She nodded. “Along with the lives of everyone I hold dear.” She snorted. “Serves me right for not listening to my wife.”
“Have they hurt you?”
“No. As long as I make up their rooms and clean their clothes and pick up their dirty dishes, no one bothers me.”
I rounded the bell desk.
She uncrossed her arms and shot out her palm. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Emmy! I’m not like them. You don’t have to be scared of me.”
“You just said you were one of them.”
“Just because I can shift doesn’t mean I’m like them.”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
I sensed there was no reasoning with her. “How many humans work here?”
“Four. But the other three are thrilled. I don’t think they’ve gone home once since the pack arrived. You should hear them talk. They’re all so freaking dazzled. Even your aunt. I swear. It’s disgusting how attentive she is to her new employer.”
“Emmy!” The snap of a familiar nasal voice had me whirling around. “If you’re done gossiping, Linda could use some help setting out breakfast.”
Emmy scurried past my aunt without a backward glance at me.
Lucy had slimmed down considerably, or perhaps it was an illusion cast by her choice of attire—a simple black sheath belted at the waist. As I kept staring at her, I realized it wasn’t an illusion. Her milky-pale cheeks had lost their roundness, and her freckled arms seemed too narrow for her column of bangles. Even her eyes had gone through a transformation. They carried haunted shadows, as though grief had absorbed into the fragile skin of her lids and swelled her orbits.
“What are you doing here, Ness?” she asked.
“I came to see Mrs. Morgan.”
“Mrs. Morgan doesn’t care for visitors. Especially Boulders.”
She spoke the word as though we were something glued to the bottom of her shoe. Granted, she wasn’t a werewolf, but being the wife of a wolf and the mother of another had made her just as much of a Boulder as I was.
“She told me to stop by.”
“I very much doubt that.” I started advancing, but she blocked the entrance of the living room. “You are no longer welcomed here. Leave.”
I reined in my annoyance by tightening my hold on my bag’s crossbody strap. “Lucy, I have to talk to her.”
“I’ll let her know you stopped by. Now, go.”
“Lucy?” came another voice that always made my hackles rise.
Her hazel eyes widened, and she mouthed, “Go,” again, but I didn’t heed her command.
Surely Aidan would allow me to meet with his cousin. He appeared behind my aunt and then slowly brushed past her. “Miss Clark, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“I came to see Sandra.”
“Huh.” His lips twitched, and then his fingers rose to his earlobe, and he rubbed it—one of his weird little ticks. He did it when he was nervous, but he also did it when he was intrigued. His stealthy smile told me it was the latter. “Right this way.”
My aunt—former aunt—went as rigid as marble. “Aidan, I—I don’t think it’s a good idea. We don’t know what her intentions are.”
“My intentions?” I said. “You think I came to burn down the inn?”
Her nostrils flared.
“My rose”—Aidan ran a knuckle along the pillar that was Lucy’s neck—“do not fear for our safety. You know we could snap her like a twig before she’d even have time to strike a match.”
I let out a low hiss.
Leering at me, Aidan started toward the living room but stopped and patted his thigh. “Come along now.”
“I’m not a dog,” I snapped.
“Oh, I know. I’m fond of dogs; I’m not particularly fond of you.”
The feeling was mutual.
Lucy didn’t even blink as I passed by her, didn’t even twitch, but I caught the spike of her pulse and the aroma of something cold and tinny wafting over her heavy rose-and-tobacco scent: fear. Was Lucy truly scared I’d set the inn on fire? My aunt had never been a very caring person—at least not toward me—but believing me capable of arson was a whole new level.
The leather couches in the living room had been arranged in a semi-circle around the massive stone fireplace blackened by a recent fire, and the Native-American patterned rugs had been dragged in the middle. They overlapped and were strewn with throw pillows as though the yellow-stuccoed living room had become a hippy campsite.
“You like our new décor?” Aidan asked.
I eyed him.
“I think it’s much more convivial.”
“Do the rest of your hotels look like this?”
“No. But this isn’t a hotel. It’s a family home.”
From what I could see through the glass wall of windows separating the living room from the deck was that the Adirondacks and charming teak tables had been removed and replaced by plain picnic tables, the sort with attached benches. Dozens of them from the looks of it. They were lined up in two neat rows and topped with pitchers of drinks, thermoses of tea and coffee, and platters of breakfast offerings.
A handful of Creeks were already seated, digging into the food. As I stepped out, the loud chewing noises subsided and hunched backs straightened. And then heads perked up.
Only two were familiar—the Alpha’s and her daughter’s.
“Sandy, look who stopped by to see you,” Aidan said.
28
Cassandra’s narrow jaw moved as she chewed on whatever was in her mouth. After swallowing, she wiped her lips with a napkin. “I was expectin’ you sooner.”
My heart began to stampede inside my chest. Was walking into this den of wolves alone a poor idea? Would I leave here alive and in one piece?
I lifted my chin a notch to show I wasn’t scared, hoping they wouldn’t associate the pounding behind my ribs with fear. What else would they associate it with, though?
“Can we speak in private, Sandra?”
She smiled at me. “You may call me Sandy. All my wolves do.”
“I’m not your wolf.”
Her smile strengthened, and although she didn’t utter the word, yet, I could see its shape take form on her bluish lips. She rose and stepped over the bench. A shapeless tunic that seemed made of tarp dropped to just below her knees. “Would you like to take a stroll or sit in the living room?”
As she stepped closer, I cranked my face up. I didn’t like how small she made me feel, even though being a full head taller than me wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t even wearing shoes. Her toenails, like her fingernails, were lacquered in dark polish, and her toes were stained with dried mud and crushed grass.
“I’m not a fan of shoes. I’m not much of a fan of clothes either, but I was told walkin’ around these populated parts naked was frowned upon.”
“Where you live in Beaver Creek is that remote?”
“Even more so than the Rivers’ compound. Was your trip to their domain enjoyable?”
Sarah had shared the info I surmised. I found myself gaping up at the small balconies in front of each room, wondering if my friend was standing on one of them.
When Cassandra raised her head to study the log façade, I shot my gaze away. I couldn’t have her wondering what or who I was looking for.
“A walk sounds good, but not in the woods. Right here in the clearing.”
The Creek Alpha turned the full force of her blue gaze to me. “I got no plans on murderin’ you, Candy.”
“My name’s not Candy.”
“Sorry. Must’ve slipped my mind.”
I doubted it had. As we walked side by side toward the stairs built into the porch, I heard footsteps behind us and glanced over my shoulder. “Tell your cousin not to follow us.”
“Aidan. You heard the girl. Leave us be.”
Af
ter a beat, I asked, “Where’s the rest of your pack?”
“Some are runnin’. Some are sleepin’.”
“They’re all still here?”
“Not all of them, but most stayed. They like how fresh the air is here.” She tipped her face toward the sun and inhaled slow breaths. “What’s the nature of your visit, Ness?”
“I wanted to know if your offer to sign a peace treaty is still on the table.”
She closed her eyes and pulled in another breath. “Is Liam gettin’ cold feet?”
“Liam doesn’t even know I’m here.”
Her eyes opened and set on me again.
“But my uncle knows I’m here,” I lied so she didn’t do away with me. “So . . . is your offer still available?”
Her light-brown hair, which was cut within two inches of her scalp, appeared grayer in the sunlight. “Why didn’t you become Alpha? Everest all but handed it to you.”
“Handed it to me? How did he all-but-hand it to me?”
“Liam cares for you. He wouldn’t have fought you.”
“If we hadn’t dueled, Lucas would’ve been Alpha, not me.”
“What I meant was if you’d actually fought, Liam would’ve let you win.”
I blinked as I understood what she was insinuating. “Winning would’ve meant killing him.”
“Your pack’s soft, Ness. They surely wouldn’t have required death.”
I didn’t think the Boulders were soft. Unless by soft, she meant civilized, which hadn’t been my first impression, but now that I’d met the Creeks . . .
“You don’t know that,” I ended up saying.
She clasped her hands behind her back. “Did it even cross your mind to fight for what you wanted?”
“I didn’t want to become Alpha.”
“Then why did you enter the trials?”
“Because I didn’t want a Kolane to become Alpha.”
“And yet a Kolane became Alpha.”
“Look, I’m not here to discuss the past. I’m here to discuss the future. Is your offer still available?” I asked for the third time.
“We agreed to duel.”
“Agreements change all the time.”
A Pack of Love and Hate Page 16
