“What if the ball you want isn’t there?”
“Then the choice is easy, isn’t it?”
My father entered his Lunam with a plan. When Layla called the council to confirm she was bringing her daughter to Lunam, the match was made. For him it evolved into love. Not so much for Kalysia. The matches made at this ceremony do not have to be honored. What happens at Lunam can truly stay at Lunam.
Dad and I have similar surf styles, the same awesome hair, and horrible luck when it comes to women. As fate would have it, we love women who don’t love us back. Dillan grew up knowing he was special, that he was destined for greatness. He lived that fantasy for a time. He led his pack with the love of his life by his side. Everything was working out in his favor when suddenly the fairytale crashed and burned. Literally.
“Is there a chance I’ll find someone else, a ball I wasn’t looking for?” This scares the shit out of me, but it’s a possibility.
“Only you can answer that, son.”
“What if—”
“What-if’s will kill you. Focus on what you know.”
I know Abbi. I want Abbi.
“I think the bigger question is, does she want you?” Ouch, Dad. “Have you thought about her finding someone else?”
“I don’t have to worry about that.” I’d rather Abbi stay far away from the ceremony than risk her matching with someone who isn’t me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’ve spent countless hours waxing hair off my body. Those painful sessions will be for nothing if I go to the ceremony. Yet, I can’t imagine missing it.
We’ve been off the vitamins for two weeks. According to the journals, that’s long enough for the serum to wear off and allow us to phase. In the past, any regeneration of cells, from broken bones to pregnancy, naturally killed the wolf gene. With each generation our human side became stronger, more dominant. The research showed we would be extinct in two or three decades without the serum. Nature would have run its course, ending our kind.
Then Lowell Duke studied the DNA of half-breeds. He discovered the wolf gene of a child with one human parent was not diluted. Everything they’d believed about half-breeds was wrong or false information. No alpha wanted to admit they were weaker than a beta.
Lowell injected adults with R-49, then moved to children, believing the gene would intensify by the time the child reached adulthood, creating a super wolf. His trials were cut short after the pack discovered his plan. The subjects scattered into the human world. Lowell was right. The gene did morph, it did become stronger. That is why someone like me can heal from injury and still phase.
Kalysia was lying when she said Monte created the R-249 serum. The reversal was also part of Lowell’s trials. He created it as a failsafe in case he created a wolf he couldn’t control. R-249 is also a weapon.
If taken before you phase, R-249 creates a volatile environment for the gene, breaking down its defense mechanism and killing it. Early trials showed the serum lost effectiveness over time, allowing the gene to regenerate. This is why we take vitamins and get quarterly injections. Too much serum causes the subject to become violently ill. We’ve built a tolerance to it. Jay hasn’t. That’s why he was sick at camp. Before phasing, R-249 suppresses the gene. Taking it after you phase kills it for good. Armed with this knowledge, I am ready to go to the ceremony.
My bag is packed and sitting next to the door. Mom and Dad have spent the last day-and-a-half trying to convince me to stay. They’ve offered everything from exotic vacations to a new car. The old me might have caved.
“There’s no guarantee you’ll match with Jay,” Mom keeps reminding me. “If you participate in the ceremony, you are committing to the pack. That comes with responsibility.”
“Kali, this isn’t helping.” He rarely disagrees with her. “Give Abbi some credit. Hell, give us some. If we’ve done our job right, she’ll make the right decision.”
“Our daughter is about to ruin her life, and apparently I’m the only one who cares.” She paces like a caged animal.
I fetch a bottle of water from the fridge for the road. “Don’t you have confidence in your mothering?”
“Not helping,” Dad reprimands me.
“What happens when Jay matches with another female, and she comes back with a broken heart or worse—matched with some yahoo from Shasta?”
That gets his attention. “I’m sure that won’t happen. She’s in love with Jay.”
“Dad! I do not… why do you think that?” I’m mortified he believes I’m some lovesick idiot, chasing after a boy. “This isn’t about Jay.”
“I’m sorry, you two looked happy at camp.” Jase is confused in that way dad’s get when the wife and daughter talk about boys and periods.
“Please, Jase,” Mom womansplains what is going on. “If Abbi loved Jay, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“What does that mean?” I snap. “You don’t know what I feel.”
“If you loved him, you never would have moved here,” she says.
“Love doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Love should be about compromise and balance. I don’t know if I love him. I don’t know if I love myself. If I don’t go to the ceremony, I’ll never know.”
Layla walks into the apartment with Monte. They are my only allies.
“Great, the traitors are here.” Mom tosses her hands in the air. “This wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t give her those books.”
“Kalysia, honey.” Layla takes mom by the shoulders. “You have to let this go. She has made her decision, and we must honor it.”
The Lunam Ceremony meant something different to my parents and grandparents. For Monte and Layla it was about power. For Kalysia, it was loyalty. I have my own agenda.
Dad sits beside me. “Why?” He can’t muster anything more than a single word. His pain hurts me the most.
“I need to find where I belong.” I glance around the apartment. “This isn’t it.”
“Come home,” Dad pleads. “Your room is waiting for you.”
I stand. “Dad, no. I don’t want to go back to the way things were. Meyers is suffocating me.” Everyone in the room gazes at Kalysia.
“What?” she retorts. “I gave her everything she wanted.”
“Exactly. You gave me. I want do something on my own.”
“Get a tattoo, date a biker, but don’t throw your life away!”
Her biggest fear is the one she keeps repeating. She believes I will match with Jay and end up pregnant, just like her. Kalysia has dedicated her life to me, a sacrifice she will not allow me to make to my son or daughter.
Monte clears his throat. “Abbi is old enough to make her own decisions, good or bad. It’s our job to be here when she needs us.” He gets up, motioning for Layla to follow him. “Experience has given us the tools we need to make good choices, even if that means making a few wrong ones along the way.” Monte lovingly hugs me. “You’ve always been the smartest kid in the room. Those pack of jackals need your guidance. Go. Figure out who you are. You’ll be fine.” My grandfather’s speech renders the rest of us silent.
Dad says, “Do you have a tent?”
“She doesn’t need one,” Layla tells him. “The kids are staying in the new house. Things have changed.” She addresses Kalysia. “These kids are smarter than we were. Ozzy and Raine have managed to pull it together on their own.” She glances at me. “Jay left a week or so ago.”
I try not to react, but the stabbing pain in my chest forces me to flinch.
“According to Raine, he didn’t say where he was going.” Layla is holding back. I can tell by her small smile.
“Well, then. You should get on the road.” Mom perks up.
“I’ll go check your tire pressure.” Dad leaves. Monte follows him out.
“You’ll need a sweater, it gets chilly at night.” Mom goes to rummage through my closet.
Layla pulls me into a quiet corner. “Jay will be there for the ceremony. Don’t pre
tend you don’t care. I hear the way your heart beats whenever I say his name.” She squeezes my hands. “You’re doing the right thing. You are so much stronger than your mother was, than I am. You are the best of us.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Good. Go with your instincts. By the time we were your age, the ceremony was all we knew. You get to learn everything now, as an adult, as Gaia wanted it to be. You truly get to make the choice to be human or wolf.” She lets that sink in. “For the first time since are creation, we can choose not to be a wolf. Once we know for sure who turns and who doesn’t, we’ll have more data to go on for implementing the serum to future generations.”
“Grandma, no.” I pull back. “You can’t keep using us as lab rats. I read the journals. What they did was criminal. The children—”
“Lowell Duke was a monster, when he died in the fire of 2017, the world became a better place.”
“Did you know about the broken legs, the forced pregnancies?”
“Not at first. Believe me, honey, when we took over the lab, all of that stopped. Our subjects are volunteers who receive compensation for their participation.”
Paying them doesn’t change the facts. It’s still human testing. Preying on the poor in the name of science isn’t something to be proud of.
“Promise me the testing will stop after the ceremony.”
“The longer we allow the gene to spread, the more dangerous it will become.” She pulls out her phone and scrolls to an article. “A woman in Utah claims a wolf broke into her house and killed her son. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff.” She shows me a picture of a torn bedspread, a grainy surveillance photo of a wolf running from the house, then a mangled naked body. “Here is another one, a girl claims she was kidnapped by wolves. She was found in the woods outside town.”
“Someone phased and took her?”
“No, Abbi. These kids are phasing and have no recollection of what is happening to them.”
“This is why you kept us trapped in Meyers? You were afraid we would phase?”
I think of Taylor. Carrick and Rusty had refused to let her go to art school on the east coast. They forced her to take a gap year, and she lost her spot. The day her body was found was one of the worst in my life.
“Taylor.” Her name is an accusation.
Layla swallows tears. “The vitamins were useless on her. I begged Rusty and Carrick to tell her what she was. They kept giving her the serum, hoping it would suppress the gene, kill it.”
“And it killed her.”
“The serum didn’t hurt her. The lie did. Rusty and Carrick dosed Taylor without her consent. In Taylor’s mind they took everything from her. First art school, then her birthright.”
That’s why Rusty helped Jay. He’s making amends.
“It wasn’t our intention to keep this from you, from any of you. Your mother and the others didn’t think you could handle the truth. They were scared.” I notice she doesn’t put herself in that group, but sometimes keeping quiet doesn’t absolve you of guilt.
“My mother’s worse nightmare is happening to kids all over the country. We have the means to help those innocent children.”
“The preservative will help. We’ve also created a task force to follow up on these cases. Our kind has survived for centuries. We’ve lived through famine, war, and poverty, and always persevered. The elements were never our enemy. We destroyed ourselves with greed and power. With lies and secrets. Every generation was worse than the last. We came to terms with fact that it would end with you, and I see we were wrong. The old ways have paved a new path for all of us.”
I’ve always looked for my purpose. Something I was meant to be or do. Saving our kind could be my destiny.
“Do you think I’ll phase?”
She places her hand on my face. Her eyes give away her thoughts, but she lies anyway. “I don’t know, honey, but we have to find out. The fate of our kind, of the human race, depends on it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I arrive at the ceremony site to a barrage of questions and shocked faces. None more so than Raine. As ecstatic as she was to see me, she was also perplexed. She keeps a watchful eye on Ozzy as he helps carry supplies into the house.
He drops a container on the floor to give me a hug. “I knew you’d change your mind.” He hugs me so hard, my feet leave the ground.
“”Nice to see you, too.” I pat his back to tap out of the embrace. “You feel solid.”
He flexes. “I’m an alpha, baby.” He makes a growling sound, then grabs Raine and kisses her.
“Get back to work, you show off.” She swats him away, but not before stealing another kiss.
The grand staircase if a life-size replica of a Barbie house I had when I was seven. Kids chat along the stairs, in the hallways, every crevice is filled with a body. “I didn’t expect this many people to be here.”
“Neither did we, once the word got out that the ceremony was open to everyone, people started showing up. There’s a guy who came all the way from Alaska and two girls from South America. Don’t worry, I have a room saved for you.”
“You never gave up hope?”
“I know you and your fomo.”
Raine unlocks the door with a pad on the wall. “It’s next to hers, small but private. We share a bathroom.” She points to an open door on the wall opposite the bed.
“This place is part five-star hotel, part youth hostel.”
“It could be worse. They used to sleep in tents in the woods.”
“I choose this.” I lay back on the four-poster bed that looks like something straight out of an historical romance novel.
She lays beside me. “I’m scared, Abs.”
“Of phasing?”
“No. I’m scared Oz will match with someone else. What if we aren’t meant to be together?”
“That’s not possible.”
I skimmed the books that explained phasing. Most of the archaic rituals involve a male choosing a female. What little Mom told me about her Lunam, I know it’s just as much the female’s choice as it is the male’s.
She turns on her side to face me. “Stories about mixed-matches are like the ghost stories we told around the campfire. For all I know, Ozzy could match with you.”
I pretend Raine is nuts, but I secretly wonder if it could happen, and my stomach knots.
“Lunam changes everything.” Raine makes a painful face. “Did you know my mom had a crush on Rusty when they were kids?”
“No way.”
“She used to write his name in her journal with little hearts and everything. She was so sure he was going to be hers. Then he opted out, and she matched with my dad.”
“I’ve never seen two people more in love than your parents, Raine.”
“Mom loved Rusty. She settled for my father because that’s what happens after Lunam.”
Ray is the kind of husband who makes the others look bad, they are so perfect for each other. I can’t imagine them with anyone else. Then again, my mom matched with Dillan and ended up with my father.
“This could be the last day we have together.” Tears trickle down her cheeks. “My parents are crazy in love and happily married. I know I could have that with someone else, but I only want Ozzy.”
“Then go find him.” I give her a hug.
“You’ll be okay?” She wipes her tears, then goes to the bathroom to fix her makeup.
“I’ll be fine.” I have my own agenda. “Go get your man.”
A rush of wind ruffles my hair as the door closes behind her. If she’s right, and today is the last day Jay is single, I won’t waste it.
People spill from the house to the grounds outside. This day is spent bonding with the other participants, and from what I can tell, everyone is cliqued up. I ask some guys if they know Jay. One says he was here earlier and left.
“If you’re looking for an alpha, look no further.” Dude #2 slides beside me and places his
arm around my shoulders.
“I don’t think so.”
“Playing hard to get, uh.” His douchey friends laugh. “That’s fine, but you can’t run me tonight.”
I throw his arm off of me and hurry away before I deck the asshole. What a jerk. He’s acting like the Lunam Ceremony is an open invitation to sexually harass females. That isn’t what today is about. What kind of message was sent out about the ceremony? Clearly, some of the people here have their own agenda.
“Abbi Kincaid! Get your skinny ass over here. I bet Rory five dollars you wouldn’t show.” Trevor beelines over from the door, nearly mowing down a girl holding two mugs of coffee, it reminds me of the mornings I spent with Jay. If anyone knows where he is, it’s Trevor.
“You bet against me?” I sock his shoulder.
“No, I bet on Kalysia.” He loops his arm through mine and escorts me to the dining room. “The sun is shining. The birds are singing. Can it get any better?”
“If you tell me they have blueberry pancakes on that buffet table, then yes.”
“We’re about to embark on a magical transcending journey, and all you can think about is blueberry pancakes?”
“They’re my fave.” I pull free and grab a plate. I fork three and plop them on it.
Trevor isn’t buying my blasé attitude. “You aren’t even a little excited about tonight?”
“I can’t wait to see what all the hoopla is about.” I stack bacon next to the pancakes.
He looks at a mousy girl in a gray dress on the opposite side of the buffet. “Hoopla! Hoopla, she says.”
The girl looks up, startled. It could be due to Trevor’s word assault or his purple hair. She decides against sausage and hurries away.
“Can you dial it down a notch? You’re scaring the normal people.” I pick up three packets of syrup and utensils, find an empty seat. Trevor sits opposite me. “You’re not eating?”
“I ate already.”
I look at the clock on the wall behind him. “It’s only ten. How long have you been up?”
“I can’t sleep. I’m too… AHHH!” He makes a sound that is part monster, part woman who just saw a mouse.
The Lunam Legacy (The Lunam Series Book 3) Page 15
