by Kat Kinney
And as she lay her head against my shoulder, I realized it was possible to love a thousand versions of a person. That love wasn’t a singular moment, a first kiss, a first dance or a first time making love, but endless and infinite as there were stars in a wide-open Texas sky.
“You’re perfect,” I whispered against the soft hollow of her throat, kissing a pale freckle that rested just over her collarbone.
Her eyes widened. Swallowing, she stared down at me, expression guarded, vulnerable. Her hesitation hit me like a gut punch. I might be ready to say the words, but she wasn’t ready to hear them. Not yet. Not like this. I would have to find a way to fix everything still standing between us so that we could have the future she deserved.
* * *
FriesWithThat: Okay lovebirds. I reactivated your vests. Two life bar penalty.
BabyGotBake: Looks like we got caught.
Me: Not too late to check out of this Caldwell exercise in madness early. I’m thinking cheesecake. We can see how much of your apartment Fancy’s destroyed.
BabyGotBake: Are you seriously trying to woo me by renaming my cat? Is that even a thing?
Me: How about we put her in the middle of the room and see which one of us she comes to.
BabyGotBake: Pretty sure cats make you their bitch, not the other way around.
Over the next fifteen minutes, I got into a firefight with August, which had me down to two life bars, but managed to ambush River and Guillermo in the middle of a standoff, taking my brother out before he could find cover. And yeah, he was probably going to send his Tracer buddies to my house in the middle of the night, but who the hell cared? Lacey and I were going to go back to her place, make sure our cat hadn’t developed a phobia due to the seventeen bowls of water she’d left out, and spend the rest of the night getting lost in each other.
I was just crossing the creek where it forked off west towards the lake when my target vest buzzed with a hit. Cursing, I ducked low and spun, trying to get a bead on my attacker. A few craggy trees twisted their bare branches up towards the night sky. The jagged face of the limestone bluff to my right was strewn with boulders. Beyond it, wild ranchland. Had to be the bluff.
My vest buzzed with a second hit. Checkmate.
“I’m out.”
“Never give up the high ground.” My mother emerged from behind the closest outcropping.
I held up my hands. “You got me. Nice trip wires, by the way.”
“You saw them. Maybe I’m getting sloppy.”
“Or you taught me well.”
A smile played at her lips. But only briefly. “How’s that shoulder?”
I dropped my head. “Mom—”
“Shirt.”
Sighing, I stripped off my target vest, then the shirt. “It’s fine.”
“Did Naomi examine this?”
“How did Brody answer during the pre-interrogation? Cause I’ve heard it’s important to keep your answers straight.”
Ignoring me, she probed the muscle, then guided my arm up, testing for range of motion. “Did you let her call one of the pack doctors from Austin?”
“It was already closing. She put in stitches. Given that we have no idea what the vamps infected Lacey with, or who could be involved, we didn’t want to chance reaching out to another pack.”
My mother tossed me my shirt. “Naomi is an excellent veterinarian and has saved more than one life in this pack as a first line medic and EMT. But she’d be the first to tell you that some injuries are beyond her level of skill. The Austin packs both have surgeons. The last thing you need is to have an injury this serious heal up wrong and cause you problems down the line.”
“Dad never trusted doctors from outside the pack.”
“He was raised not to trust anyone. You weren’t.” A beat. “I guess there’s no need to ask if you and Lacey Blair are together.”
“Wow, Mom. Really?”
“Is it serious?”
“You and I talk every week. Pretty sure you already know the answer to that one.”
A ribbon of cloud passed ominously in front of the moon. “So end this stalemate with Ethan.”
“Okay. Good talk.”
“Shifters don’t like to share. The need to mark, to possess, goes against every instinct in our wolves, especially in males. But it’s creating division within our family and the pack. Brody said you didn’t even stand with the rest of your brothers at the ceremony today.”
“Glad to see Ethan has no shortage of people ready to make excuses for him yet again.”
Her eyes held mine. “If you think I’m proud of what your brother did, you’re wrong. But it’s done and he’s with Hayden now. And holding onto all this anger is only going to hurt you in the end.”
Here’s the thing. Ethan and I hadn’t always had it out for each other. At first, I’d even been excited about the idea of him coming to live with us. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how his being around all the time shifted the dynamic in the house. We began to get into squabbles. Stupid kid stuff, really. He’d take the last hotdog at dinner or I’d step on his drawing paper, which was always scattered all over the bunkroom we shared with West. And every time, my dad would come down twice as hard on me because apparently Ethan was too special to be punished.
I played football in the fall, baseball in the spring, and continued to pull in A’s. Ethan got into fights, failed classes, and glowered all through dinner. And each and every time he screwed up, our dad wrote him a pass. I began to resent him, resent the preferential treatment he always seemed to receive from our parents that I was never the recipient of. But most of all I resented that Ethan had managed to turn me into the black sheep in my own family.
Looking back on it now, I knew my parents had been trying to help my brother through a difficult transition from foster care into our family. I shouldn’t have been such a dick. I couldn’t even imagine what he’d been through in the years before he came to stay with us. If I could have gone back and shaken some sense into nine-year-old Dallas, hell yeah, I would have. But I’d been on a trajectory I couldn’t escape, feeling more isolated from my family with every day. And back then, I didn’t have anyone to turn to for help.
My mom listened, worry lines forming in her brow. “I will never forgive myself for not stepping in when your father took you out to the barn that night. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, there is no mistake I regret more than that one.”
I closed my eyes, that night roaring back, the pressure of my dad’s power forcing me to submit as everything in me screamed for it to stop—
“I don’t want to talk about that night.”
The thing with Lacey? It didn’t matter that transmitting the virus shouldn’t have been biologically possible. It didn’t matter that we’d used protection and that she was the last person on earth I would ever have dreamed of hurting. It didn’t matter that, contrary to everything my dad would later shout at me, I not only grasped the gravity of how badly I’d screwed up, I was sorrier than he would ever know. In the end, Lacey Blair had been forcibly changed at my hands. She would never get a second chance. And so I didn’t deserve one.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, I resented that had I been Ethan, it would have been granted anyway.
“I think we need to talk about it. You’re in pain. You’re still reliving that night somewhere in the back of your mind, even if on the surface it seems to everyone else like you’ve moved on.”
I clawed a hand through my hair, saying nothing.
Ethan thought he had it so bad? Try getting shipped off to Canada and not hearing from your dad for four years. Try arriving home at twenty-one to a town you barely recognized and a family that treated you like you were radioactive. Try finding out that even though you were the one who used to get up at dawn to make everyone in the family French toast drizzled in syrup, powdered sugar and fresh raspberries, your parents set up the kid they adopted from foster care to inherit their coffee shop the day he turned twenty-fiv
e. That once again, you were an afterthought.
Ethan thought he knew what it was to be an outcast. I was the one this family had thrown away.
But that wasn’t even the worst part.
“I busted my ass opening that food trailer. It took all the money I’d earned working up in Calgary. I barely slept that first year between running the smokers, showering at West’s and driving around to work sites. And I don’t care that I had to start over from nothing. I just wish even once Dad would have acknowledged I was trying. That I wanted to get back on the right track.”
“You know I was proud of you. Your father was, too.”
“He had a hell of a way of showing it.”
That second-hand food trailer sold out of brisket, chicken, and pork every day by 2 p.m. By the time I was twenty-four, I was able to get a construction loan to build The Rusty Spoke. My entire family showed up to opening day. Everyone that is, except for Ben Caldwell.
“He shipped me away two thousand miles from home, then wanted me to crawl back to the pack on my knees. And even that wasn’t good enough.”
“Ben didn’t react well. There are… factors in his past that caused him to be easily set off that night. When he discovered you’d been lying to us for two years—" She stared me down. “What your father did was inexcusable. But you have to understand that you changing a human against their will, even by accident, represented one of his greatest fears.”
My vision greyed out, hot visceral rage searing through my blood as the wolf clawed to get free. How many times had I apologized to all of them, in calls, letters, and later in person? How many times had I curled in the corner of the shower, having retched until my stomach was empty, sick with shame at the knowledge I’d destroyed Lacey’s life, that I could have forced my entire family to leave Blood Moon if we’d been exposed? All because I’d convinced myself that just this once it would be okay to bend the rules, that if Lacey and I didn’t let things go too far, no one would get hurt. Except they had gone too far. And she and my family had paid the price for my lack of judgment.
“Except Dad’s been punishing me for years. Telling the city to deny me the permits to open The Spoke. Refusing to come to the restaurant even after it opened. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised you went to such lengths to keep me and Lacey apart, or that you’re clearly not supporting us now.”
She didn’t try to deny it.
“It’s not that I dislike Lacey. It’s that I’m not convinced either of you is good for the other.”
I barked out a laugh. “Wow. Got it.”
“You have to realize what an impossible situation Ben and I were in. You were seventeen. Lacey was a child. Underage. What happened that night was a terrible accident. But she had been changed in our territory. At your hand. And we were therefore responsible for ensuring she was safe.”
I ground my teeth until I was pretty sure I heard a molar crack. That night in the barn came rushing back. Dad looming over me, the belt whistling in his hand. Splinters in my cheek from the barn floor. Moths swarming the light high up in the rafters as my vision swam in and out. The sharp metallic taste of blood—
“And so you sent me away.” The wind gusted. Sharp blades of silver-tipped grass swirled in the moonlight. “Do you have any idea what that was like, being exiled from everything I’d ever known?”
For an endless moment, no one in the clearing breathed. My mother took a cautious step towards me, like I was a rabid animal. Right now, that didn’t feel far from the truth.
“We never meant to hurt you. Either of you. It’s common for sires to develop a strong bond with the wolves they change, a bond that often turns sexual. Ben and I couldn’t be sure what either of you were telling us was the truth, or just the bond’s influence. Lacey was my responsibility until I could safely return her to her mother, delivered out of her transition and no longer a danger to humans. It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized how deeply she cared for you, that you loved her in return, and I came to regret keeping you apart for so long.”
“I never would have forced her—”
“You can’t know that. I’m not saying you ever would have willingly, just that… you two were very young, the connection between you was intense, and I couldn’t allow Lacey to be put in a position where she would be made further vulnerable after everything that had already happened to her.” She paused, and I could feel her weighing her words. “I understand you’re angry with me, that you’ve been angry for a very long time, but look at it from an outsider’s perspective. What happened that night was a freak accident, so far outside what should have been possible none of us could have predicted it. It had to be due to your age, a spike in hormones that boosted your viral load enough to cause infection outside the normal transmission window. But regardless, you changed Lacey. No matter how much it killed us to send you away, in the immediate aftermath, we had to focus on her.”
I stared up at the night sky. It was a truth I’d accepted from the moment I’d seen my dad’s eyes that night in the barn, the shame there a knife to the gut every time I’d called home only to be told I’d be in Calgary another six months, then a year. Until I’d finally stopped asking entirely.
A decade later and I was finally coming to understand that it was never going to matter how sorry I was. It would never matter how much I punished myself or how many times I apologized. All the hours I volunteered out in the community and donations I made to the pack might as well have been for naught. In Ben Caldwell’s eyes, I would always be ruined.
My heartrate picked up, my hands shaking at my sides, something my mother had said just now clicking in my head.
I’m not convinced either of you is good for the other.
Not was. Is.
Fuck, I needed a drink.
“You’re like me,” my mother said quietly. “You always have been. A fighter. When you get kicked in the teeth, you claw your way back up. You built The Spoke. It’s in your blood. Your sweat. I didn’t step in when you got home because I knew you needed to earn your way back. You put your life back together. No one shares the credit for that. Not me. Not your father. Only you.”
But I didn’t hear anything she said. Something cold had settled in my chest. “I need to ask you about something that feels… off, but I can’t put my finger on what. Lacey’s blood tests came back negative for any pathogens. And now it’s like the Council just wants to drop the whole thing. I can’t get anyone on the phone. They won’t send anyone out to investigate.”
“They’re overwhelmed right now. The bombing. The video getting out—”
“Sure, but if the vampires are developing some sort of bioweapon that can stop us from shifting, imagine if they could aerosolize that and deploy it during a major battle, or somehow get it into the water supply. They could wipe out entire packs, one territory at a time.”
“Right now all the Council has is one person’s word, a civilian’s at that, and a blood test that came back negative for everything they tried to test for.” When I started to protest, she held up a hand. “I believe you. Both of you. But if you want the Council to listen, you and Lacey are going to have to do the legwork, get evidence to back up this theory of yours.” She began working her way up the craggy rock face. “One last thing. Many see your uncle’s methods as uncompromising. They judge what River and the Tracers have to do as unforgivable. But none of us wants to see the Blood Wars restarted. So many lives lost, and countless more if the Nationwide Database Act is passed.”
“You really think it will come to that?”
“August told you he thinks we have a mole?”
I nodded.
Her eyes grew hard. “Trust no one.”
8
Lacey
BEFORE I KNEW IT, WE WERE HALFWAY THROUGH DECEMBER. Christmas music played non-stop on the radio. Every store I entered had decided to stack baskets of cinnamon pinecones at its entrance, which due to my still malfunctioning wolf senses made me want to run back out onto the street and ga
g. In between hot-gluing Major’s antlers for the pet costume contest on the last night of the Yule Festival (which Brody insisted he wasn’t entering) and baking seasonal-themed cupcakes to sell while dressed up as a five foot nine holiday elf (I so rocked the ears), I’d been making contact with other packs, seeking out information on the mysterious weapon the vampires had used against me. My only problem?
That would be the sudden and conspicuous absence of my best friend. Oh, he was there on paper. Half a pound of chicken with all my favorite sides showed up at noon on the dot on Mondays. His Tuesday offering, a deluxe brisket platter, caused half the people in line for sandwiches at Blair’s to shoot guilty looks at the door before sneaking across the street to The Spoke. After that we had words, but on Wednesday, an order of ribs still showed up, along with the daily special, Mac and Bleu, just the way I liked it.
I rearranged The Spoke’s reindeer this year so they were eating giant tinfoil pies. He stole the snowman off the front stoop of Blair’s, dressed it up in one of the signature t-shirts from his gift shop, and parked it in the front lobby. And every night he wasn’t on pit duty, he disappeared. I knew he was following up on leads, too, which so far hadn’t panned out. But it was impossible to dismiss the feeling that ever since Thanksgiving, we’d been slowly drifting apart.
My phone chimed with yet another delivery notification. Because, of course it had.
My apartment was currently under siege from delivery boxes. There were my mother’s anti-werewolf offerings, including a pair of arm guards that were flame resistant, stab-resistant and designed with maximum flexibility, plus wolf deterrent spray made from lion urine. Don’t ask. That one had gone straight out to the dumpster. I was pretty sure it was the cause of Godiva’s recent night terrors.
