by Kat Kinney
I swore. “If that happened—”
She threw a glance over one shoulder. “End game. But instead, the opposite occurred.”
“They somehow found a way to suppress the effects of the virus.”
“Right. We know males carry a higher viral count than females and that everyone’s numbers spike each month at the full moon. This biologic agent stops the lycan virus from over-replicating. Basically, it suppresses viral load so that a shifter under the influence of the drug would be temporarily unable to shift, unable to heal, and unable to properly defend themselves in a fight.”
“For all intents and purposes, they’d be human.” I thought back to the last few weeks, the vulnerability of being cut off from my wolf—
“Or close enough.” Dallas blew on his cupped hands. “They deploy this in the middle of a battle—"
“They’d wipe us out. No question.” London scanned the crowd. “We believe there are three remaining vampire covens coordinating Project Eclipse, one out of Houston, and two others north of Dallas.”
“Who’s your source?”
“Like I’d tell you.” She slapped a thumb drive into Dallas’s hand. “Tell your brother he owes me.”
The band began tuning, sheet music flapping under clothespins as a gust of wind shivered across the field, blowing dirt and dry grass into our eyes.
I stared London down. “Your people sold us out to the vamps. Why should we believe anything you say?”
“Okay, first. That was a separatist faction within my pack who’d been hoping to overthrow me ever since I took over as Alpha from my father last year.”
Dallas shook his head. “You were Alpha. Everything that went down in your territory—”
“I’ve been banished from my pack and exiled by the Council.” London Blake bared her teeth despite their foot of height difference. “You really don’t want to mansplain pack law to me right now, pretty boy. It happened on my watch. I paid the price and so did my people. That’s how it works. But it doesn’t make me a traitor. And you can believe me or not. But most of my pack wants reform. Whatever the undeads hit her with didn’t come from us. I guarantee it. And if you’re thinking they could have developed something that complex on their own—"
My blood ran cold. “Wait. What are you saying?”
There was a shout and another group of teens crashed into us from behind. I stumbled, nearly tripping over the wrinkly old basset hound I’d seen earlier, who glared up at me disapprovingly from beneath her light-up antlers.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, searching my pockets for doggie cookies.
When I looked up, London Blake was gone.
Cursing, I stood on my toes, searching the crowd, millions of multicolored lights swirling around us in a spiraling haze. Dallas’s hands caught me before I could fall.
“You okay?”
“She’s gone.”
“Yeah. Least we got what we came for.”
I buried my face in his chest, inhaling the comforting scent of laundry detergent and woodsmoke. His fingers curled into my hair, stroking the nape of my neck. Gently, oh so gently, he tipped my chin so I was staring up into his eyes under the warm glow of the Christmas tree.
“I love you, Lacey.”
My heart took off, fluttering like a trapped moth in the cage of my ribs. Dallas leaned in, whispering my name a breath from my lips, thumbs grazing my cheekbones as if he were afraid of breaking me, touching me in a way I had never before that moment realized I desperately wanted to be touched. Like I was absolutely, exquisitely adored.
My eyes fluttered closed. Our lips met in a kiss that tasted of hot chocolate and woodsmoke, of snowflakes, Christmas trees and hope. And for the first time, I pictured what it would be like to come to a park like this on a cold winter night years from now, to hold hands as we sipped hot chocolate and twirled beneath a tree strung with lights.
In a future I’d never allowed myself to wish for, a tow-headed boy and an impish girl chased each other around an island crowded with mixing bowls in a warm, sunny kitchen. I captured them before they could get away, trading hugs for sticky frosting covered spoons. There were humid summer nights with the four of us in cutoffs and flip flops spent making homemade ice cream on a wide back porch while a midnight black cat stalked fireflies through the dewy grass. Dallas, barefoot and grinning, blew raspberries into our daughter’s cheek while she shrieked, the two of them spinning in dizzying circles. The boy clutched a football, grasping at the tail of his father’s shirt. All of us laughing, happy.
And as the kiss deepened and the band began to play Skating from A Charlie Brown Christmas, I silently wished we could stay like this forever, just the two of us. Because for the first time, I could see a future I wanted. A future I never wanted to let go of. I wanted all of it, including the memories Dallas Caldwell and I had yet to make.
“Lacey?”
Dallas instantly released me. I leaped away from him, stumbling in the hay. But it was too late. Heart pounding, I whirled towards the bandstand. My mother looked between me and Dallas, face slack with disbelief. But that wasn’t the worst part. Not the part that stilled the breath in my lungs. It was the slender man with wire-rimmed glasses standing beside her.
She was here with a werewolf.
9
Dallas
“DALLAS CALDWELL?”
Had to give the Blair girls credit. They didn’t half-ass anything. One second, Juliet was glaring daggers at me and the next, Lacey had rushed in to drag her mom bodily behind her, eyes flaring amber as she faced down the unfamiliar male werewolf.
For what it was worth, the guy looked about as threatening as your local college professor. Slim build. Deep brown skin. Afro cropped close in a grown-out buzz. Pretty sure that swanky cashmere sweater and slacks combo retailed for more than my monthly car payment.
Lacey bared her teeth. “Lay a finger on her and I will so throat punch you.”
So much for introductions.
Everyone under that big blinking tree from the band conductor to the antler-bedecked basset hound munching contentedly on funnel cake whipped their heads around to stare. Time to get out of there. And fast.
“Sidebar.”
Grabbing Lacey by the elbow before she could shift and eat two or three of the carolers, I dragged her off towards a line of cut Christmas trees hiding the parking lot from view. By some miracle, Juliet and he-who-was-about-to-be-lunchmeat followed.
We stopped just behind a row of food trucks, the smell of hot chocolate and kettle corn thick in the air. Which was apparently cue for everyone to start yelling at once.
“Dallas Caldwell? Are you kidding me?”
“Me?” Lacey growled, shooting a dark look in the direction of werewolf guy. I mentally catalogued the location of all her knives and came up two short. Not good. “You didn’t even tell me you were seeing anyone.”
“No way.” Juliet held up a finger. “This is so not about me. You’re with him?” If I’d previously thought it was impossible for anyone to stare at me with more revulsion than my dad had standing over me in the barn the night I was sent away, I was wrong. “Please tell me this is some sort of sick joke.”
“I never meant to hurt Lacey.”
Juliet glared daggers. “I’d suggest not talking. You’ve done enough damage.”
I held up both hands. “You can believe me or not, but it’s the truth.”
Lacey rubbed her forehead. “Okay. Not helping.”
“Yes, and of course privileged little rich boy Dallas Caldwell always deserves one more chance.”
“If we’re going to Dr. Phil this, do we really have to do it here?” Lacey bared her teeth at her mom’s date. “And in front of him?”
Lunchmeat waved his coffee, which I could smell without even needing to read the label was one of those super-hipster Austin drinks. Soy non-fat sugar-free decaf with an infusion of healing energy. “I’m Simon—"
I shook my head. “Dude. Not helping.”
He c
ringed. “Right. Sorry.”
Mother and daughter faced off. “Those first months after you came back, you were like a ghost. I’d go to bed and you’d pace the house for hours, wandering from room to room, unable to sleep, barely wanting to eat. You lost so much weight I barely recognized you—”
Lacey covered her face. “Mom, please.”
“You wouldn’t see a counselor. Wouldn’t talk to any of your old friends. Some nights you sat on the couch for hours staring straight ahead as if I wasn’t even in the room. You—”
Rubbing her temples, she swayed in place.
“Mom.” Lacey lunged for her, steadying her before she could fall. “Which way is your car?”
I hit the locator app on my phone. “C’mon.”
“Wait.” Simon stepped in front of us, earning a growl from Lacey. He held up his hands, palms out. “I can help. I’m a physician with the North Austin pack. If she needs medical attention—"
“Back off,” she said, fury lacing every word. “You’ve done enough.”
We reached my SUV. Lacey dug the keys from my coat pocket and clicked it open. By then, Juliet was staring vacantly past all of us, mumbling incoherently to herself. Lacey swiped tears from her eyes as she checked her seatbelt, making sure her breathing and pulse were stable—all while I looked on from a safe distance, utterly helpless to do anything. Except disappear. And I knew then what I had to do. Her mom couldn’t see me. We both knew it. Her memories reset in the wake of bad attacks, erasing the events that had triggered them. She wouldn’t even remember seeing me here. Unless, of course, I was there when she woke up, in which case we’d just be right back to square one. Ten years ago, I’d made the selfish choice. Now it was time to start making the right ones.
“Call me when you get back to town.”
Lacey’s eyes shot to mine. “Dallas—"
“S’okay. Just… go.”
Suddenly she was crushing me to her in a kiss that had never felt more like a goodbye. Her hands threaded desperately through my hair, her tears wetting my lashes, her sobs warm against my mouth in the cold December air. Time stilled as I broke the kiss, pressing my forehead to hers. She smelled of vanilla and coconut, butter and confectioner’s sugar. Lacey Blair always smelled of comfort, of warmth, of a soft place to land when I got home after work and a future of weekends spent cooking together where she would snort-laugh and inform me I was using way too much cumin (guilty) before kissing me senseless over a kitchen counter littered with her multicolored whisks and my high-end knife set. A life where a midnight-black cat twined figure eights around our ankles and the worst problem we had was who got to make the pancakes after spending the night wrapped up in each other’s arms. A life that was ours. And god, I wanted to fight for that future. For her.
But right now what she needed was one person in her life who wouldn’t force her to choose, and I was going to be that person. Even if it tore my fucking heart in two. Without a word, I kissed the tip of her nose and watched her drive away.
“You, uh, need a ride?” Simon slowly approached. No doubt he’d heard the whole thing. “If not, I’ll just take off—"
“Sure you don’t mind? Kind of a long drive. I can call one of my brothers.”
“Nah. Least I can do. Get the feeling this whole sitch is sort of my fault.”
As it turned out, Simon’s Audi was totally sweet. He offered to let me pick the tunes. Kind of hated to tell the guy our bromance was never going to work out.
“Thought maybe Juliet knew,” he said somewhere north of the city, as I tried and failed for the tenth time to get Lacey to pick up her phone. “About me, I mean. Our kind.”
“She really had no idea you weren’t human? And not to throw a wrench in this whole Romeo and Juliet thing you two have going on, but pretty sure she’s subscribed to like every anti-supernatural group on the internet. I’d start tasting your food.”
He laughed. “We met at a charity fundraiser through work last month. We’ve been talking ever since.”
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a trauma surgeon over at the new hospital that just opened up in north Austin.”
“And were you planning on telling her?”
“I swear, I know how this looks. But … you know how sometimes you meet someone and there’s this instant connection? I couldn’t get Juliet out of my head. And the more we texted, talked when I was getting off my shifts, the more I knew I wanted to see her again. I knew she was human, obviously, but the scent of werewolf was all over her. I guess I convinced myself that somehow she must know about our kind, that maybe there could be a chance for us.”
Knowing Lacey would probably burn The Spoke to the ground when she found out what I’d done, I made the split-second decision to let Simon in on the details of our long and sordid history.
“So you see,” I said at last. “I’m pretty much the last guy in the world with the right to be passing judgement. But they’ve both been through hell, and after what the Tracers did to Juliet, she can’t take anything else.”
“Has she been seen by one of our doctors?”
“Don’t think so. You know the Council. If they got wind of it—”
“Sure.” He paused. “But the thing is, our pack has a neurologist on staff. I might be able to pull some strings. Get something scheduled off the books.”
“That would be great. Might need a few days to work on Lacey, but she’ll come around. She’d kill for her mom.”
“I can tell.” He chuckled. “I have a sister just like her. You know, I could have sworn in the confusion back there that I saw my former Alpha.”
“Wouldn’t know anything about that.”
We crested a long hill, the exit sign for Blood Moon coming into view.
A thin smile graced his lips. “I won’t say anything. You know, you might find it hard to believe, but most of the pack has shifted, moved away from the hard-liners. London’s father was a traditionalist. Segments within the pack, ones who support the current Alpha, want a ruler who will stick to the old ways. London was more like her mother. She wanted change. Many were sorry when the Council removed her. And for what it’s worth, I’ve never believed the charges against her for a second.”
* * *
“Okay, you ready for the breakdown?” Brody drained the last of his beer.
Over at the edge of the patio, a haggard, brindle-colored werewolf sulked in timeout, glaring out at our dad’s herb garden so hard it was a wonder he hadn’t set the thing on fire. Alan Jackson’s Honky Tonk Christmas blared over the sound system. Over the past two days, I’d texted Lacey nineteen times and gotten two replies. Every time my phone vibrated and it wasn’t from her, my pulse went into freefall. This brotherly bonding sesh? Any other time I would have been down for it. Today it felt like my personal version of hell.
“I had River go over the flash drive. On the surface, everything checks out. According to,” my brother’s eyes flicked to Topher, “Goldilocks, the vampires hit Lacey with a biological weapon that targets the lycan virus.”
“We knew all that two days ago.” Shutting the lid on the smoker, I checked the temperature gauge. Every year around the holidays, I smoked gouda and cheddar for my entire family. Pretty sure if the stuff didn’t show up in their stockings Christmas morning, someone would hunt me down.
“Maybe so. But we’re still not asking the right questions. The lycan virus mutates rapidly. It’s why our scientists have never been able to develop an effective therapy to help control our Feral population, or treat people like August with autoimmune disorders linked back to lycanthropy.”
I took a pull off my beer, barely resisting the urge to check my phone for the fifth time since I’d gotten here. And then what my brother was saying hit me. “Why go to the trouble of developing a biologic weapon that has to cost millions—”
“Hundreds of millions. Maybe more.”
“—when you could just use silver?”
“Or wolfsbane.” Brody reache
d down to rub Major’s ears. “We can keep up this song and dance as long as you like, Topher. But we both know the vamps aren’t targeting Blood Moon because our Whataburger makes the best fries in the state.”
The wolf flattened its ears.
I stewed on his answer, staring up at the sky, where high wispy clouds drifted overhead. “Wolfsbane found in the wild won’t hurt one of us. It’s only when it’s compounded and aerosolized that it becomes a deadly paralytic.”
“And the Council’s been tight-lipped about that formulation ever since Tracers started using it roughly thirty years ago.”
“My guess is they’re still in the early stages of testing,” Brody said. “Weapons-grade wolfsbane is expensive and hard to come by. It’s an effective paralytic, but only for short-term use. And silver comes with its own set of problems. An aerosol that could be deployed during a fight, one that weakened every shifter who breathed it in, reverted them back to human status for days, maybe even weeks, but left the vamps untouched… that would be a game changer.”
“And we still don’t know why they’re targeting mostly females.”
“Lot of unanswered questions about Project Eclipse.” Brody’s eyes flicked to the wolf-gargoyle at the edge of the slate flagstones, who seemed to hunch further into himself with every word. “That’s an hour. Back in the house.”
Glowering, the brindle wolf performed a quick three-sixty of the back yard, like he was picking out burial plots for both of us, then turned and skulked inside.
I was just about to ask if one of us should go with him when West came out.
“Kill me now.”
He sagged into one of the patio chairs. Major bounded over and dropped a grayish chewed-up tennis ball next to his Saturday afternoon bowl of organic vanilla ice cream (now licked clean), tail waving hopefully.
Brody threw it out into the field and the golden took off through the grass in a blur of pale fur. “Topher secure?”
Pulling out his phone, West flicked at the screen. “Whatever. He’s fine. Probably destroying everything I own as a fuck you for hauling him back here last night.”
