by S. Young
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She was so sick of feeling like they were all deliberately keeping things from her. “I’m talking about secrets. There are secrets here.”
“What kind of secrets?”
“I …” She threw her hands up. “I don’t know.”
“Caia—”
“No.” She shook her head, annoyed. “Don’t use that patient tone with me like I’m a child, Lucien.”
The man had the audacity to smirk. “Stop acting like one.”
“I’m not.”
“Are too.” He grinned.
She felt her stomach twist at his smile. Damn it, did he have to be so sexy and so … so. The only way to not fall for his charm was to remember that he was hiding something from her. She could feel it in her gut.
She placed her hands on her hips, straightening to her full height, not that it did any good standing next to this guy. “Why don’t you want me asking about the war? I mean, really, not the phony answer you gave me when I first asked. Why does no one speak about the war?”
Lucien ran his hand through his hair. “Caia, this is a party. Why can’t you just enjoy it?”
“Because I’m asking you a question, oh chosen one.”
“Caia,” he started toward her. Not wanting to succumb to the effect of his proximity, she retreated and tripped on her heel, falling against the wall of the house. “Caia, there is no big secret.” He reached out to steady her. His gaze moved from her face to sweep the backyard and the woods. “The war is such a part of our daily existence that we just don’t talk about it. It’s like breathing. You do it. It’s there. But you don’t talk about it.”
“Well that’s ridiculous. I’ve been a part of the war. I was a target and may still be. Which means the pack could still be targeted. I’m just saying, maybe it’s something we should talk about.”
He nodded, understanding. “I get it. I really do. But the Daylight Coven do all they can to track down the targets of the Midnights. We have an extra-close relationship with them through Marion so … I think we’re good.”
“If you say so.”
Irritation flittered across his face. He took another step toward her, close enough that she had to crane her neck again to look up at him.
“Caia …” His tone was a warning.
She pretending she wasn’t intimidated. “I guess it’s easier to worry about the war when you were once the target of it.”
“You weren’t a target of the war.”
“No. But I was the target of a war. Makes a person nervous.”
“Caia,” Lucien growled softly, “I will protect you. You have nothing to fear. I won’t let anything happen to you. And all these questions insinuate you don’t think I’m capable of doing that. And it’s pissing me off.”
“I didn’t insinuate that. Or all lykan males as touchy as you?”
“Touchy?” he asked with menacing softness.
Really? She was baiting her Alpha? “You can’t deny that you’re a little touchy.”
“Touchy,” he repeated again, his eyes lowering to her mouth. “I’ll show you touchy.”
Suddenly she was hauled against him, her gasp lost between his lips as he kissed her with a hunger that electrified her. But she was also probably the last eighteen year old on earth who had never been kissed before and her sudden insecurity made her pull away.
He chased her.
With a half growl/groan that might have translated to “oh no you don’t” his mouth sought hers again and Caia’s knees began to tremble. As if he felt it, Lucien guided them both to their knees without breaking the kiss and she melted into his embrace and began kissing him back. Still, she shook with excitement and nervousness.
Lucien made a soothing noise in the back of his throat and left her lips to brush soft kisses across her cheek. Then he whispered against her ear for her to open her mouth.
Caia shivered.
And when he returned to her mouth she obediently complied.
At the feel of his tongue against hers, another wave of rippling shivers cascaded over her. Instinct took over and she kissed him back, in love with the feel of his mouth on hers. Lucien’s strong arms tightened in response as she slid her hands over his arms and entwined her fingers around his neck.
Forever, they seemed locked in that kiss, each moment building something new in Caia. It was like a spring tightening, all these feelings she didn’t know what to do with. Her skin grew hotter and hotter, her body losing her usual rigid control one burning step at a time.
“Lucien!”
They pulled apart at the sound of Ella calling his name and Caia tried to catch her breath as reality flooded in. Lucien studied her, searching her face for … something. Then he smiled, brushing his thumb across her lips.
Her heart thudded. Had that really happened? Were all first kisses that amazing?
“Lucien!”
He cursed under his breath, not taking his eyes off her as he helped her to her feet. When Caia retreated from him, she saw him raise his hand as if to bring her back to him. But at the sound of Ella’s footsteps he curled his fingers into a fist and dropped his hand back to his side.
“There you are,” Ella called, striding toward them. “Lucien, the pipes have all burst!”
That got their attention.
“What?” He turned to his mother.
She threw her hands up in bewilderment. “A few seconds ago, I heard Alexa squeal in the kitchen—the pipes have burst! Water, everywhere! Then Julia ran in from the downstairs bathroom, Morgan from upstairs, and they’re the same. Magnus is checking Caia’s bathroom while Isaac and Draven take care of the plumbing. But there’s water, everywhere,” she ended on a whine.
Lucien cursed again and started heading toward the kitchen.
“Can we fix it?” Caia asked quietly, reeling from the news as much as from Lucien’s kiss.
Ella nodded. “Thankfully, Isaac and Draven are plumbers, but it’s put a little damper on the party.”
Caia nodded numbly as she stopped in the doorway, watching as the others mopped up the small flood in the kitchen.
This couldn’t be happening.
She glanced back toward the shadows of the porch where she and Lucien shared their explosive kiss.
Could it have been explosive enough to have done this?
She bit her lip, heart pounding. First, the pipes in the airport, then her bathroom … oh, and that morning with Ella when she’d cried over her father’s photograph.
Was this her doing?
She shook her head and retreated from the doorway.
The blood rushed in her ears and she could feel adrenaline rocketing through her body.
Kicking off her shoes, she ran down the porch stairs, past the lawn chairs, and into the woods, not stopping until she was at least five minutes from the house. Leaning against a tree to catch her breath, trying to slow her panicking heart, Caia shook her head in disbelief.
“It can’t be me,” she whispered. “How could it be?”
What was going on? Is this what the pack meant when they called her different? But pipes bursting? What did that even mean? Why was she causing it?
“No …” She gasped.
Because suddenly she knew why.
She could feel something inside of her pulsing. It had always been there, throbbing like a barrier below the energy she tapped into when she changed into a wolf.
It was alien and strong.
“What’s happening to me?” She pleaded with Gaia as tears pricked her eyes.
Growling a profanity she’d never said in her life before now, Caia yanked off the satin dress in haste and ripped her hair out of the French twist. And then she began to run, faster and faster, her feet tearing on bracken, her toes sinking into moss and dirt, her muscles aching. And with fear riding her the entire way she dove, arms first as if diving into a pool, high into the air, pushing the change like she’d never done before.
As she landed, it wa
s on her wolf pads, her graceful lupine limbs pushing her deeper into the forest and away from her troubles.
14
The Change
The school was quiet. Everyone was inside; the bell for first period had rung ten minutes before. Caia felt limp, as if she were no longer a part of her body. The night of the mating ritual, she’d run as hard and as fast as she could from the house, pounding out her anxiety on the dirt beneath her paws, until she began to feel a resolve.
She didn’t want to be alone in whatever was happening to her, and although she loved Jaeden, there really was only one person who made her feel safe. Even if he discombobulated her in other ways.
Lucien.
By then she’d been away from the party for well over an hour, so she returned as quietly as she could, finding her torn dress and then scaling the house to her bedroom. Caia had hesitated as she remembered Magnus was supposed to be checking the water pipes in her bathroom. But the room was dark and quiet, and there was no light filtering from under her en suite.
Aching, she’d tried to squelch the butterflies in her stomach enough to focus on what exactly she would tell Lucien.
He would think she was crazy.
Caia moaned and fell back onto her bed. Lucien was so good, so caring and fair. He took time with his people, took their problems upon his shoulders as if they were his own. He would need a mate just like him, not some troubled girl who was falling to pieces. And what if what was inside her put the pack in danger? He’d try to help because that was who he was—and what if she hurt him? Hurt any of them?
That’s what stopped her confiding in him.
In the end, she talked herself out of it.
She would have to deal with this on her own. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to taking care of herself.
Eventually, Jaeden was sent to find her, but Caia didn’t open the door to her or anyone, claiming she was tired and needed to sleep.
She shut herself in her room the next day. Jaeden had called, Ella had hovered, and Lucien had threatened to break down the door. At that, she’d whispered she was okay, she promised, she was just exhausted, but they shouldn’t worry.
But they had.
Caia felt it radiating throughout the house. How she could feel it—as strongly as she felt her own emotions—she didn’t know, and it had worsened her anxiety.
Jaeden wasn’t accepting her feeble reassurances. She’d dragged Caia over and into her car as soon as she’d arrived at school on Monday.
Caia looked out the passenger window at a cat dashing from belly to belly of the cars parked around them. Its simple happiness made Caia envious.
“Caia.” Jaeden finally broke the silence between them. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
Her friend wouldn’t to give up and Caia wasn’t going to tell her the truth, so she decided to waylay her with the other something on her mind. “Lucien kissed me on Saturday.”
Jaeden’s eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and she let out a startled whoop. “Oh. My. Goddess.”
Caia managed a wan smile. “Yeah.”
Jaeden grabbed her arm, shaking her. “Caia, are you crazy? Aren’t you happy? I thought this was what you wanted?”
“It’s just a crush, Jae.”
Her friend shook her head, refusing to accept that. “You can’t say that.”
“Yes, I can, and it is.”
“Cy … a crush is what I have for Ryder. He’s gorgeous, and he has a cool, dangerous job. But I haven’t spent time with him, gotten to know, not the way you have with Lucien.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Have you considered the possibility that what you feel is more than a crush? That you might be falling for him … and he for you?”
Caia twisted her lips in thought and looked down at her hands, clutching the straps of her backpack so tightly, her knuckles turned white. She liked Lucien. A lot. And she was, of course, attracted to him. But in love with him? Did she really know him well enough for it to be that? Did she even want it to be that?
“No.”
“No?”
The sounds of laughter from inside drifted toward her ears. She could hear a teacher telling a student not to write on the desk; a class giggling at one of the few funny teachers in there; a girl stuttering over a class presentation. It was all so normal, so human. But she wasn’t human. She wasn’t even sure she was a normal lykan. The only examples of reality she’d had in her life were the bonds of friendship she shared with the girl by her side. And goddess forgive her, all she wanted right then was for Jaeden to go away. To leave her alone so she could go back to ignoring the fact that something was happening to her, good or bad, she didn’t know.
And to top it off, her crush on a lykan she could never have had gone from hot to sizzling in a matter of twenty-four hours. She glanced back out the window at that cat. If what was inside her was dangerous, she would take herself far away from these people she’d begun to love.
Caia smiled humorlessly as she thought of the day she’d told Sebastian that China was always an option if worse came to worst. She had always wanted to see the Great Wall.
“Caia?”
She looked back at her friend and placed a reassuring hand over hers. “I’m not meant for him, Jaeden.”
“Maybe that’s not your decision.”
Caia really couldn’t handle another speech about the gods and fate. “I better get to class.”
“Caia …”
She shook her head and got out of the car. “We’ll talk later.”
Alexa smiled like the cat that ate the canary. It put Caia’s back up as she slid into her seat in English. She didn’t even want to know what was going on with her.
When fifteen minutes went by, and Alexa hadn’t said anything, Caia relaxed minimally, trying to concentrate on the passages the teacher asked them to read. As per usual, the class was rowdy and obnoxious, and the poor teacher had trouble controlling them.
“So, you missed all the excitement on Saturday night,” Alexa purred.
“Really,” she muttered back, uninterested.
“Mm,” Alexa continued, a smugness in her voice that alerted Caia. Her skin prickled unexpectedly, the hair on the nape of her neck standing up. What the Hades? She looked at Alexa. “Yeah. While you were gone, to gods know where, I helped Lucien mop up. He was very grateful.” She sighed dreamily. “And then we got to talking. Really talking, you know.”
Caia shifted uncomfortably.
Alexa grinned and ducked her head closer to Caia’s, as if they’d been best friends all their lives. “And I dunno, maybe we had too much to drink, but before I knew it, we were in his bedroom.”
It was like someone had slapped her across the face.
Alexa didn’t mean what Caia thought she meant, did she? Lucien wouldn’t kiss one girl, and then …
A white heat prickled across her skin, boiling her blood as it passed inch by inch from her feet up through her legs. It was a familiar heat she’d felt only once before.
“And there I was, waking up next to his gorgeous body. I think the pack will be celebrating another mating soon, and when we do”—she smiled and touched her flat belly—“this will be a whole lot rounder.”
At those last words, without warning and with no way to control it, even though she knew what would happen, the white heat blasted out from Caia’s body like a force and sent a horrified Alexa flying across the room. Her peers gasped and chairs scraped back as some went to help Alexa off the floor. Caia stared at Alexa in horror, her hands trembling, blood pounding in her head.
And then the worst began to happen.
A familiar wincing pain radiated from her left hand. She glanced down and saw her fair pelt pushing through the soft flesh. She slapped her other hand over it. No! Oh goddess. Not here.
She couldn’t breathe.
“What on earth?” she heard the teacher cry as Alexa stumbled to her feet.
She heard the “oh my Gods”, some snickeri
ng, but most of them were staring at her like she’d gone mad.
“Caia Ribeiro, what has gotten into you?” the teacher cried.
“I have to go.” She ignored Alexa’s snarl of her name as she fled past her classmates. Eyes on her left her hand, Caia watched, frightened, as more and more of her pelt pushed through. She swallowed a groan at the feel of her muscles burning, readying themselves for the change.
“Watch yourself, young lady.” Caia looked up as someone steadied her, at once realizing a small crowd had gathered in the hallway. “The water.” The janitor pointed to the floor a few feet ahead. “The pipes in this place have all gone crazy … water everywhere …”
Caia didn’t stop to hear him finish. The water was her fault, again, but with the change coming fast, she had no time to think about it. Her pelt was pushing through her legs now, her feet shifting in her shoes. Holy Artemis, she wasn’t going to make it out of here.
“Caia!”
Sebastian?
She whirled around to find him rushing toward her. He tried to halt her, locking onto her elbow. “Caia, I need to talk to you about Saturday night.”
“Sebastian,” she growled, her voice changing.
His eyes widened, and he gripped her tighter. “Caia?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she leaned into him, pleading with her eyes. “I’m changing, Sebastian. I can’t stop it. I didn’t … you have to get me out of here.”
She was never so thankful for his quick thinking. He didn’t say another word, just grabbed her and started running with her toward the parking lot. She tripped as her left foot completely changed inside her shoe and he swung her into his arms, running to his car. She was aware of him almost ripping off the car door, and then he none too gently threw her into the back seat.
The door slammed behind her and she clawed into the leather seats as her back rippled. She heard Sebastian climbing into the driver’s seat, and then a blanket was thrown over her, launching her into darkness as she changed completely, her clothes tearing with the transformation. Her heart slowed when she realized they’d made it, and she sat panting as the car spun around and sped off at high speed.
