Cursed (Howl, #6)

by Morse, Jody

  Samara met her best friend’s worried sky blue eyes, and she knew there was no sense in trying to keep it all a secret from her best friend anymore. Luke already knew the truth, so she might as well tell Emma the truth, too. “I cheated on Luke with Declan.”

  “What?!” A look of surprise filled Emma’s eyes. “When did this happen?”

  “Before the day of our wedding. The night before, to be exact,” Samara replied with a sigh, knowing just how terrible of a person that made her sound. “Remember when I asked you for your advice on the wedding day, and you told me not to get pregnant?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” After a moment, Emma’s eyes widened. “Please tell me you’re not pregnant with Declan’s child. That would be horrible!”

  A tiny smile tugged at Samara’s lips, and she couldn’t help but giggle. “No, I’m not pregnant with Declan’s child, I promise. We didn’t even do that! We just kissed, but when I came to you for advice . . . I wanted to know if I should marry Luke that day or if I should postpone the wedding, because I had feelings for Declan, too.” She sighed and opened the carton of ice cream, shoveling into it with the plastic spoon that Emma had brought for her.

  As Emma dug into her own carton of Ben and Jerry’s, she furrowed her brow. “What does Declan think about all of this? Did he seem sad after you married Luke?”

  “I don’t know, because I haven’t been able to get in touch with him,” Samara admitted. “He promised me he was going to be there for me on my wedding day, no matter what, but then he never showed up. I tried contacting him again a few times, but I never heard back from him.”

  “I thought you said he was having family problems and that’s why he hasn’t been around,” Emma said, studying Samara’s face intently.

  “I know that’s what I said, but . . . I lied,” Samara admitted. “I made it all up because I didn’t want to admit the truth to everybody—especially not to Luke. See, me and Declan were mated again when we merged packs. I don’t know if the bond between us was broken when I married Luke or if Declan’s just been ignoring me ever since then, but I can’t seem to get ahold of him through mind-speak.” Knowing that she couldn’t keep the rest of the truth bottled up inside anymore, she also added, “There’s something else, but you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone else in the pack.”

  “Okay, I promise.” Closing her eyes, Emma said, “I just blocked Colby out of my thoughts so he can’t listen in on our conversation.” Opening her eyes again, she glanced over at Samara. “What is it?”

  “Declan joined forces with Darren Jackson,” Samara replied, trying to keep her voice at an even level, despite the fact that she wanted to cry or scream. “That’s who they initiated into the Vyka adult pack that night—the person who’s close to me, who I told you guys I didn’t actually know. It’s Declan.” A tear glided its way down her cheek, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. “He’s a traitor, Em. Darren said that Declan got close to me just so he could help them figure out a way to kill me quicker. What if that’s all true?”

  Emma shook her head and bit her lip, considering the possibility. Finally, she sighed and said, “I don’t know, Sam. I want to tell you that it isn’t true and that Declan would never do anything to hurt you that way, but . . . I also didn’t think it could ever be true that Declan would turn on us like that, either. It’s almost like we never knew him at all.”

  “I know,” Samara agreed, sighing. “I don’t know why I felt like I had to keep this whole thing a secret from everyone. I know the whole pack is going to be so mad at me once they find out the truth—that Declan’s a Vyka now—but I guess I felt like, in some way, I owe it to Declan to protect him.”

  “Sam, you don’t owe Declan anything,” Emma said, shaking her head. “He was supposed to be your friend, and yet, he joined your biggest enemy in his plot to kill you. That doesn’t sound like the type of person who really deserves protecting.”

  “But he also protected me from my enemy before, too,” Samara insisted. “When Jason saw me in Alaska, Declan covered for me. He acted like he didn’t see me so that Jason wouldn’t know I was there. And then later on, he told me about Jason’s plot to kill me.” Staring her best friend in the eyes, she asked, “Why would he do that, Em? Why would he do that unless he really loved me?”

  “I think Declan did love you at some point, Samara. Maybe he still does, but maybe he’s too angry at you for marrying Luke to be friends with you . . . so he feels like he needs to kill you, instead.” Emma sighed. “I don’t know. It sounds really bad when I put it like that, but who knows what’s going through his head? But maybe once you told him that you were choosing Luke over him, he just couldn’t take it. Maybe he snapped.” She snapped her fingers dramatically.

  “But I never told him I was choosing Luke over him. I mean, it might have sounded like I was going to at the time, but . . . I wasn’t going to marry Luke, Em,” Samara told her, shaking her head.

  Emma’s eyes widened. “What do you mean you weren’t going to marry Luke? You really weren’t going to go through with it?”

  Samara shook her head. “No, I was going to choose Declan. I just wanted to see him there in the crowd with everyone else that day and to know that it would have hurt him if I went through with it. It was all I needed to choose him over Luke or to at least postpone the wedding until I could figure out what I really wanted, but . . . he wasn’t there.” A sob caught in the back of her throat, and tears began to pour from her eyes. “He didn’t come for me, Em. And he promised me he would be there for me, and he wasn’t.”

  “Oh, Sam,” Emma said, flinging her arms around Samara and hugging her close. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry Declan wasn’t there for you like you needed him to be.”

  Samara allowed herself to cry on her best friend’s shoulder for what felt like an eternity. When she finally pulled away, Emma asked, “So, what does this all mean for you and Luke? Do you still love him?”

  Samara nodded. “I know it sounds bad . . . and selfish, probably, but even on the day of my wedding, I was confused because I love both of them, Emma. I didn’t think it was possible to love two people at once, but it really is. I love them both in different ways. I love that Luke is such a loyal person. He’s so much fun to be around, and he really cares about me. I care about him, too.” She paused before saying, with hesitation, “And I loved—or maybe I still love—Declan because he always made personal sacrifices for me. He really loved me, Em. At least, I think he did. I have great chemistry with both of them, but . . . I married Luke.”

  “Yes, Samara, you married Luke,” Emma agreed. “If you weren’t sure, maybe you should have waited a little longer, but now that you married him, you owe it to Luke to work things out with him. It’s the right thing.”

  “I know it is.” Samara sighed and then continued. “There’s still more I need to tell you, though. I think that Luke might have killed someone important to me.” Meeting Emma’s eyes, she said, “I think he might have killed Brad Kelly.”

  “What? Are you serious?” Emma asked, her jaw hanging open. And then she shook her head. “No, Sam. There’s no way that’s possible. Luke definitely didn’t kill Brad. Luke might be a lot of things—stubborn, at times, and maybe even a little jealous, but I don’t believe for a second that he’s a killer.”

  Samara gave her a sideways glance. “I would have thought the same thing about Declan, and who knows.”

  “Well, did you ask him?” Emma questioned.

  Samara shook her head. “Yes, I did. And it sort of felt like he turned this whole thing around on me. He somehow got me to admit to all of the things that I’ve done wrong, but he never actually answered me about whether or not he killed Brad.” She sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter, though. I’m just going to work things out with him, anyway.”

  Emma made a face. “You really want to be with a killer?”

  “Well, what other choice do I have?” Samara asked. “Both of my mates are bad. Declan’s a traitor,
and Luke may or may not be a killer. I mean, I don’t know he killed Brad for sure, but . . . I have a picture that shows him holding a knife over Brad’s body.”

  “That sounds like proof enough,” Emma said quietly, taking another bite of Chunky Munky.

  Samara hesitated. “What if it was Photoshopped, though? What if someone is trying to frame him, even though it wasn’t actually him?”

  “I don’t know, Sam,” Emma replied. “Why would anyone go through the effort of doing all of that? To hurt you? To make you not want to be with Luke anymore?” She laughed bitterly. “The only one I can think of with a good enough motive is Declan.”

  “Declan wouldn’t do that—” Samara started to say, but she stopped herself from saying anything else. She no longer knew what Declan was and wasn’t capable of. She sighed. “Why is my life so confusing?”

  “Because you’re a werewolf,” Emma said, resting her head on her shoulder. “All of our lives are so much more confusing because we’re wolves.”

  “And human teenage girls think they have it bad,” Samara said.

  “For serious,” Emma agreed with a giggle.

  Chapter 20

  When Samara met her grandfather later that night, she couldn’t help but feel angry with him. “You know, you gave me terrible advice last night,” she said, putting her hands on her hips angrily once she approached him as he waited for her.

  Grandpa Joe’s amber eyes pored through hers, studying her face. “Oh, yeah? What advice was that?”

  “You said I should just ask Luke to tell me the truth,” Samara replied. “It ended up turning into a huge fight, and now we’re not speaking.”

  “This is only just a minor setback for the two of you, I’m sure,” Grandpa Joe said. “Did he tell you the truth, though?”

  “No! I didn’t even get an answer out of him, but he found out about some of the things that I was lying to him about,” Samara said with a frustrated sigh.

  “Well, why did you lie to him about them in the first place?” Grandpa Joe asked. “That’s the question you really need to ask yourself.”

  “I don’t know,” Samara admitted. “I just felt like I had to.”

  “What is it worth it?” Grandpa Joe questioned.

  Samara stared back at him blankly. “What do you mean was it worth it?”

  Her grandfather huffed with annoyance. “I thought you were going to be the smart grandchild, but I have to explain everything to you. Even though Luke’s mad at you for lying to him now, was it worth it at the time?”

  Samara thought back to the night before the wedding and the kiss that she and Declan had shared. It had been one of the best kisses she’d ever gotten in her life—of course, she only could compare it to the kisses she’d share with Luke, but for a moment in time, it had felt like everything was perfect in her life. If she could go back and not have that experience, would she?

  No, Samara decided. She wouldn’t take the kiss back. And, more importantly, she still would have kept it from Luke. Even though she hated knowing that she had hurt him, it was still one of the best moments of her life.

  “I can tell it was worth it,” her grandfather said with a small smile. “Everything will work itself out in the end, Samara, and if it doesn’t work out in one way or another, then it’s not the end yet.”

  Samara nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “We have a lot to talk about,” Grandpa Joe told her. “But I just want to remind you that you’re not allowed to go back and repeat any of this to your pack members yet. Not even Seth.”

  “I won’t,” Samara agreed. “You have my word.”

  Her grandfather studied her face for a moment before nodding. “Good.” He sat down on a large boulder and glanced up at the sky, folding his hands. “When I was the Alpha of the Vyka, I was the strongest and most powerful werewolf, as you obviously know by now. And there were two groups of people: the ones who wanted to be me so much that they settled for being my best friends instead, and the ones who wanted to be me so much that they made it their life’s mission to kill me.”

  “But no one actually succeeded?” Samara questioned.

  Grandpa Joe glanced over at her with raised eyebrows. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  Samara shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if you were a spirit or a werewolf at first.”

  “I’m a werewolf,” her grandfather replied. “I almost became a spirit, though. You see, someone hired one of the werewolves in my pack to kill me.”

  “Finn McClellan, right?” Samara asked.

  “That is correct. This other werewolf asked Finn McClellan to kill me. What you should know, though, was that Finn never would have done that. Pigs would have to fly or it would have been the end of the world for him to kill me,” Grandpa Joe explained. “He was my best friend, ever since we were kids. He was the whole reason I moved down to Pennsylvania from Alaska. And Finn did his best to try to protect me from this other wolf. In fact, he’s the only reason I’m alive. We had to lie to the whole entire Vyka pack and make them believe that I was truly dead, even though what I really did was move to Arkansas. I went into hiding with my wife, Mollie.”

  “So, everyone except for Finn thought you were dead?” Samara questioned, somehow feeling surprised by this whole story so far. It contradicted everything that Eddie Williams had told her. He’d made it sound like Finn was the bad guy, when it really sounded like he was the good guy.

  “That’s right. I moved away, and Finn remained a part of the Vyka. He became the Alpha of their pack, but it was only long after I died when I heard the news that Finn was killed, too,” Grandpa Joe explained. “There were a lot of rumors out there about who did it, but I knew right away who it was. To this day, I would bet my life on who did it, even though I don’t have any proof. It was the same werewolf who wanted Finn to kill me.”

  Samara hesitated before asking, “Was it Darren Jackson?”

  Grandpa Joe laughed. “No, it wasn’t Darren Jackson. At that time, Darren was still fairly young, and he wasn’t as evil as he is now. We actually got along. We were friends, me and him, even though he was an Ima and I was a Vyka. So, no, it wasn’t him. The werewolf who hired Finn to kill me was Orkos.”

  “Orkos?” Samara felt her own eyes widen with surprise. “But he was your best friend!”

  “I know it,” her grandfather replied, licking his lips. “Orkos and I went way back, but he got extremely jealous when I left Alaska to start a new life. I think a part of him was always jealous because he wanted to come with me, but he was too set in his ways. He didn’t want to leave behind the traditional werewolf traditions and rituals to live somewhere more modern. It was more than just that, though.”

  Samara stared at her grandfather, waiting for him to explain further. When he didn’t say anything, she prompted him. “What else was it?”

  “Orkos was my half-brother, Samara. We shared a mother, but not a father. What he doesn’t realize, even now, was that my power came from my mother’s side of the family. It didn’t come from my father’s side. But he seemed to cling to the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could become as powerful as me one day. But there was no way Orkos could ever become the most powerful werewolf in history when his powerful half-brother was still alive,” Grandpa Joe explained. “The only way he could become the next most powerful in line was by having me killed. When he thought that Finn killed me, he knew that he had to kill Finn so the news didn’t get out that he was involved in my death. Even more than that, though, he also had to kill Finn so that he could become the next Alpha of the Vyka.”

  “I’m confused about something, though. Well, a few things, actually,” Samara said, interrupting her. “Why was Orkos so nice to me when I went to visit him? And how come he had all of the things that I needed? He knew about the wolfsbane and everything, but he never actually did anything with it.”

  “Orkos knows about wolfsbane,” Grandpa Joe explained, “But he would never tell that information to anyone else—not even the mem
bers of the Koto pack—because that would mean that they would have the potential to become as strong as he wants to be. He keeps that information to himself, which is a good thing for us.” Glancing over at her, he added, “As for why he was nice to you and why he took care of Nuka and everything else? It’s all an act. He has to do those things because the Koto pack knew that he was my half-brother and my best friend. It was expected of him, and he would never want them to know that he was bad.”

  Samara nodded understandingly. “That all makes sense. But how long was he the Alpha of the Vyka?”

  “He’s actually still the Alpha of the Vyka, but none of the members of the Koto are aware of it. And if you’re wondering if Kyana has any idea that her father is involved in all of this, I can tell you that she doesn’t,” Grandpa Joe explained, twisting a gold band around his ring finger. Samara couldn’t help but notice how old and leathery his skin looked; even though he only appeared to be about sixty or so, visibly, it was easy to tell that he was actually much older than that.

  “How can Orkos be the Alpha of the Vyka if he lives all the way in Alaska?” Samara questioned. “I thought that Alphas need to live near their packs.”

  “It’s not a requirement,” her grandfather explained. “Most Alphas do choose to live near their pack members out of sheer convenience—and due to pack loyalty—but it’s not necessary for them to be around. The members of the Vyka still respond to him when he gives them orders, the same way they would with a regular Alpha.”

  “How is he an Alpha if Darren Jackson is the new Alpha?” Samara asked, feeling even more confused about all of this the more she thought about it. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

  “Well, you know all about the fact that Orkos was injured,” Grandpa Joe explained. “From what I can see in my visions, you were there when he was beat up by the two werewolves who came to his den.”

  “Yes, I was there,” Samara replied.

  “Well, he gave up on the notion that he could become the world’s most powerful werewolf,” Grandpa Joe explained. “He handed over his Alpha position to Darren Jackson willingly, in hopes that at least someone could keep the Vyka alive and active for at least a little longer, but he’s going to come back to claim his pack as his own. In fact, according to my visions, we have until this Saturday when Orkos arrives.”