by Reine, SM
She ducked around Aden and Trevin as they emerged from the house, and then she disappeared into the kitchen.
“See you soon,” Trevin called to Abel as he ran off.
Everyone was spreading out that night to watch for Union members, although they were under strict instructions to capture, not kill. Rylie wasn’t optimistic in how well she thought that would work. Werewolves weren’t exactly the best at self-control.
Rylie glanced up at the sky. She couldn’t see the moon through the clouds, but she could feel it. “Ten minutes.”
What was she going to do?
Abel untied the string on his jogging pants so that they hung loosely around his hips. “The old lady’s right. You need to chill.”
“But you can’t take over for me yet. You can’t control the pack’s change.”
“And you can’t shift on command, either,” Levi said, rounding the side of the house. He was one of the pack members that was completely comfortable being naked before the transformations, but the air was too cold that night, so he wore a thick bathrobe. “You’re too weak. You’ll never be an Alpha wolf, Abel.”
Abel growled, but he fell silent as soon as Rylie touched his arm. His bicep was tense beneath her fingers.
“You want to be Alpha?” Abel asked, biting out each word. “Be my guest. Walk with the pack and change them. I’ll wait.”
Levi glared at him, then tossed his bathrobe to the ground and shifted without admitting that such a thing was beyond his power.
As a wolf, Levi was hard to distinguish from his sister. They had the same shaggy, honey-colored fur. The only real difference was that he was much larger. Maybe even large enough to take Abel down.
Levi took two steps toward Abel, as if considering exactly that.
“Get out of here,” Rylie said. Her voice was deepened by the power of the moon. She didn’t often force her will on the pack, but she was sick of Levi’s crap, and her stare was enough to make him back down. For now.
Bekah flashed through the nearby orchard, having already changed on her own. Levi gave chase.
The others were still spread out in human form—not far from the grove where they buried the Union soldier.
Rylie faced Abel. “If you are the male Alpha for the pack—if you are my mate—” She stumbled on that word. “You should be able to change them. Reach out with your inner wolf. Seize control of them and draw out the spirit of the beast.”
Abel didn’t have to respond for her to see the helplessness in his eyes. He didn’t even understand what she was talking about.
How could he ever be Alpha like that?
“Okay, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just watch me tonight.”
Rylie moved down the hill and walked among the wolves. A current of energy filled the ranch, twisting in the night air like the electricity that lingered after a lightning strike.
One by one, the wolves shifted, and it was painless under her watchful eye. Every yelp and shudder could be soothed with a touch.
Her wolf wanted to change with them so very, very badly.
When the rest of the pack had transformed, she returned her attention to Abel—still human, but not for long.
“Do it,” she urged him. “Do it without me.”
He balled his hands into fists. “I can’t.”
The urge to change was too strong to wait any longer. Rylie touched his hand, released her energy, and fed it through his body. It poured out of her to fill him. His eyes grew brighter with the brilliance of the moon.
He became a wolf and ran with the pack.
Rylie failed to get any sleep that night. She stayed up to watch the wolves, terrified that Secretary Zettel would choose that night to return. But the hours passed quietly, and the sun rose on a sleepy ranch.
Once everyone was inside, she followed Gwyn into the cellar, where Scott was already waiting with James and Brianna. The witches had spent all evening trying to repair Scott’s body, but to no avail. James said that he didn’t have a big enough power source to channel the necromantic power, and nobody was hot on the idea of human sacrifice.
“We’ll figure something out. No rush. I’ve got all eternity, apparently.” Gwyn moved for the stairs again, but James stopped her.
“We should check your bandages,” he said.
“It’s not like I’m going to get an infection, son.”
“No, but you’re fragile now. One wound invites others. If we don’t protect it, you might begin…unraveling.” James didn’t look at Scott when he said that, but Rylie did. No hat could cover the deterioration on Scott’s skull now. The skin had peeled open all the way to his eyebrows, and his hair was falling out.
Gwyn dropped her coat and sat down so that James could inspect her wounded back. Rylie couldn’t stand watching it.
She fled for the surface and gasped for air.
When had everything gone so wrong? There was a body buried somewhere on the ranch. The Union wanted to take her pack away. A white-haired witch was trying to figure out how to resurrect the dead in her cellar. And Abel couldn’t seem to find his inner Alpha.
As if to remind her that things could still get harder, one of the babies gave a hard kick.
Rylie winced and headed inside.
Things were no more pleasant in the house. The pack was eating breakfast in the living room, and it seemed to have dissolved into an argument over whether or not they should join the Union.
“We might be safer that way,” Kiara said as Rylie slipped through the door. Kiara had headphones hanging around her neck with the cord vanishing into her jeans pocket, and the tinny sounds of treble whispered from the speakers. It underscored the conversation with a weirdly peppy beat. “You heard what he said. If we don’t sign up… What if we all get tagged, like wild dogs?”
Bekah moved into the center of the room. “Nobody is tagging anyone.”
“But they’re the government,” Trevin protested. “They’ve probably got our phones bugged and cameras everywhere!”
“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t mean that we should do what they say,” Bekah said. “We’ve dealt with them before. We can do it again.”
Levi had been pacing silently near the front door, but at this, he stopped and faced the pack. “We should strike first.”
Protests erupted throughout the room. Crystal’s voice was louder than the rest. “That’s suicide!”
“Better suicide than servitude,” Levi snapped.
Abel stood suddenly. Rylie hadn’t even noticed that he was on the chair by the window, but once he was standing, he was much too tall to ignore. All eyes fell on him. “We should hear what Rylie thinks,” he said.
So all eyes went to her, instead.
After more than two years leading the pack, it shouldn’t have made her nervous to have everyone looking to her for guidance. But it did.
Rylie folded her hands over her stomach and took a deep breath to brace herself.
“I’m not a dictator,” she said. “I’m also not a fortuneteller. I can’t see the future, and I don’t know what’s safest for us. Will we be okay if we band together and stand as a team? Maybe. But that might also mean that we’ll all get tagged or arrested or…I don’t know.”
Levi scoffed.
She went on. “We’re not just wolves, and we’re not just a pack. We’re humans. So I’m not going to tell you what to do. I can promise that everyone who stays will have my very best efforts to protect them, but this is big, and I can’t make any guarantees. If you think the Union can offer you something…” She shrugged.
Brody worked his mouth around, like he tasted something sour. “What is this Union, anyway? What can they do?”
“A lot. Some are witches, and some are natural born hunters—kopides, like Seth—and they all have a lot of guns. They’ve tried to exterminate us before,” she said.
“Being on the winning side doesn’t sound so bad,” Pyper said, and Kiara nodded vigorously along with her.
Levi
gave Rylie a hard look. “An Alpha has the power to enforce his will over the pack. A smart Alpha could use that to protect his wolves.”
Another challenge. All it succeeded in doing was making Rylie feel acutely tired. “Then enforce your will. If you’re such an Alpha, you tell everyone what to do.”
“You’re not even going to try to fight back?”
“She doesn’t have to,” Bekah said.
The room erupted in voices—Levi yelling incoherently at his sister, Bekah attempting to soothe him, Kiara gesticulating wildly, and Aden and Trevin shouting. The muscles of Rylie’s abdomen tensed. Another contraction?
Rylie couldn’t stand to be in the room with Levi a second longer.
She limped into Gwyn’s bedroom and shut the door.
It was harder to make out the details of the argument with several walls between them, but she couldn’t tune out the voices entirely. Every time she heard Levi’s shouts, her abs tensed again.
Rylie sank to the bed and took deep breaths.
What had Stephanie said she should do if Rylie started having contractions again? Drink water? Go for a walk?
Fortunately, she had escaped the argument just in time. The cramps didn’t get any worse. But it did get the babies kicking. “I’m not happy about this, either,” she told her stomach, rubbing a slow circle over her womb. “I bet most pregnant women don’t have to deal with dominance fights.” She dropped her hand with a sigh. “I’m talking to my stomach.”
The door opened. Rylie tensed, but it was only Seth.
“You okay?” he asked. She glimpsed Brody in the hall before Seth shut the door again.
“Just trying to stay calm.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Abel’s reaming Levi right now, and the whole pack is watching. He’s doing exactly what you wanted.” Seth sat on the bed next to her and started massaging her lower back. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it. She was always so sore now. “Does that help?”
“A little,” she admitted. “Once I teach Abel to change on his own, Levi won’t be able to stand up to him at all.”
Seth’s fingers stilled. “I was talking about the rubbing.”
“Oh.” Rylie blushed, and she could tell that he was watching to gauge her reaction. “Yeah. That’s helping.”
She expected him to say something about Abel—something about how she should stay away from him—so she was surprised when Seth changed subjects. “You’re not wearing your engagement ring anymore.”
Rylie spread the fingers on her left hand out. “No,” she said, “I’m not.”
“Why?”
“My fingers get puffy sometimes. And…”
She hesitated. The truth was, she had only agreed to marry Seth in the first place because she had been certain that he was the one who had gotten her pregnant. But that was before Abel dropped the bomb and said they had been mating.
“We’re not going to get married, are we?” Seth asked.
She bit her bottom lip and looked down at her feet—what little of them she could see over the curve of her stomach. “Seth…”
He stood and left.
Rylie stared at the sliver of hallway that she could see around the bedroom door. Brody’s shadow was lurking there, just feet away. Beyond him, the werewolves were still arguing in the living room. The witches were in the cellar, and the house was filled to the brim.
But she suddenly felt so alone.
Rylie waited until Brody’s shadow disappeared from the hallway, and then sneaked through the kitchen and out of the house.
Everyone had been telling her to stay hidden. To stay safe. So it had been weeks since she got to leave the ranch. Rylie was getting awfully sick of being safe—she needed to escape.
Once she got outside, none of the cars were in sight. Rylie walked toward the gates as quickly as she could and hoped that nobody would see her by the time she hit the highway. She only made it halfway down the hill before a voice called out.
“Wait!”
Rylie stopped and shut her eyes.
The apprentice witch, Brianna, pulled up alongside her in the car James had been driving. It was a silver sedan with leather seats.
“Where are you going?” Brianna asked.
“I’m heading into town.”
“You’re walking?”
“Yes.”
Brianna gave her massive stomach a dubious look. “I’m going that way to buy some stuff for James. Can I give you a ride?”
Rylie glanced up at the house. There was still no sign of Seth or Abel, but if either of them realized that she was running off, they would stop her. She could escape much faster in a car. “Sure.”
She climbed into the passenger’s seat and buckled up. Brianna pulled onto the highway.
Mercifully, the young witch didn’t talk very much. She hummed along with the hip hop radio station and beat her fingers against the wheel, but mostly, she just focused on driving. That was exactly the way Rylie liked it. No arguing, no judgment, no warnings about needing to be safe. Just silence.
She focused on the world whizzing by the window. It had been far too long since she saw any of it.
“Do you want to know what they are?” Brianna asked about ten minutes into the drive.
Rylie blinked. “Huh?”
“The babies. Do you want to know what they are?”
“I don’t really want to know the genders,” Rylie said. “I’m going to wait to be surprised.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Brianna tapped her own nose with a fingertip. “I can tell what kind of creature everyone is, so long as I’ve come across their breed a couple times before. It’s kind of a useless trick, actually.”
“Well, it’s definitely useless here. I already know that they’re werewolves.”
“Nope.”
Rylie blinked. “What?”
Brianna waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the twins. “One of them is definitely a werewolf. I can feel that. But the other one isn’t.”
“What is it?” Rylie asked, suddenly feeling faint.
“I don’t know,” the witch said, shrugging. “I don’t recognize the signal.”
As soon as Rylie’s heart remembered how to beat, it was going way too fast. “What else could it be? Werewolves always breed more werewolves. That’s what everyone has told me.”
Brianna frowned. It was a cute, delicate kind of expression, and just as charming as her dimpled smiles. “Sorry. I don’t mean to worry you. The fact that it’s so quiet might just mean that the baby’s human—so you probably shouldn’t worry.”
Easier said than done.
They reached the edge of town. “Drop me off at the park?” Rylie asked.
“Sure. I’m going to the drugstore. Should I pick you up when I’m done?”
“No, it’s fine. I have a ride back.” Rylie was lying, of course, but she had decided that Brianna was almost as creepy as James, and she didn’t want to get back in a car with her again.
She watched until Brianna drove off, and then started wandering. Rylie hadn’t given much thought to where she would go once she escaped. Now that she was free, she had no idea what to do with herself.
The icy streets were mostly empty, as if the entire town had gone missing in the New Year. Everything else looked the same way that it had ever since Rylie moved there in high school. A couple of businesses had closed, and those buildings had new occupants, but it could have been any one of the other winters that she had spent living with Gwyn.
How many times had she walked through those streets holding hands with Seth, totally absorbed in each other, as the world around them vanished? They had spent so many long summer days sitting under the trees, talking about the future they wanted to have together.
It had been too long since they did that. Whenever he came back from college, they had been so desperate to see each other that they barely left their bedroom, much less talked about anything. And now that he had moved back to the ranch to watch Rylie, they s
pent more time arguing than talking about their dreams, their plans, their future together.
Rylie wasn’t even sure that she saw a future with Seth at all anymore.
Those dark thoughts carried her through the streets. She eventually found herself in the grocery store, even though she hadn’t planned on going there.
Everyone stared at her as she walked aimlessly through the aisles. She recognized a few of the faces. It was a small store owned by a local family, so almost everything was local and organic. Normally, she really appreciated the quality food and friendly family atmosphere. Unfortunately, it also meant that everyone recognized her. They whispered as she passed. It bothered her. It bothered her a lot.
She didn’t even notice when someone crept up from behind until hands covered her eyes.
“Guess who,” said a low, masculine voice.
She reacted on instinct. Rylie spun with a growl, which cut off when she saw who had grabbed her.
Tate was older, thinner, and less smelly than he used to be. But that was still Tate’s mischievous smile, transplanted onto a body that wore a nice suit. “Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “Tate!”
He swept her up in a hug that would have been tight enough to bruise her, if she had been human. “Holy crap, you’re pregnant!”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, laughing weakly as he spun her around. “It would be kind of hard to miss with this…thing…getting in my way.” Her stomach was big enough now that none of her clothes fit, including her baggiest shirts. Now she had to borrow clothing from Seth.
“You’re huge! Is it twins?”
“Actually, yeah,” Rylie said.
Tate’s grin warmed his whole face. It made him look like the guy that she used to play video games with in high school. He didn’t look anything like the suited personality giving speeches on TV.
“Bet Seth’s going crazy over this,” Tate said.
Rylie just gave a pained smile. Yeah, but not for the reason you think.
She was sick of talking about pregnancy drama. Rylie pushed him gently, playfully. “What are you doing in town? I thought you were too important to hang out with us anymore.”
