Rogue Huntress

by Aimee Easterling

  “Hey,” Derek answered, his breath ruffling the hair along the top of my head. He was taller than I’d expected, I now realized, my little brother in name alone. Somehow, I’d assumed Derek’s less advanced age would make him shorter than I was. But if anything he gave my mate a run for his money in the height department. And Sebastien was no pipsqueak.

  Height, of course, was irrelevant. It was only one of dozens of revelations that flowed through me like water as we stood there for an endless moment, wolves communing silently beneath our skins.

  And it was in that moment of siblinghood that the bond between us formed. It clicked into place instantly, as if we’d only needed to touch to create a tether that in other wolves might take months or years to grow strand by minuscule strand. One moment we were two beings standing side by side in the same circle of sunlight. The next moment we were inseparable members of the exact same pack.

  “You okay?” Derek asked eventually, pressing me away from his lanky body in order to gaze upon me with creased brow. A sunbeam struck directly between us in the process, illuminating his nose and shoulder and my left hand. The brilliant light was like a blessing, and I found myself certain that everything would finally come out right now that my brother had been found.

  “Fine,” I answered, forgetting all issues in that moment of sun and siblinghood. I brushed off worries over Sarah’s not-so-warm welcome. About Becca and Chase’s danger. The Tribunal out for my skin and SHRITA agents gunning for my mate. Everything drifted away like a mote of dust on a sunbeam, to be dealt with later by the strong partnership that was my pack.

  So I was smiling and giddy when a weight slammed into my right shoulder. Sarah might have been small, but she was able to pack a serious punch. “Out of my kitchen!” she demanded, her voice rising higher with every subsequent syllable. “Off my land! Out of my life!”

  I turned, bracing myself for the blow that would inevitably follow when I offered up my unprotected face to attack. But, instead, Sarah ignored me as she continued shoving my brother toward the exit, her slenderness meaningless in the face of her urgency and passion.

  “You’re not welcome here,” our mother growled, wolf at the forefront. “I told you when you left never to come back. Now go.”

  Snarling, Sarah shoved my brother out the same door I’d snuck in one day before. Then, slamming the barrier behind him, she adamantly bolted it shut.

  Chapter 24

  Wolves slipped into the kitchen in ones and twos, fours and sixes until the space was filled to the brim with bared teeth and stiffened legs. Sarah’s pack bond had alerted her underlings to potential danger but my own connection to Sebastien was insufficient to draw my sole ally to my side. Instead, I stood alone in the sea of seething aggression, wishing I could flee the premises on a hunt of my own.

  Because my newfound bond to Derek tugged at my chest like the yearning for chocolate. My brother was gone—I knew that. I’d heard his motorcycle rev seconds after Sarah pushed him out of her kitchen, proving that Derek was far beyond either of our reaches. Finding him now would require stealth and patience. Still, I itched to shift and run after my absent brother as fast as my paws could carry me....

  Mirroring those thoughts, Sarah faced me with barely suppressed lupine fury. “We have to run. We have to hunt,” she growled, her reasoning vastly different from my own but the result exactly the same. While I yearned to rush outside in search of my cast-off brother, Sarah was merely reacting to the pack emotion that reverberated through the room so strongly it cascaded over her clan members in waves. She needed to turn wolf to blow off much-needed steam if she hoped to bring her human brain back to the fore in the foreseeable future.

  The rest of her pack, in contrast, was already lupine. Which meant we risked everything by standing here, far too close to nosy neighbors and prying strangers. SHRITA agents were presumably angling for presidential permission to step back onto Eddie’s property and hunt for wolves, while even the mailman might arrive on our doorstep unannounced at any moment. No way could this volatile band of werewolves continue to roam freely within the mansion without risking shifter secrecy being blown sky high.

  Proving Sarah’s point, footsteps thundered down the stairs above us. There were two sets, I noticed, both heavy and urgent. Perhaps Sebastien had felt something down our mate tether after all, or maybe Eddie was more closely linked to his wife’s emotions than either of them knew. Whatever the reason, both Sarah’s husband and my mate would soon be entering the kitchen, walking into a pack of addled and wild wolves the sight of which was a danger to these men’s future existence.

  So I accepted my role as the sole shifter present composed enough to hold onto my inner animal. Ushering werewolves out the door, I prodded them toward the broad back garden even as two humans approached from the opposite direction.

  “Go,” I told the wolves urgently while Sarah fell into her lupine form with a strangled howl. She was slow to shift but fast to take the lead as wolf after wolf slipped into a line behind her. They hung a sharp right into the rose garden halfway across the lawn, frolicking and cavorting...then stooping to slide through a hole in the shrubbery that had clearly been ignored for this precise purpose when the rest of the bushes were brought up to snuff.

  The pack’s obvious pleasure in their freedom left me itching to relinquish the future, to forget my worries, and merely run. Everyone but me had ditched their humanity in a heartbeat, and it took every ounce of my own self-control not to slip out of clothing, call to my inner animal, and join them with paws on earth....

  It was Sebastien’s voice that returned me to the present. “Ember?” His single word floated out the kitchen window, followed up by a quiet murmur from my mother’s spouse. And while the professor wouldn’t bat an eyelash at the display of fur in the back garden, my host had been kept blissfully ignorant of his wife’s inner nature for the last eight years. This wasn’t the time to blow his naivety sky high.

  As if sensing Eddie’s presence, my mother sidled back out of the shrubbery, head cocked to one side as she gazed into my eyes. “Help me,” she as good as begged. “Protect Eddie from the repercussions of knowing too much.”

  Twenty-four hours earlier, I would have rolled my eyes at the request for assistance from a female who’d never given me anything but heartache. But now, I nodded acceptance and sent both Sarah and her pack further along their path with a wave of my hand.

  “I can handle this,” I promised my birth mother. “Eddie won’t suspect a thing. Now, go.”

  The female’s tail disappeared behind leaf-covered branches half a second before the door opened behind my back. Scanning the garden, I saw nothing but dark trails in the dew to suggest others had recently been present. My human companions, I hoped, wouldn’t notice such a minor sign of events Eddie couldn’t afford to be privy to.

  “Have you seen Sarah?” the latter asked in lieu of a greeting. Meanwhile, Sebastien’s hand landed lightly on my shoulder, the weight holding me quite effectively within my human skin.

  “She’s around here somewhere,” I responded, refusing to glance backwards even when a huff of lupine laughter emerged from the rose garden no more than fifteen feet away. “She asked me to put some cinnamon rolls in the oven and said she’d be back about the time they were done. Here, why don’t you help me find the butter?”

  Chapter 25

  We ate our breakfast in the sunroom, plants draping over every available surface in a scene reminiscent of the office where my mate spent so much of his time. And as we nibbled on iced-sugar frosting and peeled layers of sweet pastry off our cinnamon buns, I imagined the hot blood of a rabbit pouring down my throat while hard hind legs kicked their last. I’d been keeping such a tight rein on my inner animal in deference to my mate’s human sensibilities that I could hardly stomach missing a run even among such unfriendly companions as Sarah’s pack mates. Despite my love of pastries, I would have preferred spending this morning as a wolf.

  As if sensing my discomfo
rt, Sebastien angled his chair a little closer, his leg brushing up against mine beneath the table. “So...you said that Derek came by this morning?” he offered into the silence, returning us to the topic that had drawn such a pall over what had begun as a cheerful occasion.

  I nodded, regretting the mention now despite its efficiency at sidetracking my host from wondering where his entire staff had wandered off to. Because as soon as I’d voiced my brother’s name, Eddie’s scent had turned as harsh and acrid as that of any angry werewolf. And now his left leg jiggled relentlessly in a motion that chattered china and threatened my sanity if he didn’t pull himself together soon and manage to stop.

  “There are things you should know about your brother,” Eddie said at last, interrupting my brown study...and, thankfully, ceasing momentum in the jiggling department. “Things I didn’t realize for a long while after he and Sarah began calling this place their home.”

  “We’re listening,” Sebastien answered when our host descended into silence. Eddie clearly needed a nudge to keep the story flowing, and my mate was more than happy to oblige. He opened his body artfully into the stance of a welcoming conversationalist, and I found myself unclenching the arms I’d clasped across my chest in an effort to mimic Sebastien’s pose.

  The tweak in body language, though subtle, paid big dividends. It was almost as if Eddie had forgotten we were present as he launched into a story as dark as it was telling, one I had a feeling he’d never told to strangers before. “Derek was twelve when I first noticed signs of trouble,” my stepfather murmured, his voice so quiet I wasn’t sure Sebastien’s non-lupine ears could hear. “It was subtle at first. Practical jokes that weren’t really funny. Dead birds left on the doorstep by what I assumed was a neighborhood cat.”

  I shivered, suddenly knowing where this was going. Not Derek, I thought, my right arm sliding back across my chest as a barrier against further knowledge. But Sebastien reached over and grabbed my hand before my resistant body language could stem the flow of Eddie’s words.

  He needn’t have bothered, because the trickle of remembrance was now opening into a flood. “I came home from the office one evening,” our host continued, “and found Derek hunched over a cat at the edge of the driveway.” Eddie’s tone was meditative now, as if he’d walked back over this ground so many times he couldn’t quite discern which parts were memory and which were merely the way he’d always replayed the tale. “The cat’s leg was broken. A big gash cut through its fur. I assumed Derek had found it on the road after the pet was struck by a vehicle.”

  My stepfather paused, swallowed a great gulp of air. The man who had phoned the President of the United States and bullied the latter into calling off an armed raid on his residence was absent, replaced by someone so defenseless I almost wanted to sidetrack us away from the remainder of this recitation before it drew to its inevitable close.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I hummed a wordless query and waited for Eddie to continue. Eventually, he did.

  “I knelt down beside this teenager I already considered a son and told him to hurry, that we’d get right back in my car and take the poor cat to the vet,” Eddie murmured. This time, I held my breath, tugging despite myself on the bond that tied me to my brother. The tether held tight and strong, promising that Derek was safe and unfazed somewhere far to the north.

  And, as if sensing my need for reassurance, my brother sent back a wordless reply. The memory of sunlight shining through my hair earlier that morning. My smile as he welcomed me into his arms for the very first time. Our bond, built out of thin air, strummed like a guitar string between us.

  Then Eddie burst the glistening soap bubble of beauty I’d built up within my own mind. “Derek looked up at me,” the older male continued relentlessly, his words gaining power as they tumbled toward the story’s conclusion. “And he shook his head. ‘I’m not done yet,’ Derek told me. And that’s when I knew this teenager needed far more than a house, some food, and a boundless supply of love. Derek was growing into a monster, and I couldn’t allow that darkness to permeate my home.”

  Chapter 26

  “So you kicked him out?” I demanded, suddenly so angry I couldn’t remain seated a moment longer. I rose and paced between a waist-high ginger plant and a banana tree, clenching fists that wanted to grab onto Eddie’s lapels and shake some sense into his larger body. My stepfather had appeared so kind and caring when taking in strangers who showed up unannounced on his doorstep. He’d hired a large staff who clearly needed a home and had built an arsenal to protect his skittish wife. And yet, he chose to cast off my little brother for an action that must have been intended as a plea for help?

  “Of course not,” Eddie answered, twisting his body around so he could keep me in his field of vision as I looped around the plant-filled room. “I called in psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, witch doctors. We tried medication, counseling, trips abroad. I even attempted to bribe the boy to pretend to care about others’ agony. I don’t give up on my own.”

  My stepfather sounded so wolf-like in that moment that I paused at last, breathing heavily not so much from the walk as from the effort of controlling my own inner beast. And it was Sebastien who pulled us both back to rationality in the lull that followed.

  “What the layman often doesn’t realize,” my mate told us, although his eyes promised that the words were largely intended for me, “is that antisocial personality disorder—sociopathy or psychopathy, if you prefer—doesn’t inevitably lead to crime-show serial killing and a scourge on society. Lack of empathy is a mental illness akin to hearing voices or succumbing to depression so unshakable you can’t get up out of bed in the morning. But the issue can be managed if caught early...and if the patient in question wants to be helped.”

  “He didn’t.” Eddie’s voice was sad, his eyes hooded as if he still struggled with this failure even eight years later. “One night, Derek and his mother indulged in a shouting match that I wasn’t privy to. The next morning, he didn’t come down to breakfast. The boy was simply gone.”

  I bowed my head, unable to make this story mesh with the Derek I’d hung out with for so many hours over video chat. A sociopath wouldn’t have listened to my chatter with no reward on the horizon, would he? Someone lacking all empathy couldn’t have understood how much I yearned to meet him and how much I loved to share my baking with the wider world.

  But had Derek actually engaged with me, or simply let me prattle on unmolested? Had he indulged me in order to stem his own boredom? Or had he perhaps seen an easy mark worth nurturing in preparation for some future depredation beyond my ability to comprehend or to control?

  Before I could make a decision about who to believe, though, a bell chimed and Eddie delved into his pocket to pull out a tablet tied into the security system of the house. For a split second, I wondered how Sarah and her staff managed to slide beneath the radar when her husband seemed to have security cameras aimed at every possible approach to the residence. But then I stopped worrying about my birth mother, because I caught a hint of motion on the screen and leaned in closer in an attempt to make it out.

  The paved driveway winding up toward Eddie’s residence was too well landscaped to be viewed in its entirety. But here and there the road surface became visible between gaps in the trees. In one of these sunlit patches, a lone motorcycle rider sped rapidly toward us, the shiny black helmet making it impossible to identify whether the newcomer was male or female, a one-body or someone possessing an inner wolf.

  For half a second, I let myself believe this was my brother. That Derek had felt my confusion down our pack bond and returned to clear up a misunderstanding nearly a decade in the making.

  But then the rider skidded to a halt a good distance away from the residence. Removed her helmet, shook out her long blond hair. This wasn’t my brother returning to make amends. This was Dakota—the leader of the pack with the most reason to spill my and Sebastien’s blood. The captor of my uncle and cousin. This was my own
past coming to call.

  MY MATE AND I SPOKE wordlessly, not even needing our currently lax tether to communicate. “I’ll go,” Sebastien told me with the squaring of his shoulders. “I shot her men. This is my problem to resolve.”

  “No, you need to stay and sidetrack Eddie,” I answered with a flicker of my eyes. “The problem will only grow worse if we draw him into the mess.”

  As if sensing that he was being excluded from something interesting, my stepfather’s finger hovered over a red button at the corner of his tablet. “Danger?” Eddie asked, his eyes lighting up as he considered deploying yet more defenses like the ones he’d utilized last night.

  “No,” Sebastien and I answered in quick tandem. We glanced at each other one more time, the dark shadow of Dakota fading slightly in the face of this understanding that strummed between us more powerfully than the pack bond of any wolf.

  “No,” I repeated once my mate bowed his head subtly, giving me the lead in further evasions. “She’s...” I paused, darkening Sebastien’s name with my subsequent lie, “...she’s Sebastien’s ex. I should go talk to her, see if I can get her to move along.”

  Then, as the professor backed up my words with soft-spoken explanations, I slipped out of the sunroom, padded down the stairs, and broke into a run after breaching the broad front door. The driveway was nearly a mile long, so I had plenty of time to second-guess my decisions as I rushed toward my enemy. Plenty of time for Becca’s smiling face to rise up in my mind’s eye as I berated myself for not grabbing hold of my brother and handcuffing him when I had a chance.

  “There are still three hours left before the deadline,” I panted in a vain attempt to salve my guilt as I rounded yet another bend. And, on instinct, I pulled out the second burner phone as I ran, powering up the device and checking for messages that might explain Dakota’s presence here where I should have been hidden from all prying eyes.