“Three shifters who work for Hunter were taken last night. They’re a lion, a leopard and a jackal,” Sofia said, then shot me a look for verification.
I nodded. “All female. Taken by the same wolves who’ve been killing and eating humans.”
“That’s terrible,” Marie said. “Sofia said on the phone you needed someone to track them?”
“Yeah, since where they attacked hasn’t had dozens of cops all over the place, the scent trails should still be preserved.”
Marie considered that as she dropped dumplings into the oil carefully. “You know who the best tracker is.”
Out in the living room, the door to her apartment was pulled open. I turned to look and my mouth went dry with nerves at the sight of the two of them. It had been so long since I’d last seen my parents that for a moment I could see them as strangers might. Paul was a short Filipino-American in his late fifties, handsome and strong even now. The aura of power around him was enough that he could have been the alpha of the pack if he’d ever had mind to, but he never had. He had always been happy as a beta, supporting Sofia’s grandpa Ray and then her father Ric after him. Jay was Black, taller and more powerfully built, but didn’t have the same metaphysical power to him. He wasn’t dominant in any way and had always seemed happy with that. He had shaved all of his hair off since the last time I saw him, while Paul’s hair was streaked with gray and still thick. They both had new lines at the corners of their eyes, but otherwise the years hadn’t been too hard on them.
“Hunter,” Jay said and I could feel the weight of ten years of loss in the way he said my name.
I wanted to remain aloof, to continue punishing them for the secrets they had kept from me, but I couldn’t do it. “Dad,” I greeted him with an uncertain smile as I walked out of the kitchen. As soon as I was close enough, he pulled me into a fierce hug. I hugged him back tightly and when Paul came closer I threw an arm around him as well. “Papa. God, I’ve missed you. I’m…I’m sorry.”
“We’re sorry, too,” Jay said, his eyes tearing up when he pulled away.
“We’re just so glad you’re okay,” Paul rushed to add.
The kitchen behind me had gone quiet, so I knew Sofia and Marie were watching the reunion. Anyone else and I would have wanted privacy from them, but my mate and her grandmother were acceptable people to let my guard down in front of. I was still reeling in part because I had apologized. I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t thought it was necessary either. The sight of my parents and knowing just how much suffering I’d inflicted on them had made the guilt unbearable.
Only when I pulled back from the hug did I realize that Aidan had followed them in. He was still standing by the door and didn’t look particularly pleased to see me. He and Sofia were from the same litter, but he had always seemed younger than her to me. Like Jay, he wasn’t a naturally dominant wolf. There was a lot more power to him than what my dad had, but it still wasn’t geared toward leadership. That the pack had fallen on his shoulders after his father died still seemed so strange to me. I knew that Sofia had distanced herself from the pack for her own reasons, but it still didn’t seem right.
“Hey,” I said, giving Aidan a nod.
He gave me a small nod of acknowledgment, then looked past me to Sofia. “I know there are reunions to deal with, but Mama said you had more information about this new pack.”
“Yeah, and I needed to tell you what happened in person, Aidan. I came face to face with Christopher last night.” Sofia paused after she said it, her eyes getting a far off look to them. Somehow, I could sense her thought there. Had it really only been the night before? So much had happened, so quickly.
“Who?” Paul asked, the blood draining from his face.
“Christopher, the leader of this other pack,” I clarified. “What is it?”
Paul swore quietly and clutched onto Jay’s arm. Both of my dads were looking deeply disturbed by this revelation. When I glanced back toward the kitchen again I saw that Marie looked nearly as troubled. She paused to turn off the burner on the stove, then stepped around Sofia to come out into the living room.
“Did you see him in his wolf form?” She laid a hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder, frowning.
“Yeah.” Sofia drew the single syllable out slowly. “We both did. As a human he’s tall, really pale, with auburn hair and blue eyes. Shifted, he kept the same coloring for the most part. His coat was about Hunter’s color.”
“Yes, it was,” Paul said quietly.
“You know Christopher?” I looked from my dads to Marie, then back toward Aidan. At least he appeared to be as confused as Sofia and I were.
“The alpha of your birth pack,” Jay said, then looked over to his husband. “I wasn’t there for the fight, but I know Paul and Ric only encountered him directly after he was already shifted. He was—”
“He was terrifying,” Paul interrupted. “If he hadn’t been more intent on getting that pup away than fighting us, he could have killed us both.”
“What pup?” I had a sudden horrible thought. The dream I had sometimes of the woman with eyes like mine and the baby…
Paul gave me a look of nauseated guilt before he collapsed onto the couch. “We didn’t know she was just trying to protect her pup. When we went after the pack we found a woman outside a little den. Ric was sure that everyone in the pack was involved in killing people. He was sure they all deserved to die.” Paul rubbed a hand over his face, then hung his head to avoid looking at any of us. Jay crossed the room to sit next to him and place a hand soothingly on his back.
“Since she was defensive toward us, there didn’t seem any reason to give her benefit of the doubt,” Paul went on. “Ric killed her when she shifted and came at him. It was only after she was dead that we realized there had been a pup in the den. He wasn’t shifted, looked about a year old or so. That was when the alpha showed up.”
The room was silent for a long moment, as it seemed that no one else knew any better than me what to say next. I closed my eyes a moment, swallowing, then opened them again. I had to know. “Did she have my eyes?”
Paul raised his face to nod and I could see the tears glistening on his cheeks.
The dream I’d had more times than I could count came back to me. I had done my best not to dwell on it before, but I couldn’t keep denying the past. “My mother told me to run. My little brother James was too small to come with me. She had to stay to protect him.”
“I’m so sorry, Hunter. We thought she was attacking because the pack had been killing people. If we’d known she was only protecting a pup…” Paul trailed off.
I scoffed softly. “You might have let her be. I doubt Ric would have.”
“It was the day after that I found you,” Jay said softly to me. “You were all scratched up and lost in the woods, carrying a little backpack. You wouldn’t tell us where you came from, but we could guess.”
I smiled grimly. “Because I had Christopher’s hair and my mother’s eyes.”
“Christopher must be getting on in years now,” Marie interjected. “He may be easier to take down this time.”
“No, he won’t be,” Sofia said. “He doesn’t look a day older than Hunter.”
Paul finally pulled himself free of his guilt enough to look curious about this statement. “Are we sure it’s not some other son going by the same name, then?”
“I imagine it’s the same Christopher and we know why he was so powerful before,” I said. “They’ve been using vampiric magic to prolong their lives and increase their power.”
“How is that possible?” Aidan protested.
“I think I might have read a reference to something like that in one of my books,” Marie said as she crossed the room to her bookcase.
Most of the books were the sorts of things you could expect to see in an old lady’s bookcase—there were cookbooks and little “inspiring” volumes and things like that—but there was a shelf full of old, leather bound books. Well, some were old. One had
been written in her lifetime by her own hand. Before she died, she’d name one of her female descendants as the new keeper of the books and she would be expected to guard the lore and add to it as time went on. As I understood it, the tradition had been kept up since at some point in the early eighteenth century.
“If it worked once, then it can work again,” Aidan said. “Maybe they’re too tough for us to kill them all, but we can chase them off again.”
“Until they show up again years later and in the meantime, they’re killing humans in other cities,” I pointed out dryly.
Aidan appeared unswayed by this. “So you think genocide is the answer? Do you think it would have been better if my dad had killed you when you were found? Do you think he did right killing your mother for protecting her pup?”
On the one hand, I had to appreciate the fact that he didn’t want to end up exactly like his father. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure the direction he had taken things was any kind of improvement. I narrowed my eyes slightly at Aidan and opened my mouth, but Sofia stepped forward, cutting me off.
“Aidan, Christopher killed Mom. He told me,” she said. I heard, mournful sound from Marie in response to that revelation. “That’s what happens if you just drive them off. That’s what happens to a lot of families.”
Aidan’s eyes widened at this news, then narrowed again. “We’ll be no better than them if we do more than just defend our territory.”
“We’ll give them a chance,” Sofia said. “If they want to join us and behave, they’ll live. We’re going to have to kill any of them who are a threat, though. We owe it to all the humans we live among”
Her brother raised his chin slightly, looking down his nose at her. “That’s not your decision to make.”
Sofia was undaunted. In fact, I could feel the rush of her aura as she unleashed it, so that she practically glowed with her defiance. The main reason I didn’t argue with Aidan further was because it was far more enjoyable to watch her take charge.
“I’m making it,” Sofia said. “Packs aren’t a dictatorship. People can either follow me or not, but this is the decision I’m making.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” There was a hint of a growl in Aidan’s throat.
“It’s not a challenge, because I don’t need to fight you. If you want to make it a fight, fine, but I’m not going to start one. You can challenge me if you want to.”
Aidan’s eyes widened in shock at that and I had to turn my face to the side so that I didn’t crack up. She had backed him into a corner that wouldn’t be easy for him to get out of. By simply declaring what she was going to do, she was de facto acting as the alpha. By refusing to challenge him first, she was putting him in the subordinate position. He could challenge her to retake control, but he’d lose a lot of face by having to do so.
“And what do you think about this?” Aidan asked. I looked at him again to see he was watching my dads.
Jay shrugged. Paul gave a small inclination of his head toward Sofia. “Her plan seems the wisest.”
“I see.” Aidan stood there for a moment awkwardly, as if he couldn’t figure out what to do now that things had gone so wildly off script.
“I found it,” Marie said, saving us all from further pack politics. She went over to lay her book down reverently on the coffee table. “It was in my oldest one, from Adanna Jones.” She glanced up at us, but only Sofia had any recognition on her face from the name. “She was one of my earliest ancestors born in Jamaica, daughter to an Igbo woman and the sailor who freed her. She was the one who started keeping the lore.”
“And what did she write?” I asked.
Marie’s eyes lowered to the book again. “There was a coven of thirteen wolves who drank blood to grant themselves immortality. Because shifters are so closely tied to life, it took special blood in order to give them this ability. The blood of any women would do most of the time, but during every blue moon each of them needed to sacrifice a woman with a gift to remain unaging. Witches or shifters or even the half-shifters born from ratkin would do, but they all had to be female and fertile, so that all the potential within them could be drained.”
“When is the next blue moon?” I asked, then looked around the room. “Hell, what even is a blue moon?”
Jay had already had his phone in his hand while Marie spoke. He glanced up. “There are a couple of definitions, but the twentieth century one of a second blue moon in the same month probably doesn’t apply here. An extra full moon between an equinox and solstice being a ‘blue moon’ dates back at least into the sixteenth century.”
It seemed to fit, considering the age of Marie’s book. “And when is the next one?” I asked.
“The twenty-first of this month.” Jay paused, blinking. “That’s tonight.”
“Oh god,” I breathed, dragging a hand through my hair. “I’ve got a necromancer who said there were twelve of them and we know for a fact they have three shifters to sacrifice tonight. Nine more paranormals we don’t know about yet are going to be killed.”
“We can try tracking them to their den, but what do we do when we get there?” Jay asked.
“If the marks between Sofia and Hunter are active, they might have the strength to stop them,” Marie volunteered.
“What do you mean?” Sofia asked.
Marie turned the book to show her a passage in it. I stepped closer, cocking my head to look as well. “Adanna and her mate Donovan were bound and were able to use their combined power to stop the alpha. They didn’t stop all of them, unfortunately, but they did make them less dangerous for a while. Two alpha wolves who are bound would be even stronger.”
I frowned and reached out to follow the loopy old-fashioned handwriting with one finger. “The second-in-command was named Christopher and he escaped,” I pointed out. “Fuck.”
“We’re dealing with somebody who’s over three hundred years old?” Sofia shook her head. “The marks still aren’t really working for us, Mama. I don’t know that we can do what Adanna did. Especially not against someone this ancient.”
“Maybe the two of you should work for the rest of the day on getting the marks to work,” Jay said.
I glanced at him with a faint frown. “How? They stopped working at all years ago and we’ve only just gotten together again. They might be entirely dead.”
“No, it just takes love.” Jay’s voice was gentle but insistent. “Paul and I are bound. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Are you saying I don’t love Sofia?” I couldn’t help but get defensive at that, even if I knew he probably wasn’t really challenging our feelings for one another.
“Love isn’t just about what you feel,” Jay said. “It’s what you do. It’s when you decide to care for each other and make decisions with them in mind and work toward mutual happiness together. This is a choice you can make right now. Choose to love one another and the rest will fall into place.”
I set my jaw, which seemed a better choice than to argue with him and tell him I didn’t think he knew anything about love. So many easy, cruel things I could say about my dads hiding things from me, about Paul standing by while Ric killed my mother, came to mind. Maybe it was just Sofia’s presence, but for once I reined in my anger.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“If nine other paranormals are in danger from this, I need to warn people,” Sofia said.
Again, I could fill in the blanks of her thoughts. Though I hadn’t seen her in years, I had a flash of a mental image of Sofia’s friend Dawn. I blinked and glanced over toward Sofia, wondering if the marks were kicking in after all.
“First, eat,” Marie insisted. She got to her feet and put the book away before she returned to the kitchen. “You can’t do anything if you’re fainting from hunger.”
“Here, I’ll help you.” I followed Marie into the kitchen, grateful for the excuse to get away from everyone else for a few moments.
There was no real privacy in the kitchen because of
the window into the living room and the open doorway—not to mention sharp shifter hearing—but it felt more private, at least. As I was helping her with continuing the ackee and saltfish, she leaned in closer to me.
“The coven Adanna wrote about was all male,” she said softly.
I gave her a blank look, wondering what that meant.
“The magic they’re using requires a coven of a single sex,” she went on. “Only males draining the life out of females or only females draining the life out of males.”
“Oh,” I breathed. It meant my birth mother hadn’t been one of them. Having pups by Christopher, killed as one of them, but not perverting nature for her own gain.
I wasn’t sure if it made me feel better or worse.
Chapter Twelve
Sofia
“I’m going to have to talk to Dawn in person.”
Hunter glanced over at me as he drove. “She doesn’t know about any of this, after all this time?”
Breakfast had been satisfying and, happily, not nearly as awkward as I had feared. Once he got over his initial hurt and offense, I think Aidan was actually relieved to give up control of the pack to me. Everyone who was at our collective den came to join us, until we ended up spilling out into the courtyard. My cousin Ana brought some eggs and sausage and Uncle Damon and Aunt Jali brought coco bread and even with the specter or a horrific battle over our heads, it felt like the wounds of the past were finally starting to heal. Secrets had come out into the light of day and we finally had closure for my mother. It had been good and necessary, but it had also not been the only thing I had to do that day.
Calling Edie to warn her had been easy, since she had been involved from the start. Dawn was another story entirely, though. I sat in the passenger seat with my phone cradled in my hand, staring at her number.
“She’s taken a mate who’s a weretiger, so she knows about him and he knows about me,” I explained. “Pretty sure she doesn’t know about me or know that I know all about them.”
Once Bitten, Twice Claimed (Claimed by an Alpha Paranormal Romance Book 3) Page 10
