Pack Violet Shadow

by C. M. Stunich

  For that, I was seriously going to have to kick his ass later.

  “The forest … floor …” Faith was saying as I finally finished climbing the stairs and paused in the doorway to the bedroom. The look she gave me over her shoulder could've curdled milk. “The ground? The pine needle strewn ground?”

  This was going to be a long night, wasn't it?

  After I'd convinced Faith that the gargantuan bed was clean of bodily fluids, we snuggled up together in the middle of it with breadsticks, pizza slices, and soda—courtesy of Tidus and Nic—and put on, of all things, a werewolf movie.

  “God, I love werewolves,” Faith said as she watched some hideous beast man in black and white grab a screaming, fainting woman off a park bench. I glanced her way. I'd think she was being ironic if I wasn't sure Faith was ignorant about the existence of the Numinous.

  “Faith,” I started, sitting up and pushing red hair over one shoulder. “We should probably talk …” The sight of Diya's body flashed in the back of my mind, but I knew I couldn't tell her, not without revealing everything else about the world that she didn't know. And honestly, if I let myself think too hard on it, confessing would be more for me than it would be for her.

  “Probably,” she said, dipping a breadstick into a plastic tub of marinara and swirling it around. When she flicked her brown eyes over to me, they were wide and accusatory. “The forest floor, Zara? Is that a joke?”

  I didn't respond right away and she groaned, stuffing the breadstick into her mouth and falling back onto the pillows.

  “Explain, please. I just … One-Kiss-No-Date, what happened to you?”

  “I'm not … a sexual awakening?” I asked with a flash of teeth, trying to make a joke out of it. Faith was all about women taking control of their sexuality and all that; maybe this was a way I could get her to understand? “After Nic and I did it, I just sort of opened up …”

  “I'll bet you did,” Faith said as I plucked a piece of chicken off my pizza and threw it at her. “But how did you explain your sexual revolution to Nic?”

  “He's okay with it,” I said, looking her in the face and hoping she could tell that at least some of what I was saying was the truth. “As okay as he can be anyway. He knows what's riding on this … courtship.”

  “What is riding on this courtship, Zara? Money? You've never cared about that sort of thing before.”

  “It's not about money,” I said, trying to keep the honesty going as long as I possibly could. “These guys, their families have political and business connections that could really make a difference in the world. Nic knows that.”

  “All these years, you've managed to keep your mom's job a secret from me. I'm assuming you're still not going to tell me what she does for a living?” I gave Faith an I wish I could smile but shook my head.

  “No.”

  “But you dating these guys is really important?” she asked and I nodded, watching as she sat up, reaching for another breadstick and picking at the bits of roasted garlic on the top. “Can you tell me why there's only one bed in this house?”

  “It's a lesson in togetherness,” I said, which was at least partially the truth. “A way to force us all to get along. To be honest though, most of the guys have been sleeping on the sofa or in the chairs downstairs.”

  “So …” Faith started as she rewound the werewolf movie to rewatch a particularly brutal death scene. “It's like one of those corporate picnics where they make you tie your legs together and do the sack races and stuff?”

  “Yeah,” I said, surprised at how well she was taking this. “It sort of is.”

  “Are you going to sleep with them all?” she asked me after another moment, and I shrugged.

  “I don't know. Probably. I think so.”

  “You dirty bitch,” Faith said, pulling the buffalo wing box close and flicking it open with a single finger. She stared at the sauce covered meat for a long time, ignoring the screeches of the movie heroine. “You're sure Nic is okay with all of this?” she asked again, voice soft. “Because I feel like you guys are meant to be together.”

  'We are meant to be together,' he said to me from downstairs, using wolfspeak to drop in on the conversation. I had to resist a small smile. I wasn't sure if it would come out genuine … or tinged with a drop of sadness. 'No matter what happens with the others, it doesn't change that.'

  “I love Nic,” I told Faith aloud, drawing her attention back to me, staring into her brown eyes and hoping she could tell how serious I was about that. “And nobody else.”

  Faith's mouth twitched in a smile and she plucked out a chicken leg, handing it over to me.

  “Alright,” she said, sounding a little more like herself, “but you still owe me detailed stories, dick lengths, and an explanation as to how you ended up doing it outside with this Che person.”

  “Deal,” I said as I took a bite of my food and wondered how many of the guys were listening in on our conversation.

  The sex stuff, I could get past, but the love thing … I'd said what I'd meant.

  At this point, I did only love Nic.

  But I knew at some point, my heart would swell to make room for another—for several others, actually.

  Early, far before Faith would even dream of getting up, I rose from the giant bed, slipping on jeans and a t-shirt and heading downstairs to see what Che had done with Aeron last night.

  I found the fae girl curled up on the sofa, her glamour still firmly in place, making her look like a sleeping teenager instead of a supernatural monster.

  “She's been out all night,” Che said, his voice as dark as the shadows behind him, dripping and hot, inviting me to wrap the sound around myself like a blanket. “I don't trust her for shit, but …” I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him shrug, his purple eyes shimmering as he watched me. “The other one,” he continued, this time with his lips twisting into a scowl, “is outside. He slept on the porch last night.”

  “Thanks,” I said, moving toward the door to face up to the inevitable—I had to talk to Silas. I had to know how deep his betrayal went and then figure out what to do with it. As I turned away from Che, he reached out, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. An instant thrill took over me, that wildness I'd felt during the hunt. With just a single touch, he made my heart pound like I was running in the Hunt all over again, paws padding over snow, the scent of prey driving my instincts forward.

  “Che,” I said as he stepped forward and looked down at me, running his tongue over his lower lip and flicking his eyes to the side for a moment like he wasn't sure what he wanted to say. But as soon as he switched them back to me? There was nothing but confidence in his gaze.

  “I want your mouth,” he told me without a stitch of hesitation. I felt an allover warming in my body, this hot flush that crept across my skin and made me suck in a sharp breath. I might not be in love with Che Nocturne, but physically … there was a connection between us.

  “Duly noted,” I said, extracting my wrist from his grip. He let me go, but his mouth twisted to the side in a bemused sort of frown. I started to turn away and then paused, reaching up and planting my palms on either side of his face. Lifting up on my toes, I breathed in the rich scent of bergamot and wolf, and then pressed my mouth to his.

  He let me kiss him like that for just a few short seconds before putting his hands on my hips and deepening the moment into something darker, something sinister. And I liked it, too, each strong flick of his tongue against my own.

  “Spend the night with me tonight,” he said against my mouth, putting just enough space between us to say the words. I cracked my eyes open a fraction and found his purple gaze shimmering with primal lust and want and need, his wolf peeking out at me from a very handsome human face. “Or at the very least, let me into the bed.” Che's mouth twitched a little as he released me and stepped back, making no move to hide the hardness inside his sweats. “Sleeping on the couch blows.”

  I smiled back at him and stepped away,
running my tongue across my lower lip. I could taste him there on my mouth and I loved it. Che Nocturne spoke to me at a bestial level my wolf could understand. Attraction, warmth, pack, mate.

  Pushing open the screen door, I found Silas curled up in one of the rocking chairs on the porch with a blanket thrown over him, a small decorative throw pillow tucked under his cheek. Jax lay on the floor in wolf form, opening one blue eye and flicking a single ear in my direction when I came outside.

  'He's just fallen asleep,' he told me as I paused there and looked down at Silas' face, praying that I was right about him, that he was telling the truth. For a traitor, there were only two options for pack justice: death or banishment. It was hard to say which was worse for a 'were'. 'He spent the night tossing and turning, mumbling things under his breath.'

  Jaxson stood up and then did a bow, yawning wide and flashing pink tongue as he lowered his front half to the floor and then stood back up, shaking out the thickness of his pelt.

  'What exactly did he say?” I asked him, and if wolves could shrug, then that's what Jax was doing, lowering his front half slightly in another half-bow, as if to say how the hell should I know?

  'Nonsense, mostly. Although I'd be lying if I said I didn't hear your name a couple of times in there.' Jax padded up to the edge of the porch and sat with his back rigid and his head raised, nostrils flaring as he scented the cool, crisp morning air. 'Che is already planning Silas' funeral,' he added, casting an icy blue gaze in my direction. 'What are you going to do if you find out he really is a traitor?'

  “I don't know,” I said aloud, because I needed to hear the words break the quiet peacefulness of the morning air. I didn't know, and I wasn't used to that. “First, I suppose we should come up with a plan to deal with Julian.”

  Moving down the front porch steps, I stood in a half-melted puddle of snow and closed my eyes, letting the peacefulness of the pack property wash over me. Jax joined me and shifted into human form on my left side.

  Glancing over at him, I couldn't help but notice the firm contours of his muscles, the smooth white surface of his skin, the pale pink color of his lips. He was ice and frost, through and through, from his appearance to his attitude. I didn't know how to deal with him, what to make of him. Jaxson Kidd was an enigma.

  “We need to arrange a meeting with the Crown Aurora Blood Queen,” I said after a long moment, tearing my gaze away from Jax's naked body to stare out at the forest. “I need to understand why, when they have such an incredible trick up their sleeve, the Ironbound Bloods are losing so much territory.”

  “Do you think they're doing it on purpose?” Jax asked me, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his chin up toward the sky. I followed his gaze and watched the sun peek its gold head above the horizon. “Relinquishing all that territory?”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked, turning my head slightly to find that Jax was watching me now. The corner of his lip twitched slightly, like he was on the verge of almost-smiling at me.

  “That's what I'd do, let them take all the territory, spread themselves thin …” He paused and then let a full smile twist across his face, one full of irony and bemusement. I wondered what Jaxson looked like when he was actually happy? Or if he ever really was. “Maybe watch them get comfortable in unfamiliar turf … then during the day, I'd kill them all.”

  A chill skittered down my spine, like frosted fingertips on a cold winter day.

  Jax had a damn good point there.

  Even more reason to get in touch with Aurora herself.

  If she didn't know about the daywalkers yet, that meant I had leverage enough for a favor …

  “This is so weird,” Faith whispered on our way to the university, sitting in the front row of the Yukon with me, pretending to glance surreptitiously over her shoulder at the boys and failing miserable. She was painfully obvious about it. I could see Nic rolling his eyes from the driver's seat. “You're dating all of these guys. It's like a new wave of feminism or something.”

  “Faith,” I said, giving her a look as she chewed on the end of her braid again. Damn it. I was really going to have to stop throwing revelations this girl's way.

  My stomach tightened and I found myself inhaling sharply.

  Faith no longer had a mother, and it was all my fault. That wasn't something that was ever going to go away or get better. I had to learn to live with it.

  “What? You're allowed to date seven guys, and I can't comment on it?”

  I pursed my lips and forced myself to keep my gaze out the front window. Every boy in this car was a werewolf; no matter how quiet Faith was, they'd hear her. How embarrassing. Not to mention the fact that Aeron was in the far back, sitting seatbelt-less and nauseous from all the iron in the SUV.

  Oh well.

  I couldn't exactly leave her on pack property—we were extremely lucky her glamour also masked her smell or else my mother might've shown up to investigate—and I didn't have time to deal with her until later. If she wanted to talk to me, she'd just have to tag along and wait for an opportunity.

  I tapped my fingers on the edge of the car door and tried to work out how to deal with Julian when I got to school—if he was even there.

  It would be smarter for him not to show.

  Now that he knew I knew, there was no point in hiding my males from him; I'd take them all to the university campus as a show of force.

  “You're a good man, Nic,” Faith said after a moment, and I swear, when I flicked my gaze in his direction, I saw his hands tighten on the wheel. “A real good man.”

  “Gee, thank you, Faith,” he said sarcastically, pursing his lips as we pulled into a lucky front parking space and he stopped the car. Everyone else was silent, either replaying yesterday's fiasco at the diner or else purposely giving Silas the quiet treatment. Looking back at him, I caught his gold eyes with mine and saw pain flash there, hot and tired at the same time. He was hurting, but he was also exhausted. Whatever was going on, it was rooted in something deeper.

  Silas was my concern now, my mate, a part of my pack … and it was my job to find out.

  “Walk a perimeter around the science building and if you see Julian,” I told Montgomery once Faith was distracted calling out to a friend from her chemistry class, “you and Anubis stay on him. If he's on campus, he's yours. But no matter what, don't leave with him.”

  Aeron ambled up to stand beside me, her arms crossed over her stomach as she watched me hand out orders. I didn't particularly like her taking this all in, but then, she wouldn't learn anything I didn't want her to know. I'd be careful with what I said or did around the Unseelie Princess.

  “Yes, Alpha,” Monty said, watching as I turned my attention to Jax and Che.

  “I want you two to actively search the campus for him. Silas, Nic, Tidus, you three are with me.” I glanced over at Aeron. “You're welcome to stick with us,” I added as her sloe-eyes blinked lazily in the sun. I imagined she'd follow along until we got a chance to talk.

  I started off toward the building, ignoring Che's deep, rumbling growls as Silas passed by him. Taking Faith by the arm and bribing her to stick with us by offering free coffee, I steered her inside, my nose, ears, and eyes working at full capacity to search for any sign of the daywalking vampire.

  To my surprise, he was waiting for us just inside the front door, his smell masked with witch hazel, but his distaste for me written across each line of his scowling features.

  “Nic, get Faith the coffee I promised and I'll pay you back. I gotta talk to Julian about our final project,” I added when she gave me a raised eyebrow and a look.

  “He's not part of the harem, is he?” she whispered, but Nic was already yanking her away and taking her down the hall toward the study lounge and snack area.

  “I'm surprised you'd show your face here,” I told him, tilting my head to one side and watching as his brown eyes took in Tidus on my right and Silas on my left. I had to admit, they made a very attractive set of bodyguards.
>
  “And why is that?” Julian asked me, looking for all the world like your average college student. “Do you think I have a reason to hide? I'm not the one who has trouble keeping track of his people, now am I?” He smiled at me, and not for the first time, I felt an uneasiness around him, a sense of wrongness that I'd been picking up on from day one. “Oh, hey Silas,” Julian said with a little wink, pushing off the wall and heading for our wildflower class.

  The university had assigned a substitute, now that a police report had been filed by Professor Heath's husband. He was officially missing, a whisper the whole school was talking about. Had he run off with some young lover? Had he committed suicide?

  I hated being one of a few who knew that he'd been murdered.

  “I don't know him,” Silas said, quivering beside me, his jaw clenching tight. I could see his canines peeking over the edge of his lip, his hands curling into fists. I smelt blood, wolf blood, and knew that he'd probably cut himself with his own nails. “I've never met this guy on my own, Zara, I swear it.”

  Before I could even react to that statement, Silas was tearing across the hallway and grabbing Julian by the hair. He yanked him back and shoved his face into the wall with a sickening crunch. All around us, students started screaming and backing up; some pulled their phones from their pockets while others rushed forward to help.

  “I've got this,” Aeron said from beside me. I'd almost forgotten about the faerie princess for a second, but when she pulled a tiny bottled glamour from her pocket and tossed it onto the floor, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  The students who were watching paused, blinked as if they they'd just woken up from a long nap, and tucked their phones in their pockets before stepping back and moving on as if nothing at all had happened here. As I rushed forward to grab Silas, I saw an overlay of the glamour of top of him and Julian, a peaceful reconciliation of friends, laughing and patting one another on the back.