Adversity (Cursed #2.5)

by Claire Farrell

  “You okay?”

  “Sorry about today. I’ve been all over the place lately.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and looked a little sheepish.

  “I know. That’s another good reason why we should be looking to get rid of this curse.”

  He stared at me. “I know that, Amelia.”

  “Did they kick you out of school?”

  A rare grin lit up his face. “No. The principal told me to take the rest of the day off, basically. She’s pretty cool, for a principal.”

  “At least that’s something. Why did you go off like that, though?”

  Groaning, he paced in front of me. I could almost taste his stress and realised that Aaron had been lucky as hell. “It’s not as if I planned it. I’ve been on edge lately, and Aaron’s been asking for a hiding since I got here. You know that, right?”

  “I might know it, but I thought you were over the fights. You know fighting with you isn’t fair because you have this advantage that they don’t. Besides, you’ve kept your cool for ages. I thought you could control it now.”

  “So did I. Guess you can never trust a wild animal.” He gave me a watery smile, and I felt a pang of something in my chest. I knew he suspected our father of murdering our mother. And I knew he had always felt as though he himself could never be trusted. But this was the first time I had seen the evidence of his lack of control in front of my face. I often felt left out because I wasn’t a werewolf, but I was becoming ever more certain that I didn’t want to be a werewolf after all.

  ***

  Kali

  “What’s taking you so long to get home from the village every day?” Drina asked her.

  Kali smiled. “I walk slowly.”

  Drina’s face paled. “Don’t do anything stupid, Kali. He won’t stand for it.”

  Kali waved away Drina’s concerns. She wasn’t afraid of her father. She was too valuable.

  “Our clan only wants the pure,” Drina reminded her. “Nobody will remember you if you’re banished.”

  “I haven’t done anything to deserve that,” Kali insisted. “I haven’t been touched.”

  And she hadn’t. Andriy had never tried to touch her, no matter how much she wanted him to. Every cell in her body cried out for him, but he never made a move. He only ever spoke to her if she spoke first, which made him a good man, in her eyes. Knowing he couldn’t cross a line. The knowledge made her angry, angrier than… his wife. Always Kali’s thoughts returned to his wife. A loveless marriage and a paleness to his skin meant she couldn’t have him.

  The clan might have accepted him, taken him in as an honorary member if he had brought some use with him. But his having a wife was a step too far, and her people would reject her if she took him for hers, even if there was no love between the couple. Her banishment would mean she didn’t exist to them anymore. But wasn’t that what she wished for all along?

  She asked him questions, so many questions, and he spoke plainly to her in those few minutes they stole together every evening. He told her how his wife made him feel small, in his own home. He wasn’t welcome in her bed, and he had no bed of his own. He was needed to work the farm, while his wife embarrassed him by taking other men into her bed. Kali listened to his every word and told him her own stories. She was the next chovihani, and her destiny was linked to protecting her clan from the dead. Her children would be respected and revered because they would bear the curse of her birth.

  And he listened. He didn’t seem to truly understand the things she said, but he didn’t laugh or run when she told him her story. He didn’t judge her clan’s beliefs or act like a coward when she talked about the rising dead who tormented her people or when she talked about the werewolves said to protect her people from the evil spirits they so greatly feared. He held her gaze and listened to her words and made her feel as though she might be worth more than the happenstance of her birth, and thus, deserving of a different destiny.

  She fell for him quickly. Fell hard. She knew there was no going back. She saw the love in his eyes, returned it with her own, and they had an affair of the heart and of the mind, but not the body. Theirs was a sweet love that compelled her to keep stepping toward him, to keep waiting for him to cross the line. She had little idea of what might happen next, but she wanted more than anything to find out. She lived for the promise the future held.

  The rumours started again, courtesy of Andriy’s wife, but Kali withstood them because she had him to rely on. They never touched—not even her fondness for him quelled her reluctance to cross her people’s marime taboos. He, in turn, was afraid of his wife’s wrath. Their moments together were fleeting.

  Nobody could take away the memories they had created together. He had given her a peace of mind she didn’t know existed and made her feel valuable in a way that wasn’t bound to assets or riches. She saw the pure beauty in what they had together because they loved without taking, gave all of themselves except the physical part. She saw their souls entwined, and she knew they could be so much more together. He could cleanse her of the darkness within her, and she could help him stand up for the things he truly wanted.

  Drina covered for her, although she didn’t approve. Her father didn’t care as long as she brought home the payment of the villagers, but the heady summer sun would change everything. Kali felt it in her bones.

  Chapter Nine

  Amelia

  Nathan kept saying he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, but I could sense his apprehension on the way to school the next morning. We were late, and barely made it in before the bell rang, again accompanied by that spine-crawling awkwardness from the students in the hallways because of our presence. The atmosphere remained tense and full of expectation, as though everyone waited for another fight. Not that Aaron had a chance. If he had any sense at all, then he would keep the hell away from my brother. My own rage rushed to the surface suddenly, and I clung to my bag to stop my anger from releasing. Nathan frowned, and I knew he could feel what I felt. I waited for him to comment, but he didn’t. Without a word he took a different route to his first class, leaving me alone again.

  I skulked into my own class, finding a seat at an unoccupied table. Ger smiled at me, but I could only nod in return. I thought it ridiculous to be stuck in school trying to make small talk with completely normal people who didn’t have a pack of werewolves after them. Byron kept insisting we squeeze in the normal stuff, like school, with all of the danger and tension. His plan wasn’t working very well.

  I wasn’t altogether sure if there really was a pack of werewolves after me. Nobody seemed to know what the werewolves wanted, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.

  A cold sweat covered my brow, and I told myself I was putting myself under too much stress. I kept twisting everything up in my head and making it bigger than it had to be. So what if Nathan had a fight? One fight in extreme circumstances didn’t mean he was going to accidentally kill anyone. And so what if my grandfather was acting weird? He’d lost his mate and that was huge. He’d lost the person who’d centered him, so of course, he would take a while to find his balance again.

  I rationalized everything in my head all day, completely ignoring everything else that was going on. I was so going to fail my summer exams.

  At least it was almost time for our summer holidays. We spent most summers in Germany or France, visiting places my grandparents knew well. This year might be different. Nobody had spoken about it, so I guessed travelling was off the table.

  I spent at least three classes trying to remember every detail of my dreams in case they were part of the key to ending the curse. Okay, that scenario wasn’t likely. Not at all. But if my family members’ dreams led to soul mates, then why not curses? But I could find nothing. Nothing useful about curses, anyway. All I remembered was Kali’s distraction, and the focus she had on escaping her life.

  Sometimes I woke up wanting to slap her. Her thought processes and the decisions she made confused me. She was so
dramatic. She barely knew Andriy, and she had convinced herself she was hopelessly in love. She didn’t see that she was so desperate for escape that she would have clung on to any option that presented itself.

  One minute she was noble and moral, and the next she was running after somebody else’s husband. And she was barely older than me. Yeah, she lived in another time, but her actions still grossed me out, though not during my dreams. Everything seemed normal and right while I dreamt.

  The dreams had to mean something to me or be relevant to my life somehow. I had been thinking hard, and some of the hints she dropped added up. Kali would have werewolf children. Did that mean she was a soul mate? Was Andriy one of us? His surname was familiar. Ivaneska-Evans. Not a huge stretch. I felt a little ill at the idea of being attracted to a possible ancestor, but really, I was feeling the aftershocks of Kali’s emotions. She loved the man, but there was no possibility of a happy ending for her.

  ***

  Before lunch, Abbi approached me. I tried to smile at her, but something about her triggered my suspicions. She wasn’t evil or anything, but I couldn’t forget my first impressions of her.

  “Hey, Ams. Where’s your brother hiding?” she said cheerily.

  “Here. Somewhere.” I gestured vaguely.

  “No, seriously. I haven’t seen him since this morning. He ran out of class after I told him about Perdy.” She frowned.

  “What? What happened to Perdy?” My lungs seemed to constrict, and dark spots flew in front of my eyes. What had happened now?

  “Those wild dogs again,” she said slowly, but I was already gone, looking for Joey. I sprinted and found him in the first classroom in which I looked. “Where… what happened?” I blurted, flustered beyond belief.

  He looked up from his conversation with Tammie and shook his head. “I should have known you’d be next. A wolf tried to attack us at the hospital; another wolf protected us.”

  “Another—oh. Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. I’ve talked about this with your brother already, and he ran out of the school as though the hounds of hell were after him.”

  “Oh.” I turned to leave, then hesitated. Oh, crap. I glanced back at him. “Did you say wolf?”

  A smile twitched on his lips. “I did.”

  “Did Perdita… say something to you?”

  His expression was blank. “Like what?”

  I bit my knuckle to cover my gasp of fear. Could she have told him the truth about us? Would she really betray us? I shook my head and left. “Like nothing,” I said over my shoulder.

  I made up my mind. I was going home. Screw staying in school while the rest of my family was busy dealing with… whatever. I was part of the family, too, and I deserved to know what was going on. I snuck from school grounds without telling anyone. I’d only miss a couple of classes, but I didn’t want to deal with any questions. What could I tell them? I needed to deal with werewolf business?

  I made it home, still shaking from the worry of another attack and the idea that people might know the truth about us. Nobody was around except for Opa.

  “What’s happening?” I asked him.

  He refused to look at me. “Nothing.” But his voice was strained, and I knew something had happened.

  “Then, where is everyone?” I demanded.

  “Jeremy’s following orders. Your uncle left to find your brother.”

  “Why? Where’s Nathan? What’s going on?”

  He glared at me, unrecognisable emotions filling his eyes. “He decided he wants no part of this pack anymore.”

  I stared back, trying to translate. “Wait. He’s… he’s gone to her. Is that it? He got around the order?”

  When he didn’t disagree, I laughed. “That’s great! He’ll be okay now.”

  He lurched to his feet, but I gazed at him sullenly, determined not to cower before him ever again. “Disobeying an alpha is not great,” he said. “Betraying family is not great.”

  “And yet that’s exactly what you did.” I couldn’t stop the words. They popped out before I could even think.

  “I did what was needed for our family to survive,” he shouted. I felt his power roll over me, but somewhere inside me, there was something clamoring to get out. I shuddered with the sensation, feeling a familiar twitching at my fingertips. Not possible. I was not like Kali. But the words were coming again, vomiting out of me without control.

  “No!” I cried. “Not for us to survive. You’re taking out your grief on everyone, and that isn’t right! Just because you lost your heart doesn’t mean you have a right to take Nathan’s from him. You can’t act like this and expect everyone to sit down and obey.”

  “You have no right, Amelia. No right to speak to me this way.”

  “And you have no right to put Nathan’s mate in danger. She was attacked again! For what? Because you have some warped idea of what should happen next? You’re being ridiculous, and people are getting hurt. This has to stop!”

  He flinched at the word “stop,” and a crack of pain sliced through my temples. I left the room, eyes streaming, and hid in the bathroom, struggling to breathe. He knocked on the bathroom door gently, but I ignored it. I could barely open my eyes from the pain and fear running through my entire body.

  I was terrified. Terrified of him and of what was happening to me and to everyone I loved. I couldn’t see a way out or a way to fix any of the hopeless situations. He was doing everything in his power to make it worse for all of us. I couldn’t tell if he had lost his mind or if he had turned into an exaggerated version of Byron, but whatever it was, I couldn’t cope with it. I wanted my Opa back. He was the one who loved me and who loved his family, not this cold man who brought out the worst in me. I had wanted to strike him and to hit back at the stupidity of his orders, but I was just a girl in his eyes. Nothing I did mattered to him.

  I didn’t leave the bathroom until I heard Nathan and Byron return, but that was only because I wanted to know what was going on. I swallowed a couple of painkillers as I entered the room where all of my family members had gathered. I listened to the conversation.

  “Perdita reckons the other wolf protected her. The male,” Nathan said, almost hesitantly.

  Other wolf? Other wolf? No freaking way.

  “It wasn’t only her,” he continued defensively. “Her cousin Joey was there, too. He said one wolf was about to attack, but another got in the way and chased her off.”

  I stopped listening. That didn’t make sense, but Perdita wouldn’t lie. She had no reason to, so a wolf had protected her, though it certainly wasn’t one from our family. Opa had made it perfectly clear that we weren’t to help her.

  All of a sudden, Nathan’s finger was pointing at me. “What about your own granddaughter? Look at her! She hasn’t slept properly in weeks because of those dreams. I had dreams before I turned. What if hers mean something? Why hasn’t anyone done something about that yet?”

  “Dreams aren’t our priority right now, boy,” Opa said. “I’ll think about worrying when it gets closer to her birthday.”

  I wanted to leave the room. I didn’t need to hear anymore. He didn’t give a crap about me. Why should I care what he said or thought? But suddenly Byron and Nathan seemed to stand together. They pushed Opa against his will, persuading him to reveal whatever was going on in his head.

  He panicked, on the edge of giving in. I saw it in the droop of his shoulders and heard it in the passiveness of his protest. “There’s nothing wrong with secrets.”

  “There is when people start dying.” All eyes turned to me. That’s right. I didn’t have to be the scared little girl in the corner. I deserved to play a part in family business, too. To my surprise, Opa nodded. Had I gotten through to him after all?

  With a reluctant sigh, he revealed that he knew the wolf in charge, the one who was sending his pack after us. All along, he had known exactly what was after us. He expected us to trust him when he still hadn’t shown all of his cards.

  “When
I was young I was eager to run wild and find my mate,” Opa explained, “but the years went by, and I still hadn’t found her. I would have the dreams. A face would appear for a while, then poof, the dreams would end. Later, they’d start back up, but this time it would be a different face. A different girl.”

  “How is that possible?” Jeremy voiced my own concern.

  “I couldn’t figure it out at first,” Opa said. “Couldn’t understand what was going on. So I did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions. I eventually found out quite a bit. It took a lot of effort, but to make a long story short, a certain group of wolves were headed by a particular alpha who wanted to fix their pack. They had been unable to breed properly for years. The werewolves were dying out, becoming weaker with each new generation created. All except our family. We kept getting stronger, and they wanted to break the line to make sure we weren’t stronger than them.”

  I glanced at Nathan who looked as surprised as I felt. This was big news, yet we were only hearing it now.

  “The wolves had a special… tracker. She could find the mates, intuitively. I don’t know if it’s anything like what we do. The werewolves planned to use their tracker to find my potential mate and kill her before I found her. Just like that. No guilt. I found the tracker, and… persuaded her to talk to me. She told me where to find Lia and said Lia was my true mate, even though the dreams of her had already stopped. So I found her, and I made her mine.”

  He swallowed hard, and I exchanged a horrified glance with Nathan, unable to even begin processing what he was telling us. I still didn’t trust him. From the way he spoke and the agitation in his hands, I was sure he wasn’t giving us the full story.

  He cleared his throat, and I wondered if he might be making up a story in his head.

  “Eventually, the alpha lost his role. He was overtaken by another wolf named Vin. Vin wanted to breed his own wolves, and he was convinced that the curse was actively selecting women who were capable of breeding with werewolves. He thought we were essentially stealing potential breed mates for his wolves. But he lost his tracker, so he had no way of taking the potentials away from us anymore.”