by Aliya DalRae
“Holy shit!” I cried, sitting up straight and pulling against the seatbelt.
“What?” Malcolm slammed on the brakes and threw his arm out to keep me from whacking my head on the windshield.
“My father is the Alpha of a pack of Werewolves.”
“That’s just now hitting you?” Malcolm rolled his eyes and eased the car back onto the road. I had been so messed up about seeing them again, reliving the anger and pain I’d felt as an abandoned child, that I didn’t even think about what all this meant. Was I so immune to being around supernatural creatures that I never questioned the fact that my parents were Werewolves? How the hell did I get here?
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “That’s why he went away. He must have been attacked or something.” I glanced sideways at Malcolm. “Is that how it happens? In an attack?”
Malcolm nodded. “With the wolves, yes, humans can be changed. They are true Weres, moon bound and all that. The cats are different, though. We’re Shifters, and the only way to get new Shifters is by making baby Shifters.”
“But Allie is a wolf,” I pointed out.
“Yes, they can do it that way, too, but like the Vampires, they have other methods of ensuring the species survives. With the Vampires, it involves a ritual and can be, I don’t know, romantic, I guess. However, with the wolves it’s brutal. An attack leads to infection, which either leads to death or change. Depends who you ask which is worse.”
“So you’re saying my father was attacked by a Werewolf, survived the attack and bingo, bango, now he’s the Alpha?”
“Not quite that simplistic, but that does seem to be the end result,” Malcolm said.
We were nearing town again, and my pulse was slowly returning to a steady rate, even though I wasn’t really handling the situation with my parents very well. The whole thing had me twitchy, and I hadn’t stopped to think that I could finally get some answers. I knew what it looked like on the outside, but what was the truth? Why did they leave me? Why wasn’t I good enough to keep our family together? I tried not to be jealous of Allie. She was a sweet girl, and she obviously adored me, but that green-eyed monster creeped up inside me nonetheless.
My adoptive parents had been great, I reminded myself, and I’d had a good life. But that little girl had my family, and I hated myself for the envy I felt.
Malcolm dropped me off at home and left without too much complaint, though he did promise to check on me later. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but with my mind so full of conflicting thoughts, figuring out his place in my life had lost major importance points. I made myself a cup of cocoa and carried it to the sofa where I curled up in the corner to think.
I was certain that my mystery caller’s purpose had been to get Malcolm out of my life, and my first instinct was that Raven had been behind it somehow. But that call had set off this entire chain of events, and now I had to question the person’s end game. With this new information about the wolves being my family, it could have been anyone. But who? And why?
I grabbed the clicker and flipped on the TV, trying to distract myself, but not even a marathon of my favorite food competition show helped slow my racing mind.
Even if Raven hadn’t been the caller, it did not negate the fact that he had to know about Malcolm. He could read minds for heaven’s sake, and I know he and Malcolm the Cat talked. I’d seen them at it. Had written it off as some weird Vampire/animal thing and never really given it much thought.
But now the animosity the two shared for each other took on a whole new meaning. Raven knew Malcolm was watching me, spying on me, and probably knew how the Shifter felt about me. And yet he never thought that might be a bit of information I could benefit in knowing.
Anger churned in the pit of my stomach, a tiny swirl working its way up into a massive cyclone of fury with each recollection of the two of them interacting. Now their “arguing” and Raven’s hateful comments all made sense.
Raven knew, and he never told me.
Dropping my long-empty mug on the coffee table, I grabbed my coat and keys, and was in the car, a mile down the road before it registered where I was going. I hadn’t seen Raven, or even talked to him much since early Monday morning, when he’d healed me.
True, I wasn’t making very good decisions myself lately, but they were based on a lack of information. If Raven had been honest with me, told me who and what Malcolm really was, there is no way I would have slept with him. That night of “normal” I was looking for was blown to hell, because I was lied to by the one person I trusted most.
Okay, that sounded totally selfish. I cheated on Raven. There, I said it. But we were on a break, right? I was trying to figure things out, to figure out if normal was what I really wanted, and Mac might have been able to answer that question for me.
But Raven kept things from me, and Mac was Malcolm, and I would have known that if my damn Vampire hadn’t lied to me. I would have never let Malcolm get that close to me. Never.
Are you sure? a little voice in my head asked, and I told it to shut up. I wanted a normal night with a normal guy. That was the whole point. Mac was not normal, ergo I would not have slept with him, regardless of the fact that he was drop dead gorgeous and crazy about me. Nothing would have moved me if I had known he was Other.
The little voice tried to say something else, probably something to the effect of “would I have slept with a different normal guy?” But I slammed my fist on the car horn, and drowned the bastard out.
I was furious with Malcolm. Furious with Raven. Furious with the wolves-turned-deadbeat-parents. Every last one of them had betrayed me, and I hated them all. Malcolm knew I was pissed, and he knew why. I would never be able to trust him, as man or cat, and that hurt me more than I wanted to admit. My parents? I was nowhere near processing the emotions connected to that mess.
And Raven. Love of my life, bane of my existence. How could he do this to me? After everything we had shared? He told me about his past, for chrissakes, but he couldn’t be bothered to tell me about Malcolm?
The original rage that had subsided when I was home, gripped me once again. Part of it was my own guilt, knowing I had betrayed him, yet in this moment, irrational as it was, I blamed Raven for everything, including my own infidelity.
I pulled onto the Compound, was waived through security, and parked my Honda in the underground parking garage. The elevator ride to Raven’s floor was a blur, and when I found myself outside his door I hesitated. In that instant I knew that when I knocked on the door, my life would change forever. Again. Was I ready to lose him? If I told him what happened with Malcolm, there would be no going back. I inhaled deeply, exhaled, and raised my fist to the door.
It opened before I could knock and I was instantly wrapped in the arms of my lying Vampire.
Chapter Eighty-Five
“J essica, thank gods, you’re here,” Raven said, wrapping her in a desperate hug. “Come in,” he whispered into her hair. “There’s so much I need to tell you.”
He ushered her inside and with her situated on his leather sofa he offered her a drink, which she quietly declined.
So wrapped up in his own misery and the joy of simply being in her presence again, Raven failed to notice that she wasn’t quite herself. He didn’t notice the pinched brow or the narrowed gaze. All he knew was that she was here, with him now. When she told him she needed a break, he had resigned himself to the fact that he would not see her again for some time.
He tried not to put a number to it, a week, a month, even a day was longer than his heart was prepared to tolerate, so he simply didn’t think about. He knew she would return to him, and indeed she had. It was all he could do not to grab her in his arms and carry her to the bedroom, where he would erase any lingering doubts that they were meant to be together.
Instead, he cracked open a beer he’d grabbed for himself, and felt he totally deserved, and took a long pull. He set the bottle down on the massive coffee table and settled on the couch beside her.
>
Rather than throwing his arm around her shoulder, Raven took her hand in both of his, delighting in the skin contact. He would respect that they were still officially on a break until she gave the word otherwise. She was looking at their hands, joined as they were, and Raven felt a tiny flutter in his rib cage.
There was so much to tell her, so much she needed to know. It was no wonder she thought she was seeing Raven in her horrible visions. His twin must look exactly like him, and once she knew this…
“I’ve missed you,” he said, as he followed her gaze to their hands, his heart nearly exploding with the emotions dolphin diving through him. When she didn’t respond, he said, “A lot’s happened in the time you’ve been away. I can’t believe I’m going to have to thank Harrier, but he really came through for us.”
Raven looked up to see that her gaze had shifted, and she met his eyes in a steady stare. The warmth in his heart frosted over as the darkness behind her eyes registered.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, the relief of having her with him again slowly being displaced by a mountain of tension.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pulling her hand from his and standing to face him. “You’re a lying son of a bitch, that’s what’s wrong.”
And with that, Raven’s world imploded.
Chapter Eighty-Six
T he shocked look on Raven’s face did nothing to stem my anger. He obviously had something he felt was important to share, but whatever it was, it was so not my problem, not anymore. Not my freak show, not my monsters. I couldn’t stand to be so close to him, so I started to pace.
“Tell me, Raven, how long have you known?” I spat.
“Known what?”
“You know damn well what,” I shouted. “How long have you known the wolves were having me watched? How long have you known they were my parents? And how long have you known that I was letting a fucking Shifter sleep in my fucking bed?” I was shrieking, probably sounded like a crazy person, but I was beyond caring.
Raven jumped to his feet, tried to stop my pacing by standing in front of me. He reached for me, but I swatted his hands away and stepped around him, putting the sofa between us.
“Jessica, please,” he said, but I interrupted.
“Please what? Try to understand? Put myself in your shoes? Damn it, Raven, I trusted you. I believed all that, ‘it’s for your safety,’ and ‘it’s for your own good,’ crap, but you’ve known all along.”
“I swear I didn’t know,” Raven tried again.
“Don’t,” I shouted, shifting to the opposite end of the sofa when he moved to come around to my side. “Don’t pile lies on top of lies. You had to know, you had to. You talked to him, all those times you talked to him, and I saw the two of you arguing. I should have known, or suspected or something, but I put it up to strange Vampire stuff, because you would have told me if it were anything else. You had to know who he was, and what he was doing. Who he was spying for. The whole time, he was lurking around my house, sleeping in my bed, you knew, Raven, and you did nothing to stop it.”
Raven started to say something, but stopped giving me a look.
“Fine,” I said. “Talk.”
“You’re right,” he admitted, “but only about part of it.” I raised shaky hands to my face, brushing at frustrated tears, willing them to stop.
“Go on,” I said.
“I did know Malcolm was a Shifter, but not right away. I had other things on my mind, but yes,” he said when I gave him a dubious glare. “Yes, I have known for a while who and what he was. Why do you think I hated him so much? Constantly there, full run of your house, and you none the wiser?”
“But I could have been,” I said. “You could have told me, and that would have been the end of him.”
“Jessica,” Raven sighed, frustrated. “Each and every day you are one minute away from having your throat torn out, or your neck broken, or some other catastrophic event that would take you away from me permanently. Did I like that that fucking furball was always there? No. Abso-fuckin-lutely not. But even I saw the sense of leaving things be. If there were someone around who could alert us if you were in trouble, I wasn’t going to argue.”
“Even if it meant lying to me?” I asked, but he just shrugged.
“I would do anything, put up with anything, to make sure that you are safe.”
“Bullshit,” I roared. “That’s not something you keep from the person you claim to love. And keeping me safe is no excuse. You could have put a guard on the house, something. Anything would have been less intrusive than Malcolm.”
And he had no idea how intrusive that cat had become.
“It wasn’t that easy,” Raven said. “I wasn’t the one who hired him. I simply took advantage of knowing you were being watched over.”
“Exactly,” I said, pointing a finger at him. “Which brings me to the next thing. How long have you known that the wolves were my parents?”
“Jessica.” Raven held his hands out to me, the couch providing a much needed obstacle between us and keeping him from reaching me, touching me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You think the Danes are your parents?”
“Bull. Shit,” I said again. “There is nothing about this situation that you don’t either know or have access to. Somebody here knew. I’ll bet that’s why they didn’t want me to contact Allie after the whole gravel pit situation last summer. If you didn’t know, well, it’s only because you weren’t paying attention.”
Okay, that was borderline psycho, blaming him for being in the dark about Patrick and Maggie, but I was borderline psycho, so I gave myself a break on that one.
Raven opened his mouth to speak again, but I cut him off. Again.
“Don’t bother,” I said, letting the tears fall at will. I was too pissed off to bother with trying to hide them anymore. “I’m done.”
“Wait—What? Done with what?”
“Done with everything,” I shouted. “I’m done with Vampires and Werewolves, Shifters and liars. People I can’t trust. I’m done with all this bullshit, and mostly Raven, I’m done with you.”
With that, I ran for the door, slamming it behind me and trying desperately to un-see the crushing look of loss on his face. That would be my final memory of Raven, the one I would carry with me for eternity.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
T ears blurred my vision as I ran down the hall. The elevator was still on this floor, thank God, and I stabbed the “close door” button repeatedly to get the damn thing moving. Raven’s stunned expression was imprinted on my retinas. When I closed my eyes it was worse, so I opened them again and banged the back of my head against the elevator wall.
When the doors reopened and I burst through them, tear-blind, and ran headlong into a large mass, bouncing off and landing on my tail on the lift floor. I screamed and balled my fists in my eyes, trying to scrub away the image that refused to fade.
I looked to up see Harrier standing outside the elevator, his expression alternating between that half smile of his and something I couldn’t discern. He reached a hand out to help me up, but I slapped it away, his eyes narrowing as I picked myself up. The vague awareness that running into Harrier more often than not landed me on my ass merely added to my frustration.
“Let me by, Harrier. I need to go,” I said, trying to push around him, but he was having none of it. He stood there, filling the exit with his enormity and holding the elevator door open with his giant palm.
“What did he do?” he asked, fire simmering behind his amber eyes.
“Please Harrier, he’s going to come after me. I need to get out of here before the shock wears off and he gets that I’ve really left him.” I tried to slip by, but he body checked me and I bounced off him again. At least I stayed on my feet this time.
“Come to your senses, did you?” he asked, teasing me, but I was in no mood. I pounded his chest with my fists, trying to force him out of my path. I might have been growling at him, or maybe screaming a litt
le bit. It was hard to tell. I guess he decided he’d toyed with me long enough because he stepped aside, chuckling as I stumbled around his bulk and nearly ran into a beautiful redhead. I hadn’t noticed her due to my current irrational state.
“Sorry,” I muttered as I rushed past her and headed for the front door.
“Jessica,” Harrier called after me, and I hesitated, my hand on the brass handle, prepped for flight.
“What, Harrier?” I had to get out of there. Now.
“We need to talk,” he said, and I noticed the redhead was giving me an odd look.
“Okay,” I said, “but not now. I really need to go.”
“The information you asked me for? About the blood thing?”
“Did you find something?” I asked, shooting a wary glance at the woman, a Vampire I assumed.
“Yes,” he answered, “but we need to go somewhere and talk.”
I huffed out a breath. “Just tell me. Can I be turned?”
Harrier hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is that simple, Harrier, so answer the question. Yes or no? Can. I. Be. Turned?”
“No,” he said, “but…”
“No buts,” I cut him off. “I can’t be turned, that’s all I need to know. In fact it is exactly what I needed to put an end to all of this.”
The woman’s green eyes widened, and even Harrier looked a little confused, so I elaborated, “Like I told Raven, I’m done with him, I’m done with the whole lot of you—Vampires, Werewolves, Shifter bastards—all of you. No offense,” I added at the two shocked looks I received.
“I’m in way over my head,” I said, “and I don’t want to be there anymore. Thanks for all your help, Harrier. I’m glad you’re not the complete asshole I thought you were a few months ago, but this is it. I’m not coming back.”
Harrier opened his mouth to reply, but I slipped out the door, being careful not to open it too wide and accidentally fry the Vampires I absolutely did not care about anymore.
