by Lauren Esker
Vanessa gave Damon a last pleading look, and then took off at a run.
Damon was afraid to move from the window. The way that both the cousins were looking at him was feral and unfriendly, and it had him rooted where he stood. "Mom, can I help?"
"Not now," his mother said, all her attention concentrated on her husband as she assessed his wounds with calm efficiency. "Brad, Barry, isn't there a medical student in your family?"
Barry nodded, but he never took his eyes off Damon. "Little brother Graydon. He's away at med school, though."
"Call him anyway," Damon's mom ordered. She was mousy around Verne, but in a crisis was capable of snapping out commands like a drill sergeant. Barry exchanged a look with his brother, then took out his cell phone and faded back out of sight in the hallway.
Vanessa reappeared with the pack's large, military-grade medical kit. She knelt beside her mother and opened it. Her mother nodded absently, holding a wadded-up handful of drapery against the worst of Verne's injuries, and reached for the kit with her free hand.
"Vanessa, call the Matheson pack alpha. The number is in your father's appointment book—it's on his desk. One of the Mathesons is a doctor."
"Yes, Mother," Vanessa murmured. She gave Damon another miserable look, then picked up the appointment book and retreated.
Damon's heart pounded in his ears. "Listen," he pleaded. "I wasn't the one who attacked Dad. You hear all that rain out there? It's washing away the trail of whoever did it. Keep me here if you have to, but at least go out and search for them."
"Quiet," Brad said, and bared his teeth. "We all know you picked a fight with Uncle Verne today, Damon."
How did they know that? Damon's gaze went to his mother, who refused to meet his eyes, keeping her attention fixed on her husband.
She must have been watching from the window. Or maybe one of the cousins had seen. Damn it, there were no secrets in this house!
"Yeah, I fought with Dad," Damon flared back. "I just found out he's marrying off my little sister to someone she hates. Of course we fought. But that doesn't mean I tried to kill him!"
"Save your excuses, Damon," Brad retorted. "Everyone in the pack knows how much you resented your father. You hated him because he tried to deny your place as alpha."
What? "Where is this coming from?" Damon snapped. "I never cared about being alpha!"
Barry came back in, tucking away his phone. "Little brother Gray is driving down tonight, as fast as he can. With the rain, though, it'll be hours. How is Uncle Verne holding up, Aunt Lorna?"
"He's fighting," Damon's mother said, working busily with the first-aid kit. "Your uncle is a strong man. I believe there is a good chance he'll pull through."
Damon was still watching his cousins, and at her words, he saw a flash of something sharp on both their faces. Not the kind of relief one might expect at the news their uncle would survive. Instead they looked—alarmed? Disappointed?
Realization crashed over him with the force of a tidal wave. It wasn't an outside intruder at all—it was them!
Probably with help. There had been someone else in his father's study tonight. And whoever pulled off this attack would've been covered in blood afterwards; he didn't think Brad and Barry would've had time to shower and clean up.
But as he stared at his cousins, Damon knew it had been an inside job. He wasn't the only one who had been conspiring against his father's despotic rule over the pack. It was just that Brad and Barry had done a much better, sneakier job of pretending to follow Verne's orders while plotting against him.
He'd be more appreciative if he hadn't turned out to be the fall guy for their plotting.
And this also meant his father was still in mortal danger. Because Verne, on waking, could identify his attacker. Verne was also the one person in the whole pack who could clear Damon's name.
"Mom," Damon said softly. "I think we should take Dad to a hospital."
"No hospitals," Brad said sharply, before Lorna Wolfe could speak. "That's not our way."
"Screw our way! My father is bleeding to death." Damon tried to pour as much concern into his tone as possible, and was surprised to find a lot of it was genuine. He really didn't want his father to die.
"Your cousin is right, Damon," Lorna said quietly. "We can't involve outsiders. We'll handle this inside the pack, as we always do."
Which meant his cousins would have unrestricted access to his father. Even if they placed a guard, the most likely guards were his father's most trusted lieutenants, Brad and Barry.
Was there anything to lose by trying to tell the truth?
"Mom," Damon said, speaking fast and keeping his gaze fixed on his cousins, "I think we have to consider Dad wasn't attacked by someone from outside the pack. He—"
"Yeah, we know he wasn't!" Barry snarled, loud enough to drown out Damon's words. "The attacker was you!"
"No one is making accusations yet," Damon's mother snapped.
Brad lunged across the space between them, getting right up in Damon's face. In order to avoid contact with his cousin, Damon was pressed against the wall. The window, and escape, was just a few inches to his left. But leaving would mean abandoning his father—and Mom, and Vanessa ...
"I think you should stop talking before you incriminate yourself further," Brad growled. His wolf side flared yellow in his eyes, and Damon felt a sudden pressure in his skull. Brad was trying to exert alpha pressure on him.
Oh really? Damon pushed fiercely back. Brad's gleeful triumph gave way to startlement as he was forced to give ground—slowly, one hard-fought step at a time.
Fighting his way past the migraine ache, Damon bit out, "Maybe you're worried the person who would be incriminated is you—"
A deafening explosion echoed through the room, silencing all of them.
There had always been, ever since Damon could remember, a hunting rifle on a rack above the door, out of the younger children's reach. They almost never used it; the Wolfe pack preferred to hunt the old-fashioned way, with sharp fangs and pack strategy. But they had the gun in case of emergencies. It was kept clean and loaded.
Now Barry was holding the gun trained on the ceiling, from which dust sifted down. As everyone in the room stared in silent shock, Barry levered out the spent cartridge and lowered the gun to point at Damon. The air reeked of gunsmoke.
Damon's mother was the first to find her voice. "Barry, what are you doing?"
"Stopping this asshole from attacking my brother," Barry growled back. "Aunt Lorna, can't you feel what he's doing? He's trying to alpha-dominate us all. He tried to kill Uncle Verne to take over the pack and now he's seizing control. Any of us who fight him are going to be his next victims, can't you see that?"
"I'm just trying to defend myself!" Damon cried. "Mom, they're the ones who—"
Vanessa smacked into her cousin from behind, knocking him off balance. The bullet which had been meant for Damon's face blew paint and wood chips out of the wall beside him instead, with another deafening rifle report.
"Damon, run!" Vanessa shouted.
Barry shouldered Vanessa out of the way and racked another shell into the chamber, and Brad shifted to an enormous light-gray wolf. Damon hated to leave his mother and sister, but he couldn't see he had a choice. He tumbled out of the window, shifting as he went.
Sharp pain exploded in his leg, and his leap was arrested before he hit the ground. Brad's teeth had closed on his rear leg like the jaws of a trap. Damon's weight pulled the other wolf out the window along with him. They hit the ground and rolled in the mud. Brad still had his teeth sunk deep in the muscle and tendon of Damon's leg. Damon raked his teeth along Brad's back, trying to get a purchase on him. He couldn't find the mental clarity to exert alpha dominance when he was fighting for his life.
Barry shouted from the window, "Damn it, Brad, get out of the way! I can't shoot him with you in the way!"
And Mom: "I forbid you to shoot him at all!"
"He's a murderer, Aunt Lorna!" Barry
shouted back. "He tried to kill Uncle Verne, and he's attacking my brother right n—Ow! Vanessa, get off!"
Damon savaged Brad's shoulder, raking his teeth through fur into flesh. Brad yelped and finally let go, staggering back with blood and rainwater mixing together in his fur.
Damon gave a last, mournful look at the window. He couldn't see Vanessa or his mother at all, but Barry was framed against the light, aiming the rifle at him.
He whirled and dashed into the rain. The rifle cracked, and Damon missed a step. It felt like someone had punched him in the side. In his current state, his body thrumming with adrenaline, he couldn't feel any pain. He seemed to float over the ground.
A howl went up behind him—a hunting howl. He recognized Brad's voice, joined a moment later by Barry's, and then an answering howl came up from the fields.
Someone else was out here. Another wolf. And Damon had a feeling it was the same one who'd attacked his father. Even if not, he couldn't count on anyone else being on his side.
Mother, Vanessa ... please be all right ...
Damon dashed into the woods, running flat-out. The rain would help wash out his trail, but he had to shake them off.
He didn't know where to go. The only thing he could think of was to run to Julie, but he didn't want to lead the pack straight to her.
Julie ... please help me!
7. Julie
"I can't believe you did that," Julie snapped at her brother, arms folded across her chest. The defiance was only a thin veneer over the humiliating awareness that she was wearing nothing but a nightgown with a pair of red silk panties underneath, and on top of it all, her new mate's incriminating leather jacket.
She still couldn't believe her brother had caught her having sex in the hayloft. And I thought dealing with college roommates was embarrassing. It's got nothing on siblings!
"Me?" Terry protested. "You're the one who's literally in bed with the enemy!"
"See, that's the problem! Damon isn't 'the enemy'. He's smart and sweet and—" Hot and gorgeous and has amazing shoulders and—Firmly she wrenched her mind back to the business at hand. "—and wonderful," she finished weakly.
"Good Lord," Terry said, staring at her. "What's he done to you? No, no!" He raised both hands desperately. "Don't tell me. Don't tell me anything."
But Julie was grinning. Terry totally had this coming. "Well, big brother, first he picked me up, and then he laid me down in the hay, and then he filled me with—"
Terry clapped his hands over his ears. "La la la, not listening!"
"Pleasure," she went on, grinning savagely. "I was going to say pleasure. Exquisite, exquisite pleasure."
"Knock it off or I'll stuff a handful of hay in your mouth. Twenty-two years old, and you're still a brat."
"Yeah? Well, you're twenty-four and still an overbearing bully," Julie shot back.
But she felt guilty even as she said it, because he really wasn't. He was overprotective of his little sisters, but Terry had always been a kind and attentive big brother.
And he hadn't gone to get their parents, although he'd clearly been awake long enough that he could have. She began to feel as if she owed him something of a peace offering. Terry could be a very helpful ally, if she could only win him over.
"Look, I'm wearing a nightgown, and you're barefoot, and it looks like it's gonna rain any minute. Can we go in the house and make some cocoa? You always made the best cocoa when we were kids."
"You think I don't know when you use those little-sister eyes on me," Terry grumbled. "Yes, those eyes. Stop doing it."
Julie tried to look damp and cold and woebegone. Terry clapped a hand over his eyes.
"All right, yes, let's go make some cocoa. But ..." He dropped his hand to point at the leather jacket still wrapped around her shoulders. "You better leave that here. Unless you want to explain to Mom and Dad that you've suddenly taken up motorcycle riding?"
Huh. Yeah. She stripped it off, shivering as the cold air raised goosebumps on her bare arms, and tucked it under some feed sacks. "Better?"
"Better. But when we get to the house, you're going up and putting some clothes on, while I make cocoa."
"What, are you Mom now?"
"Only when someone's acting like a brat."
"I'm not," Julie snapped. "I'm not a kid anymore, Terry. I wish anybody in this household could see that."
She was expecting a sarcastic sibling comeback, but instead he gave her a long, thoughtful look. "No," he said at last. "No, I guess you're not. Now get in the house before we both get rained on."
***
If being in her old childhood room had felt strange before, it was a dozen times weirder now. It seemed to Julie that she'd aged a year in just one night.
She stripped off the damp, muddy nightgown in front of the tall mirror with its pink plastic frame, the one both she and her sister had used for fittings of everything from Halloween costumes to prom dresses. Now she was just a little too tall for it, and had to bend down slightly to see all of herself.
She picked straw out of her hair, and brushed off some dirt and grass stains. Something on her neck looked like a smudge of dirt, but when she leaned closer to the mirror, it turned out to be a bite mark. Damon, she thought, and brushed her fingers over it. She wondered if it was just her imagination that there seemed to be a small answering thrill.
Had Damon reached his family's house by now? She yearned to call him, but told herself it would be a terrible idea. And she didn't even have his number anyway.
Don't get your panties in a twist, Julie. He'll be back soon, and if he's not ... well, maybe you can talk Terry into letting you go meet him halfway. Just to make sure everything is fine.
She hastily put on a sweater and jeans, and ran a brush through her tangled curls. Then she went downstairs. The house remained quiet—her parents were still asleep. But the light was on in the kitchen, and Terry, now in a bulky sweater and even bulkier wool socks, was heating a pan of milk at the stove.
The rich smell of chocolate and cinnamon was so familiar from her childhood that it brought tears to her eyes. How many times had Terry or her mom made cocoa for Julie and Ava when they came in, wet and cold and tired, from doing chores or playing in the snow?
How am I going to tell Ava about this?
Throughout their teen years, she and her sister had shared all their trials and troubles with boys, whether they were giggling over teen crushes or soothing away each other's heartbreak with romance novels and pints of ice cream. Julie had always daydreamed about the day when she would be able to tell her sister that she'd found Mr. Right. Never in a million years had she imagined she'd need to have this conversation, though.
Terry finally noticed her standing in the doorway, one foot hooked around the back of her ankle like when she was a kid. "Well, at least you're decently dressed now," he said gruffly. "Cocoa's almost done. C'mon, sit down."
She sat obediently, and he poured the cocoa into two enormous mugs with big blue snowflakes on them. Julie wrapped her hands around her mug and let the warmth seep into her fingers. It was still just as comforting as when she was a child, even if her problems were much larger now.
Terry sat down across from her, and slowly stirred his cocoa with a spoon. "I guess there's no point in asking what you were thinking."
"I don't think I was, really," she admitted, staring into her cocoa rather than looking at him. "I just wanted to be with him."
Terry heaved a long, weary sigh. "And so begins every tragedy in the history of literature."
"And every romance," Julie reminded him.
Thunder grumbled somewhere outside. The kitchen window was open, letting in the smell of the night. She took a sip of her cocoa and closed her eyes in bliss at the achingly familiar taste of childhood.
But when she opened her eyes, it was not to the faces of her brother and sister as children—now lost in the past—but to adult Terry regarding her from across the table with his brows drawn together in a frown of worr
y.
"You really believe in him, don't you?" he asked, studying her over his own cup of cocoa. "You really don't think he's going to break your heart and run off?"
"No," she assured him. "No, a thousand times no. Damon would rather chew his own arm off than hurt me."
Terry blinked. "I hope that's not necessary. So, tell me, what are your plans for you and lover-wolf-boy?"
"We haven't really had a chance to make any yet."
"No, but there's plenty of time for a roll in the hay, I see."
"Terry," she said reprovingly. "If I wanted to talk to Mom and Dad, I'd go wake them up. Can't you just be my friend for a change?"
"I'm sorry. I really am trying to ... accept this, I guess." He twirled a hand vaguely in the air. "Since it seems like it isn't going away."
"You really believe that?" she asked, her heart lifting.
"I don't have a choice, do I? You and this kid were hanging around each other back when you still were kids, and now that you're grown up ..." Terry raised a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "Look, I don't believe in destined love and all of that, not really. But if I ever saw a couple that made me want to believe in it ... well, I think about all the forces trying to keep you two apart, and how you keep coming back together. That's worth keeping."
"Thank you." She lowered her head, buried her nose in the warm fragrance of the cocoa. "I don't know how I'm going to break this to Mom and Dad."
"Just tell them the truth. What are you worried about, Julie? Sure, they might be mad. But you know they'll support you. They aren't going to kick you out or anything."
Unlike Damon, she thought. A nervous little flutter of anxiety beat in time with her heart.
Outside the window, rain began to fall. Earlier in the day, it had been a gentle drizzle; now it was a sudden, hard summer deluge. Julie raised her head to the sound of the storm. Was Damon out somewhere in this?
"Will you help me?" she asked Terry. Her voice sounded small.
