Call of the Lycan (Secrets of the Sequoia Book 3)

by Deidre Huesmann

  Aaron fixed her with a frigid stare. “Shall I direct the bullet straight into my heart next time?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she protested.

  “Holden has made the stakes clear,” said Aaron grimly. “It is either him or me. He came after me with the intent of taking my life. Had his weapon not failed him, I would not be standing here now.” His words froze through like aluminum buried in snow. “And you would have him to contend with as the pack alpha. Meanwhile Nathan would likely be dead alongside me within days and your brother would be put down for attempting a coup.”

  Rachael looked like she wanted to argue, but she couldn’t make any sound beyond strangled consonants.

  Feeling a blackness coat his heart, Aaron knelt to the ground and retrieved the necklace. He approached Rachael and held it out to her. For a long moment she stared at it, warring emotions naked on her face. The cheap metal took on a dull sheen in the lamplight. The longer she stared at the necklace, the grimmer Aaron became.

  Of course, she took it back in the end.

  “That,” said Aaron with tempered fury, “is why I am not making you a lycan. I do not need anyone who would hesitate when it comes to choosing between me or the man trying to take my life.”

  Rachael clutched the pendant to her chest. Her lips moved but no sound escaped, until she emitted a choked, “I’m sorry.”

  Aaron reached overhead to the lamp’s swinging cord. “As am I,” he murmured, turning out the light. Then he found the door, opening it to reveal Rachael’s hunched and confused back. She stared down at the floor, the hand gripping her necklace moving with the slightest of tremors.

  In that moment, Aaron allowed the blackness to wrap him up in its familiar, lonely embrace.

  And he left her there to think.

  Chapter Fourteen

  How awful an accessory she hardly put any thought into could be the thing that encouraged Holden’s feelings for her while simultaneously disgusting Aaron.

  Rachael stood in her room, clutching the necklace in her hand. She didn’t know what to do with it. Often she wore it without thinking since the day Holden had gifted it to her. Even after Vera’s death she hadn’t been able to talk herself into throw it away. At the time it was for the same reason she’d told Aaron: she wasn’t convinced the Holden she knew was completely lost forever.

  But she hadn’t thought of what else it symbolized. That she could still love Holden, that it gave him hope she reciprocated his feelings still; that it meant she might turn on the pack in favor of Holden.

  Rachael gently set the pendant on her small desk, watching as the chain curled into a metallic pool on the cheap wood. The wolf’s beady red eyes stared up at her, and a chill went down her spine. It was almost as though Holden could watch her through the necklace.

  So why couldn’t she get rid of it?

  A soft creak disturbed her from thought. Without thinking Rachael grabbed the nearest object—her weighted physics book—and whirled to face the intruder.

  Holden’s eyebrows shot up at her stance. He held his hands up. “Whoa. Ray. It’s just me.”

  Rachael gripped the book in both hands, the spine facing toward him. “You can’t just—come in here when you want,” she sputtered in disbelief. “How did you get in?”

  He sighed. “I used to do espionage for Aaron, remember? Picking locks isn’t a big deal anymore.”

  Trembling overtook her. Was there no place she could truly have sanctuary?

  “It scares me when you do that,” she whispered. “Please go away.”

  Still with his hands in the air, Holden stepped forward. Rachael tensed and he frowned. “I won’t break in anymore, I promise. But there’s something you need to know.” His eyes lingered on her chest suspiciously before trailing to the desk where the necklace lay.

  “What?” she bit, backing up until her hip bumped the desk. A pen rattled and fell to the carpeted floor.

  Holden didn’t take his eyes off the necklace. Then with unsettling dispassion he said, “Coleen is dead.”

  Rachael’s legs went numb in a rush of horror. She wobbled a little and began to stammer. “But... what? How? When?”

  “She was bit,” he said quietly. “Infected. I tried to nurse her through it, but she lost the battle.”

  How she kept the book at the ready, Rachael didn’t know. Her breath grew short and rapid, and stinging tears tried to escape. Damn it, why did these things keep happening?

  “I’m sorry, Ray,” said Holden forlornly. “But I thought you should know.”

  A shot of suspicion roused her. “Who bit her?”

  Holden raised his eyes, narrowing them at her beneath rusty eyebrows. “Does it matter?”

  “It does, and you know it. Who infected Coleen?” demanded Rachael. “I know it wasn’t anyone in the pack, especially not Aaron. You made sure of that.”

  One moment Holden lingered near her door and the next he stood beside her. Rachael gasped as he yanked the book from her grasp and dropped it with a terrible thud. She tried to back up. In her hurry, she bruised her hip on the corner of the desk.

  “I did what needed to be done,” said Holden. His expression turned hard and unyielding. “And I didn’t even succeed. He’s still alive and still warping everyone in that house. Including you, apparently.”

  “I have a mind of my own, Holden,” she said angrily even as she tried to shrink away from him. “If you think everyone else is so wrong, maybe they’re right and you’re the one who’s confused.”

  He snorted. “Would the human population agree with you?”

  “Maybe not, but why do you care? If you’re trying to become alpha, what do human opinions matter to you?”

  “They’re everything, Ray.” Holden reached down and put his hand on the desk, never breaking their locked eyes. “The lycans now are lost. They think like wolves when they should be thinking like people. If I’m alpha, I can fix that. Don’t you get it? They need to be retaught. Compassion, empathy, love, forgiveness. They won’t have that with Aaron in charge. All they’ll have is bitterness and hate.”

  “I’m sorry that’s all you took away from it,” said Rachael in a barely steady voice. “But I don’t agree.” She slowly reached toward the desk, praying she didn’t actually touch Holden’s hand. Her fingers slowly groped across the smooth surface.

  Thankfully, Holden seemed too fixated on her face to notice. “That’s because you don’t really know them. Jackson is still new to it, and he’s your brother, so all you see are the human parts.” Holden touched her arm in what she guessed was supposed to be a soothing manner. “Ana Sofia is still five, but you’ve seen how bloodthirsty she gets, don’t you? It affects kids the worst. They’re so fragile and just soak everything up like little sponges. And with Aaron they never get the chance to learn any better.”

  Rachael was about to retort when she realized he had led her off track. Somehow she had completely forgotten about Coleen and her apparent death. She glared at her former love and said, “Who bit Coleen, Holden?”

  He heaved a sigh and looked toward the ceiling. Then, after a terrible silence, he confessed, “I did.”

  Her sliding fingers froze over a pencil. “What?”

  “I did, okay?” he snapped. “And I’m sorry, but she came at me. Threatened to tell the police and everyone else. So I infected her. I couldn’t have her yelling about everything and get me—and you, you were there when Vera died—I couldn’t let her get us in trouble. So I infected her. But listen.” He turned his touch against her bicep into a firm grip. “I didn’t just do it on impulse, okay? I figured, hey, I could show her how being a lycan could be. She’d be the first to really be a lycan with humanity. And then if I did that—”

  “If you did that you could be an alpha of your own pack,” interrupted Rachael with widened eyes. So Aaron had told her the truth.

  “It’s not ideal,” admitted Holden. “And it would mean a lot of changes for us.”

  Rachael curled her fin
gers around the pencil on her desk, still holding his gaze. “There is no us, Holden. Do you hear me? Not after you killed Vera.”

  Something broke in his eyes then. The blue-green-gold storm quieted. “I told Coleen I was sorry,” he said sadly. “And I’m telling you the same thing. Killing Vera was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and I wish I could take it back.”

  The apology threw her for a loop. Feelings Rachael had thought completely dead tried to resurface and she struggled to smoosh them down. It couldn’t be that easy, she thought, panicked.

  But it did show remorse, and she didn’t think he was lying. It made her question everything. If she could forgive Aaron’s transgressions because he was acting more lycan than human, how could she hold the same against Holden?

  Because he pretends to be human, she remembered. Lycans were half human, half wolf. At least in behavior, even if their physical makeup was not wholly certain. When wolves struck out weaker members of their pack it made sense; it was just nature. But humans were supposed to be more than that.

  So does that make Holden better than Aaron?

  That couldn’t be right. Aaron didn’t kill indiscriminately and on impulse.

  But now her feelings on it all were so conflicted. Rachael blinked several times in succession, attempting to calm her turmoil of thoughts.

  Holden’s hand left her arm and touched the side of her face, guiding her to look up at him. “Ray,” he murmured.

  No.

  Rachael didn’t think; she just acted. In a fierce motion she yanked up her hand gripping the pencil and slammed the pointy end down as hard as she could on Holden’s hand. He shouted and jerked away, the pencil sticking out the back of his hand as he raised his palm to stare at it in mute shock. Then he looked to Rachael with the most pained, betrayed expression she’d ever seen. Her heart tried to split in half, but she refused to let it.

  All of it happened within a second. Hyped on adrenaline, Rachael screamed, “Get out of my room, Holden! How dare you try to pretend to love me after all this. You killed Vera and then you kill Coleen and you try to apologize?” His stunned face strengthened her rant. “I won’t forgive you, not ever. You’re insane if you think I will. I want you out of my room, out of my house, and out of my life! Don’t you ever come near me again, you crazy self-centered son of a bitch!”

  “Geez, Ray,” he whispered. Holden pulled the pencil out of his hand with a grimace. And still when he looked at her there was no anger. Just sorrow, hurt, and... pity.

  He felt sorry for her.

  “Well,” he muttered. “I’m glad training with Nathan is helping. Didn’t expect that.” Then, misunderstanding her stunned silence, he added quickly, “Not that you couldn’t take it, just that he’d do any good, I guess.”

  Rachael choked on the urge to shriek. How had he known about all that? How much was he following her, watching her? It was even worse than when he’d kissed her—that she still believed to be her fault.

  But this, admitting he followed her, breaking into her home, trying to kiss her again, killing Coleen... it was too much. Rachael felt dangerously close to breaking.

  She pointed at her door, blood rushing through her like a swarm of angry bees. “Leave!”

  Holden scowled and clenched his bleeding fist. “Fine. I will.”

  Instead he stepped forward. Rachael felt her breath dissipate and she scurried to the side, away from him. Holden ignored her and placed the bloody pencil back on her desk.

  “I’m sorry, Ray,” he said quietly, as though he wasn’t dripping blood on her floor. That it hardly seemed to bother him freaked her out.

  He started to walk out but paused at her desk. Rachael watched with sickening dread as he picked up the pendant with his uninjured hand and looked at it. The tenderness that softened his face was unmistakable.

  Holden turned and, ignoring her protests, clasped the necklace back around her neck. He pulled away quickly, as though wary she would stab him again. But his voice was gentle as he said, “It looks great on you, Ray. And it makes me feel good you still have it. Please keep wearing it.”

  Finally, he left.

  Rachael shuddered and fumbled to unclasp the necklace again. This time she hurled it to the floor, where it fell next to the few drops of blood Holden left behind.

  She hurried to slam her door shut and then rushed to her dresser and began to push. A picture of her mother fell off as well as a small camera she hardly used, but Rachael just prayed a silent apology to her mother for the faux pas. She kept shoving until the dresser rested squarely in front of the door and blocked anyone from getting in.

  Then, panting and on the verge of tears, she collapsed onto her bed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Holden cursed as he turned the steering wheel. His hand throbbed and had swollen thanks to Rachael’s attack.

  He hadn’t expected that. Some anger, sure, and definitely some shouting. But she’d stabbed him.

  Whatever Aaron was doing to brainwash her he was even more skilled than Holden had given him credit for. And when it came to manipulation he gave Aaron a lot.

  Solemnly he drove on, but not toward the city where his new home was. It was still early. He passed by the golf course. Instead of taking the highway he turned on to a small street that boasted an enormous apartment complex made of eight four-story buildings. The entrance’s sign was a warm, friendly orange with red lettering that read, Welcome to Towne Gardens.

  Holden found visitor parking and pulled in there, careful to turn off his headlights before he locked the car. He meandered toward a sidewalk that opened into a set of stairs that went both up and down. After a glance at the letter C on the building, Holden took the stairs down. There he was met with a short hallway that sported seven apartment doors on either side of where he stood.

  He turned right and walked to the very end of the hall. Music blared from inside, muffled by the door. Voices joined the cacophony.

  Holden sighed and rang the doorbell with his bandaged hand.

  The girl who answered had flat brown hair and brilliant auburn eyes. She blinked, her eyes bleary from drink. “And you are...?” she asked contemptuously.

  “Lacey’s friend,” answered Holden with a crooked smile. “You must be Genevieve. You’re even prettier than she said.”

  Genevieve snorted and opened the door wider. “Flattery doesn’t work on me, kid. Not when you’re fresh outta high school.” Then she raised her voice several decibels. “Lacey! Your pool boy is here!”

  Hoots and laughter followed her announcement. Holden shook his head and watched as a tumble of sweet golden curls wriggled her way through the crowd. Lacey caught his eye and beamed at him. “Holden! Hey, sweetie!” She set down her drink. Unlike her roommate, she appeared relatively sober.

  Lacey joined them at the door and shooed Genevieve back to the party. Then she snagged a grey jacket from a nearby coat hanger, slid into it and stepped outside.

  Still with cheer she said, “I thought you moved already. What’s going on?” Then she gasped. “Oh my god, what happened to your hand?”

  She didn’t even ask how he knew where she lived. Holden smiled faintly, but it wavered. “Bad run-in with a drill at home,” he lied, showing off the gauze and tape that vaguely resembled the end of a limb. “One long ER visit later and I’m having a bad night. I think the drill was the better part of today, actually.” Compared to Rachael’s fury, getting stabbed meant next to nothing in the long run. “And I know this sounds crazy, but you were the only person in Keeton who really listened to me, so....”

  She pursed her rounded lips. “But what about that girl you—ohh,” she gasped, her eyes widening. “Oh, this is about her, isn’t it?”

  “I’m really sorry to drag you away from your party,” he began.

  Lacey waved a delicately manicured hand. “Oh, honey, no. Not even. It’s Vivi’s. I’m just here to babysit and maybe flirt a little.”

  “Thanks.” Holden nodded toward the stairs. “Can
we take a walk?”

  Lacey laughed. “Okay, but no funny stuff. I carry pepper spray everywhere.”

  So she wasn’t a complete idiot. Holden grinned and headed off. She fell into step beside him and then led him around the building. Behind this complex rested a small area for kids to play, plus a section of concrete for owners to walk their dogs.

  “Nice neighborhood,” said Holden. And it was. Not as calm and expansive as the homes Aaron tended to prefer, but definitely nicer than Holden’s new place.

  “Yeah, but the rent is ridiculous,” said Lacey. She smiled at him beneath her mop of curls. “But that’s not why you’re here.”

  Holden nodded and kicked at a stray rock. “It’s... kind of hard to explain. But I guess the short version is that the girl I love hates me for hurting her friend. And yeah, it was a stupid thing to do, but no matter what I do to apologize she still hates me. And I guess I could live with that. Except now she’s falling for my... I guess my guardian. Almost like my dad for the past several years.”

  Lacey let out a low whistle.

  Hanging his head, Holden muttered, “I know I should let her go. But it’s so hard. She’s just... she’s so kind. Or she was. I think she still is, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. But I was there when she found out her mom died, and it just devastated her.”

  A sympathetic noise sounded in Lacey’s throat. “Sometimes tragedy changes a person.”

  “I guess.” There was much more to it than that, but Holden couldn’t get into it yet. “But I lost my mom, too. So I don’t really get this drastic sort of change.”

  Soft brown eyes turned to him. “I’m so sorry, Holden. Can I ask...?”

  He nodded. “She died when I was four.”

  “Oh, sweetie...”

  Holden stopped in the middle of a walkway and eyed the fresh grass around them. Lacey slowed and turned to face him, shoving her hands into her coat pockets.