“Looks like the lesson’s over,” Adrian said.
“That’s cool,” Crystal said, admiring the simple magic of the tripod. She had a hard enough time figuring out how to turn the oven on! “Wait—lesson’s over? What do you mean?”
He nodded behind her, causing her to realize she’d been so caught up in watching him she wasn’t paying attention to the world around her. Gwen and Guntar rolled across the clearing and pulled up to a stop beside their trailer. Gwen hopped off and reached up to run her fingers through her platinum hair. She smiled and waved at Crystal while Guntar climbed off his bike.
“The last good cuts from that deer,” Adrian said when Guntar and Gwen joined them. “Looks like we’ve got an extra for dinner.”
“Where’s Ember and Hank?”
“Ember went on a date,” Crystal offered, earning a frown from Guntar and a surprised look from Gwen.
Adrian smirked and added, “Hank’s been gone awhile. Said he had some research to do.”
“He was gone when I got here,” Crystal added.
“Thought he said he could do all the research he needed with the Internet?” Guntar asked.
Adrian shrugged.
“Well, if Ember’s gone, looks like it’s not plus one after all,” Gwen said.
“Expect Hank should be back soon?” Guntar asked.
Adrian shrugged again. “I’m not his keeper. The boy’s been with us for three years; he comes and goes as he pleases.”
Guntar’s lip curled up briefly and then relaxed. He sighed and turned to Gwen. “Kids.”
Crystal’s eyes followed them and she couldn’t help but think that she had something to do with all of this. “Um, I wasn’t invited. I hope I’m not intruding.”
Gwen smiled and reached over to take her hand. She gave it a squeeze and said, “You’re one of us, sweetie. Or you will be soon. This is your home, too.”
“My home? But—”
“Yeah, ‘but,’ is right,” Adrian growled.
Crystal’s jaw fell as she turned to stare at him. Hadn’t he just said he liked her?
“She might still end up being a threat we have to deal with,” Adrian explained. “Or Clover might not like her. If Clover decides she’s bad news, I don’t plan on risking my hide to change her mind.”
“That’s tomorrow,” Gwen chided him. “Tonight, she’s one of the pack.”
“One of the, um, pack?” Crystal’s heart was beating fast in her chest.
Guntar nodded.
She looked at Adrian. “That’s good, right?”
He smirked. “Always being tested.”
Crystal felt a grin slip on her face. They’d accepted her! She wanted to run around and give them all hugs. In fact, she was going to—she couldn’t stop herself. She went to Adrian first and surprised the wiry man by wrapping her arms around him and giving him a big kiss on the cheek. He grunted and struggled against her a moment and then accepted it. She moved on and did the same to an uncomfortable Guntar and finally ended with the far more gracious Gwen.
“Thank you so much,” Crystal said.
“It might only be for the night,” Adrian muttered.
Crystal shrugged. “It might be for the rest of my life too. No matter how tomorrow turns out.”
Adrian’s brow furrowed and both Gwen and Guntar laughed at his reaction. Crystal’s grin broadened.
“Why did you come to us tonight?” Gwen asked. “You don’t need a reason—we are a family joined by the hunter’s blood—but until now I don’t think you realized that.”
“She still doesn’t understand,” Guntar said. Gwen nodded in concession to his point but never took her eyes off Crystal.
“Um, well, I—” Crystal gasped as she remembered the reason she’d wanted to talk to them. She grimaced at how stupid she’d been, forgetting what had happened. “It’s about Chad!”
Adrian glanced at the others before asking, “Chad?”
“The boy from the car?”
“Is he still after you?” Gwen asked.
“Damn!” Guntar swore. “Is that what Hank’s researching? Did he know who he was?”
“I didn’t tell him,” Crystal said. “But I hope not.”
“What about him, sweetie?” Gwen asked.
“He wasn’t at school today. I don’t know why, but after I slapped him yesterday he had scratches on his face from my nails. And, um, I was worried about my nosebleed in his car. I’m sure he cleaned up the blood I got on his seat. Is there any chance it might do something to him?”
Guntar and Adrian looked at each other. Guntar’s eyes narrowed and Adrian shook his head a tiny bit. The historian turned back to her. “Unlikely. Very unlikely. He would need a substantial amount of blood and he would have to get it in his own wounds.”
“And you haven’t changed yet,” Guntar added.
Adrian nodded. “Yes, yes, there is that.”
“You said you’d never seen anything like me before.”
Adrian sighed. He glanced at Guntar again. “Just because we’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. We don’t keep written records of our kind. If we did, sooner or later norms would learn of us. That helps us and it hurts us, such as times like this.”
“What’s that even mean?” Crystal asked.
“It means we don’t know for sure,” Guntar said. “But it also means that something like that would have been talked about and shared. We’re not the only pack. There are others and even though we don’t always get along with one another, we do share stories when we run across one another.”
“Oh,” Crystal said even though she was still confused.
“So that means I doubt we have anything to worry about,” Adrian finished.
Crystal nodded and felt the muscles in her neck loosen a little. “Good.”
“Better, not good,” Gwen said. “Good would be keeping that meat from overcooking.”
Adrian cursed and turned to the fire where their dinner needed to be flipped over. Crystal laughed and saw Gwen’s eyes twinkling. Gwen winked at her and turned away. Over her shoulder, she called out, “I’ll fetch some plates. Crystal, will you help me?”
Crystal nodded and hurried to walk after her. “Of course,” she said. It felt good to help, even if it meant carrying plates and silverware. Or maybe they used plastic forks and knives, given the way silver felt. She shrugged the thought away. What mattered was that she finally found a place where she belonged.
Chapter 4
Hank rumbled in to camp with only a few seconds to spare. Guntar sighed and stopped eyeing the thick steak that was cooling on the plate beside the fire pit. Crystal barely noticed; she’d risen to her feet and turned to face Hank as he parked his bike and climbed off it.
Hank stretched his neck, the pops audible from a dozen feet away, and slipped his leather jacket off. He hung it from his handlebars and turned in time to catch Crystal as she all but threw herself on him. Hank chuckled, the sound and feel of his raspy voice in his chest sending shivers through her.
“Well, hi there,” Hank greeted her. “I could get used to this.”
Crystal craned her neck up to look at him. “You could?”
He smiled and nodded.
Crystal wanted to leap on him and kiss him. She squeezed him tighter and risked a glance back at the others. They were all watching. Damn it!
“Hungry?” Crystal asked.
“Starving,” he replied. “And I’d hate to let that steak go to waste!”
Reluctantly, Crystal backed away enough so Hank could move towards the others. She managed to capture his hand in hers and held on to it, satisfying herself with the small contact. Guntar chuckled and Adrian sighed as they walked back to them.
“Where’d you go?” Guntar asked.
“Hang on,” Hank said before he stabbed the fork on the plate into the meat and lifted it up as a solid chunk. He bit into it, tearing off a chunk and releasing a spray of juice. After he’d wolfed down the steak in a half-dozen bi
tes, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and glanced down at Crystal as though he only now realized what a pig he’d made of himself.
She grinned up at him, amused by the abashed look on his face. She’d almost been as savage when she’d eaten her dinner a few minutes earlier. There was something about the simple meal that brought out the beast inside her. She’d been thrilled by how it felt, rather than scared. There was no way to go back, she figured, so she might as well enjoy it while she could.
“You missed some,” she whispered.
“Huh?”
Crystal crooked her finger at him. He bent down and let her reach up and wrap her hand around the back of his neck. She leaned in and pressed her lips against his chin. His scruff tickled her lips and combined with the flavor of Hank mixed with the juices from the venison to steal her breath away. She sucked on his flesh and licked his chin before he turned enough to slide his lips against hers.
“That’s enough.” Gwen startled them and broke them apart.
Crystal jerked back and would have fallen if Hank hadn’t been holding on to her. Her chest ached and her stomach was on fire. She was panting for breath and barely caught herself to stop from reaching for him. She squeezed her thighs together and groaned.
“I think opposite sides of the fire might be best?” Gwen decided.
Hank frowned and glanced down at Crystal. She gathered herself to leap on him when Adrian’s hand wrapped around her upper arm. She stiffened and turned to look at him.
“You heard the lady,” he said.
Crystal nodded and let him pull her away and then put himself between them. Hank lifted his lip briefly and then shook his head and relaxed. Crystal had to take several deep breaths and stare into the fire to clear her head.
“You good?” Gwen asked.
Crystal let out a final breath and nodded. “This is crazy,” she muttered.
Gwen laughed. “Reminds me of when I met Guntar.”
Guntar groaned. “We definitely have to keep you two apart then. I’m not sure Hank could handle that.”
“Hey!” Hank said.
“You did all right,” Gwen reminded him.
Guntar grinned and admitted, “Some of the best fun I can remember.”
Adrian cleared his throat, putting an end to the conversation.
“So you’re okay?” Gwen checked again.
Crystal nodded and cast a longing glance at Hank before saying, “Yes, but if this keeps up, I’m going to need to start packing extra underwear.”
Gwen snorted and, after a pause, Guntar started laughing. Even Adrian chuckled at her joke, leaving poor Hank to look around in confusion. He smiled at last but it was obvious he was playing along and trying not to draw attention to his flushed face.
When the moment passed, Adrian turned to her and asked, “Can you stay with us tonight?”
Crystal’s eyes went to Hank’s and she opened her mouth to jump on the offer. Before she could howl in triumph, Gwen added, “With Ember.”
Crystal clamped her mouth shut and felt the heat in her cheeks. They all knew where she’d been going. She nodded. “Sure. But lock the doors.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Gwen said.
“Why?” Crystal asked. “I mean why should I stay here instead of at my home?”
“We’ll get an earlier start,” Adrian explained. “We don’t want to be in the swamp at night.”
“Afraid of snakes and gators?”
“You should be too,” Adrian said. “We can recover from almost any injury, but there is no healing dead.”
Crystal winced.
“That’s where I went today,” Hank offered.
“You said you were doing research,” Adrian snapped at him.
“It was. Not for a book, for tomorrow. I didn’t go in, just checked along the edges to get a feel for it. I’ve never been in there before.”
“It’s a swamp. What’s so special about it?”
“Swamps have been explored and inhabited less by people than anywhere else. There are hunters and fisherman, but only the people who live in the swamp can hope to begin to understand it,” Adrian said.
“What about the TV shows that show people living in the swamp?”
Adrian snorted. “I doubt they follow real swamp people.”
“They look swampy,” she said. “Long beards, dirty, no shoes.”
He shook his head, ending the line of questioning without a word. “There’s the world the norms believe they live in, and there is the real world that lies beneath them. You’re a part of that world now. Clover is another part of it. And because it is so much safer from norms, the swamp plays host to many other things that are more dangerous than you can imagine.”
Crystal didn’t get it. “If they’re so dangerous, why are they hiding?”
“Because they’re smart enough to know better. As dangerous as any of us may be—even the Beast we killed—what threat do we show against the norms? They outnumber us and have access to weapons and technology beyond us.”
“You could get organized and stand together,” Crystal said. “We, I mean. We could do that. They’d have to recognize us and treat us like people. We are people, I mean!”
Adrian scowled. “History has proved otherwise.”
“He’s right,” Guntar said. “What you read in books and hear in schools is written by the people who survived. The victors. The conquerors. We are feared and shunned. You want to see world peace and have the different companies and cultures come together? Bring our kind together and let the world know of us. They will all band together to destroy us.”
Crystal stared at him and shook her head slowly. “That can’t be.”
“It is,” Guntar said. “We survive by living in secrecy. When we are found out, we are hunted and killed.”
Gwen nodded when Crystal looked at her, confirming what her mate said.
Crystal swallowed loudly and nodded. “Okay, secrecy it is,” she agreed. She jerked her head up and looked at them. “You don’t need to worry about Beth. She won’t tell a soul.”
The sound of a motorcycle drew their attention. Ember drove down the lane, riding faster than was safe on the bumpy dirt trail. She stopped in front of her trailer and dismounted, reaching back immediately to pull the tie out of her hair and worked the braids out. When her hair hung in waves around her head, she walked up to them and looked at Crystal.
“You need a shower,” she said.
“What?” Crystal gasped.
Ember ignored her and looked at the others. “I miss something? She smells like a bimbo who’s been edging for a month straight.”
“A what?”
“Edging?”
“Who?”
Crystal lost track of who asked what, including herself.
“It means taking yourself right to the edge and backing off without getting off,” Hank explained.
Crystal’s eyes were wide as she looked at him. “Really?”
“My research takes me in some strange places.”
“Strange places?”
“Websites and stuff, not, uh, places.”
“Uh huh,” Crystal teased.
Hank’s face reddened.
“Leave him alone,” Guntar said. “A week ago he didn’t know you existed. If he wanted to whore around—”
“I didn’t!” Hank cried out in defense of himself. “I didn’t do anything like that!”
After the new round of laughter died down, Gwen turned to Ember. “Crystal’s staying with us tonight.”
Ember shrugged.
“With you,” Gwen added.
Ember’s face tightened and then relaxed. She shrugged again. “She can take the couch.”
“Hey! I had to do that at my place,” Crystal protested.
“I sleep naked and haven’t washed my sheets in weeks.”
“Gross,” Crystal said. “Couch it is!”
Ember smiled.
Unwilling to let the redhead get the best of her, Crystal
asked, “How was your date?”
“Good.”
Crystal was aware of the others snapping their heads back and forth between them as they talked. “Just good? Who was the lucky guy?”
“Who says it was a guy?”
Crystal gasped. Hadn’t Ember told her she wasn’t her type? “Then who?”
“Somebody has to clean up your mess.”
Crystal heard Gwen’s gasp mirroring her earlier one. She turned to stare at the platinum blond and then looked back at Ember. Gwen had told her to take care of Stephanie after Crystal rocked her world with a kiss. Was that where she’d been? Is that why Stephanie had been so cool to her the last couple of days? “Steph—Stephanie?” she stuttered.
Ember smiled and licked her lips. She spun around and walked to her trailer. “I’ll try to leave you some warm water.”
Chapter 5
“Get up!”
Crystal raised her hand with her middle finger on display. She kept her face buried in her pillow and grumbled, “I am up. I’ve been up on and off all night. Your couch sucks.”
Ember snorted. “You eat?”
Crystal rolled onto her side and fell off the couch. She yelped as she hit the ground. She kept going and picked herself up to her knees and then crawled back onto the couch and sat down with her face in her hands. Ember was laughing at her. “Shut the hole that makes the words,” Crystal growled at her.
Ember laughed harder.
“No, I didn’t eat. If you’re asking if I want to, yes.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still not my type,” Ember teased.
“Oh my God! I didn’t even think that. Gross!”
Ember snickered and opened up the cabinet drawers above the tiny kitchen counter. She pulled out a box of Pop Tarts and tossed it to Crystal. “Hope you like strawberry.”
Crystal yelped as the box bounced off her arm. She frowned and looked at the toaster pastries. “Yum,” she muttered. She fished out a foil package and tore it open so she could take a bite out of one of them. It tasted dry and bland. She made a face and set it aside. “What are you doing with Stephanie?”
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