Dustin could hardly refuse Darren. If the hunters were here and Logan had been right all along, their precautions were prudent. If the hunters weren’t, then it would have been a waste of time. At least they weren’t dead.
He nodded.
Chapter Six
Katey stared thoughtfully at the ceiling above her bed, her mind racing with thoughts she could barely put in order. The silvery glow of the moon filled her room, and she could hear the crickets outside, the usual nighttime serenade that would lull her to sleep when all else failed.
After she had cooled off from her argument with Logan and her outburst at the dinner table, Katey was left penitent and with too many conflicting emotions she couldn’t keep straight.
When Dustin confirmed that Logan’s hunch about the police officer at the school might not have been a hunter, Katey’s heart dropped straight into her shoes. It would devastate Logan to know he was wrong and had forced such a burden on the community. It was clear they couldn’t tell him and she couldn’t use it in a fight against him or Darren to support her need for freedom.
On the other hand, she could finally understand Darren’s concerns and the reason for his touchiness in the last few days. It was his job to protect the pack, but she couldn’t forget the way he had denied her the very thing she wanted most. She wanted to hate him for refusing to continue her training. She wanted to challenge him for what he said about her and Logan’s mating plans.
Most of all, she wanted to hate Dustin for his thoughtless comment that silenced her so efficiently. She thought she knew what it meant to be loups-garous. It meant belonging in a pack, being part of something greater than herself, and being one with the wolf that lived within her. What more was there to learn? What was coming in her training that she didn’t know about? What were they keeping from her and why? Hadn’t she proven herself enough with everything that happened in Canada?
Darren hadn’t been with them when she stood up against Yaverik and issued the decree about forming the counsel to bring peace between the vampires and loups-garous. Maybe he didn’t fully realize she was capable of taking care of herself and continuing her training under the supposed threat of hunters.
Or perhaps it had nothing to do with her pack. There must have been something that happened when a loup-garou changed at will for the first time. Maybe she would learn some innate truth through the transformation that no one except her inner wolf could teach her, but there was no chance she would learn it at this rate. It’d be weeks, maybe months before everything calmed down and she could resume her training.
Patience was something Katey never had. She pushed back her covers and slipped out of bed, making little more than a whisper of sound. Using everything Logan had taught her about how to creep around, she ducked out of her bedroom and began to make her way down the second-floor hallway.
Katey passed by the other bedrooms, listening to their steady breathing behind the doors. Dustin snorted in his sleep, and she froze, waited for the confirmed pause that he was still unconscious, and then continued.
When she came to Logan’s door, she stopped. If anyone had appreciated her desperate need to train, it would have been him. Although he wouldn’t have been an excellent teacher, he could have provided protection if she needed it. After the fight they had just a few hours before, Katey wasn’t sure she wanted his company. He would just try to stop her, to tell her to go back to bed and crawl under the blanket with her to ensure she stayed put.
Logic reminded her that if Logan were to escort her, and if she were discovered, he would have gotten in trouble too. Also, there was nothing for him to protect her from. There were no hunters, and there was nothing she couldn’t handle as a loup-garou.
She continued and managed to get to the end of the hall before she heard the soft click of a doorknob turning. Katey wanted to pound at the air or hurry downstairs before anyone saw her, but she knew it was no use.
She turned to face Ben’s confused and sleepy face peering back at her in the darkness. He cocked his head to the side, asking without words what she was doing.
Here, she found her ticket out. She made the sign of a drinking glass and tipped it to her lips. Katey had often gone downstairs for a drink of water in the middle of the night. It was a plausible alibi, and he wouldn’t have suspected her of anything else.
Ben gave his nod of approval and slunk back into his room, closing the door behind him. Katey waited a few seconds to make sure he was back in his bed and then hurried as quickly downstairs as her quiet feet would take her.
To continue the ruse, Katey went through the motions of getting a drink of water, but she had no intention of finishing it. Instead, she waited a good ten minutes before she was sure Ben was fast asleep along with the others.
She took the back door out through the billiard room and stepped outside where their vehicles were parked safely under the carport. Forgetting the need to be silent, Katey dashed toward the tree line beyond the gazebo and gardens behind the house, using her inhuman speed to carry her far away from her home and her pack.
When she was a safe distance from everything, she skidded to a stop on the fallen oak leaves and pine needles of the forest floor.
Katey breathed in the night air, letting it fill her lungs for the first time in what seemed like forever. How she had missed its cool embrace. Any human would have been shivering in this mid-January weather, but Katey thrived in it.
Katey curled her toes into the soft soil beneath her and didn’t care about the way the dirt would stain the bottom of her pajama pants. The sounds of the earth and forest surrounded her, welcoming her to their domain that she had as much a right to as any loup-garou. This was the pull all loups-garous felt to the forest. She felt it rise within her, intoxicating and thrilling like Logan’s kisses.
She watched as the branches above her swayed with the gentle wind, making the pale moonlight dance across her skin. Katey stripped away her clothing, standing naked, baring herself to the glory of nature around her.
At any other time, she would have felt silly and vulnerable. The frosty winter wind whipped at her hair, blowing it around her face in a tangled mess. Her skin was riddled with gooseflesh by the time she could focus enough to try the change.
She squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arms around her chest, doing exactly what Darren and the others had taught her to do. She tightened her muscles, breathing deeply to get her blood flowing faster. The usual tingle that preceded each of her attempts to change came and coiled through her body. Tiny spasms made her twitch and wince, but there was nothing of the pain and agony that should have come with the change.
Katey let out a tight breath of frustration and looked to the sky, wondering what she was doing wrong. She turned to the moon above, silently pleading for the answer. For whatever reason, she couldn’t capture that same sensation she experienced in Alaska when she almost changed in front of John and Darren at the gathering. The conditions were nearly the same except she was alone and the ground wasn’t frozen with snow.
Somehow, she thought perhaps being alone would help her wolf feel comfortable and come forth more readily. It was just the two of them out there with no one to keep badgering them or telling them what to do.
Don’t force me. Welcome me.
The small voice came from seemingly nowhere, but Katey knew it must have been her wolf. Then, the problem was evident. All this time, Katey had been trying to drag the wolf out of her instead of inviting it to emerge. Neither one of them were in complete control and never should be. It was a partnership, Katey remembered.
After taking several deep, meditative breaths, Katey let her muscles relax, and her body swayed with the winds, becoming in sync with the tranquility of the forest. She closed her eyes and focused on her wolf. With gentle coaxing, the animal awoke and experienced the same sensations of the forest through Katey. The wolf wanted to run free, just like Katey did. Freedom. It was what she had been denied, what she longed for just as much as a family
that accepted her and a man to love her. She and her wolf were in one accord, one mind.
Katey looked up to the moon with her golden eyes, entranced by its majestic shape and simple beauty. Slowly, she let the wolf take dominion, asserting that they were one. A warmth grew in her chest and spread to her belly. It coursed through her veins like a drug and her senses blurred.
The pain came just as slowly, but it wasn’t near as excruciating as in previous attempts. Her limbs and joints began to ache and pop. Skin pulled, and muscles burned like fire within her. Katey fell to her hands and knees, gasping for air as she could feel her own body begin to morph and her organs expand and contract.
Instead of resisting, she let it happen. She accepted the wolf as it had accepted her and the change came easier. Katey kept her lips shut tight against the cries and screams as the pain quickly intensified with the speed of the change. She didn’t know which was worse; changing for several minutes with mild pain, or changing rapidly with penetrating pain.
She gave herself no choice. There was no time to hold back as the night was carrying on without her. Even as the wolf was emerging from her subconscious, the wild instinct coming forward in all its splendor, Katey summoned it more urgently. She wanted the wolf to dominate, to take control. To her surprise, the wolf refused.
Instead of demanding her human body as the vessel with which to carry out its primitive desires, the wolf wanted to walk alongside her, to share this body as one. Katey had been told when the change came, she wouldn’t remember anything of her time as a wolf. What luck was it that she should host a spirit willing to coexist so completely?
When the shift was complete, Katey stood on her four wolf limbs. Her paws dug into the earth the same way her toes had. She lifted her head, feeling the weight of her fur coat across her body and around her neck. Her ears rotated at each little sound. She stretched out her stiff muscles, shaking off the last prickling effects of the change.
Then, she heard something behind her. She turned, but it stayed behind her. To her chagrin, she realized it was her bushy tail. Katey’s vision was even sharper as a wolf than a human. She could see through the darkness around her, and from what she could tell, her pelt was white. If not white, it was a bright gray.
This, among other things, made her ecstatic because Logan had told her she would be black like all new loups-garous. Witnesses in Alaska had told her that she was a white loup-garou when she changed at the vampire castle, but she would have never imagined she would be white in her regular wolf form.
Forgetting all propriety, she leaped and yipped like an excited pup, sending leaves and twigs scattering in all directions. Without the aid of her pack, she changed for the first time without complications. She knew there would be trouble in the morning if she were found out, but until then, Katey was determined to make the most of this time.
She sniffed the air, oriented herself to the west and loped forward, weaving between the tree trunks and leaping over bushes with remarkable grace that she could have only dreamed of. Her tongue drooped out of her smiling muzzle, letting the cold air pass in and out through her powerful lungs as her lean legs carried her deeper and deeper into the forest. Where she was going? She didn’t know, and she didn’t care. As far as Katey and her wolf were concerned, they were where they were always meant to be.
The laptop screen came alive, bathing Darren’s room in light. He cracked his eyes open and squinted at the computer until the sleep was cleared from his vision. He saw black and white surveillance video windows checkered across the screen, rotating every few seconds.
When Darren had first gotten the system a few years ago, he was awoken nearly every night by squirrels passing in the underbrush and sparrows flying across the field of view for the cameras hidden away in the branches of the trees around their property. It wasn’t until Logan showed him how to change the settings that he was able to sleep through the night and the screen only activated when anything the size of a deer came into focus.
With the threat of the hunters, he was glad he had made such investments for the safety of his pack. He had asked Ben to keep an eye on the camera feed while they were gone, but he was sure Ben wasn’t doing anything of the kind. Ben was the lightest sleeper of them all and would have been driven mad just by the constant whirling of the laptop fan that kept the computer working throughout the night.
Grateful for the break in his fitful sleep, Darren slid out of bed and shuffled to the desk on the far side of the room. He stretched out his tight shoulder muscles and searched through each of the windows, looking for what could have triggered the sensors. The cameras were only positioned around the edges of their property, patrolling a couple of miles worth of woodland forests and a creek that slithered along its northern border. The coverage wasn’t perfect, but they watched over the more worn paths through the trees; paths that any large animal or human would be more inclined to take.
Darren thought he had come back around to the beginning of his search when he found the culprit. A doe was peacefully grazing by the creek. He flipped through the feed windows again and was convinced there was nothing else. Still, he felt compelled to watch the deer until it passed on. The screen would not turn off until the deer had moved out of view of the camera anyway, and Darren’s tired eyes despised the bright light.
He sighed and sunk into his leather office chair. There was nothing impressive about this doe. It was perhaps a few years old, surprisingly old for an animal of prey around these parts. Apart from the hunting packs of loups-garous that passed through the woods frequently, game hunters were in no short supply this deep in the south.
The mention of hunters stirred unpleasant thoughts for Darren, and he rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. Rest had been an impossible feat this past week. Not only because of the hunters but because of the precarious situation, Katey had placed him in.
The alpha side of him wanted to punish Katey harshly for her outbursts and defiant attitude. Such seeds of discontent were likely to spread among his pack, and a mutiny could well be under way. At least, that’s what his wolf side wanted to believe. Darren knew his pack too well, trusted them with his life and he with theirs. A mutiny was inconceivable.
He remembered Dustin’s words about why Katey balked at his authority so hard lately. It was clear Katey was different from them. In their early years, they wanted to deny their loup-garou nature and rejected training. Memories of his first few training sessions with John reminded him that even he, an alpha and successful pack leader, had once been hesitant and resentful about what he truly was.
Katey was not that way and probably never would be. He remembered how she had pleaded with him on that long-ago day when she first awoke after Logan bit her, that she wanted this and even asked it of Logan. Even now, Darren still couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that she truly wanted to be half human, half beast. Then again, considering it had been a miraculous work of fate that brought her into the world of loups-garous, perhaps it wasn’t such a far-fetched idea after all. It was her destiny.
Darren was beginning to consider the possibility of keeping Katey there with them until the threat of the hunters passed. Perhaps he would even continue parts of her training that had nothing to do with changing.
Getting rid of her or sending her on to the safe house in Alabama to wait it out with the Devians would have been the easier course of action, but what kind of message would that send to Katey? As far as she was concerned, the hunters were no threat, and she might take it as a personal offense against her. Sending her away when she acted out was exactly the kind of treatment she received as a foster child, and this was not one of her foster homes that she would be jettisoned from at the first sign of trouble. This was a pack, a family unit, and Darren refused to let himself pretend it was anything different.
It was the most logical response to keeping her safe and out of danger. Darren stroked his beard, still indecisive as he watched the doe munch away at the winter grasses.
He would n
eed to keep up morale within his pack, now more than ever. No one else seemed as worried about the hunters as him. They didn’t understand the danger. He had experienced it first hand, and that was another reason why sleep evaded him. Images of his family - his deceased family - motivated him to stay strong and vigilant. He had seen Ben’s looks of worry and heard Dustin’s words of warning, but they didn’t understand. They hadn’t lost anyone to the hunters, no one they truly knew. He lost friends and loved ones throughout the centuries, and he was going to make damned sure he didn’t lose any more.
Suddenly, the doe lifted her slender head, ears working in every direction. Darren watched closer, wondering what had gotten her attention. Then, as quickly as she had become alert, the doe darted out of the camera view, heading further down the creek and away from their property. Whatever had spooked the deer, it did a fine job of it.
Darren was about to drag himself back to bed when he saw another figure blur across the screen. A white streak, much too large to be a dog but too small to be a deer, and much too fast to be a human or small critter.
It darted in and out of the window so quickly, Darren didn’t have time to make out what it was. He clicked in a few places and watched the feed of the doe fleeing north. When the white blur came into view, he paused it.
His chest swelled with anger. He stood up so forcefully from his chair, he knocked it clear to the ground. Darren marched out of his bedroom and made his way down the hall, banging on the other bedroom doors as he went.
“Wake up!” he demanded from the three sleeping men. He heard groans and muttered curses from his pack, but he didn’t care. He had to know who was on their property – if it were one of his own or a Devian.
When he came to Katey’s door, he pounded on the wood, and it gave way, swinging open to reveal that her bed was empty. The covers were thrown back, but her belongings were still there, including her shoes.
Beast Within (Loup-Garou Series Book 3) Page 9
