Gage let out a laugh, one that rumbled from his stomach into the world, before leaning forward with the paint can. He could feel Kaylee’s gaze on the back of his neck and he tried his hardest to ignore it even as it stirred something inside of him.
***
Kaylee watched Gage spray-paint the lewd word across his older brother’s truck, sure there was more behind his intentions than his anger at the pack of coyotes. She understood why Archer hadn’t put the other shifter down. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to stain his soul in that way. But, Gage’s anger boiled from deep within. It roiled through him, his lid ready to burst.
She sighed and looked away. Her own thoughts brought her somewhere else, to a place she should have been. In truth, Kaylee missed her family. She missed her siblings and her parents, the people who had pitched together to get her this weekend away from her horrible life. When was the last time they’d heard from her?
There’d been times, when she’d sat on the edge of the couch here at the Vancourt house and stared at the ringing phone in her hand. Her mother’s number would flash across the screen with a shot of them together, smiling and hugging each other. Every time, Kaylee had let it go to voicemail.
She looked down at her arm, where the bite had once been. Since that day, she’d avoided all contact with her family. The calls had become more frequent. Her mother called. Her brother called. Her little sister called. But, she wasn’t sure she was the same person they loved. Her very existence had changed and the person they once knew might not be there anymore. In the old Kaylee’s place was a pair of golden eyes with animal instincts.
The man before her finished his tagging with a swirling flourish. It brought a weak smile to her lips. Gage was good to her. He’d rescued her from herself, but would he understand when she asked to go home? As much as she enjoyed his presence in her life, Kaylee desperately wanted to find her place in the world again. If her footing had been rocky since she’d lost her shop, the bite had pulled the world out from beneath her. Slowly and steadily, she was finding her footing again.
“Where’s your mind, pup?” Gage asked, his voice nothing more than a whisper as he stood before her.
There was little space between them. She could feel the heat emanating from his body, teasing the notion of what it would feel like to press them together. Unable to resist, she let her head fall against his shoulder. Automatically, his arm rose to hug her close.
Kaylee swallowed before speaking, trying to push past the lump forming in her throat. “I think it’s about time I went home.”
Gage stilled beneath her. His arm pulled away - she wanted to cry out. She sucked in a breath and tried to look up at him, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. The desire to fix what she’d done rose, but she forced it back. Why was he so reluctant to see her go?
They were nothing to one another. What they’d shared was as friends and nothing more. It might have been fun, but it had to come to an end sometime. Surely, Gage knew that.
Gage’s shoulders slowly sank, deflating before her. She knew she’d pierced some bubble he’d kept intact, and a small amount of guilt hit her. She didn’t want to see the hurt in his eyes or the way he stepped back from her. The urge to reach out and pull him back made her hands tremble as she kept them at her sides.
“If that’s what you want, I won’t keep you here.” Gage refused to look at her and it was driving her mad. “But, I think we should get through one more lesson before you go back.”
“What else do I need to learn?” Kaylee snapped. Her heart thumped inside her chest. She felt trapped and the coyote suddenly screamed to run.
“Do you remember how it felt to be around people? The sounds, the smells? Since I brought you here, we’ve avoided civilization. I don’t want to send you back and have you lose it the first time you’re surrounded by people.”
Kaylee scoffed. “I’m sure I have this under control. We’ve been working on controlling the shift for days now.”
Gage nodded, reaching to scratch the scruff on his chin. He still fought to look anywhere but at her. “Doing it around just me is one thing. Try keeping your lid when you’re surrounded by a million voices that sound like they’re screaming at you.”
“Fine,” she snapped. The feeling of being trapped didn’t quite go away. Would Gage actually let her leave when it was time to go? She looked up at him, feeling something stir inside of her. It felt soft and warm, like the ray of sunlight a cat might curl up in. It pulled her toward him, but she held her ground.
Chapter Eight
Kaylee sat on the stairs, her arms wrapped around her knees, while she listened to the meeting below. Archer and Cohen had called every shifter they knew, apparently. Gage assured her it was only the two local packs. One was the pack he and his brothers once belonged to. The other was the one Archer’s mate, Joanna, now led.
Still, no matter who they were, it was too much for Kaylee to handle. The scents mingled and made her head ache. Eyes clung to her, some curious while others outright sneered. She figured they had to know her story. They had to know she’d been created by the evil that’d plagued them not too long ago. Did they think she would turn on them? Did they think that evil had infected her being?
She sighed and pulled her knees closer to her chest, as if she curled into the smallest ball she might disappear altogether.
“You banished them!” a raspy voice argued. “They should be gone.”
“Telling someone to leave doesn’t work if they don’t want to listen,” Gage responded. “You could tell me to get the fuck out all day, but I’m going to stand right here.”
The voice sighed. Gage wasn’t happy. He’d been stalking around, barking orders at her ever since the coyote shifters had surrounded them. Knowing they were out there put him on edge, but it seemed to only infuriate Gage. Every now and then, a coyote howl would ring from the woods around Vancourt house. Gage would start to stagger toward the woods, but Kaylee would reach out and grab him.
For some reason, she couldn’t stand the idea of him going after them. She knew the packs below thought it was because she was a double agent. They thought the howls were the shifters communicating with her. She could promise all day that she would never betray them, but she couldn’t explain how she led them away from the hunt the other night.
“What are you trying to say?” Joanna challenged Gage.
“I’m saying we should have put them all down when we had the chance.”
“You’re saying you want us to become the monsters they are? You want us to stoop to their level?”
“If that’s what needs to be done,” Gage growled. The tone was low and ominous, as if he’d spoken from between clenched teeth.
Would he hunt the pack for her? Kaylee warmed when she thought about it. Gage shifted, turning his head so he could glance up the staircase. His brows furrowed when he saw her curled into a tight ball, but she offered him a weak smile. His concern made her unfurl a little bit.
“That’s not who we are!” Joanna cried.
“I beg to differ,” a new voice said.
“No one asked you, Grover. You’ve tried to kill our father on several occasions. You clearly have no problem with murder,” Gage accused the man.
“Yes, because this Pack has no direction with a bed ridden Alpha. We have nothing to go by, no protection to rely upon while Sampson still clings to the title on his deathbed!”
“That’s enough!” Cohen’s voice rumbled through the room. It made Kaylee pull back into a ball, a tremor in her hands as she tightened them around herself. His voice carried something more than just a demand for attention. There was a thread of something, magic maybe, woven through it. That thread pulled at the shifters around him in a way Kaylee had never experienced before. It was all at once terrifying and comforting.
Was that what an Alpha should be like? Kaylee realized she was a creature alone in the world. She had no pack, no Alpha to take care of her. Who would protect her? Gage seemed to be the only p
erson who cared, but when she went home, who would be there? She couldn’t ask Gage to leave his life here and follow her.
It was asking too much. She set her head on top of her knees and stared at the wall while she listened to the conversation below.
“You aren’t an Alpha,” Joanna growled. “Don’t pull that with my pack.”
A long moment of silence passed. Kaylee leaned to the side to see if she could catch a glimpse of what was going on down below. Gage looked up again. Feeling brazen, Kaylee unfurled and climbed down a few steps to watch the conversation. Joanna and Cohen glared at one another. While Cohen’s face was filled with eerie shadows, Joanna was fearless as she held her ground. Kaylee wondered what happened to give the woman the ability to look something so terrifying in the face. It made her realize she knew so little about these people. She was an outsider.
She didn’t belong here.
A man saw her, his dark hair growing silver at his temples. “Why don’t you just give her back to them? Maybe they’d leave us alone.”
“Gover!” the room screamed in unison.
Gage stalked toward the man, his body tense. She could see him clenching his fists at his sides. She wanted to cry out, to run down the steps, but found herself trapped beneath the eyes that pinned her.
“Say it again,” Gage whispered. His voice was strangely even for the rage that bunched his shoulders. “Tell me to throw a person away again.”
The man stared Gage down, seemingly unafraid. But, Kaylee could smell his fear. It turned the air sour and made her stomach turn. The animal in her rose to watch the situation unfold. It watched Gage with pride. He would wipe the floor with the man. They both knew it.
“Grover, you’re a piece of shit,” the raspy voice said.
One by one, other voices in the room rose in agreement. The air in the room shifted, the tension melting away. The room warmed, and voices fell into an amicable murmur, as if this was nothing more than a family get-together, like a Thanksgiving.
Slowly, Kaylee crept down the stairs. She wasn’t happy with who she’d become when surrounded by a room full of shifters. Her confidence and strength was pushed aside in favor of a weaker personality. Were the other shifters in the room also bears? It would explain a lot.
“I never meant to cause any of this,” she said once she reached the bottom stair. “I don’t want to be a burden on anyone….”
“Oh, hell no.” Gage closed the space between them, his hands rising to cup her face. There was an intimacy in it, but he didn’t seem to care as he looked down at her with concern, the promised violence from moments ago gone in the blink of an eye. “Don’t let them bully you into thinking this is your fault. What’s going on here is Archer’s fault, if anything.”
Archer growled from where he leaned against the wall, a tall and imposing figure behind Joanna.
“It’s no one’s fault,” Joanna said. “Let’s stop placing blame and start finding actual resolutions to this issue.”
Kaylee looked back at Gage, trying to summon the courage she would have felt if it’d only been the two of them. “What if I left? Would that stop them?”
The hurt in his eyes was too much. Kaylee closed her eyes and tried to ignore the echo of pain inside herself. Everything they’d shared, it’d all been for fun. That, or learning. There was no magical bond between them. Nothing tied her to him or him to her.
If not, then why did it hurt so much?
“If that’s what you want,” Joanna said. “No one will stop you. But, I don’t think that will solve anything.”
Kaylee pulled away from Gage’s grasp and nodded. She needed to leave, to get out of the room. The smells were becoming too much, musk and fur assaulting her senses. The pressure of eyes touching her skin weighed on her. She felt the animal stir inside her, the coyote scratching and whining to be free.
The world tilted, and she ran for the door. Outside, the night air touched her face. It cooled the rising anxiety that’d made her heart thump. Winter was on it’s way out and the warm touch of summer was on it’s way in. The world around her wasn’t much different than home. She knew there was more snow here and the traffic was nothing compared to Maryland.
It would have been a nice place to settle down. The thought drifted through her mind, leaving her confused. What made her think that? Home was not middle-of-nowhere, New York. It was a small neighborhood between Baltimore and D.C.
She had to repeat it to herself over and over. Stonefall was not home. Stonefall was not home. Stonefall was not…
The coyote shoved its way out. Her body buckled with the shift and she fell to all fours on the ground. Unable to fight it, she gave the coyote what it wanted. After a long moment of pain and confusion, a coyote panted on the ground. She kicked away her clothes and pushed them toward the back door.
The coyote looked up into the night sky and knew what it was.
Home.
She threw her head back, and she let out a long, baleful howl.
***
It’d been too much for her, he realized. There were too many people, too many shifters all in one place. Their attention on her and the guilt she must have felt over the situation had forced the coyote to take over. It rose to help the human half through the confusing part, but it couldn’t help her process it.
All the coyote did was shove it aside. Running, wild and free like she was, fixed nothing. It only delayed the problems that had drawn out her coyote in the first place. He hated seeing her like this. He hated knowing she was hurting. If he could, he would draw her back to the creek bed where they’d explored each other’s bodies. He would help her return to her human form and promise he would fix everything.
But, what could he fix? Especially if she didn’t want him in her life? He was just a waypoint between places and she would soon run back to the life she’d led before, never to look back.
He thought of someone else who wanted an animal to lean on. Not long before he’d left Stonefall, before the night of the last prank, Gage had confessed what he was to Fredrick. He revealed his inhuman strength and the power of his bear to someone he thought he could trust.
All Fredrick had seen was the strength and ferocity of the bear inside Gage. He’d seen what it would do to the people who hurt him at home. Not the battle Gage fought every day with a second voice in his head. Not the lines he had to walk just to be accepted by his own.
Fredrick had begged Gage to change him. It wouldn’t have taken much. Just a single bite, an exchange of fluids, and Fredrick would have his own beast. But, Gage said no. He didn’t know how he felt about changing a friend. Gage must have seen it, even then, the gleam of violence in his friend’s eyes. He must have known what would become of Fredrick once he had a beast of his own.
Maybe that was why Fredrick had ratted him out after the last prank. It must have been his form of vengeance for being turned away. It seemed that it hadn’t mattered after all. Fredrick had gone and found a way to get a beast after all.
He wondered how many problems it had solved for him. His heart sank. How many people had he killed with the animal inside him?
Chapter Nine
“You can’t avoid civilization forever,” Gage said with a laugh on his lips.
She regarded the world outside the car window with wariness. The last time she’d been downtown, the sounds and smells had overwhelmed her. As much as she wanted to go home, she wasn’t sure she was ready to go through that again.
“Besides, you could use something to eat. Don’t deny it, we both know I’m right.”
She shrugged. “Could we get something to go?”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. It’d been three days since they’d brought each other to climax on the bank of the small creek. Three days since the chorus of coyote shifters had chased them back to Vancourt house. Since then, Gage hadn’t wanted to leave sight of the house, constantly on the lookout whenever they stepped outside. He’d had her practicing controlling her change, exhau
sting her until she passed out on the couch the moment she stepped back inside.
This was the first time since then that they’d strayed away from Vancourt house. She should have been grateful to leave behind the cold and dark house, to escape the ominous sound of coughing that came from upstairs and the scowl that Gage greeted it with.
“Why don’t you talk about your father?” Kaylee asked, stalling for time. “Hell, why don’t you talk to him? I haven’t once seen any of you open the door to his room.”
Gage’s playfulness faded. A solemn look took over his face, and Kaylee found she was sad to see it go. She wanted to bring it back, to find ways to tease him, but he responded before she could change the subject.
“He doesn’t talk to us.” Gage’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Kaylee gave him a look, the one a teacher might give over her glasses, only Kaylee didn’t have any glasses. She waited for a response, one that actually brought the truth to light.
Gage stared out the window, his gaze and his mind growing distant. “He kicked us out of the house and the Pack when we were young. None of us were all that good at following his rules, not when our house felt more like a barracks than a home. So, we didn’t know he had cancer until another member of our old Pack called us home.”
“Cancer? And there’s nothing they can do to stop it? No chemotherapy?”
He sank into his seat. “I think they tried, but it just racked up a bunch of debt. Every time he changed, it would reverse all the good the treatments had done. It’s not like we can avoid the change. At some point, we have to let the animal out, so I think Dad gave in. He’s just letting it run it’s course now like it’s some kind of karma he has to bear.”
“Shit,” Kaylee breathed. “That sounds awful.”
Gage offered a half smile, nothing like the man she’d become attached to. It made her want to reach across the space between them, to grip his hand and tell him it would be okay. The thing was, it wasn’t going to be okay. His father was on his way out and there was nothing he could do other than stand by and watch.
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