Red

by Kait Nolan

  I started to reach up, to scrub the tears away, but he captured my hands. “Don’t”

  I didn’t know if he meant don’t cry or don’t try to pretend I wasn’t crying, and I didn’t get a chance to figure it out because my brain totally short circuited as he leaned in and brushed his lips over one wet cheek. Shock kept me immobile as he shifted to kiss the other cheek. I inhaled one sharp breath, which was good because I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing after that.

  Sawyer’s lips, those marvelous, beautiful lips, curved into a smile as he hovered a few inches away. He stayed there, his gaze dropping to my mouth then lifting back to my eyes and waiting, as if asking permission. Or maybe he was waiting for me to close the distance between us. I wanted his mouth on mine. I had almost from the first time I saw him.

  I shifted a hesitant inch forward.

  It was enough. He closed the distance between us, touching his mouth to mine.

  How could a body that hard, that strong, be so soft and careful? The contrast left me weak and dizzy. I swayed toward him, unintentionally deepening that bare brush of lips. One of his hands slid into my hair, cradling my head, tipping it a bit for better access. My free hand slid up the planes of his chest—dear God, what did that feel like without a shirt?—and came to rest over his heart. Though it thundered beneath my palm, he kept his mouth easy, still testing.

  I drew in a breath, smelled his arousal. The scent curled around me, through me, waking something other than terrified nerves in response. My hand fisted in his t-shirt and yanked him closer. One of us, maybe both of us, growled. Suddenly his arms were around me, under my knees, dragging me into his lap.

  Oh yes, yes, this was good. My hands found their way into his hair, and it was soft, as his lips had been soft. They weren’t soft now. They were hungry. He was hungry. For me. He actually wanted . . . me.

  My body seemed to pulse with heat, desperate for more. More heat. More skin. More everything. If this was all I was ever going to have, I wanted as much as I could get.

  “Get your hands off my daughter.”

  I froze, my hand splayed against Sawyer’s back beneath his t-shirt. Something that sounded suspiciously like a gun clicked behind me.

  “I’m not gonna say it again.”

  We broke apart, panting. Sawyer stood, set me on wobbly feet, and shoved me behind him. I was still busy trying to force my brain cells to fully engage and my leg muscles to properly hold me up when he said evenly, “Mr. Rose, put the gun down.”

  “Jesus!” I rushed around Sawyer. “Dad, stop it!

  Dad’s attention shifted briefly from Sawyer to me, and his face went bone white. “Elodie. Get in the truck.”

  “What? What is it?” It wasn’t pure anger in his expression. Now there was straight up fear.

  “Get in the truck!” he shouted.

  “Not until you put the gun down.”

  Sawyer stepped in front of me again. “You don’t have to go with him. He’s obviously not safe to—”

  “Not safe? Not safe? You touch my daughter and you think I’m not safe?” The skin across his cheeks seemed pinched, too tight over bone.

  I’d never seen him like this, and it scared me. “Dad, put down the gun. I’m not going anywhere until you put it down.” I tried to keep my voice even, soothing.

  “Get in the goddamned truck!”

  The gun never pointed at me. It was fixed steadily on Sawyer. I stepped in front of him and the gun wavered. “Put the gun down, and I’ll go with you.”

  “Elodie—” started Sawyer.

  “Don’t,” I said, not looking at him. “Dad. The gun.”

  Dad’s horrified gaze fixed on me. That same My daughter is a monster expression I’d caught right after he’d read the letter and the journal, but so much more than I’d ever seen. As if I was turning before his very eyes.

  “I won’t let you hurt him any more than Mom let my grandfather hurt you.”

  Dad’s face spasmed, but he lowered the gun. “Get in the truck,” he croaked.

  I didn’t dare turn back to Sawyer for any kind of proper goodbye. Dad was way too unstable right now.

  “I have to go,” I said quietly.

  Saywer’s hand shot out to grab mine as I stepped away. “Elodie.”

  “I have to go,” I repeated, squeezing his hand and not looking at him. I pulled away and walked to the truck.

  Once I circled the hood to the passenger side, Dad broke the standoff. In contrast to my quiet, careful closing of door, he slammed the driver’s side, shoving the pistol roughly into the holster on his belt. I hoped he’d put on the safety. Then he cranked the truck and jammed it into reverse, making a rough three point turn.

  I chanced one last look at Sawyer. He looked predatory and furious as we drove away. Then Dad got the truck turned around and slammed his foot on the gas.

  “How could you?” he demanded.

  “How could I what? Be human?” I demanded.

  Furious, he slammed the passenger side visor down. “Look at that and tell me you’re still human!”

  What the fuck was he talking about? I tilted the mirror to get a look at my face. My lips were red and swollen from Sawyer’s, my cheeks still flushed. Everything looked totally normal for somebody who’d been making out on a picnic table for who knew how long. Until I got to my eyes. I gasped. My irises were a pure, glowing gold.

  “You’re shifting,” he said. “Just like she did.”

  Chapter 9

  Sawyer

  “Elodie!” Panicked fury ricocheted through my chest as the truck sped away, tires slipping on gravel, carrying my mate to danger.

  I sprinted after it. I had no plan, no clue what to do, just a desperate need to get to her. My legs burned, as I pushed faster, beyond human limits, the wolf rising within me. Almost there . . . My hand stretched out, the tailgate almost within my grasp, when Elodie’s father looked up. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and narrowed. The engine roared and the truck sped up, taking the bed of the truck—and Elodie—out of my reach.

  “No!” I roared.

  Where was he taking her? Home? I could cut through the woods and possibly beat them there. Be on the offensive when they arrived. But what if he was taking her somewhere else? I couldn’t risk losing them. Losing her.

  I veered into the woods that edged the road, ripping off my shirt. I was fast like this, but not fast enough. The wolf came roaring forth, my limbs twisting and popping, muscles screaming with too fast a change. I stumbled as I landed, tripping over shoes and shorts before gaining my paws again and racing after them.

  It was the same path I’d run last night, following the curve of the road where it cut through the mountain. I hadn’t been panicked then. Not even when I’d found her car, abandoned, the flashers lighting up the night with an intermittent orange glow. I’d been concerned. Frustrated with her carelessness of not having a backup plan for a breakdown, and determined to see her home as a faithful shadow. Then I’d seen the truck stop. A dark figure got out, peered in the windows of her car, then got back in his own vehicle. And sped off too fast for a mountain road.

  I felt more terror now.

  Elodie’s dad wasn’t driving dangerously fast. I could see the truck below me through the trees, and I was grateful for all the switchbacks through this section because my back leg was still aching from being clipped. Last night had been a sprint to beat the driver, to get to Elodie before he could. This was a distance race. Even though I wanted to run all out, I just had to keep up, to find out where her dad was taking her so I still had something left when we got there.

  I cursed myself for not paying more attention last night. I should have noted what the driver looked like, what the truck looked like. Could it have been Elodie’s father, already coming unglued? I didn’t know. My focus had been only her, on getting to her, on saving her, on making sure I hadn’t hurt her when I knocked her into that tree. Then I’d stayed with her, made sure she got home safely.

  I’d t
hought her home was safe.

  Mr. Rose’s driving seemed less erratic the closer we got to town, as if he recognized that he didn’t need to get pulled over. Where was a deputy when you needed one? I relaxed an iota when he took the turn by Hansen’s. He was going home. Thank God. I peeled off then, putting more distance between us so I could keep to the trees for cover. If I was fast enough, maybe I could get inside before they did.

  And then what, dumbass? You think her dad isn’t going to shoot a wolf in his house on sight? Okay, so maybe I needed to rethink that approach. There was no way I could get near her as long as he had that gun.

  As the truck bumped into the driveway, I crept along the side of the free-standing garage, keeping to the shadows. Mr. Rose still had the gun on him as he circled around the truck, but it was holstered now. His movements were still stiff and jerky, but he seemed less . . . psychotic now. Elodie walked ahead of him, shoulders hunched. In that moment I despised him for making her look defeated.

  Neither of them said a word as they went inside.

  I made my way around back to the picture window in living room. I could go through it if I had to. They squared off as they had during that fight after the search, across the coffee table. But this time Elodie looked exhausted and miserable.

  “How did you find me?”

  “The deputy who dropped you off. I went back by the station when you weren’t at home. He told me where he’d let you out. Exactly what have you been doing this summer? Not working as a guide as you told me.”

  “I’ve been working as an intern for a biologist in the park.”

  That seemed to trip him up. “Why?”

  “Because I was interested. And because it would look good on college applications.”

  “You know you’re not—”

  “No, Dad, I don’t know anything of the sort. You’re the one who refuses to consider that I might have a future, that I might have something of value to offer the world. You want to keep me in a cage.”

  “Obviously I should! Look what you did when you went out on your own.”

  “I want a life!” she shouted. “For all my hard work in school to actually mean something. To lead to a career and a future where I actually live beyond sixteen.”

  Wait, what? She’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if she’d lived her entire life expecting it to be over already. Why? How? Disease? Suicide like her mother? Something else? I thought of her paranoia, her sense that someone was watching her, and wondered if that was somehow connected.

  “I thought when I made it through this year, that I had a shot. That you’d finally get past this insanity and let me be normal. So that I can finally have friends and people who care about me beyond an obligation because I’m some kind of burden to them.”

  “Is that what you think you are to me?” Her father had to choke the words out.

  “Aren’t I? You’ve hardly been able to look at me since we got Mom’s letter explaining things. I am this thing, this problem you have to contend with because I share half your DNA.”

  “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you,” he whispered.

  “Yes. Protecting me. You threw yourself into this . . . ” She waved her arms, as if she could pluck the right word out of the air. “—lunacy when I couldn’t even believe it myself. Why is that? Why should an otherwise totally rational man actually believe it when the mother of his child writes that she was a werewolf and charges you with stopping the same thing from happening to me? Why didn’t you think she was crazy?”

  Stopping it? What the hell was she talking about?

  “Because I saw her.”

  “What?”

  “I saw her as a wolf.”

  Elodie sank down onto the couch. Clearly this was news to her.

  “It was months before you were born, and I didn’t know it was her. Not until years later when we got the letter. But she had this birthmark on her back. A sort of crescent moon shape. The wolf I saw had a patch of fur exactly the same shape, the same location. It couldn’t be a coincidence. And I couldn’t risk ignoring her orders on the chance that it wasn’t. And why would she go to all that trouble, all that effort to make arrangements for the lawyer to find us thirteen years later?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was so much for you to cope with. For both of us to cope with. And a part of me did want to believe she was out of her mind. But there was always the possibility . . . So I did absolutely everything possible to stop it. Everything she recommended. And I prepared you as best as I could to survive under any circumstances.”

  Okay, that explained all the Survival Family Robinson training.

  “Meanwhile, I’ve been preparing myself for how to die.”

  Mr. Rose’s face went white again, but Elodie pressed relentlessly on. I had the sense that this explosion was a long time coming.

  “Do you think this has been easy for me, Dad? To live this life where I’m half a person, a shadow in school, in town. Completely isolated, blowing off every single person who shows even the slightest interest in me? To live with the knowledge that, at the very least, I have several centuries’ worth of crazy in my family tree and at worst, I’m going to turn into some kind of psychotic monster? To live with the responsibility that I might have to put myself down like a dog before I can hurt someone else?”

  My legs actually gave out. I sank to my belly on the concrete outside the window and wrestled with visions of the knife. Jesus, God, the knife I knocked out of her hand the day we met. It had been a goddamned dress rehearsal.

  ~*~

  Elodie

  “You’ve been . . . ” Dad couldn’t even finish the sentence. He collapsed into the chair. Even now he was doing everything in his power not to look at me.

  “You can say all you want about helping me survive, Dad, but you won’t let me live. So yes, I lied to you about my job. I lied to you about a lot of things. We’ve both been lying. To each other. To ourselves. This year has been borrowed time. I should be dead already.”

  It was strangely liberating to say all of this out loud.

  “Oh God, Ellie,” he moaned.

  “I should have turned last year. We both know that.” I stood again, squaring my shoulders. I was going to be honest about all this for the first time in my life. No more deception. “I think a hunter knows it, too.”

  What little color had returned to my father’s face drained out again. “What?”

  I sighed, struggling to organize my thoughts. I needed to move. It felt like all the muscles beneath my skin were electrified, twitching at once, begging for action. Not now. This is so not the time. I rolled my shoulders, trying to release some of the tension. “Someone’s been following me for weeks. Since I found Rich. That entire scene was freakish, and totally pointless from a kidnapper or serial killer’s standpoint. Rich was left as bait. I think it’s someone waiting for me to slip up and show what I am.”

  Dad sat bolt upright at that. Now he was actually looking at me. “Wait, you’ve known someone was following you, suspected it was a hunter, and yet you take everything we’ve done the last four years to keep you safe and throw it away for some boy? Getting involved. Making yourself a target?”

  I bristled, feeling the aggression I was starting to associate with being wolfish. Sawyer wasn’t just some random guy I’d gone out and picked up for kicks. Given the look on Dad’s face, I guessed my eyes had changed again. “Were you ‘just some boy’ to Mom?” I demanded. I didn’t bother to suppress the growl in my voice. “I have done every goddamned thing right. I’ve followed your Rules. I’ve cut myself off from every part of a normal life for four years. And you know what, Dad? It’s happening anyway. I started changing before I ever laid eyes on Sawyer.”

  Sucker punch, I thought, as he sank back. If he’d been older and less fit, I might’ve been worried about a heart attack.

  “How long?” Dad whispered.

  “Just before my birthday.” I shoved both hands throug
h my hair and gave in to my body’s need to move, pacing a tight path in front of the sofa. “I think the history had it all wrong. The entire cock and bull story was just some twisted morality tale passed down from one ignorant fool to the next, and I am apparently the only member of the entire female line of the family going back three hundred years to have the self restraint to figure that out. I don’t think this has a fucking thing to do with a curse. It’s genetics. I am a werewolf because Mom was a werewolf. She was because her mother was, and her mother before that, all the way back to Brynne. I’m turning, Dad. And I sure as hell haven’t slept with Sawyer or anyone else to cause it.”

  He was silent, still processing this total alteration in the “facts” we’d been living by since the letter.

  “You’re deluding yourself. Because you want this boy.”

  “Please. I am not being ruled by my hormones.” I thought fleetingly of that desperate kiss, then squashed it. So not germane to the current argument. “I’ve been thinking about this for years. Magic is nothing but science that people didn’t understand. They used to think that thunder was caused by a god. It makes sense that they would see werewolves as a curse, not as the introduction of new genetic material.”

  “It doesn’t change anything.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t. There’s still a hunter. I suspect there have always been hunters. I don’t think they disappeared all those generations back. I think they got smarter about not getting caught.”

  That thought had clearly never occurred to him. “We have to go. The essentials can be packed in a couple of hours. We’ll leave the rest,” said Dad, pushing up out of the chair. “I’ve got a contact—”

  “No. We don’t have to go anywhere. I do.”

  “No.” Dad’s voice was ragged as he lurched toward me.

  “I won’t put you in danger by staying here. I won’t put Sawyer in danger either. What you saw was goodbye. My mind was already made up.”