“What? Am I not allowed to ask? They don’t look real.”
“Lucas—” Liam started.
“Don’t tell me you weren’t wondering the same thing…” Lucas turned to look at Sarah again.
“I wasn’t wondering the same thing,” Liam said in a low voice.
Lucas shifted his attention back to his friend. “Right.” His eyes flashed to me then to a waiter carrying a platter of mini club sandwiches. He grabbed three and chucked them into his mouth. “See you kids later.”
I didn’t ask where he was going, because I already knew. He was going to start the hunt for the piece of decaying wood.
After Lucas left, I asked Liam, “Shouldn’t you go?”
“It would look suspicious if I left too, don’t you think?” Liam peered at something beyond me.
I turned and found the focus of his attention—Justin and his two cronies from the music festival.
“Do you have any idea why the thing we’re seeking is so important?” I asked softly.
Liam’s gaze tracked back to my face, then lower, to my collarbone dusted with glittery powder. “No.”
My heart scudded. “Not even a guess?”
He shook his head as he lifted his gaze back to mine. The intensity of his attention pressed my lungs hard against my ribcage. No one had ever looked at me so intently. Then again, no one had ever tried to see into my mind as desperately as Liam Kolane. I lowered my lids, hoping the delicate skin would hide my machinations just a little while longer.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lucas returned a few minutes before the ceremony began—empty-handed and pissed. He shuffled past Frank and Eric and the latter’s wife to reach the seat Liam had saved.
Lucas exchanged quiet words with his friend, probably telling him where he’d looked. No doubt remained in my mind that they were performing this test as a tag team.
Liam was about to sidestep past me, when he stopped and leaned in, his breath warming my earlobe. “I’m not being very polite. Why don’t you go?”
Musk lifted off his smooth skin and slid into me, momentarily hazing my mind. God, he smelled so good. Why couldn’t I just be repulsed by him? I tried to put some space between our bodies, but the backs of my knees hit the seat of the chair.
“I want to see what the bride is wearing.” I sounded as hoarse as a heavy smoker.
Liam straightened, eyebrows casting shadows over his amber eyes. “Don’t you want to beat me?”
“Just because I’m letting you go first doesn’t mean I won’t win.”
The tendons in his neck shifted as he studied my face. Could he tell it was a lie?
He started to dip his head back toward my ear when the first notes of the wedding march began. All those who’d been sitting rose to their feet in a rustle of chiffon.
“You better go,” I whispered.
Liam stepped past me and into the outer aisle, distancing himself quickly from the ceremony.
He returned after the ceremony, wearing a disgruntled expression. I took it he’d failed to locate the artifact.
“Wasn’t the ceremony just marvelous?” Julian was standing in the petal-strewn aisle by our row.
“It was lovely,” Eric’s wife said, tucking a short white curl behind her ear.
Unlike Eric, Frank had come alone to the ceremony. Maybe he wasn’t married. I realized I didn’t know much about the elders. All I knew was that both men had had sons, but only Eric’s was still alive, and both had fourteen-year-old grandsons who were part of the pack.
“Are there any weddings on the Boulder Pack horizon?” Julian asked.
Frank glanced at Lucas, then at Liam. “None of our boys are committing yet, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated, Julian.”
Our boys. Salt in my wound.
Julian smiled a frigid smile then turned his attention to me. “Ness, may I have the pleasure of your company before dinner begins?”
Prickling from Frank’s exclusion, I moved past his boys and hooked my arm through Julian’s extended one. I knew what it looked like but was too slighted to care. We drifted away from the festivities, toward the glossy green hedges forming a manicured maze.
“Ah…the Boulders and their boys.” Julian let out a soft snort. “It’s a real shame wolves can’t pledge their allegiances to another pack. I’d welcome you with open arms.”
“That’s kind of you, Mr. Matz.”
“Julian, please. Mr. Matz makes me sound like an old college professor with a penchant for tweed.” He wrinkled his nose. “How’s the contest going?”
“It’s going.” I lowered my gaze to the red chiffon swirling around my ankles.
“Then why are you putting off competing?”
I faltered and would’ve faceplanted if he hadn’t been holding me up. It didn’t help that my skinny heels kept burying themselves in the soft earth. “I’m not putting it off—”
“Ness, spare me the lie. I’m not an idiot. While Lucas and Liam roamed my house, you stayed planted on my lawn like a gloomy poppy.”
He led me around a sharp, leafy corner, then around another. I was disoriented. Not only by the thriving labyrinth, but also by his admission. He knew why we were here. How? I opened my mouth but not to speak. Just to gape.
“Did you assume my invitation to attend my nephew’s wedding was sent out of geniality?”
I tried to shut my jaw, but it hung open, its hinges shattered by shock.
“I possess something dear to your pack, and McNamara knows it. It was a matter of time before he sent his boys to retrieve it.”
I finally got my mouth to work. “But how… How did you know it would be part of the contest?”
“I made sure it became a part of it by tendering an invitation onto my estate.”
A loud squawk sounded. I raised my eyes to the sky to spot the bird capable of releasing such an ear-splitting sound but saw nothing flying overhead.
“If I’d been Frank, and your pack held something of mine, instead of breaking and entering, I’d jump on the opportunity to stroll through the front door.”
“So your pack really did steal it?” I whispered into the dusky air.
“No.”
“But then…how—”
“Someone gave it to me in exchange for a favor. I knew it was of great importance because Heath had paid me a visit a couple days before he died to demand I return it to him. At that point, I had no idea what in God’s good name he’d been raving about. But of course, his request rendered me extraordinarily curious. And when what he’d been pursuing dropped into my lap some time later…well, you can imagine my absolute delight.”
Julian stopped walking, pulling me to a stop too. He frowned and released my arm. I assumed someone was coming but heard no footsteps, smelled no other body. Then again, it was difficult to smell much of anything over the sour scent wafting in the air. He reached around me to pluck a leaf that stuck out from the smooth green wall of vegetation.
The reason we’d stopped.
My skin turned bitterly cold as I realized that if I stepped out of the line he’d drawn for me, he’d probably snap my neck like he’d snapped that poking imperfection.
Julian returned his attention to me. I took a step back, my bare shoulder blade brushing against the bristly hedge. What had gotten into me to follow him deep into a maze he knew like the palm of his hand?
The sky had dimmed to a periwinkle blue that matched Julian’s eyes as he drank in my dread like a man savoring a delectable vintage.
He held out his arm. “Shall we?”
I swallowed, forcing my limbs to move, even though the mere thought of touching Julian had goose bumps pebbling my arm.
As we started walking again, he said, “Shortly before we met, I contacted McNamara to let him know I held what Heath had been so desperately seeking and promised to hand it over if he explained its importance.”
My throat moved with another swallow. “He mustn’t have told you if you still have it.”
He tsked. “Ye have little faith in me, Miss Clark.”
My eyes widened, soaking up the silvery outline of his gelled hair. “He told you?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t return it.”
Another loud squawk. I tipped my head upward again.
“I had every intention of giving it back—until I heard what they used it for. Then I had every intention of destroying it, but I held off, waiting for a new Alpha to rise to power in your pack. It is more challenging to barter with ashes.”
“What do they use it for?”
Julian stopped walking again, but this time, it was simply to face me. “Have you really no idea?”
I shook my head.
“They grate the wood into the drink pledges have to ingest the day they join your pack.”
I frowned.
“Have you never wondered why only males are born to the Boulder Pack? Did you truly think it was an evolutionary trait like your elders claim?”
The world held still for a moment, and then it tipped. Julian slid his palms underneath my elbows to hold me upright.
“I hope this will renew your desire to compete.”
A gust of wind cartwheeled through the maze, blowing against the glossy leaves that waved at me like tiny hands. Anger bloomed in my chest, chasing away the chilling numbness I’d felt all week long.
“Once you become Alpha, you can destroy it and change the course of your pack’s future.”
Color must’ve seeped into my cheeks, because Julian raised a wide smile that barely crimped his too-smooth, too-shiny brow.
He leaned in close. “Shall I tell you where I’m keeping it hidden?”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I’ve already told you. I want a friend in your pack, and I think you’d make a good friend.”
“You already have Everest.”
“I would not call your cousin a friend. Merely an effective purveyor. But if you’d rather not be my friend, then—”
“Where is the damn stick?”
A slow smile drew his pouty lips upward, revealing the perfectly polished enamel of his teeth. “That’s my girl.”
“I’m no one’s girl.”
He scraped a dry finger against my cheek. His hand smelled so strongly of acetone and lotion it momentarily dispelled the repulsive scent blistering the air.
I bristled away from his touch.
“Take every right turn from now on. At the center of this maze, you’ll find the cage in which I keep my glorious pets. What you’re looking for is inside.”
A cage? Was that the source of the squawking and revolting reek?
Julian handed me a little key. “You will be needing this.”
I closed my fingers around the gold key and started walking away when Julian called out to me.
“After you were born, your father came to me.”
I didn’t turn around, but I waited, spine tight.
“He asked if I could enlighten him as to why he’d been given a daughter.”
“He must not have drunk the celebratory concoction,” I said drily.
“Perhaps. Anyway, at the time, I didn’t have an answer for him. I told him he should ask his Alpha. He told me that he had. Would you like to know what Heath told him?”
“He instructed him to kill me and try again. Oh… and he also suggested a paternity test.” My tone dripped with acid.
The ensuing silence told me Julian hadn’t expected me to answer.
But then his voice rose again. “I know you feel guilt, Ness. I sense it weighing heavily on your shoulders. Cast it away. Heath Kolane was not a good man. Besides, think of your father. Think of what a victory it would’ve been for him to see you, his strong, beautiful daughter, rise to the highest rank of a pack who cast her away because of her gender.”
My heart hardened to steel. My resolve too. I didn’t delude myself into thinking Julian was my friend. He was an oily, manipulative man, but he’d just given me two tools—courage and knowledge—to right one of the many wrongs inside my pack, and for that I was grateful.
I started up again and took the first right.
The first of many rights.
Chapter Forty
Even if Julian hadn’t shared the directions to his birdcage, I would’ve found it from the smell. His vibrant-colored and cacophonous parrots reeked. As I approached their cage, eyes prickling from the aggressive stench, I lifted a hand to block my nose.
No wonder he’d hidden the fossilized wood inside. The birds’ awful stink would cover up the artifact’s. I wasn’t sure what the old thing I needed to find would look like and regretted not having asked what color it was or where it rested in the cage. When Julian had mentioned a cage, I’d imagined a smallish thing, not one I could step into without hunching over.
The birds turned their beady black eyes toward me, growing still and quiet at my advance. I uncovered my nose and sniffed the air for what I needed to find. My eyes watered, but I kept sniffing, strolling slowly around the cage. I caught a whiff of cold rot and stopped. Both parrots had swiveled their neckless heads to watch me, their sharp beaks buried deep in their puffy red chests.
I crouched to see if the smell emanated from the wood-chipped floor. My nose burned. The rancid odor was definitely worse below. In the pale light of the moon, I tracked my gaze over the woodchips until I found a disturbance in their evenness. Something glinted among the dull carpeting like polished bone.
Pressing one palm over my nose, I made my way back around the cage to the door and slid the key into the lock. When the latch clanked open, I pushed the door open and slipped inside, shutting it back quickly so Julian’s prized pets didn’t flock out. Keeping one eye out on the quiet birds, I moved toward the irregular patch of flooring and dug out what I’d seen.
Thick. Yellowed. Shiny. Putrid.
The key to gender selection.
How had anyone been able to swallow a drink sprinkled with this was beyond me. I would’ve thrown up at the mere smell.
Perhaps that’s what had happened to my father. Perhaps he’d thrown up the vile thing.
I wrapped my fingers lightly around the disgusting object and exited the birdcage. The parrots hadn’t fluttered a single feather. I turned the key, then buried it in the palm that wasn’t holding the Boulder relic.
As I turned, I bumped into a body.
A tall, broad body with glowing yellow eyes.
Chapter Forty-One
Liam stood in front of me, jaw so hard it could cut glass.
My pulse raged from his presence, from his nearness.
“You found it.” The low timbre of his voice rolled toward me. He was angry. Terribly angry.
I pressed the key harder into my palm. “I did.” I should probably have dropped the key into the grass and prayed he wouldn’t see its shine, but I didn’t drop it. I didn’t dare move. “You’ve arrived too late.”
“You wouldn’t have had any help, would you now?”
“Would it matter? The rule of the game was to find the artifact. They didn’t specify our method for finding it.”
A rough smile perched on his lips. “You’re good, Ness. Sneaky, even.”
I tried to step around him, but he blocked my advance. “Get out of my way, Liam.”
“You cheated.”
I glared up at him defiantly. “I used my connection to find it. How is that cheating?”
“Your connection…or your mouth?”
I uncurled my fingers from the piece of wood. It tumbled onto the grass at the same time as my hand flew into Liam’s jaw.
How could I ever have considered letting him win? “I’ve never ever touched a man that way!”
“Then why is Julian helping you?” he asked, rubbing his jaw.
“Maybe because he thinks I’d make a better Alpha than any of you.” I crouched to pick up the fossil. Woodchips had caught in the hem of my dress, but I didn’t bother brushing them off. My hands trembled too fiercely to do muc
h more than focus on clutching the key and the wood.
I shook my head as I rose and passed by him, knocking my shoulder into his chest on purpose.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
“It’s away from you, so it must be right.” My vision had tunneled from anger and adrenaline. I’d find my way outside of this maze eventually. I was in no rush. I walked briskly, my heels poking into the ground and popping out. I took every left turn I could find. Instead of finding myself on the great lawn, I found myself back in front of the birdcage.
I growled out of frustration.
At least Liam was gone.
I tried again, this time focusing. I remembered I’d emerged from the maze on the side facing the cage door, so I walked back that way, and then I took a left, and another left, and another. On the ground beneath my feet I spotted the spindly branch Julian had ripped. Bolstered by the knowledge I was heading in the correct direction, I concentrated on recalling how I’d gotten to that point. It took me three attempts to figure it out.
When I burst out of the maze, I released a deep breath but then sucked in air anew when I caught sight of my welcoming committee.
Liam, Lucas, and Frank stood there. All of them had their arms crossed.
“What? No applause?” Apparently anger made me snarky.
“You had help,” Lucas said.
I shot my gaze to Liam who met it straight on. He didn’t even flinch. “Perhaps I did, but as far as I can remember, that wasn’t forbidden.”
Lucas whipped his head to shift his hair off his forehead. “That’s cheating.”
“I didn’t come up with this test, Lucas. The elders did.”
“Frank, come on…” Lucas said, untying his arms and waving his hands around. “You can’t let her win.”
I fixed my gaze on Frank and dared him to disqualify me.
Slowly, his chest rose with a sigh. Even more slowly his lips parted, and he said, “Let me see it.”
“Can’t you smell it?” I was pretty certain the odor would never wash away from my skin, even if I dipped my hand in bleach.
“I need to ascertain it’s whole.”
A Pack of Blood and Lies Page 22
