He turned so still I bared my fangs and lashed at him, nipping his neck.
Fight me or they’ll know I’m talking. I dug the tips of my fangs into his skin. Damn it, Liam, figh—
He released a blood-curdling snarl and then tossed me off him with a hard shrug. I yelped as I landed on my haunches, a pale cloud rising around me like smoke.
He advanced toward me.
They sent me a message saying, I see you. So they’re here. Or they’re watching me somehow.
When he started to turn his head—a dead giveaway I was talking—I launched myself on his back like an arrow. He wrung his massive body, and I tumbled off, falling hard on my spine. He stepped over me, pinning me to the ground.
What now? he growled. ’Cause I sure as hell won’t kill you.
Yes, you will.
A deep, guttural sound rose out of him and made my fur stand on end. The fuck I am!
You will once you know…once I tell you what I did.
He became as still as an ebony carving. What did you do?
I shut my lids so I wouldn’t see his reaction. I…I killed your father. Nothing happened for so long that I peeked through my lashes at him. I am the reason he’s dead.
His pupils turned pin-sized. What are you talking about?
The crowd tightened around us, but still no one transformed.
I started working at the escort agency to land a meeting with Heath. I knew he wouldn’t let me into his house and listen to me otherwise. I wanted to see him to speak my piece. I slipped him three pills—I swallowed, but my throat felt wadded up with cotton—that made it impossible for him to shift. And then I told him that I knew what he’d done to Becca Howard…to my mother.
Shock rushed over Liam’s features, but soon that shock turned into something else. Something that whittled his expression. What did he do to your mother?
He didn’t ask about Becca, which meant he already knew.
When she begged him to let me into the pack and train me, he…he raped her. I dragged in a rough breath. I hated your father, Liam, but I never meant to kill him. It truly was an accident. If I could rewind…if I could just—
Ness, my father didn’t die because of any drug.
I know how he died, Liam. I know he drowned. My eyes were so hot that the cold air made them sting. But he drowned because of their effect.
You think he fell into his pool and somehow spasmed to death? His gravelly voice turned almost shrill. Oh, Ness… He nudged my cheek with his wet nose.
But Everest said—
What did he say? His tone was as dark as his glistening fur.
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. My throat had squeezed as tight as a fist.
My father did die in his pool, but he was strangled to death with a silver cord.
The air eddied between us, cold and hot, loud and silent.
Strangled? I whispered.
Your pills might’ve slowed him down, but they didn’t kill him. Liam’s large black face dipped heavily. In a slow, even voice, he added, I wondered why my father hadn’t shifted. And then, Everest knew about the pills, didn’t he?
He suggested them. I only wanted to give your father one, but Everest recommended three. He told me Alphas weren’t built like normal wolves.
Suddenly, everything made sense. How quickly Everest had been to blame me. How swiftly he’d pushed me toward the enemy pack to make me look like a traitor. How he’d up and left Boulder. Why he’d blackmailed me to compete in the last trial.
My death would mean his secret was safe.
Liam’s death would mean my cousin would be free of retaliation.
What he hadn’t counted on was for me to figure it out and share my findings with Heath’s son.
My head swam, but my heart, it shot up from the depths it had been wallowing in. I have to go. I have to go. I tried to wriggle out from underneath him, but he pinned one of my shoulders with his giant forepaws. Liam, I have to go! Let me go! Everest took Evelyn. I have to save her.
I spun my face to see my uncle. He was watching on as intently and curiously as the others. Was he in on his son’s scheme? Was he the one who saw me?
I writhed, but Liam wouldn’t get off me. I snarled at him. I need to find her.
I’ll go with you.
You come with me and they’ll know I talked.
What am I supposed to do? Let you leave to face Everest on your own?
Yes.
No. His yellow eyes sparked like fire.
He’ll kill Evelyn if you come with me.
He might kill her and you if I let you go on your own.
We’re wasting time. I writhed like a snake. You want to help me? I growled. Then shift back and tell them I’m running away since I can’t forfeit. That’ll give me time to find her, and it will lead Everest astray.
Ness—
I spun so briskly to the side that he faltered. He tried to trap me again but ended up swiping his paw across my face, his claws catching in my cheek. The wound wasn’t deep, but it stung.
Liam folded his ears back. Shit.
I could see my reflection in his gaze; I could see the red seeping over the white. Using his surprise, I flipped onto my stomach, my cheek weeping blood on the cement floor, and leaped out from underneath him.
I burst into the sunlight, speeding away from the boy who made my heart beat fiercely, from the warehouse that held cherished moments of my childhood, from the pack I’d wanted to become a part of even though I’d claimed otherwise.
Chapter Forty-Six
Liam didn’t come after me, which led me to think he’d changed back to his human form and indulged my plea. I prayed his explanation would get back to Everest, and that he wouldn’t hold my supposed desertion against Evelyn.
I flew toward the inn like a lightning bolt, pounding the earth so violently I thought my heart would crack. The urgency and the adrenaline dimmed the horror of what I’d just learned…of what my cousin had done.
When I reached the inn’s property line, I slowed to make sure there weren’t too many humans but then realized I was wasting precious minutes. To hell with sightings. I was not an impressive creature, not like Liam and the rest of the boys. They couldn’t pass for real wolves; I could. I muscled my way through the prickly fir trees and bounded into the parking lot. Evelyn’s sash window still gaped wide.
As I trotted toward it, I lowered my nose to the hot asphalt and inhaled. There it was again. The ashen scent of a crushed cigarette laced with Evelyn’s minty ointment. Everest didn’t smoke… Or did he? Did I even know my cousin?
The odor of arthritis cream ran the length of the parking lot, tempered with that of gasoline fumes. He’d taken Evelyn in a car. How was I supposed to trail a car?
I ran, but not fast, clinging to the edge of the road. I discovered a cigarette butt, coated in dry saliva, then picked up more hints of Evelyn’s salve. I prayed it wasn’t my addled mind conjuring up smells that weren’t there.
The sun baked my hide, but thankfully, the whiteness of my fur repelled some of the heat. I walked and walked, losing the invisible trail more than once, but retrieving it each time. Like a fractured chain, it hung in the stifling air. The only explanation I could come up with was that her captor had left the car window open.
A fork split the road in half. I smelled the air but froze as I took in my surroundings.
No…
NO!
I’d followed an old scent. Despair limning my vision, I stared at the steep hill with the pockmarked road that led to my childhood home. My heart thudded. I backed away but stepped in a spot of mud that sucked at my hind paw. I yanked my leg free, noticing tread marks beneath my paw print.
Fresh tread marks.
A car had come by here.
Maybe I hadn’t followed an old trail.
I sped up the hill, pulse lurching savagely. Tucked behind the house was a black minivan with the Boulder Inn logo. Part of me had held out hope that I’d been wrong. That it wasn’
t my own family that had done this to me. The van trampled that hope.
Wolves didn’t have goose bumps, yet my fur tingled with thousands.
I swayed but steeled my nerves as I inched closer to the house, ears perked up for sound. Through the grimy window of my old living room, I caught a sight that sucked all the oxygen from the air.
Evelyn was strapped to a chair, her snarled black hair spilling over her hunched shoulders. My eyesight narrowed as I took in her legs hooked to the chair rungs with duct tape, her arms taut and stretched backward, her hands bound with a zip tie. I tried to see her chest, see if it still rose and fell, but she was angled away from me.
The desire to sink my fangs into flesh and spill blood seized me so hard my muscles jerked.
One of Evelyn’s fingers twitched.
She wasn’t dead!
A voice, scratchy yet feminine, rose from within. “She didn’t go through with the trial.”
My vision blurred and sharpened.
Lucy!
I circled around my house toward the broken window pane of my bedroom. The second the crackled glass would fall against the hardwood floor, Lucy would know I was here.
My stomach seized as the scent of cigarettes and menthol blasted into my pulsing nostrils.
Now!
Glass bit into my flesh and rained over the floor.
Something thumped lightly in the living room. And then everything turned quiet-quiet. I lunged toward my open door and shoved it wide, claws skittering over wood. My aunt’s mouth rounded with a gasp as I leaped onto her, slamming her against the floor. Her skull cracked like an eggshell, or maybe it was one of the bones in her body because her eyes were still wide, still seeing. I bared my teeth and growled.
The sharp tang of urine and fear filled the room.
“Ness!” she shouted, but it sounded like static to my buzzing ears.
I barked, and she blinked wildly.
Suddenly, something collided into my side and tore me off my aunt’s heaving, urine-soaked body.
Chapter Forty-Seven
I was half expecting to see my cousin, but it wasn’t Everest who’d flung me off Lucy; it was Liam. He’d caged her underneath his massive furred body.
What are you doing? I hissed.
Lucy was muttering, “It’s not what you think.”
He growled at her so roughly she shut up and turned as white as the towels I’d laundered for her day after day.
Liam spun his face toward me. We need to find Everest, and Jeb doesn’t know where he is, but I bet she does.
I stared at him wide-eyed. My uncle wasn’t in on it? How could he not have known? How—
The others are on their way.
I turned toward the wrap-around windows, and sure enough, vehicles were rolling up the drive. Suddenly, the room was filled with human bodies.
Frank rushed toward Evelyn, who was shaking with sobs. The second he freed her, she slung her arms around his neck. He whispered into her ear words I couldn’t pick up. And then he kissed her cheek.
And she let him.
But then Liam stepped in front of me and blocked out the rest of the room. He licked my cheek, and the warm wetness stung, and then he tried to lick my shoulder, and I realized he was trying to get the blood off me.
I shoved him aside. I’d tend to my injuries later. First, I needed to ascertain Evelyn wasn’t hurt.
Cole and Lucas were hauling Lucy up. I felt them look my way, but I didn’t look at them, utterly focused on Evelyn. She released Frank and limped toward me. Slowly, she kneeled, pain excavating each one of her wrinkles, and then she extended her arms, and I walked into her embrace.
I trembled when her fingers combed through my fur.
“Querida,” she murmured croakily. “She told me you needed me, that you were here.” She took my face in her hands, then pressed her forehead to mine. “Lo siento. I am so sorry for going with her.” Evelyn swept her shaky, dry palms over my muzzle.
A bone-deep shudder raked across my body, and tears skimmed off my eyes, tangled with my bloodied fur. Fear, relief, anger, and tension swept through me in waves.
Evelyn was safe.
She was safe.
I tried to tell her I loved her but remembered I was still a wolf. She wouldn’t understand me. And then I realized this was the first time she saw me in my beast form, and I froze.
She threaded her shaky fingers through my fur again, stroking my neck over and over.
She wasn’t running off, screaming.
I relaxed into her embrace, but then a hand touched my haunches. I snatched my head out of Evelyn’s hands and snarled at the person who’d dared pet me. Frank pulled his arm back to his side, as though fearing I would bite.
I licked Evelyn’s hand. She stared at the skin my tongue had touched, then stared at me, and I felt like I’d done something wrong. But then her pallid face split with a startled smile, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and crushed me against her.
Her scent rushed through me, reaching the places her arms couldn’t, and like the petals on a limp rose, my wolf form tumbled off my spent body.
Several things happened at once. Evelyn gasped. The air turned colder. A shirt whispered over my naked backside. A loud voice rose over all the others, demanding that everyone get out. Frank’s. Large hands lifted Evelyn and helped her back to the couch, and then those same large, papery hands wrapped around my taut and trembling arms.
“Someone, get her clothes!” Frank’s frantic voice reverberated off the cracked plaster walls. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t know.”
I bobbed my head, half nod, half tremble.
Frank rose and someone else crouched in front of my huddled, naked form. Liam.
“Here,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the dusty, water-stained wooden slats my father would oil every two years. Whoever had bought our house hadn’t cared for it at all.
Liam fit a roomy t-shirt over my head, then lifted my hands one after the other and guided them through the sleeves. He tugged the hem low over my thighs. And then he crooked my chin on a finger to make me look at him.
“She’s safe, Ness. You saved her.” He smoothed my hair back, and then he collected my trembling body against his solid one, and held me.
The room swayed and then it blurred and darkened before finally vanishing completely.
Chapter Forty-Eight
I sprang awake so fast my head spun and my vision fragmented. “Evelyn!”
“I am right here, querida.” She eased me back down, then leaned over me, her fingertips curving over the sides of my face, tracking over each one of my features.
I blinked at her. “You’re okay?”
“I am okay.”
“Did Lucy…did she hurt you?” I whispered.
“No.”
I closed my eyes and saw my aunt’s protruding eyes, saw Evelyn hunched in a chair. I forced my lids up. My mouth tasted sour, and my body reeked of wet-dog. I stretched my arms and legs then sat up, slower this time, my cheek pulsing. I lifted my fingers and felt a patch of puckered skin.
Evelyn wrapped her hands around my bicep. Although I didn’t require her support, I let her guide me to the bathroom…I let her tend to me. She closed the lid of the toilet and sat me down. As she warmed the water, I peeled my t-shirt and shorts away. I didn’t remember putting them on.
When steam curled up from the shower nozzle, I stepped into the bathtub, sat, and raised my face, letting the hot water beat down on me. Evelyn squirted soap into her hands and cleaned my body. And then she rubbed shampoo between her palms and washed my hair. She lathered in conditioner next, her careful fingers working out the knots.
She rinsed and rinsed and then turned off the water. As she picked up a towel, I clamped my fingers around the rim of the bathtub and heaved myself up and out. She patted down my body and then my hair, and I felt like I was a toddler all over again. She forced me to sit back down on the closed lid and went to get me clean clothes: leggings
and a tank top. I pulled both on. She dried my hair some more and then combed it out.
As I stood, the world spun a little, and my stomach rumbled as though it hadn’t been fed in days instead of hours.
“You need to eat something.” She steered me to the armchair that was creased and warmed from her body. “Sit here and don’t move.”
“I won’t.” I leaned my head back and shut my eyes, relishing the tranquility.
Sometime later, she was back with thick slices of chewy bread topped with thin slivers of turkey. I ate slowly, the food dropping into my stomach like clumps of blizzard snow. Evelyn pulled the sheets off my bed and tucked in new ones. For a long time, the rustle of fabric and the floorboards creaking under Evelyn’s lopsided footsteps were the only sounds inside the room. I thought about the day. About Lucy and Everest and Jeb. And that made me think of what my uncle had insinuated.
She was fluffing my pillows when I finally spoke. “Evelyn?”
“Yes?”
I peeled a piece of crust off the bread and shredded it into dark dust between my fingers. “Can I ask you something?”
Like an articulated toy, she straightened out. “Anything.”
“Is your real name…is it Evelyn?”
Even though her pupils were almost indistinguishable from her irises, I saw them pulse, or maybe I sensed them pulse. For seconds that stretched into full minutes, she stared at me. Then her gaze moved off mine, settling on a spot beyond my shoulder. Her long lashes swooped down and skimmed her pallid cheeks.
I hadn’t wanted to believe Jeb; I still didn’t want to believe him. But her evasion… “Who’s Gloria?”
The silence turned barbed. Slowly, she raised her lashes. Tears burned in her eyes as brightly as the stars blazing in the night sky behind her. The plate slid off my knees. It didn’t crack, but crumbs peppered the rug, and the remaining slices of turkey dropped like crumpled tissues.
She sat on the foot of the bed and linked her hands in her lap, her black hair falling around her lowered face.
A Pack of Blood and Lies Page 25
