by Cheree Alsop
“Go on, dear,” Mrs. Willard encouraged.
I let out a breath and said, “Could you not tell Isley that I was the wolf?”
Glances were exchanged. I wished I knew enough about being human to understand what they meant. I felt like an animal more at that moment than any other time, lost to the subtleties of an unspoken conversation that said far more than words ever could.
Mrs. Willard was the one who nodded. She smiled and said, “Your secret is safe with us, dear.”
I left the room more confused than when I had entered. I headed toward the porch, but the sight of Mitch through the window reminded me of his advice to get some sleep. I was exhausted. To be honest with myself, I could feel the weariness to the depths of my bones. Even walking took effort. I knew that if I was that tired, it would affect the healing process. As much as I hated to admit it, Mitch was right. I needed to sleep.
I smeared what was left of the paste along the deep scratches that scored my chest and then set the bowl beside the sink in the kitchen. The healing aroma of lavender, geranium, and lemon drifted from the stinging salve. I entered the living room again and stared at the cushions of the couch that promised a comfortable rest. A glance at my chest told me I would destroy the fabric by laying on it. Instead, I spread the blanket I had already ruined across the carpet and laid on it where the moonlight fell brightest through the window.
A few minutes after I had closed my eyes, the sound of Alia’s footsteps paused just inside the living room door.
“You can come in,” I said without looking at her. “Don’t mind me.”
“I just didn’t want to disturb you,” she said, crossing the floor. “I thought…I thought you would sleep on the couch.”
“I was afraid of ruining it.”
When she didn’t answer, I opened my eyes and looked up. She gazed down at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“You saved one of my best friends, Zev. You can sleep on the couch,” she told me.
I ran a hand across the carpet. It wasn’t new by any means, but it was clean and thick. “To be honest, this is the most comfortable I’ve been in perhaps my entire life,” I told her honestly.
Alia smiled. “I guess I can’t argue with that.” She grabbed a pillow from the couch. “But at least use this.”
Before I could protest, she pushed the pillow beneath my head and rose again.
I fought back a smile. “I can’t say the Willards suffer from the lack of hospitality.”
She grinned at that. “No, we don’t.”
The warmth of the room combined with the healing numbness of the salve worked against me as I fought to keep my eyes open.
Alia must have seen my efforts because she said, “Sleep, Zev. I’m just going to go talk to Mitch for a bit. You get some rest.”
The thought of her talking to the werewolf bothered me, but I didn’t know how to put it into words without coming across as controlling. I let my eyes close and nodded so she wouldn’t see the emotions I was so bad at hiding. She wasn’t mine. I shouldn’t feel possessive of her or even protective. Who she chose to talk to was her own decision to make. So why did I feel like fighting Mitch?
My body refused to move a muscle and the voice in the back of my mind noted that it would be a poor fight indeed. If I was to have any hope of winning a fight against felguls, the Masters, or even Mitch, I needed to sleep.
My mind drifted into a comfortable, blissful place somewhere between sleep and awake. Voices drifted from beneath the door to the porch, their murmurs soft but clear enough to make out.
“What are felguls?” Alia asked.
“They’re demon cats, the guardians of choice for some vampires,” Mitch replied.
“But your Masters chose werewolves?”
“They’re not our Masters anymore,” Mitch replied.
Pride filled me at the certainty in his voice. If I was the pat on the shoulder type, I would have done so for his strength.
My thoughts drifted away. I was partially awoken again by the question, “So what now?”
“I’m not sure.” Mitch’s voice was quiet and hard to hear even with my werewolf abilities. They must have walked further from the house. “Things most people want, a home, a picket fence, a job, seem so far away.”
“Maybe not,” Alia replied. “I could help you.”
“Why would you want to?”
The question lingered in the air and my thoughts drifted away with it. A dream of me working a job in a mall, taking money for a shirt behind Alia’s desk turned dark when a vampire walked into the store. He wore his human disguise; his leathery skin, clawed feet, slit nostrils, and glowing yellow eyes were hidden behind the beautiful human façade vampires could keep up for short periods of time with considerable effort. Why he even bothered to disguise himself was beyond me. The foul scent of black licorice and charcoal would have given him away no matter his appearance.
The store turned dark; the air became heavy, scented with mildew and death. I blinked and we were in the Lair. The scent of charred blood and the cloying odor of pain colored the air. Columns reached to the ceiling and chains dangled from each one. From each set of chains hung a werewolf. At first I thought it was one of the many I had commanded as Third in the werewolf hierarchy, but the familiarity of the closest one caught my attention. I reached out, turned his head with a hand in his hair, and found myself looking into my eyes, only they were dulled and lifeless in death. A look around showed that all of the werewolves had turned their heads to look at me, and each was me with the same lifeless eyes.
A hand touched my chest. My hand shot out and closed over a throat. Whoever it was held perfectly still until I opened my eyes. I found myself looking up at Mitch. The werewolf’s gaze showed no fear, only understanding as he waited for me to loosen my grasp.
I did so and sat up abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“There’s another werewolf here,” he said.
Alertness washed over me like a bucket of cold water. I rose and grabbed the shirt he held out. The need to hide any weakness was echoed in both of our expressions as I slid the shirt over my head.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“I’ve lost track,” he replied wryly. “I think she was thirty-second or twenty-ninth, or something like that before we left.”
His nonchalance about rankings that had been so very important to us when we were in the Lair nearly made me smile, but the reality that there was a werewolf on the Willards’ property spurred me to action.
“Where is she?”
I followed Mitch to the front door. He pointed and I made out the form of the werewolf standing at the very edge of the property near the road. The fact that she had chosen to honor our so-called territory calmed my anger, but only slightly.
I noted as I crossed the grass that she appeared unarmed. It wasn’t very reassuring. Adrenaline pounded through my veins, pushing me to protect the Willards and Steins, to take care of those who had been kind to me. The very presence of the werewolf was a threat, and the wolf inside me didn’t take to threats very well.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. I stopped far enough away that I would see anyone who came from the trees to either side of her before they attacked.
She stood upwind, an action a werewolf took consciously to show that they were alone. The cloying scent of the Lair haunted my nostrils and I had to ignore the urge to back away so I didn’t have to smell it. Her stance was casual, her arms at her sides and her gaze just to the right of mine, yet the left corner of her lips was pulled up in the smallest of humorless smiles.
“I come with a message, but first, a question.”
I remembered her in the ranks. She had been thirty-one when I left. The girl was cunning and shrewd. She would have risen quickly in the ranks without me there to check her progress. I didn’t view cheating as a praiseworthy trait the way the Masters did.
“What is it?” I snapped.
She cr
ossed her arms. “Your name. Did you give it to yourself?” Her gaze flickered from me to the porch. “Twenty-two called you Zev.”
I glared at her. “It’s none of your business.”
Her eyebrows rose. “It’ll be my business if the Masters send me back here to tear this place to the ground.”
I grabbed her by the throat and lifted her into the air. It wasn’t difficult. She was smaller than me and she didn’t struggle. Instead, she looked down at me with a light of triumph in her eyes.
“What’s wrong, Three? Afraid your little human family will become vampire fodder?” she asked tightly.
I was so tempted to squeeze my fingers shut that my other hand shook. I clenched it into a fist and fought the wolf inside me that demanded I protect those she threatened. Her very presence signified that our attempts to destroy any evidence that the other werewolves had been there had failed.
“My name is not Three,” I replied in a growl. “I don’t listen to the Masters anymore.”
“You’ll wish you had when they drain every last body in that house and feed—” Her eyes widened when my grip tightened, cutting off her air.
It was so tempting to end her life and send a message to the Masters that I wasn’t theirs to command any longer. She had always been a conniving werewolf, cheating and backstabbing to climb her way up the ladder. That was the problem with ranks, I realized. Nobody knew how you got to the top; it was only who stood up there that mattered. But that was no longer the way for me.
She struggled, but I refused to release the pressure. Her eyes widened and fear showed in them for the first time.
“Zev, let her go.”
Mitch’s calm voice broke through the red haze that filled my vision. I glanced at him.
“She didn’t come here to fight.”
There was no sympathy in his gaze when he looked at her, only the same calculation I had seen when he sized me up for the first time.
“She’s a threat,” I told him.
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe, but not to us and not to them,” he said with a nod toward the house. “At least for now. I think you should put her down.”
I didn’t want to listen to him. The wolf inside riled at the thought of taking another werewolf’s suggestion, yet he had said it levelly, dispassionately, and left me to decide. I realized at that moment that Mitch was a very smart werewolf.
I lowered the girl so that her feet could touch the ground again, but I didn’t let her go. She sucked in a breath as soon as I let up the pressure on her throat. I pulled her closer and said, “Tell the Masters that I’m done taking their orders.”
I released her and she stumbled. She kept her eyes on Mitch and me as she backed toward the forest. She was nearly there when she dared to speak again.
“How dare you address the Masters that way!” she shouted, her voice raspy. “I should kill you where you stand!”
Her voice startled a pheasant who had nested in the blackberry bushes behind her. It took flight into the night with a clatter of wings and an angry cry.
I opened my arms. “You’re welcome to try.
Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She glowered for a moment as if debating what to do. Then, with a growl and a very unwerewolflike stamp of her foot, she turned and ran into the trees. I heard her footsteps change when she phased. The lope of the wolf faded away into the dark distance.
“I’m not sure that was smart,” Mitch said.
I turned on him in exasperation. “You said to put her down!”
He nodded without smiling, his gaze on the trees where she had disappeared. “Yes, but now I’m wondering if that was the right advice to give. She’s liable to come back with a dozen werewolves and start a fight of her own if the Masters agree.”
I watched the forest in silence with the knowledge that if I spoke my mind, Mitch might not like the direction of my thoughts.
“You’re a very angry person. Do you know that?” he asked.
His analysis was accurate enough that I didn’t feel the need to reply.
I saw him glance at me out of the corner of my eye.
“But you also surprise me. I remember how you were at the Lair. You’d tear into anyone who so much as looked at you wrong, especially before you disappeared. You had everyone walking on eggshells.”
“It was easier that way,” I admitted to the night. “No questions. Everyone obeyed. The tension was already there. Adding to it meant less work for me because they knew the consequences of getting on my bad side.”
Mitch gave a small huff that could pass for laughter from a wolf.
I looked at him. “What?”
He smiled and said, “What would they think at the Lair of you letting go a werewolf who just challenged you like that?”
I couldn’t deny a small smile in return when I admitted, “They’ll think I’ve gone soft.”
He shook his head. “Not if they remember you just took out a full team by yourself and buried them in the woods.”
The satisfaction in his voice made me ask, “So what will they think?”
“That you’re crazy,” he replied. I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a hand to cut me off and said, “And that’s just where you want them. Keep them on edge; make irrational decisions like letting that girl go. They’re less likely to want to mess with you that way.”
I wasn’t sure I appreciated his view on my mental state, but I had to admit that it might actually help us if it made the werewolves more reluctant to attack.
“And what about you?” I asked. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
He studied me for a moment with a serious expression before he shook his head. “No. I don’t. But you confuse me.”
“How’s that?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
“I’m alive, too,” he said. He opened his arms slightly to remind me. “Given our training, you should have killed me the other night with the rest of them.”
“The rest of us?” I repeated, stressing the last word. “I killed a whole lot of us.”
His tone was level when he said, “Not much different from the Lair.”
“It’s completely different,” I replied. At his questioning look, I said, “At the Lair, I might not have let you live. You were a threat to my rank.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “It’s funny how something so insignificant as a number could create so much animosity.” He was silent for a moment, his gaze distant, before he said, “The Masters are shrewd, aren’t they?” He glanced at me and explained, “They knew ranks would turn into challenges, favor into fighting. They knew exactly what they were doing when they made us earn our positions. It bothers me how much they understand werewolves when we don’t understand the Masters at all.”
“I understand them,” I said flatly.
He gave me a challenging look and replied, “How so?”
“They think they’re so smart in the way they’ve pitted us against each other to keep us from forming into real packs, but they were wrong.”
“I don’t see how.” He glanced at the road as if he heard something. “Us hating each other kept us serving them.”
I nodded. I had to give him that, but the truth still remained. “Do you know what I’ve learned in my time away from the Lair?”
He shook his head.
I looked back at the house. “It’s that life is made up of so much more than moments of rivalry and survival. The heart is made for many greater emotions than jealousy and pride.” I looked back at the moonlit trees. “We were born into captivity. We were raised knowing that we would defend the Masters and the Lair our entire lives. We accepted our lot in life.”
“We did,” he agreed.
I crouched and ran my hand across the lawn. “But a warlock, witches, and humans helped us fight to defend this place and do you know why?”
“To save their lives?” he asked dryly, looking down at me.
I shook my head. “To save the ones they love.” I stood a
nd indicated the house. “Each of them didn’t fight to protect themselves. That wasn’t an individual battle. Instead, they fought to protect each other. I guarantee that when James fought that werewolf with his gauntlets, it wasn’t with his own life in mind, it was to defend his mother, his sisters, and his brother. When Virgo put that spell out to stop the knives, it was to shelter his sister and mother and the Willards.” I looked at Mitch. “The Masters denied us the one thing a werewolf needs above all else. They denied us a pack. They knew that the one force they couldn’t stop would be all of us working together. They could have raised us in packs and taught us how to work as one to defend the Lair, but there was too much risk.”
He nodded and a light of understanding showed in his eyes when he said, “So they chose to keep us separate and pit us against each other.” His brow furrowed. “So how does that help us understand the Masters?”
“They’re petty and afraid,” I replied. I held up a hand before he could argue. “They’re stronger than we are and shrewd. They’ve had lifetimes of living that makes them wiser in years, but along the way, they’ve come to take for granted that we will fight for our ranks and strive to please them for advancement.” I gave him a small smile. “We’re forming a pack here, Mitch. It’s a pack of humans, witches, a warlock, and even a demon-cursed little girl. It might be mismatched, but we’re creating the one thing the Masters fear.”
Mitch studied the forest and I kept silent to see what he would make of my thoughts. Most of it had come to me as I said it, but it made sense in a way that I felt deep down. I knew I was right. I just hoped he could see it.
He finally nodded and glanced at me. “So if you’re right, they may just leave us alone in the hopes that we won’t ensnare the others.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I hope so, but if not, we’ll fight them again. I have a feeling the Masters aren’t going to be willing to put too many more werewolf lives at risk with this new threat coming.”
Mitch nodded. “They’ll have to decide who poses the biggest threat between you or the vampires.” He let out a breath and said, “Personally, I’m concerned about the felguls. If the vampires sent them on ahead, they might be here soon. Brickwell’s going to be in serious trouble.”
