Talley volunteered an answer. “Now we go back to my house. Mom and Gramma are cooking a huge breakfast - eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, everything.” I thought about my last meal and shuddered. A raw rabbit? A defenseless little bunny, fur and all? “You need to eat, Scout. The Change burns about a million calories you’re going to have to replace.”
“So, we eat.” If I could get poor little Thumper out of my head long enough to work up an appetite. “And then?”
Her clear blue eyes met mine. “And then I don’t know.”
Chapter 4
Talley’s driveway looked like a car lot. I always assumed the Pack consisted of Jase, Charlie, Charlie’s dad, and Toby, Charlie’s annoyingly self-important brother. I never thought to include great-uncles and distant cousins.
My fingers dug into the upholstery of the passenger’s seat. No one said much during the fifteen minute car ride other than Talley asking if I was okay every thirty seconds. Maybe if I could have managed something besides a strangled choking noise she would have quit asking.
I spent the majority of the time trying to convince myself this was all a horrible nightmare or psychotic episode brought on by stress, pain, and fever, but seeing all those cars gleaming in the early morning light somehow undid all my hard work.
If there had been anything left in my stomach I would’ve thrown up again.
“Scout?” Jase’s fingers clutched my elbow. I gave yet another strangled choking noise in response. “Scout, you need to listen to me. This is important.”
I turned my head to find him leaning up between the driver and passenger seats. “When you go in there, whatever you do, don’t let them see your fear. You have to be strong, okay?”
The realization Jase was echoing what Alex said to me in my dreams was enough to get me back into speaking mode. “What? What did you say?”
Her jerked back, looking as shaken as I felt. “Shifters are different than other people. Fear is a sign of weakness, and weakness is worse than bad. You can’t let them think you’re afraid. If someone bullies you, you have to stand up for yourself. Think you can do that?”
“No.” Honesty is the best policy, right? “God, Talley, just take me home. I don’t want to be here.”
“Not an option,” came Charlie’s voice from the back seat. “You trespassed on Hagan territory.”
“I was in my back yard.”
“Doesn’t matter. Rules are rules.”
I literally felt like I might explode. Rules are rules? I just had one of the most traumatic events of my life and they were actually concerned about crap like borders and territory? And when did Charlie start caring about rules? He was the kind of guy who believed rules were made to be broken. In fact, he owned a t-shirt that said, “Rules are made to be broken.”
Talley looked down to where my fingernails attempted to rip the upholstery out of her car. “Are you mad?”
I answered with a glare.
“Good,” she said, shutting off the engine. “That means you’re not focused on being scared anymore.” Her door was open before I could even protest. “Let’s go.”
About a dozen different guys loitered on the Matthews’ front porch, and it sounded as if there were at least that many more inside. I could put a name to most of the faces, though I suspected many of them I had only met once or twice before.
The moment we got near the house all conversation stopped. I’ve been stared at my entire life, and not in the you’re-the-most-beautiful-girl-in-the-world way. My stares tended to be more of the hey-I-didn’t-know-the-circus-was-in-town variety. I’m what a nice person would call “unusual looking”. The hair hanging down nearly to my waist is a silvery blond, my skin is a pale ivory with no hint of a peach or pink undertone, and my eyes are the palest of azure blue, only one tiny step up from white on the color chart. But something told me these hard looks had nothing to do with my white-on-white-on-white color pallet.
“Does everyone already know?” I asked Talley quietly, although whispering was pretty pointless. They were all Shifters, and it was the morning after a full moon. Supernatural hearing was working at full force, a fact driven home by my pounding headache.
Talley nodded, head held high as she kept walking towards the mob. “Be strong,” she muttered so softly I knew it carried only the ears of those of us who walked alongside her.
Badass Scout. I could do that, right?
I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin, looking at the cluster of guys about my age who sat on the front steps making zero effort to hide the fact they were trying to ease-drop in on our conversation. One of the younger ones, whose name I couldn’t remember for the life of me, made a big show of dragging his eyes down my body, pausing dramatically at the place where the orange gauzy material stopped mid-thigh, before giving me a grin and thumbs-up. I offered up a hand signal of my own in response.
I marched up to the steps and waited for someone to move so we could go inside. No one did.
“Makya,” I said to the largest of the group, “I’m going to need you to move out of my way.”
Makya is, as best as I can remember, Jase’s third-cousin. Apparently whatever genes that make Jase attractive in that adorable teddy-bear kind of way and Charlie sexier than should be allowed didn’t run through his part of the family tree. Makya sports a pug nose, a protruding forehead, and zero evidence a chin ever had an inclination to exist. The only thing he has going for him is the mossy green eyes which mark him as a Hagan.
“And what if I don’t feel like moving out of your way, baby?”
I shrugged with affected nonchalance. “I’ll let you decide. Either I can break your nose like I did at the state Mixed Martial Arts Tournament five years ago, or I can see if I can make you run crying to your mommy like the one and only time you showed up at Uncle Charles’s dojo. What will it be?”
“You think you can take me?”
A smirk played on my lips. “I know I can, moron.”
In all honesty, I wasn’t so sure. I spent the last month bed-ridden and just went through an extremely physically taxing evening without any sleep. Not exactly the best fighting conditions one could hope for, but Talley and Jase were right. For Christmas I received a surprise gift from Alex - one of the few factual books on werewolves in existence. Alex understood my need for scientific facts and reasoning when faced with the impossible magic of Shifters. In my multiple readings I picked up on a few of the basics of Shifter culture. Pack structure is based on physical strength. It’s the one place where being a bully is not only encouraged, but exalted and necessary. I needed to fight Makya and win, but at the very least I had to fight. Getting my butt kicked would be bad, but being a coward simply wasn’t acceptable.
Makya slowly rose and began to move towards me. Almost instantly, Charlie and Jase were in front of me, snarls in their throats.
“Boys, enough.” At the sound of Toby’s voice, Charlie and Jase went silent and dropped their heads, which allowed me to see the fear in Makya’s eyes. “Get off the steps, you idiots. Let her by.”
It was like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, bodies moved out of the way giving me a path to the front door where Toby stood waiting.
“How are you doing, Scout?” he asked when I was standing in front of him.
How am I doing? Every single bone in my body has been broken multiple times in the past twelve hours. I’ve had muscles rip themselves into shreds and then reform. My skin feels like I laid in the tropical sun for hours upon hours without sunscreen and then poured acid over it. My brother almost killed me a month ago. My boyfriend was murdered by your brother, the only boy I’ve ever loved besides Alex. And now I’m a Shifter. How the Hell do you think I am?!?!
“Fine.”
To Toby’s credit, he obviously didn’t believe me.
“Hungry?”
My stomach answered for me.
“Come on, then. We’ve got plenty to eat.”
Toby moved back and held the screen door
for me. Everyone inside the house, who tended to be in the Toby-to-parent age spectrum, stood perfectly still, except for one tiny old woman.
“There you are.” Gramma Hagan wrapped her pudgy arms around me and squeezed with more strength than I would have believed a woman of her size and age possessed. “Oh sweetie, you’re so thin. I should have brought you more food. I meant to, of course, time just got away from me with Phyllis’s hip-replacement surgery.”
Gramma Hagan is one of those grandmothers everyone wishes they had. She bakes, knits, and holds to the firm belief her grandchildren are the most perfect creatures to have ever lived. I was included in that bundle of perfection, even though she was the mother of Jase’s father and, therefore, no relation to me whatsoever. After I was finally released from the hospital, Gramma Hagan came to our house with what can only be described as a sampler of casseroles. There were seven different pans of food, each enough to feed our family of five for multiple days, and they all operated under the instructions of, “Take out of freezer and place in a 350-degree oven. Bake until bubbly.”
“You brought more than enough food, Gramma.” Gramma Hagan was always on me about being too thin, which was certainly not the case. I’m a very average sized girl, in no way the skin-and-bones look of models or actresses. Even with the weight I lost over the past month, I am still within the normal range. I just didn’t look it at the moment. “I just haven’t felt like eating much.”
She patted my cheek, the highest point she could reach on me. “That’s going to change now. I imagine you’ll be starved after this whole ordeal, aren’t you, sugar?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The smell of food from inside overpowered all my other super-senses. I was half dizzy from it. I had a brief moment of insanity where I thought about pushing Gramma aside so I could get to the kitchen.
She chuckled in that cute way old women do. “Well then, Tobian, I think it’s time you let your Pack eat.”
Toby nodded and the Shifters all stood up and began arranging themselves into some sort of line. The younger guys from the porch were mostly towards the back, although Makya seemed to be somewhere squarely in the middle. Jase stood behind Toby and Charlie behind him.
I stood more than a little awkwardly off to the side.
“If this is some sort of canine instinct thing, I haven’t developed it yet,” I said. “Where am I supposed to be?”
Toby looked down the line at his Pack members, meeting each of their eyes before turning back to me. “Why don’t you go ahead and get your food, Scout?”
There was a smattering of grunts and gasps. I don’t know what their problem was. Yes, I understood there was some sort of Pack social hierarchy at play, but Toby was still mostly human and a product of Gramma Hagan’s raising. I was technically a guest and most assuredly a female, as Toby liked to point out in the most demeaning fashion possible. Toby might be a giant pain most of the time, but he does know how to use his manners. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly like I could eat everything all by myself, although I was half tempted to try. I settled on loading up two plates with heaping helpings of eggs, pancakes, potatoes, bacon, sausage, and donuts. And, God bless Mrs. Matthews, I even had a salad bowl full of Cap’n Crunch.
There was only one place in the Matthews house where I could escape the cold stares of the Hagan men. As an added bonus, it was also where I could find some pants.
I was able to enjoy my breakfast in a sanctuary of complete privacy and near silence. Talley owned a pair of super-expensive headphones which miraculously blocked out all the annoying background noise, which was annoying even if it wasn’t the complete sensory overload it had been.
I was just slurping the last of the sugary milk from my bowl in the most unladylike fashion imaginable when someone invaded my Fortress of Solitude. I’m not sure how I knew he was behind me. I just know one moment everything was fine and dandy, and the next the little hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end as I began to mentally review defensive strategies.
I slid off the headphones and turned to find Layne, Toby’s tween-age son, standing in the doorway of Talley’s bedroom.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he said. “This room is off limits.”
“This room is off limits to boys.” I dabbed at a spot of maple syrup I spilled onto Talley’s bedspread and prayed Mrs. Matthews wouldn’t notice. “I can come in here whenever I want. I even have my own drawer full of clothes and a toothbrush in the bathroom.” It was an arrangement our parents came to when we were seven and started demanding weekly sleepovers. Talley had a drawer of clothes and a toothbrush at my house too.
Layne wasn’t impressed. In fact, he seemed to be a bit angry. “You’re not special, you know. You’re a freak. Something is wrong with you.”
I made a display of smelling the air even though I recognized his scent the moment I stepped into the house. “I hope you thanked him for saving your life.”
“He’s the Pack Leader and my dad. It’s his job.”
“I wasn’t talking about your dad, moron.”
Layne was visibly shaking. “There is something wrong with you. My dad is going to kill you and put you out of your misery, you know.”
I showed my teeth. “I’m going to rip you apart and enjoy watching your blood leave your body.”
The moment the words were out of my mouth I wished I could stuff them back in. Yes, Layne was an annoying brat and someone needed to put him in his place, but it was mean of me to purposefully scare him. He was still a kid, a point driven home by his quivering lip.
“Layne, listen…” But he didn’t want to. He darted down the hall before I could even think of the right words to apologize with.
Crap. Now I was going to have to chase after the little monster.
It quickly became evident the good people at Bose were geniuses and the sound-proofed headphones were worth every single penny. They had managed to completely block out the sound of twenty Shifters and two Seers engaged in a shouting match.
“And I’m telling you, nice little girls don’t just up and turn into Shifters,” Uncle Charles was saying. For once, his face was red from emotion rather than a few dozen too many drinks. “That thing is an abomination. A monster.”
He was calling me a monster? That was rich coming from a man who liked to use his son as a punching bag.
“She’s not a ‘thing’.” Talley’s eyes glowed with a manic rage. It was the first time for me to see her truly angry in nearly eighteen years. “She has a name, or is your memory slipping along with your ability to Shift?”
I saw Uncle Charles’s hand ball into a fist, but was too shocked to do anything. Luckily, Jase wasn’t frozen to the spot. He grabbed the older man’s elbow and jerked him back before he could swing.
“Call my sister names or even think about touching Talley again, and I’ll end your miserable life. Do you understand me?”
“She isn’t your sister, whelp. The sooner you remember that, the better off you’ll be.”
“Enough,” Toby said, taking a single step towards his father and cousin, but that was all it took. Jase went back to leaning on the counter while Uncle Charles retreated to the leather Lazy Boy recliner. “We’re not going to go around accusing anyone of anything until we have proof,” the Pack Leader said, leveling Uncle Charles with his eyes. “And we’re to respect our elder Pack members,” he said to both Jase and Talley.
If I were Toby, Jase would have been strangled over his salute. The arrogant Pack Leader merely nodded as if he was truly a commanding officer and Jase didn’t reek of sarcasm.
“Listen, Toby, it doesn’t matter if she’s a saint or a demon. The fact is, an arctic wolf is going to attract a lot of a attention around here,” one of Jase’s older distant cousins chimed in. “Especially after what your boys pulled last month. Every redneck with a gun thinks it’s open season on coyotes. Add a dangerous non-indigenous wolf to the mix and they’ll be shooting at anything that moves.”
The boy sitting o
n the couch was the one person in the room I should have made every effort to avoid, but I felt myself pulled towards the only one not in the middle of a what-are-we-going-to-do-about-Scout discussion.
“I’m an arctic wolf?”
Charlie nodded, his eyes focused on his brother.
Toby is the kind of guy who demands attention. He has rock-star looks and an attitude to match. Yet, in the presence of his Pack, he became something more. Even I could acknowledge that. He was a leader, although a very exasperated one at the moment. “What am I supposed to do? Force her to leave town? This isn’t some random lone wolf who wandered into our area. And we can’t ignore the fact that some members of this Pack may have had some role in this happening.”
Jase’s head whipped up. “You don’t really think —”
“That’s ridiculous,” Talley’s mother said. “Jase and Charlie had nothing to do with this. You can’t make Shifters. And she’s turning into a wolf, not a coyote.”
“You have to look at the facts, Vera,” Toby said, becoming the first person to ever use Mrs. Matthews’s first name in conversation. “One month she gets ripped in half by a Shifter, and the next full moon she’s sprouting fur and fangs. There has to be a connection.”
“It’s not some sort of infection you can get from a scratch or a little bit of blood, Tobian. You know as well as I do that being a Shifter is part of your DNA.”
Toby raked his hand through his hair. “Well, if anyone has any better theories, I’m willing to listen.”
Fifteen voices started yelling at once, most of them not painting a very kindly picture of me and demanding my immediate removal from Pack territory. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing a person wants to sit around and listen to.
“This is fun,” I muttered under my breath.
“Come on.” Charlie stood up and extended his hand towards me. I followed him off the couch, ignoring the offered assistance. “I’ll take you home.”
No one seemed to notice us as we made our way to the door, Charlie stopping to lift some keys out of Talley’s purse.
Time Mends Page 3
