I supposed I’d have to walk over and visit her in person tomorrow. Meanwhile, all I had to go on was what Britney and the other social workers cobbled together for me. The boy’s name was Alejandro “Jandro” Hernandez…mother dead from meth overdose. Deaf. Probably why I had been assigned the case—I spoke fluent ASL, along with Welsh, Gaelic, Cantonese, and Mongolian (our family PR team thought it would be cute for me to major in Endangered Languages).
And I knew Qim was aggressively pro-ASL, going so far as to donate millions toward keeping the language alive during an increasingly bioware age. But it’s not like young, deaf billionaires looking to adopt nine-year-old orphans were a dime a dozen.
Another mystery, but this time it feels like I’m getting closer. At the end of the work day, I lean back in my chair with all the puzzle pieces I’ve gathered swirling around my head. Then I pick up my new phone and dial Grace’s bioware.
“Hey cuz, you headed home?” she asks after accepting my call straight into her neural network.
“Yes,” I answer. “But before I leave, I want to ask a favor of you. I need you to look into someone for me without alerting your father…”
“Of course,” she answers. “Who?”
“Qim Wulfkonig.”
“The deaf billio—?”
“Yes, him,” I answer, cutting her off in my haste.
“Are you going to sue him because the Device crapped out on you?”
I let out a wry chuckle, seeing why she’d think that, since the Device is just one of several revolutionary medical patents owned by the Wulfkonigs. But…“No, actually, I’d like to find out if he has any properties or business holdings in Kansas.”
I receive a text from Grace just before Jared and Santiago pull into the underground garage beneath our apartment building. And triumphant fireworks go off in my head when I see the Kansas address on the screen with a note from Grace: “Address only a few miles from where you were found in the Kukunniwi Woods.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kukunniwi Woods
Proving he had a hell of a lot more reserve than his mate, Knud’s father, Rafe Sr waited until Jandro, Tu, Grady, Qim, and L-heart went into the Founder’s Cabin before joining the group.
“Hello, Knud,” Rafe Sr. said, studying him with a disappointed look Knud remembered well from his teenage years.
And hey, wouldn’t you know it, it still made him feel guilty as hell! Knud had to put effort into not shifting from foot to foot like a shame-faced teenager who’d just been brought home by the police after managing to get into yet another bar fight at his parents’ swanky ski resort.
“Hey, Dad,” Knud answered, reminding himself he’d done nothing wrong. Had, in fact, done what was best for all of them.
Another disappointed flicker, but eventually his father offered him a stiff hand. Knud took it, and they shook solemnly. The total opposite of how his mom had handled things.
But his older triplet, Rafes, wasn’t nearly as reserved. “Is that seriously all you’re going to say, Dad? ‘Hello?’ We haven’t heard from him in the last five years…and you act like it’s no big deal when we finally see him again?”
Before either of their parents could respond, Rafes rounded on Knud. “You have some nerve coming back here without telling your family—you know, the people who raised you and put up with your bullshit for years?—that you were meeting with Uncle Grady and Qim,” he said in the angry, judgmental tone Knud remembered better than well. “What the hell were you thinking swearing Uncle Grady and Qim to secrecy AND bringing a human here on a full moon nigh—!?”
“Are you going to marry her?” Alisha demanded, neatly cutting her indignant oldest son off just as he was getting started. “Because I really, really need you to marry her.”
“Mom, are you kidding me with this?!” Rafes asked, turning on her with an incredulous look. “You were just crying inconsolably a few minutes ago!”
“If you marry that woman I will forgive everything, no questions asked,” Alisha continued as if Rafes hadn’t said a word. “The last five years, all the fighting, the underage drinking, those girls you insisted on sneaking into our home…everything.”
“I’m pretty sure she means that,” Rafe Sr. said to Knud with a knowing half-grin. “Might be your only way back in, son.”
“I can’t believe this—” Rafes cut himself off with a curse. And Knud smirked because unlike their father, his brother Rafesson still hadn’t acclimated to the fact that the Ataneq sisters were, as Aunt Tu put it, “straight representing for Alaska cray.”
“He can’t marry her, Mom,” Rafes said, visibly forcing himself to keep his voice level. “She’s a human. A very famous human.”
“Okay, can someone please tell me why she’s so famous?” Knud asked, feeling pretty sure this was important information he needed to have for this conversation.
Alisha blinked at him, then shook her head. “He’s kidding,” she assured her husband and oldest son, both of whom were staring at Knud like he might be the stupidest man in the world. “He has to be kidding.”
“He’s not, Mom,” Rafes bit out. “Remember, we all saw his report cards growing up.”
“Oh, not all intellect is accurately measured by grades and tests and report cards. Plus, who knows what he might have achieved if he’d bothered to put in some real effort,” Alisha insisted, defending Knud like she always did and always had to his older triplet.
“Come on, Mom. This is Knud we’re talking about here. He’s obviously only interested in what’s between that human’s legs.”
“Hey, man! Don’t try to act like you know me,” Knud countered. Yeah, Rafes might have had a valid point a few months earlier. But not now…and not when it came to L-heart. He really cared about this particular human. To the point that his wolf had been spinning since she walked out his door last Friday. “You don’t know me now.”
“You’re right, Knud. We don’t know what kind of changes you’ve undergone in the last five years,” Alisha agreed, before glaring at Rafes. “People change—as I discovered when my oldest son made it his life’s mission to block wolves from using the time gates. Never mind that he spent the first four years of his life—his formative years—in Viking Era Norway. And it’s because of his time with the Vikings that he began to develop resilience and the leadership skills necessary to become the President of the North American wolves. Imagine what he would have missed out on if I’d never had access to the time gates in the first place!”
“Not this again,” Rafes raised his eyes to the sky. “I’m using the black boxes to lock down the time gates for the good of our race! And you act as if our time with the Vikings was some sort of extended four-year vacation when what really happened is you abused the time gate system with devastating repercussions—”
Rafes suddenly stopped, probably because he knew from experience how conversations with academics rapidly wormholed into other topics if you didn’t stay vigilant. Knud himself could recall several times when what should have been a short conversation—like what to buy Dad for his birthday—turned into him listening to a long-winded diatribe about “the relatively new religion” of consumerism.
Rafes reset and said, “People don’t change that much, Mom.”
“Given your relatively young age, I respectfully disagree. And in any case, your brother and the human woman are most definitely dating! I can smell her scent all over him.”
Rafes sighed in obvious frustration. “Pardon my language—which by the way, I learned from you—but fucking a human and dating a human aren’t nearly the same thing.”
A beat of silence passed. Then Alisha turned pleading eyes to Knud and said, “Your brother is right. Look sweetie, I know you value your sexual freedom but you have got to marry this one. Please, do it for me! We’ll call it a ‘five-years worth of missed Mother’s Days’ make-up gift.”
“Mom! He doesn’t even know who she is,” Rafes pointed out, sounding more like the parent in this conversati
on than his mother. “And what part of ‘she’s human’ are you not understanding?”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Alisha said. “Nago has a child on the way with his Mississippi Queen, and now you’ve got Myrna.”
“Wait, wait…time out,” Knud glanced from Rafes to his mom with his own incredulous look. “Nago already sealed the deal with that Mississippi she-wolf? And Myrna, Hot Valkyrie Babysitter, is your fated mate? Like she came through a time gate, the very things you are trying to shut down, for you?”
“Don’t call her that,” Rafes bit out. As their mother eagerly jumped in with, “Knud! You should have been there. I was protesting the black box installation at the North Dakota gate when there was a flash and out popped Myrna! It was glorious! And it obviously means an end to Rafes’ black box project.”
Knud could tell his brother was on the verge of completely losing his shit, as Rafes answered, “It obviously means nothing of the sort, Mom. And Myrna is beside the point!”
“Is she?” Knud asked his older triplet. “Because unless I’m getting this wrong, you just got a hot Viking princess delivered to you through the very time gate system you’ve been trying to shut down for years, but here you are throwing shade on my relationship.”
“What relationship?!?!” Rafes yelled back. “You don’t even know her name!”
“Boys…!” their father said as if they were still teenagers as opposed to a pediatric surgeon and the President of the North American wolves.
“No, Dad. Mom’s trying to act like Knud’s changed…but look at him! He hasn’t learned anything. He’s still a total fuck-up. How can you not see that?”
“A total fuck-up,” Knud repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “You didn’t seem to think I was a fuck up when I was running the black ops that earned you your presidency.”
“You’re right,” Rafes spat back, his face little more than a snarl. “You were useful to me for about five whole seconds and then you went and fucked that up, too!”
Knud could have calmly explained that by leaving black ops he’d actually unfucked his life. Made something of himself. That despite the bad grades he’d earned in school, he’d managed to become a doctor. A surgeon, in fact. As opposed to his brother’s personal attack dog.
He could have said all of that.
But he didn’t.
Because the anger showed up, red, all-consuming, vicious and dumb. And before reason even had a chance to open its mouth, Knud shot out a hand and grabbed his brother by the throat.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What are you doing? Shimmer? Shimmer! What are you doing?”
Jared sounds alarmed, even more so than when we walked down the rather ominous gravel path with NO TRESPASSING signs tacked to every other tree. If I were to warrant a guess, I’d say he’s less than comfortable with the fact that I’m currently picking the lock on the front door of Qim’s Wulfkonig’s home in the Kukunniwi Woods.
His home, as it turns out despite the plaque on the door declaring it the “Founder’s Cabin,” is more a ski chalet-level mansion with several summer camp-style cabins in back. Definitely not the little country cottage I’d been imagining when Grace found the address but no pictures or Google Earth-images of Wulfkonig’s Kansas property.
At least the lock on the door is decidedly old fashioned and therefore easy to pick. Which means one thing is going my way…
Five minutes after asking Santiago for one of the bobby pins from his samurai knot, I’m inside—with a silent thank you to my cousin Pavel for teaching me the art of lock picking at his place in Indiana that one summer.
I find exactly what I expect after breaking into a luxury cabin: a massive front room that extends all the way to the rear of the house, and large windows framing a stunning view of a small mountain beyond. There’s wood everywhere. The floors, the walls, the ceilings, and much of the furniture. But the wood is from a variety of trees—pine, oak, cherry, birch—and the different shades along with the bold leather furniture and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace keep the place from feeling like the inside of a giant wooden box.
Santiago immediately fans out to search the rest of the house while Jared stands guard beside me in the middle of the room.
He gives the room a long look and whistles. “Nice place. Wonder what type of wood this is?”
“Mostly pine, and a few others,” I answer automatically.
“How can you tell?” he asks, throwing me a curious frown. No doubt I’m one of the last persons he’d expect to be able to identify wood on sight. And now that I think of it, he’s right. Nevertheless…
“You can’t smell it?”
He frowns, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Nope. Just smells like a closed-up cabin to me.”
My nose isn’t having nearly the same vague experience. I can smell everything. In fact, my nose easily picks out a huge number of scents as if they’ve been neatly arranged. Leather, pinewood, stone, dust, and something dog-like—but not quite. This scent is sharper—rich and woodsy—and not nearly as offensive as that of wet dog. In fact, it smells…
I inhale again. Right. It smells right.
Kindred, the strange new voice whispers inside of me.
The scent is also stale. Which means the cabin is empty. I know this even before Santiago returns to give the all-clear. And I get the sense I’ve arrived too late for…something. But I don’t know what that something is.
“This place kicking up your allergies, too?” Jared asks me with a sympathetic look.
That’s when I realize how all my sniffing must sound to the others. “Yes,” I answer even though I know that’s not the problem. “Forgive me for not simply making use of a tissue.” It’s easier to blame non-existent allergies than to admit I’m investigating the place with my nose. I can only imagine how fast the two men would bundle me into the car for a one-way trip straight back to Texas if I start telling them about my new and improved sense of smell.
“So…can I ask why we came here?” Jared asks with another curious frown. He’s obviously fishing for answers to the follow-up questions Dad will surely ask him when we get back.
And that reminds me of the constant supervision I’m under. Which makes me grind my teeth behind the gentle perma-smile I was trained to keep on my face at all times as the new voice whispers, Cage…cage…inside of me.
It’s not Jared’s fault he’s been hired to keep an eye on me like I’m a wayward child, I remind the voice. And instead of showing my annoyance I say, “We’re near the Oklahoma state border, right?”
Jared’s eyes go up in a way that lets me know he’s consulting his bioware. “Yes, that’s right. Just above the panhandle. Why?”
With one last glance around the empty room I say, “Let’s get some barbecue for lunch.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kukunniwi Woods
So this was how Cain must have felt.
Because inside the red haze, Knud wasn’t the prodigal son. Not the bad guy turned good that his mother wanted him to be. There would be no Saul-to-Paul happy ending conversion here.
Just the red anger. Just him crushing his brother’s windpipe until he finally stopped talking.
The wolf pawed at Knud. Trying to get him to shift, to come back to reason.
But civilian nearby. First rule of Wolf Force…don’t shift. Don’t shift.
Civilian nearby. Don’t shift. Civilian…civilian…L-heart….L-heart was nearby.
The red wavered.
And an image floated into his mind: L-heart with her fists raised, fully prepared to fight him to the bitter end, but still calling out to him, hoping to get through.
And suddenly the world was back.
His father held on to his arm, while his mom bent over to see to Rafes. Who was now in a besuited heap on the ground.
It didn’t take long for Knud to put two and two together. His father had both hands around his arm, because he’d been trying to pull him off the brother he’d had in a l
iteral death grip. But then restraining Knud no longer became necessary because Knud abruptly dropped Rafes. As if he’d taught his brother a lesson and didn’t need to pursue things any further.
“Are you all right?” their mother asked Rafes who was still on the ground.
“I’m fine,” Rafes insisted, knocking away her hands and slowly pushing himself to a stand.
He rolled his neck, as if to expel the memory of Knud’s crushing hand around it. Then he said to Knud, “You. Need. To. Leave. Now.”
“Rafes…” Alisha started.
“Stop talking,” Rafes said to their mother. “Everyone stop talking.”
But Knud shook his head. “No, Mom, he’s right. I need to leave. This is why I stayed away. This is why I can’t…be with her like that. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt her. But she’s fragile and I…I destroy everything I touch. And Rafes, man, I’m…”
He looked straight at Rafes, opening his mouth to apologize to his brother for the first time in quite possibly ever. But instead of letting him speak, Rafes shook his head and said, “No, don’t say another word. Just stop talking. Right now.”
And that’s when he smelled her.
“You think I’m fragile?”
Knud turned and found L-heart standing behind him, the smile she’d been wearing all morning for Jandro’s sake, completely gone. “You pushed me away because you think I’m fragile?”
“L-heart…” he started.
“Are you aware I came out here to pull you off your brother?” she asked. “I can think of at least five different ways to neutralize you, and that’s just off the top of my head without consulting my training tapes. You cannot physically hurt me.”
But she didn’t get it. “I can hurt you. What happened last Friday…”
“What happened last Friday hurt me because you pushed me away. Because you refused to talk with me, be honest with me, or treat me like I was more than some one-night-stand you let stick around too long…”
The Brothers Nightwolf Complete Trilogy: A Sci-Fi Shifter Paranormal Romance Box Set Page 30
