by Молли Харпер
I made a mental note to pick up some calcium supplements for Pops.
Suddenly, all of the weird occurrences seemed silly by comparison. I felt indulgent and paranoid for trying to find hidden dangers while missing out on the real threat Billie posed to herself.
For the fourth time in an hour, I picked up the phone to call Matthew. As alpha, it fell to me to inform Billie’s kin of her passing. These were the rare times when my job sucked ass. I’d left three voice-mail messages, but by now, I knew the best method was to keep calling until he picked up. This time, in a near-miraculous show of cell-phone mastery, Matt managed to pick up before it went to voice mail. He chattered from the other end of the line about births and matings in his own pack, physically incapable of letting someone else enter the conversation until he had to take a breath.
“Look, Matt, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Billie is gone.” Blunt, yes, but necessary if I wanted to shut him up for a minute. “We’re not sure what happened, but it looks like she fell and hit her head in the kitchen.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, the longest pause I could remember while talking to Matt. He sighed and gave the expected platitudes about long life and Billie being in a better place. We talked about the funeral, made arrangements for a contingent from Matt’s pack to stay in houses around the valley. Matt had clearly been expecting this call for a while, because he seemed to have the end planned out. He loved logistics, which was part of why he was a pretty effective pack leader. Handling the mundane details seemed to help. I could handle busy work.
As the call was winding down, Matt said, “Maggie, I hope you know how much I appreciate you taking care of Billie in her last months. I know it was difficult, but deep down, I’m sure she really appreciated being able to stay in her own home.”
I smiled and felt just a tiny bit of the weight on my chest wiggle loose. “Oh, I can’t take all the credit. Clay and Alicia did most of the work.”
Another long pause from Matt. Two in one phone call, which was unprecedented. “Who?”
“Clay and Alicia,” I repeated. “Renard. Your cousins? Billie’s nephew and niece?”
“Mags, I have fifty-six first cousins alone, and none of them is named Clay or Alicia. And Billie was an only child. Where did these people say they were from?”
The office door opened, and Clay stepped inside, an amiable grin stretched across his face. All of the blood in my veins seemed to flutter and freeze.
The phone was hanging heavily against the side of my face. I took in a breath, jittery from shock and rage and the knowledge that I had actually kissed this guy. I’d given him the benefit of the doubt when Nick suggested that he could have been the one on the cliff, when I considered the damage to my brakes and his mechanical know-how. I believed he wasn’t capable of it because of the way he took care of Billie.
I steadied my voice and tried to loosen up enough to smile back at the son of a bitch. “OK, that’s great news. I’ll talk to you later.”
Matt noted the suspicious lift in my tone. “Maggie, are you OK?” he demanded.
“Sure, I’ll tell Mom you called. Dinner on Thursday,” I said. “ ’Bye, Coop.”
“Maggie—” Matt’s voice was cut off with a click as I dropped the receiver onto the cradle.
Clay gave me a subdued little half-smile. “Dinner on Thursday? Is it wrong to hope for a doggie bag? Because Mo can make a mean . . . well, pretty much anything.”
I looked up at him. The relaxed expression on his face was what killed me. He’d been lying to us for months, and it didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. He’d lived with my aunt, in her house, living off the pack’s goodwill, for months and seemed to have every intention of continuing. And he wasn’t even nervous.
I sprang over the desk. Clay’s eyes widened briefly before I gripped his collar and slammed him into the wall. But as I snapped and growled, he just looked amused.
“I knew we should have left when Billie died.” He sighed, shoving back at me but not moving me. He didn’t seem perturbed by this, as if I wasn’t this close to ripping his throat out. “Alicia said it would look suspicious if we just ran off now. I think maybe she got too used to living in one place. And she liked the old lady. She wanted to stick around for the service. My sister’s a sentimental girl, never could cure her of it.”
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
“Oh, Maggie,” Clay said, tilting his head and grinning nastily. “I know we’re not dating anymore, but I hoped we could still be friends.” I sneered at him and swiped my fingernails down his cheek. He didn’t even register the welts of blood I left on his face. “No? Well, that’s a shame.”
He shoved me again, sending me flying over my desk this time, tumbling into the far wall. He’d phased and lunged for me. I shot up to my feet and ran at him again, phasing on the fly. Our wolfen bodies collided, and his teeth scraped my throat. I turned, yanking my exposed fur out of his mouth, and landed on two human feet. He phased to human again, and I head-butted him, the thickest part of my forehead cracking his nose. He grinned. And punched me right in the mouth.
“You know, I was sort of hoping we could avoid all this cloak-and-dagger shit. You’re a pretty girl, and you can be downright tolerable sometimes. I thought maybe you and I could get married, you could make me the alpha male, and I could bring my family in, no questions asked. But you’re just so damned stubborn, aren’t you, Maggie? You have to do things the hard way.”
Papers and books scattered around the room as we pounded on each other in wolf and human forms. But despite several opportunities, he didn’t strike any serious blows. He just kept slapping me around and phasing, wolf to man and back again, and honor sort of dictated that I phase, too, to keep us on the same footing. The exhaustion of the constant shifting combined with being smacked around was draining and demoralizing.
“You still haven’t figured it out, have you?” He sneered, standing over me. “Well, that’s disappointing. You know, you’re not a very smart girl.”
I picked up my desk chair and threw it at him, catching his shoulders and knocking him to the ground. I lunged, kicking him in the ribs and knocking him onto his back. “Who are you?”
“I’m a little hurt that you didn’t notice the resemblance,” he spat, dribbling blood onto the tile floor of the office. “Everybody in my pack told me I looked just like my dad. Of course, you and your brother killed those people.”
I stared down at him, analyzing the sandy hair, the light brown eyes. When I’d seen that mouth, it had been twisted into a feral snarl. The eyes had been sharp and too bright, burning with hate and desperation. I felt my arms drop to my sides, the shock leeching all of the energy out of my limbs.
I was a dumb-ass.
“You’re Jonas’s son?”
“His one and only heir,” Clay said, pushing to his feet. “Your time here is over. I’ve seen enough to know that you’re not strong enough to hold on to the valley. It’s time for a new pack, a stronger pack, to take over. You have three days to clear your ragged excuse for a family out of our new home. Otherwise, people will start getting hurt.”
“People are already getting hurt.” I grunted.
He smiled, his teeth tinged an awful red. “No, this is minor damage. I mean, really, truly hurt. Throats ripped out. Paws missing. How’d you like to walk out of your cozy little house to find your mother, your grandfather, one of those little brats, dead and cold on your doorstep?”
“Why are you trying to provoke me?” I demanded, shoving at his shoulders. “You are not this guy.”
“You don’t know what I am!” he shouted, shoving me back.
“Look, I can’t change what happened—” When he looked vaguely bored, I slammed his head against the wall. He snarled, and I grabbed his chin, forcing him to look me in the eye. “Listen to me. I am sorry for what was done to your pack, but you will not threaten my fucking family and make it sound like a Sunday picnic, do you hear
?”
He leered at me and threw one last upper cut to my chin. I stumbled over the wreckage of my office furniture and nearly landed on my ass. Fine, I landed on my ass, but after that whooping, I needed a rest.
“Three days, Maggie. And then I bring the rest of my pack home, whether you’re here or not. It’s Old Home Week, and we plan on throwing a hell of a party.”
Clay disappeared, so quickly I didn’t even have time to reply, and Samson came running. I assumed that Matt had managed to call him as soon as I hung up on him. It was nice to know Matt could operate his phone when he was in a jam . . . or that someone else had dialed for him.
“Where is he? What hurts?” Samson demanded. “Do we need Doc Moder?”
“Clay’s gone.” I sighed, sitting up slowly. “I don’t want anyone chasing after him. Who knows how many he’s got in his ‘pack’?” My ears rang as Samson helped me into a sitting position. He kept checking me over for wounds until I had to slap his hands away. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” I moaned, clutching my head in my hands. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a new skull. Look, I don’t want to explain this more than once, so could you round everybody up and bring them to Mom’s? I’ll meet you there.”
“Sure,” he said, gently pulling me to my feet. “Are you sure you’re OK to walk?”
I nodded, and he sprinted for the door. “Hey, Samson?” He stopped and poked his head back through the doorway. “You’re an awesome second. I don’t care what anybody says.”
He winked at me. “Try not to get your ass kicked on the walk home.”
He ducked out the door before he could see the rude gesture I was making.
CHAPTER 15
Homecoming
I CHOSE TO LIMP HOME quietly, using buildings and vehicles as cover. Not to protect my dignity but to keep the pack from suffering another blow. OK, it was to protect my dignity.
How could this have happened? How could I have been so blind? They knew so much about Billie, about our pack. I kept calling Matt to check them out, but he never returned my calls, and after a certain amount of time, when Alicia and Clay hadn’t killed us all in our sleep, I just sort of took for granted that they were legit. And sure, maybe I trusted them a little more because they had the boys with them, and I like to think that a mother to two toddlers couldn’t be completely evil. I was new to being alpha. I was kind of overwhelmed. I appreciated all the help I could get.
Ugh, that was a bunch of rationalization crap. I’d dropped my guard, and now I was paying for it.
Billie had tried to tell me that she didn’t know them, that I’d let strangers into her house. But I’d chalked it up to her illness. Had she had moments of lucidity? Had she woken up in her own home, frightened, surrounded by strangers? I didn’t think I’d ever forgive myself for that.
Mom found me lying on the couch in one of Nick’s old Star Wars sweatshirts with a steak pressed to my face. She hadn’t seen me this bloody for a couple of years, so it sent her into a bit of a panic. I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds, and the next thing I knew, Nick was there, looking stricken and pushing my hair away from my battered, healing face.
“Maggie, baby, you’re scaring me. Please, wake up, talk to me,” he begged. His shirt was smeared with my blood, as if he’d gathered me to his chest while I was out. “Just let me know you’re OK.”
I nodded, wincing when the action made my head spin. I closed my eyes again and awoke to more people, simultaneously trying to hug me and demand answers from me. Who hurt me? Where were they now? And on and on and on until“Quiet!” I bellowed, just so they would shut up enough to let me sit up and get a word in. My ears rang with the volume of my own voice, and I had to close my eyes to keep from throwing up. Nick pulled me up, gingerly pressing my back against his side. I winced, knowing that even with werewolf healing abilities, I was going to be bruised all to hell. Mo brought me a mug of Mom’s special herbal tea, which I accepted with no intention of actually drinking it.
“Clay did this,” I said, using the towel Mom handed me to dab at my healing lip. “He’s long gone by now. And so, I would imagine, are Alicia and the boys.”
“Why in the hell would Clay do this?” Cooper demanded.
“I’m still confused about that myself. I thought he was OK with you mating with Nick,” Samson said, his lips pressed into a tight little grimace.
“I’d say my not dating him probably ranks lower on my list of offenses than, say, Cooper and I killing his whole damned family. Clay is Jonas’s son, all grown up.”
Cooper sat down heavily on the couch, looking stunned.
“Wait, so that means Alicia . . .” I heard Samson curse and throw a chair across the room, apparently just now realizing that the girl he considered a possible mate was also a possible homicidal maniac. I made a mental note to feel bad for him as soon as my brain unscrambled.
“All this time, I knew there was something familiar about him, something that made me uneasy,” Cooper said, his face paper-white. “I just thought it was the typical big-brother reaction to your first boyfriend. I can’t believe I let that psycho get so close and not even recognize him for what he was.”
“Well, he’s a well-informed psycho,” I muttered. “I don’t know how he got his background information on the pack, but he knew just enough about us to make his story plausible. I’m assuming that he’s behind the truck brakes and my office and shooting Samson. Because when I think back on those days, I don’t ever remember seeing Clay near the valley, which seems odd.”
Cooper wondered, “If he was going to try to stage a coup, why would he wait such a long time? None of this makes any sense.”
“Because all coups follow a rigid code of conduct.” I snorted, groaning when that made my skin, lip, and nose burn. “I think at first, Clay just wanted to gather information on us. And then, after sticking around for a while, I don’t know, maybe they started to like us. Alicia became fond of Billie, and Clay said he hoped that I’d choose him as a mate, and we could skip the whole dramatic-takeover thing. And when it became clear that I was becoming interested in Nick, I think Clay started playing all those tricks to make me think I needed someone like him around, someone like me. Instead, I just leaned on Nick. Now that they’ve been discovered, they have no choice but to go on the offensive.” I pressed the compress to my face and moaned. “I should have seen this. I feel so stupid.”
Cooper shrugged but didn’t disagree.
Nick glared at him. “Like you handled your first attempted coup any better.”
“I handled it OK,” Cooper mumbled defensively. “It was the aftermath that sucked.”
“Territorial disputes are not all that uncommon in the animal kingdom,” Nick told me, in that “hot for teacher” tone I knew was supposed to make me feel better. “All life is basically a competition for resources. A cuckoo instinctually knows to lay eggs in other birds’ nests, so their eggs can hatch faster than the host birds’. The cuckoo chick grows faster. In most cases, the chick evicts the eggs of the host species, and the baby cuckoos suck up all the food and nurturing. Cicada-killer wasps sting and paralyze insects twice their size and weight, drag them back to their dens, and lay their eggs in the cicadas’ heads so the newborn wasps can eat them.”
“So, this is Alicia and Clay’s version of paralyzing me and laying eggs in my head?” I asked, dumbfounded. Nick rolled his eyes at me. “I’m not good with metaphors!”
“OK, let me get this straight,” Mo said, holding up her hands. “Alicia and Clay are Jonas’s kids.” She continued, “Clay’s the alpha of whatever half-grown pack was left behind when Cooper killed all of the adults. Sorry, babe, but it’s the truth. And Alicia is his slightly-scary-in-a-quiet-way second in command?” Mo shuddered. “It’s like they’re the bizarro version of Cooper and Maggie.”
When we glared at her, she rolled her eyes and huffed. “I said ‘bizarro.’ It means the opposite. It’s not an insult!”
“I got your back,” Nick assured her, giving her
the nerd fist-bump. Mo preened. Cooper and I shared a commiserating “we chose them, we did this to ourselves” look.
“So, they’ve been waiting all this time, for what, to do what their parents couldn’t? To move into the valley, like it was some sort of Promised Land? Were they just gathering information this whole time?” Mo asked. “How could they do that? I mean, if they hated you that much, how could they live with you for almost a year? How could they stand it?”
“If you’ve got enough patience, enough will, you can stand just about anything,” Mom suggested thoughtfully.
“Is it wrong that I feel a little sorry for them?” Mo asked, cringing. “I mean, yes, their tactics are obviously questionable, but to be fair—”
“We killed everyone they loved,” I said, nodding. “Even if they started it, we finished it in a really bloody way. And I get it. If somebody killed members of my family, nothing would stop me from ripping them apart. I’m not going to say I feel sorry for them, given what they’ve done. But I get it.”
“What now?” Samson asked.
“Clay said he’s bringing his pack here in three days to ‘evict’ us. We either stand and fight, or everybody moves to Cousin Lee’s packlands, which I really don’t consider an option.”
“I vote ‘stand and fight,” Samson declared.
“There’s a shocker,” Mo muttered.
“This isn’t a democracy, Samson,” I reminded him. “But you’re right. It’s the only way.”
“No, Maggie, you can stop this,” Nick told me. “Break the cycle. Try to talk to them, figure out a peaceable solution. Otherwise, in ten years, Paul and Ronnie are going to come looking for Eva and our kids.”
“So, I’m supposed to what? Go to a mediator? Family therapy? Wolves don’t do that. We don’t talk things through. We don’t share our feelings.”
