by Lisa Edmonds
I opened my mouth to object, but Sean spoke first. “On that we agree,” he said. “Regardless of how you or I feel about it, the choice was Alice’s to make. Her choice seems clear, doesn’t it, Vaughan?” In other words: Alice chose me.
Something dark flashed in Charles’s eyes. His anger began to give way to the cool calculation I was used to seeing. I suspected he was about to go on the attack, and I was right.
“Did Alice tell you how she came to be in possession of the second cuff?” he purred.
I almost smiled. Charles had advised me not to tell Sean that I’d obtained the cuff from him. Even then I’d thought that he intended to use it against me at his first opportunity. I’d never considered holding that information back. As angry as Sean had been at the news that I’d traded a bite for the cuff, it would have been far worse if he’d learned of our arrangement from Charles instead.
“Of course she told me,” Sean snapped. “First you bite her while she’s in a coma and defenseless, and now you coerce her and try to pass it off as just another business transaction. Even for you, this was a new low.”
The corners of Charles’s mouth turned up and his eyes glowed silver. “But did she tell you how much she enjoyed my bite? The scent of her arousal still lingers on my bed.”
In the front room, Jack and Delia looked at me with contempt. Neither Ben nor Karen reacted visibly; either they assumed Charles was lying or they were taking their cue from Sean, who just shook his head. “It means nothing,” he said. “It was an involuntary physiological response. Don’t delude yourself into thinking it was anything more than that.”
“Perhaps it is you who is deluded.” Charles studied Sean. “She saved your life because she owes you her own. She chose to risk death rather than wear the cuff and bind herself to you.”
“You know nothing of Alice if you think that was her motivation,” Sean said coldly.
I’d had enough of them talking about me as if I wasn’t standing right there, and I wanted Charles gone before I lost my tight control over my anger and found myself tempted to fry him where he stood. “Now you know I’m not dead, and you’re trespassing on private property. You need to leave before this becomes an incident and the Court gets involved in a dispute with the Were Ruling Council.”
“As you wish.” Charles gave us a slight bow and backed toward the front doorway. “I can see that you all have much to discuss. I will compensate you for the damages to your home, Mr. Hastings, and please accept my apology for my intrusion. Good night.”
Bryan watched the werewolves as Charles departed, one hand near his gun. He glanced at me, his face unreadable, then followed his employer down the front steps and out of my line of sight.
Jack went to the door as Charles and Bryan got into their SUV. Tires crunched on gravel as they backed down the driveway.
When the sound of the engine faded, Jack turned around to find Sean advancing on him, radiating alpha power and fury. The force of it scoured my flesh. Wincing, I rubbed my arms and leaned against the kitchen island.
Before Jack had a chance to react, Sean had him by the throat. “Before I shifted, I gave you an order to protect Alice.” He slammed the larger man against the wall hard enough to shake the house as Delia looked on in shock. “You stranded her at the storage unit without any weapons or even a vehicle. As your boss and your alpha, I gave you a clear directive and you deliberately refused to obey it. The Court will sue Maclin Security for breach of contract because we were hired to provide security and we left an asset vulnerable to assassination. But more to the point, I trusted you to carry out my orders and you betrayed me.”
“You ordered me to lead the pack and that’s what I did,” Jack growled.
“And your plan to find the second cuff and give it to Lily Anderson?” Sean demanded. “Was that your way of leading the pack? To bind me for life to a woman you know I don’t love and never will, without any regard whatsoever for what I wanted?”
“Better that than let you be bound to her.” Jack jerked his head in my direction. “She’s not pack and she never will be. She’s a human and a vampire’s whore.”
The last word hadn’t even left his mouth before Sean picked Jack up and threw him out the front door.
I felt a strange pull and the others staggered slightly. By the time I realized he’d drawn power from the pack to shift faster, Sean—already in wolf form—was out the front door with Ben, Delia, and Karen right behind him.
I was still shaky and Sean had used some of my energy to shift, so I lurched through the kitchen and front room using walls, furniture, and then finally the doorframe to steady myself.
By the time I made it to the front porch, the fight was already underway in the yard. Jack’s wolf was larger than Sean’s and tawny brown with darker coloring on his ears, face, and tail. The fight was vicious; both wolves were already bloodied before I got to the door.
I worried that his ordeal in the cage had weakened Sean more than he’d let on, and the fast shift couldn’t have helped even if he’d drawn on the pack bonds. As we watched from the porch, Jack ripped at Sean’s leg with his teeth. Sean snarled and came up limping, his leg bloody and torn.
Delia turned on me as the wolves growled and circled each other. “You’re the cause of all this, Alice. We were fine before you got your hooks in Sean. Get out.”
“What exactly is your problem with me, Delia?” I asked. “Is it that I’m human, or that you can’t push me around like you do the others?”
Delia’s eyes went bright yellow. Karen took a step back, but Ben stared Delia down. “You know damn well Sean and Jack had their problems long before Alice even met Sean. And it doesn’t matter one bit what Jack thinks about Alice; his orders were to protect her and he didn’t.”
“Sean told Jack to lead the pack,” Delia argued, echoing her husband’s earlier argument. “The pack comes first.”
“Sean told Jack to protect Alice and Jack said he would,” Karen said, her voice gaining some strength despite the more dominant woman’s glower. “If we can’t trust Jack to keep his word, he’s not the beta this pack needs. In fact, maybe he’s not a wolf this pack needs.”
Furious, Delia started to go after Karen, but Ben caught Delia’s wrist. “Stop,” he warned her. “If you have a problem with a member of the pack, you talk to Sean.”
Delia pulled away and crossed her arms. “Fine.”
We turned back to the fight in time to see Sean’s wolf leap at Jack and take him down. Jack might be bigger, but Sean was the alpha and despite the injured leg and smaller size, he was stronger and his fury gave him the advantage.
Delia made a fearful sound when Sean’s teeth closed on Jack’s throat, but Sean didn’t intend to kill Jack. The brown wolf let out a short whine, signaling surrender. Sean shook him none too gently, then let go and backed away. Jack rolled onto his side to show Sean his belly, and then crouched with his tail tucked in a submissive posture. Beside me, Delia took a few steps back and bowed her head, echoing her husband’s pose.
The wolves shifted back to human, their wounds healing in a pulse of golden shifter magic. Sean watched as Jack got to his feet. Both men were breathing heavily and sweating, but Jack seemed the worse for wear.
When Jack was standing, Sean approached him. “You are never to speak to or about Alice that way again,” he said coldly. “When I give you an order, I expect to be obeyed. You’ve never disobeyed me before and I need to know you never will again if I’m even going to consider giving you a second chance.”
“You have my word,” Jack said.
Jack had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face or read his body language except the deliberate hunch of his shoulders and the way he seemed to shrink in size in the face of Sean’s anger. He certainly appeared and sounded submissive and contrite, but appearances could be deceiving.
Sean studied his beta. Finally, he said, “You’re suspended without pay from Maclin Security for two weeks. What happens after that may depend on
the legal action the Court takes. As far as your role with the pack goes, this is my last warning. If we have to have this discussion again, there will be a different and more permanent solution. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly clear.”
“Good.” Sean glanced up. “Everyone, please go inside. I’ll join you in a few minutes.” He looked at me. “Alice, a word?”
“Sure.” I leaned against the wall as the others filed past. Ben and Karen gave me small smiles. Delia and Jack ignored me altogether.
When they were inside the house, Sean opened the back of the Maclin Security SUV parked off to the side of the driveway. He found his duffel bag and pulled on a pair of jeans and a company polo shirt.
I made it down the front steps and joined him just as he closed the back of the SUV. I put my hand on his back.
When he turned, his eyes were hard, his face expressionless. He’d never looked at me like that. “Alice, don’t.” He stepped away.
Stung, I dropped my hand to my side. “Charles was just trying to get a rise out of you by bringing up the bite. He made it sound like I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t like that at all.”
“This isn’t about him biting you.” He walked around to the other side of the SUV, putting the vehicle between us and the house to keep our conversation private. “I’m disgusted at him for that, not at you.”
“Then why—?”
“Because I asked you not to use yourself as bait for Kent Stevens, and the first thing you did as soon as I was out of the picture was do exactly that.” He was furious with me, his words clipped and angry. “You very nearly died. You had two bullet wounds. The Vampire Court manipulated you into risking your life. They kept Vaughan safe while you walked around with a target on your back. They knew you’d eventually volunteer to draw him out because that’s the sort of person you are.”
“The plan to catch him was my idea,” I argued.
“Stop defending them,” he said harshly. “Damn it, Alice, can’t you see when you’re being used by those bloodsuckers? They don’t care if you live or die. You’re nothing but an asset to them, except for Vaughan, who still thinks he has a shot with you if he’s just patient enough. Even then you’re just a meal and a prize to him, something he wants to add to his collection.”
“He doesn’t have a shot with me and never will. He can plot and scheme all he wants; it won’t get him anywhere.”
“This isn’t about you and Vaughan. It’s about you keeping ledgers.”
I blinked. “You lost me.”
He paced, too angry to stand still. “You said you had to get Stevens out of the way so you could focus on helping me, but I think you did it for the same basic reason you sacrificed yourself to destroy the Kasten and almost died taking out the West-Addison harnad. You may have burned the ledger of things you think you owe me for, but you’ve got another ledger, a much bigger one, and it’s full of the things you did before you moved here. You’re trying to offset that list of sins by saving everyone and taking out as many bad guys as you can, no matter what it costs you or those who care about you. You’ve put Malcolm and me through so much in these past few months, and I don’t think you even think about that at all unless we bring it up.”
Sean came back to stand in front of me again. “I don’t know what’s in that ledger. You won’t tell me and I’m not going to beg you to reveal your secrets. What I do know is that you’ll do anything to try to balance the scales, running yourself into the ground and almost dying over and over, and it’s still not enough. I don’t know if it will ever be enough, and as much as I care about you, I don’t think I can keep doing this.”
“What are you saying?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice.
He rubbed his face with both hands. When he looked back at me, his eyes were hollow. “I’m saying I need some time.”
If he’d punched me in the gut, it wouldn’t have hurt half as much. “Sean, please.”
He gripped my hand and his eyes searched my face. “If you could go back to yesterday and do it all again, knowing now how I’d feel about it, would you do the same thing? Would you put yourself in the line of fire to catch Stevens? Would you die to get the cuff off me?”
I couldn’t lie to him. “Yes, I would, because there was no other way.”
He let go of my hand. “I know. You’ll throw yourself on every grenade because you think you’re the only one who can and maybe walk away from it. But the thing about just barely surviving every time is that you’re not the only one who gets hurt.”
My chest ached like someone was standing on it. “Don’t do this. We…I…”
“Go home and rest,” he told me gently. “Do you want to give the cuff back your client so you can get your bonus?”
In that moment, I couldn’t have cared less about Esther Aldridge or her damned bonus. “No. The cuffs are too dangerous to just let them be bought and sold by people who have no idea what they are. No one should have those cuffs. Patrick was right; power like that only ever ends up destroying everyone and everything around it.”
“Then I’ll make sure they disappear forever.” He took a couple of steps back. The physical distance between us was only a few feet, but it felt like miles. “Do you need a ride home?”
“No.” I didn’t know what I needed, but I could get myself home. After that, I had no idea what I would do.
Of all the possible outcomes I had foreseen, Sean asking me to go home without him had never been one of them. I’d predicted he’d be angry, but not that I would push him to his breaking point.
I’d been worried my secrets would be the thing he couldn’t live with. I’d never considered that it would be my willingness to risk my life. Maybe I should have seen it when he reacted so angrily to my initial suggestion about using myself as bait the night we were staking out John Doe’s motel room, but I hadn’t.
For all my planning and dealing, I’d never even thought about how he would react to shifting back to his human form next to my dead body, or how the members of the pack would feel after sharing his pain and grief over my death. Like a vampire—like my grandfather—I’d thought the ends justified the means. Maybe I shared more attributes with Charles and Moses than I’d ever been willing to admit, even to myself.
I wanted to beg. I wanted to rage. I wanted to punch him, then kiss him and hold him and never let him go.
Instead, I got in my car and went home.
23
Thanks to exhaustion and a glass of Scotch, I managed to sleep until almost noon, when Aaron Riddell woke me with a phone call and a request for an update.
I told him the cuff had been bought by a mage who’d accidentally destroyed it while attempting to intensify the spellwork, but that I could deliver the mirror and cup either to his office or Esther’s home. I was too emotionally drained to feel any pang of conscience for lying to him.
He checked with Esther, then called back a few minutes later to say he would be sending a courier over to pick up the items and deliver a check if I’d e-mail my invoice to his assistant. According to Aaron, Esther was unhappy that I’d failed to recover the cuff, but grateful that I’d found the other two items. She’d offered to add a small bonus anyway, despite my only partial success. Aaron advised me to accept graciously, so I did.
I put Sean’s toiletries in a bin under the sink so I didn’t have to look at them and took a long shower. My emotions were all over the place. I was hurt, sad, confused, and angry in turns. I was deeply hurt that Sean had sent me away, but most of my anger was directed at myself. He’d been so patient and understanding for so long, waiting for me to realize how my actions hurt the people who cared about me, but he’d finally reached the end of his rope. I should have apologized the second I came to and saw the pain I’d caused, but instead I’d acted like it was all business as usual.
Maybe my life with my grandfather was partially to blame for my difficulty in understanding and accounting for other people’s feelings. I’d certainly never learned empathy from hi
m, and caring about others was a vulnerability I couldn’t afford back then. But I’d been away from the cabal for five years now, and this wasn’t the first time Malcolm and Sean had called me out for hurting them with my actions. I couldn’t blame Moses for this, as much as I wished I could. No, this one was on me.
After my shower, I sat on my bed in my bathrobe, my hair wrapped in a towel, and finalized my invoice for Esther while Rogue snoozed over by the window. The bill was a nice chunk of change, but I couldn’t feel anything close to happy about it. I e-mailed the paperwork to Aaron’s assistant and said I’d have the items ready for pick-up within the hour.
I dried my hair and dressed, then put Sean’s clothes in a box in the closet. I had no idea what the protocol was for what to do with his things. Should I mail them to his house? Offer to drop them off? Keep them in hopes that we’d forgive each other and fix what I’d broken?
I wiped my eyes, picked up my laptop, and opened my bedroom door to find Malcolm waiting in the hallway. “Hey, Alice,” he said somberly.
I’d told him what happened when I got home, over Scotch on my back porch. I could tell he wasn’t surprised by Sean’s reaction to what I’d done.
To make matters worse, my last thoughts before I fell asleep were that if I’d wronged Sean so badly, I’d done the same to my ghost.
“I’m sorry for everything, Malcolm,” I said, leaning against my bedroom doorway. “I’m sorry for every time I didn’t think about how much you worried about me, or about how me putting myself in danger affected you. I don’t even know how many times I’ve done that.”
“About ten times in the past week alone,” he said half-jokingly, but his light tone was forced.
He grew serious. “The thing is, I don’t think you have any idea how to let people care about you. We made some progress on that recently, but the bigger problem is that you don’t put much value on your own life. Just because you’re cavalier about it doesn’t mean other people are too. Your life isn’t just a tool you can use to solve problems and neither is your death, but that’s how you act.”
