Authors: Tammy Blackwell
“
I don’t See--”
“
Talley.”
She took a deep breath. “The vision changes
all the time. It’s not a definite thing.”
“
How many times does it not
include me getting stabbed?”
Her silence was answer enough.
“
I’m not lying. I’m scared,
and I don’t want to die.” While part of me yearned to be at peace
with Alex, I knew it was the coward’s way out. Not to mention,
there were still things I wanted to do in this world. “But they
can’t win. I’m not saying I’m going to go along with this whole
Scout-Challenges-the-Alphas plan, but I’m willing to fight for the
cause. If there’s going to be a war, then count me in as a
soldier.”
“
That’s why we’re trying to
gather up as many Jedi as possible,” Jase said. “You’ll need
backup, an army at your command. Plus, the more people we already
have on our side, the fewer Challenges you’ll have to take on.
Those who sign on with us will already be willing to follow your
lead.”
Jase believed it. I could tell he actually
thought I was going to go out there, take on the world, and win. He
believed that Liam’s Army would put their faith in the leadership
of an eighteen year old girl. I could have corrected him, pointed
out how I was, as Liam had said, just a pawn. I could have told him
that if destiny existed, mine wasn’t to lead a rebellion but be the
catalyst for a revolution. I understood where I fit in to all of
this. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out, just a realist. But
Jase couldn’t see it, because he didn’t want to believe it, and I
wasn’t about to be the one to open his eyes.
“
What’s your role in all of
this?” I asked.
My brother tried to look all haughty. “We’re
spies, of course.”
“
Of course.”
“
We’ve earned Sarvarna’s
trust,” Talley said. “We’re able to move about freely with no one
tailing us or tapping our phones. We can pass information to Toby,
who in turn passes it to other members of the rebellion, without
any problems.”
“
Are you crazy? What if
they catch you?” The idea of what could happen to them was enough
to make my stomach hurt. “It’s too dangerous. You have to stop.
Like, now.”
Talley leaned against Jase’s arm. “It’s a
dangerous world we live in, Scout. We all have to play our parts,
do what we can.”
“
This is too much,” I said.
“We’re kids. Why should we be the ones to save the world? Aren’t
there adults much more qualified for this task?”
“
The adults have sat around
and let the Alphas do whatever in the world they want for way too
long. It’s our turn now. Our generation has to be the change we
want to see in the world.”
I was a little slack-jawed. “That’s very
profound.”
“
It’s Ghandi,” Jase
admitted. “But it’s true. If we want things to be different, we
have to make them different, even if it means sacrificing our own
safety for the future.”
“
It’s still not fair,” I
said. We were supposed to be worrying about what classes to take
and our roommate’s lack of hygiene or constant stream of sex
partners. Normal college freshmen stuff. Instead we were planning
to take down the Alpha Pack and putting our lives on the line. “I
want to grow old with you guys. I want to be an aunt to your kids
and teach them all the ways to annoy you.”
“
You will,” Talley said.
“We’ll make it through this.”
“
How?”
Jase met my eyes. “You’re the smart one. You
figure it out.”
Chapter 12
Heaven smells like bacon. Well, not Alex’s
part of heaven - if that is heaven - but the part with the pearly
gates and harps and all that jazz? Fried porky goodness wafts
through the air. It’s a truth I hold in my heart.
I woke to the most wonderful of all
wonderful smells to find Liam standing over the stove, spatula in
hand, while Talley sliced a tomato at the counter. Jase was seated
at the table, still in his pajama bottoms and UK Wildcats t-shirt.
His face was a living testament to my rage the day before, swollen
and bruised all over.
“
You trust the Alpha’s
doctor?” Liam asked.
“
We don’t really have much
choice,” Jase said, “but I can’t imagine why he would lie. If he
wanted to hurt him he would’ve just let him die. He worked too hard
to keep him alive to be screwing with us now.”
“
Damn. That’s just…” Liam
stabbed at the skillet with undue force. “He deserves
better.”
“
What’s wrong?” Jase and
Talley both jumped at the sound of my voice, but Liam just scooped
up the bacon and placed it on a plate. “What’s wrong with
Charlie?”
“
Nothing,” the three of
them said in unison.
I sat up on the couch, eyes narrowed. “Yeah.
Right.”
“
We weren’t talking about
Charlie.” Talley’s finger snagged a lock of hair. “It’s Stefan.
He’s not doing well.”
Liar-Liar, pants on fire.
“
So Charlie is fine and
dandy?”
“
Since I’m a guy and his
cousin,” Jase said, “I can’t really comment on the ‘fine’
assessment, but the guy’s kind of a slouch when it comes to
grooming. I don’t think ‘dandy’ really applies.”
I wasn’t completely awake, and therefore
couldn’t come up with a witty reply, so I extended my middle finger
in his direction. Talley scowled at the profanity, but soothed me
with, “He’s fine. Really. You heard him for yourself.”
True, he sounded like
Charlie on the phone yesterday, which was way more than I was
expecting. My overactive imagination had him lying in a hospital
bed with tubes sticking out everywhere, his face gaunt, the light
gone from his eyes. But I still felt like something was off, that
there was something they were keeping from me.
Again.
“
Do you swear it, Talley?
In front of me, God, and everybody, that Charlie is
okay?”
Talley looked to Jase, who held out a hand
to her.
“
No! No hand holding.” I
looked Talley in the eyes. Yes, I was being a bully, but this was
the only way I would get any real information. Jase and Liam could
both lie with aplomb, but as long as Talley wasn’t plugged into
Jase’s brain, I knew she wouldn’t be able to fib, especially since
I’d invoked the name of God. She was really paranoid about that
sort of thing, thanks to her mother.
I inwardly flinched at the thought of Mrs.
Matthews.
Talley took a deep breath and raised her
left hand while the right one rested over her heart. “I swear that
Charlie is getting better every day, and we fully expect him to
almost completely heal.”
“
Almost
completely?”
“
We didn’t want to you to
worry,” Jase said, “but there have been some complications. He’s
never going to be back to where he was before.”
“
But when he Changes…” A
realization struck me. “He should already be completely healed.
We’ve had two full moons since he was injured.”
Liam, who was scrambling up at least a dozen
eggs, answered. “Changing can’t fix everything, and sometimes
injuries prevent you from Changing at all while you heal.”
“
Since when?” It didn’t
make sense. Alex was able to Change from wolf to human after his
fall, even with a stick protruding from his chest. Liam seemed
disinclined to enlighten me, but I wasn’t having it. I stormed over
to him, stopping just far enough away that I could look him in the
eye without craning my neck. “What kind of injury could prevent a
Shifter from Changing?” Liam just stood there. “Tell me, damn
it!”
He stepped closer, which pissed me off. Now
I either had to look up to him or take a step backwards. I decided
holding my ground was more important.
“
I don’t follow your
orders.” His words were quiet, yet dripped with hostility. Out of
the corner of my eye I could see Jase and Talley watching with rapt
interest.
“
Liam.
” It came out as a growl, a warning.
His eyes narrowed. “You have dad’s book. You
tell me.”
I was about to snap that there wasn’t
anything in the book about injuries preventing a Change, but then
it hit me. “Your brain and spinal cord don’t Change. They’re the
same in either form.” Dr. Smith hypothesized the catalyst for the
Change resided in the Central Nervous System. “Is that it? Does he
have a brain injury?”
“
His spinal cord is messed
up,” Jase answered. “The bullet wound was bad, but it was never the
real danger. One of those assholes broke his back.”
“
Is he paralyzed?” On the
phone he said something about walking again. In the information
bombardment that occurred afterwards I hadn’t thought to ask about
it.
Liam, obviously bored with this
conversation, went back to preparing breakfast.
I plopped down in the chair beside Jase. I
felt a teensy bit embarrassed over my outburst with Liam,
especially after our heart-to-heart the night before, but there was
only so much space in my body for emotions to go, and most of that
space was reserved for Charlie-related concerns at the moment.
“
He shouldn’t have been
there. He shouldn’t have risked himself like that.”
Liam sat a plate in front of me. “He made a
choice, knowing the risks. All of us have. We think it’s worth it.
The question is, do you?”
Was it? Was overthrowing the Alphas worth
putting our lives on the line?
If it was a faceless horde we would be
liberating, I would have said no. But it wasn’t an anonymous
population on the line. This revolution or coup or whatever had
Talley’s fearful tear-stained face from when she thought she would
have to go back to the Matthews Pack because of the way the Alphas
encourage Shifters to treat Seers like property. It had the face of
Nicole, who died just because she would one day Change. It had the
faces of Alex and Liam’s parents, and Alex and Liam, who had to
suffer so much loss simply so a select few could hold on to their
positions of power.
“
I do,” I said. “I’m in.
All the way.”
***
I tried to be good throughout breakfast.
Really, truly I did, but Liam seemed intent on pushing my
buttons.
“
You weren’t kidding,” Jase
said, squirting ketchup on his eggs because he’s weird like that.
“Scout really doesn’t submit to you.”
Liam reached across the table and stabbed a
stack of pancakes with his fork. “Took you this long to figure that
out?”
“
Isn’t this whole idea of
submission really archaic?”
“
No,” three voices answered
me in unison. “Every Pack needs a Pack Leader,” Talley added on to
the end of hers.
A little light bulb, like maybe the size of
a Christmas light, went off over my head. “That’s because we’re not
a Pack.” Oh yes. This was making sense. “We’re like two lone wolves
peacefully coexisting with one another.”
Liam nodded in agreement. “We’re both
perfectly accepting of the fact that we’re equally Dominant, so
there’s no reason to force the issue.”
“
Except, you know, we’re
not really equally Dominant.” I snagged my glass of milk, frowning
at its pale blue tint. “What we both equally accept is that he’s
Super-Shifter, and I can’t be bothered to care.”
“
I was wrong,” Liam said
for perhaps the first time in his life. “We apparently don’t agree
on anything.”
I looked at him over the top of my glass.
“Seriously? You do realize you can Shift any time you darn well
please and I can barely push myself through it under a full moon,
right?”
“
Only because you’re not
trying hard enough.”
“
Good grief, not this
again.”
“
Well, if you would just
put some effort--”
“
I am putting
effort--”
“
I’m new. It hurts. I
can’t do it. Don’t make me try.
” Liam’s
voice went beyond mocking and into antagonistic. I didn’t realize
just how much he pissed me off until the glass in my hand
shattered. I jumped back, but my jeans, the only pair I had, were
covered in milk.
“
I’m blaming you for this,”
I said between my teeth.
Jase looked at Talley. “They need to
spar.”
“
They definitely need to
spar,” she agreed.
***
Someone may put our first fight down in the
annals of Shifter history someday, but hopefully they’ll leave out
the part where I slipped on a patch of grass covered in chicken
poop and Talley almost went into an asthma attack because of a
stray long-haired cat who didn’t have brains enough to be scared of
a bunch of Shifters.
“
Liam hasn’t had much
training, so he fights street.” Jase stood behind me, rubbing my
shoulders as if I was Rocky Balboa. I was only half listening to
him. My body was buzzing with anticipation. I started taking
martial arts when I was a kid, and it’s one of the few activities
I’ve kept up with over the years. There is something both relaxing
and empowering about having the control over your body it takes to
execute a perfect move. I hadn’t realized it before, but now that
it was happening, I needed this. Not to prove which of us was
stronger, but just the simple act of fighting. It could have been
Jase or anyone else standing in front of me and I would have still
felt the same.
Maybe.
“
Don’t expect him to follow
the same rules we’re used to,” Jase continued. “And remember, this
isn’t a real Challenge, so if your wolf instincts start to take
over, back off.”