“I don’t think…” His eyes closed then opened almost immediately, and he raised his head awkwardly from the bed. “Wait, yes, he has! He asked me about it a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t know what scar he was talkin’ about, ‘cause I couldn’t see it. I forgot all about that!”
I turned to my father in triumph. “That’s how he knew! Marc had seen Dan’s scar, then when he took Eckard’s clothes for warmth, he noticed an identical mark on his back, and knew that was too weird to be a coincidence!”
My father nodded thoughtfully, and I could practically see the gears in his head turning.
When everything was ready, Dr. Carver chose a scalpel from the tools laid out on a clean towel over Manx’s nightstand, and with my mother there to soak up the blood with a sterile white cloth, the doc made his first incision.
It was a lot easier than I’d expected. Just a single cut, then Dr. Carver used a special pair of tweezers to remove the chip—which was right where it should have been—and sewed Dan back up.
Dan felt no pain, but claimed he could feel weird tugging sensations, so he lay as still as he could, with his eyes squeezed shut.
“There.” Dr. Carver sat up straight and handed his curved suture needle to my mother, who set it on a
metal baking tray she’d brought in from the kitchen—at-home medical care at its finest. “Let’s get you all cleaned up, and you’ll be as good as new.”
I stared at the tiny, blood-coated microchip lying beside the scalpel on my mother’s tray. “Do you think we could trace a serial number from it, or something like that? Find out who—”
But the rest of my sentence was lost forever, swallowed whole by a sudden, urgent cry from the backyard.
“Help!” It was Jace, shouting with more fright and rage than I’d ever heard in his voice. “Someone help me with her!”
A jolt of adrenaline raced through me. My heart pounded. My hands clenched around the mug and it shattered in my grip, raining hot coffee and chunks of ceramic all over me and the floor. I was out of the room in an instant, and Owen’s boots clomped on the floor behind me, where he’d emerged from the office. But my father was already halfway down the hall.
We burst through the back door almost as one. At my first glimpse of Jace—a deep shadow in the predawn darkness—my feet froze on the porch, and my breathing quickened with shock. Owen ran right into me. He would have knocked me down all four steps if my dad hadn’t caught me.
My father paused only long enough to right me, then raced across the backyard with the speed of a much younger man.
Jace was halfway between the tree line and the back door, jogging unsteadily, his arms held awkwardly in
front of his chest. When he stepped into the light from the guesthouse porch, I saw that he carried Kaci in both arms. Her head bobbed limply near his right shoulder, her hair brushing his hip with each step. Her legs dangled from his other arm, one foot bare. Blood dripped steadily from either his right arm or her head, staining the dead grass with a trail of fat, red drops.
Owen grabbed my arm on his way down the stairs, hauling me with him. Two steps later, I’d come back to myself and was running of my own accord. We were still fifty feet from Jace when I caught the first whiff of the blood.
It was his, not hers. Thank goodness.
Still, my pulse spiked as I closed the distance between us. Why was he bleeding? Why was she unconscious? And where the
hell
was Ethan?
“…think she’s okay,” Jace was saying when I pulled close enough to hear him over my own ragged breathing and racing heart. “She just passed out. Here, take her.” He held Kaci out to me and I took her without a second thought. “Gotta go back…”
Jace turned toward the trees, but my father stopped him with a single heavy hand on his shoulder. “What happened?” he asked, as I ran my gaze over Kaci’s face and shoulders, then down both arms. Jace had said she was fine, but I had to verify that for myself.
Jace shook his head as if to clear it, and I could smell adrenaline pouring out of him and into the air. Mixing with the scent of his blood. Now that I held Kaci, his wound was exposed. The right sleeve of his coat was shredded,
and his arm was ripped open from wrist to elbow, the skin dangling in several places. The bone exposed.
He’d been mauled.
My arms tightened around Kaci involuntarily, and a moan escaped my lips before I could press them together. But incredibly, Jace didn’t seem to have noticed his own injury.
“Four toms. Quarter mile southeast of the bend in the creek. Three Shifted. Alex is on foot.”
The only Alex I knew was Alex Malone, Jace’s half brother—the second son born to his mother and Calvin Malone. And if Alex was more than two years out of high school, I was Thomas O’Malley, the alley cat.
“Cal sent them for Kaci. Said not to come back without her.” By the time Jace’s mouth closed on that last word, his eyes had glazed with shock. He’d lost a lot of blood, and it was still flowing.
Owen’s shirt hit the grass, and the guesthouse porch light glinted off his bare back in the cold. My father’s face had grown grim, his eyes blazing in equal parts fear and fury. “Where’s Ethan?”
Jace stumbled, and Owen put a hand out to steady him. “Stayed to fight. Told me to get Kaci home.”
“Good.” Dad took Jace’s right hand and gently pulled his arm forward to inspect the injury. “Go in and let the doc get you fixed up,” he said, as Kaci moaned in my arms. I hoped she’d wake up, but she only turned her head toward me. Her eyes never opened.
“I have to go back for Ethan,” Jace insisted, even as he wobbled again from blood loss.
The Alpha scowled. “Go inside. That’s an order.” Jace closed his eyes briefly, then his jaw clenched in frustration, but he turned toward the house.
Owen stepped out of his pants and pulled off his socks.
My father’s eyes met mine, and my heart beat so hard, so urgently, it actually hurt. “Take her to your mother. If she’s sure Kaci’s stable, you Shift and follow us. Understand?”
I glanced down at Owen, who’d just dropped onto all fours. “Daddy, I’m faster. You know it.” I could outrun any of the guys, and when I really concentrated, I could Shift in under two minutes. Owen couldn’t do that.
The Alpha hesitated for a single heartbeat. Then he nodded and pulled Owen up by one arm. “Take Kaci inside and make sure Jace doesn’t fall. Then Shift and follow us.”
Before my brother could protest, I handed Kaci to him and tore my shirt open. Eight buttons flew into the dark, and cotton hit the grass an instant later. I shoved my jeans and underwear down together, then ripped the hooks right off my bra.
I dropped to the ground so hard my knees bruised, and my palm was cut open on a tiny pinecone. I Shifted faster than I ever had in my life, forcing the transformation in spite of the agony in every bone and joint of my body. A minute and a half later, I took off toward the creek on four paws, without bothering to stretch.
My cat-brain categorized sounds as I ran, classifying
them as wind, insects, or small animals—all of which I dismissed. My ears rotated on my head like miniature radar dishes, and suddenly I picked up a collection of snapping twigs, hissing cats, and abbreviated roars that betrayed the fight still in progress.
At least for the moment. But Ethan couldn’t hold off four cats by himself forever.
I’d only been running a few seconds when I heard my father behind me, huffing with exertion like a tiger. He was putting everything he had into this, and he would pay for it later. But hopefully not until we’d run off or disposed of the trespassers and gotten Ethan home safely.
Please, let us get Ethan home safely….
I ran silently now, slipping between trees and soaring over brush, focused only on getting to Ethan quickly and unannounced. The sounds of the fight grew louder. A solid thunk. A low, feline moan of pain. A hiss. Then Ethan shouting, “Stay the hell back, you Benedict Arnold motherfuckers, or I’ll bash your fucking skulls in!”
My heart leapt at the sound of his voice. Ethan was alive and shouting. And apparently holding his own by some miracle.
I zigged around a broad cedar and zagged around a fat clump of evergreen shrubs, and there they were. I had a single instant to absorb what I saw in the cold, predawn glow. Then I shoved off against the earth and went soaring.
My front paws hit the nearest cat. He fell onto his
side. I clamped my jaws over his throat, squeezing but not puncturing. An enraged growl trickled from my throat, channeling my fear, fury, and triumph into the most primal sound I’d ever uttered in my life.
An instant later, my father leapt over a fallen log to pounce on the other cat, pinning him with little effort.
Between us, Alex Malone stood in jeans and a thick down jacket. He held his arms out in a defensive posture. His eyes went wide with surprise as he glanced from me to my father, then back again.
“‘Bout time.” Ethan’s tone was light, but his eyes were serious and his jaw bulged with tension. He held a huge, gnarled branch no human could have lifted alone. Swung by a werecat, that branch could kill a man with a single blow. Which was no doubt how he’d managed to hold them off until we arrived.
“Alex, your dad has just made a
huge
mistake, and he’s taking you down with him. You have a choice. You can scurry on home and tell Daddy you’ve failed—and you’ve just pissed off the biggest Pride in the country. Or you can tuck your tail, ask my father’s forgiveness, and beg him to take you in. Because that’s the only way you won’t go down for this along with your Pridemates.”
Ethan glanced at our father, who was watching him just like I was, with his jaw still clamped around the intruder’s throat, his eyes rolled up almost painfully to keep my brother in sight. “What do you think, Dad? Do we have room in the cage to throw all three of them…”
But that’s where my thoughts trailed off.
All three.
Jace had said there were four. So where was the missing werecat? Had Ethan already gotten one?
“We could lock them in together. Let them rip each other to pieces. What do you—”
A black blur dropped from a limb above, a soaring shadow I never had the chance to focus on. His front left paw hit Ethan’s chest. His right batted away the huge branch. My brother landed on his back. The cat fell on top of him. Ethan’s breath exploded from his lungs.
He reached to the side, left hand scrambling for his weapon. And before I could blink, the cat reared back and swatted him. Across the throat.
Blood poured from Ethan’s neck. He gurgled, and his eyes went wide. They found mine, and his lips formed silent words. “Faythe. Help.”
I roared and shoved myself away from the cat beneath me. But my father was already there. He knocked the cat off Ethan and onto the ground. His muzzle clamped over the bastard’s esophagus and he jerked his head back without hesitation. My father ripped the tom’s throat wide open.
The cats we’d pounced on took off into the woods, with Alex Malone on their tails.
Daddy turned his back on the dead tom and whined, nudging Ethan’s head with his nose, licking a spray of blood from the line of his jaw.
Anguish washed over me, and I suddenly felt so heavy I could barely move. My chest seemed to constrict around my heart. My limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
I crawled on my belly across five feet of cold earth, whining the whole way. I couldn’t make it stop. Sounds of grief poured from my throat as blood poured from Ethan’s. I sidled up next to him and laid my head on his torso, blinking through tears as his stomach rose and fell beneath me. Twice.
He blinked at me, his eyes the exact shade of green as my own. His mouth worked silently, opening and closing, as if he were trying to breathe. It was horrible. But then his mouth quit moving, and that was even more horrible.
Unbearable.
Ethan’s stomach stopped rising. He blinked one more time, then his eyes lost focus.
My father roared.
I cried.
Ethan was gone.
C
ockleburs cut into my heels. Twigs poked between my toes. Branches slapped my bare stomach and arms, drawing blood. I walked naked through the woods, my vision oddly blurred, turning here and there out of habit, like a plane on autopilot.
Goose bumps covered my skin, and moisture froze on my face. I felt it, but I didn’t really
feel
it. And I couldn’t smell my blood at all. I could only smell Ethan’s.
My father walked in front of me, bare shoulders shaking. He sobbed and choked, and my heart broke a little more with every sound. He held Ethan like a baby, my brother’s head limp over one arm, his feet dangling over the other.
I don’t remember Shifting. I don’t remember much of anything after Ethan died, until the walking. I remember walking in the woods. My hair was tangled and my hands were bloody. Ethan’s blood. I must have touched him.
But my father carried him. All the way home. At least half a mile.
Owen met us in cat form, about halfway there. He cried and roared and moaned. He tried to get Daddy to stop. To let him sniff Ethan and nuzzle him. But our father didn’t stop. He didn’t speak. He just walked.
We emerged from the woods into the backyard near the guesthouse, and had only gone a couple of steps when Dan burst from the back door of the house, still shirtless from his minor surgery. He ran toward us, but stopped when he saw Ethan. When he understood.
He shook his head. “Oh, no,” he whispered. But we all heard him.
My mother came next. She pushed open the screen door and came out wiping her hands on her apron. Then she saw us. Saw Ethan.
“Nononononono…!” The anguish echoing in her screams broke my heart all over again. She ran toward us, apron clutched to her chest. My father walked on, even when she got in his path, clinging to him. Stroking bloody locks of hair from Ethan’s face. “My baby boy…” She sobbed. Then, “Nonononono…”
As she screamed, a shadow fell over the back door from inside. Dr. Carver stepped onto the porch, his face frozen in a mask of shock. Jace followed, his right arm wrapped from elbow to wrist, the blood soaking through his bandages highlighted in the harsh glow from the porch bulb. He moved slowly, his face already pale with pain and blood loss. But when he saw Ethan, he paled more.
“Jace…” I said, but my voice cracked on that one familiar syllable.
He stood frozen on the top step, staring. He blinked and his jaw bulged rhythmically, as if he were trying to unclench it but couldn’t. Then he jogged down the steps and past us, tears glinting in the moonlight as they trailed down his cheeks.
A second later, the guesthouse door slammed shut, and I flinched.
With Jace’s abrupt departure, grief flooded me, settling into place like sand sinking through water, anchoring me to the ground where I stood. Tears flooded my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks, burning my skin through the deep winter chill. My chest tightened unbearably, and I hugged myself to ease a numbing cold originating from within me, rather than from the January freeze.
Dr. Carver put one arm around my mother and fell in line behind my father, guiding her toward the house with Owen padding at his side, Dan bringing up the rear. I watched the door close behind them, but couldn’t make myself follow.
Instead, I backed away from the main house, my head shaking slowly in denial. The sharp points of several holly leaves pricked my bare back, and distantly I realized I’d reached the side of the guesthouse. I sank to my knees, the grass bitterly cold on my naked legs, the holly catching in my hair.
The cold soaked into me as great, hiccuping sobs shook my entire body. I gasped for breath that seemed
to freeze in my throat, to numb my lungs. My thoughts took no form. There was only a massive, horrible storm of pain and sorrow, slamming into me over and over again with an almost physical force. Grief threatened to drown me, and I made no effort to stop it.
“Faythe…” I looked up slowly to see Dr. Carver through my own tear-soaked lashes. “Are you ready to go inside?”
“Not yet.” I sniffed. “I need just one more minute.” A minute to get myself together. To exorcise the worst of the tears, so I could rally my family instead of making them cry harder.
“Well then, let’s at least get you dressed before you freeze.” The doc knelt to grab my clothes from the ground where I’d dropped them when I Shifted, then hauled me up by both arms. He was right. Tears had formed little ice crystals on my eyelashes, and if I stayed out much longer they’d freeze right there on my face.
I stepped gratefully into my underwear and jeans, but my shirt and bra were ruined, so I could only put my arms through the sleeves and cross them over my chest to hold the material closed. Then Carver put a comforting arm around my waist and I let him lead me back across the yard and inside the main house.
At first, the heat was a blessing. It took the worst of my chill bumps and eased my chattering teeth, though it didn’t even touch the trembling that had set into my limbs. But as my body began to recover from the cold, a large part of me wished I could remain frozen. Numb.
Because the ache in my chest was unlike anything I’d ever suffered. It was like something gnawing me alive from the inside out, leaving a dark, empty cavity where my heart had once been.
It was unbearable, and every time I tried to rise above it, to bring reality into focus and concentrate on what lay ahead, I found myself sucked back into that mire of grief, from which I simply could not rise.
And the truth was that I didn’t really want to. Not yet.
Because that would mean it was true. It had really happened.
But it couldn’t have. Not to Ethan. If any of my parents’ children should have lived forever, it would be Ethan. He was fearless. And in the end, that was the problem. He’d sent Jace and Kaci to safety while he’d stayed behind to keep the enemies at bay.
He had to know his chances of survival were slim, but he did it anyway.
Ethan, why did you have to play the hero?
But the truth, though Ethan might not even have known it, was that for once, he wasn’t playing.
In the hall, Dr. Carver paused at Kaci’s room, where she still lay unconscious on the bed. Then he stopped us by the open bathroom door and waited while I washed Ethan’s blood from my hands and rinsed my face. When I was done, his hand closed around mine and I squeezed it, thankful that he was there. I’d rather have been comforted by Marc, but his absence was just one more entry on a long list of things that were currently irrevocably
fucked up
in my life at that moment.
When I had myself under control, we continued down the hall to the living room, where everyone else had gathered, and my father passed us on the way out. He walked stiffly down the hall and into his room. Seconds later, water ran in his bathroom, but over that, I heard him crying. Not the gentle, quiet tears he’d shed in the woods. Great, trembling sobs. Angry sobs, that spoke of imminent action and grim consequences.
Dr. Carver stopped in the doorway. “I have to go check on Kaci,” he whispered. “Then I need to see what I can do for Jace’s arm.”
I nodded and he squeezed me one more time, then let me go.
In the living room, Ethan lay on the sofa, his head hidden from sight by the armrest. Someone had tucked his arm in at his side, and my mother sat on her knees in front of the couch, one hand stroking Ethan’s hair back from his face. What little blood still dripped from his neck soaked into the cushion, then the front of her apron.
Owen sat on the floor, tail curled around himself, with his furry chin resting on Ethan’s thigh. His eyes were closed, and if not for the occasional mournful whine coming from deep within his throat, I might have thought he was asleep.
I curled up in an armchair, glad I’d washed the blood from my hands. The couch was already stained, but I had the absurd thought that if I smeared blood on the white chair, everything would be worse somehow. That blood on satin would make it somehow more real. More gruesome.
Make Ethan more dead.
As I watched my mother, wondering what I should do to help her, my heart throbbed with every painful beat. With that suffocating grief. A never-ending ache I knew would soon morph into a rage unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
But for now, it was only bitter sorrow.
A door opened down the hall and my father was back, dressed in clean cotton pajama bottoms and his favorite blue robe.
“Karen.” His voice was rough, like he was speaking through shards of glass. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Karen, you have to get up.”
But she refused. She didn’t even look at him, so my dad picked her up and carried her just like he’d carried Ethan. He put her in a chair opposite the couch and waved me over to sit with her. When I stood, wondering if it was even
possible
to comfort a woman who’s just lost one of her children, my father crossed the room to sit in a chair in the far corner, where he leaned forward and buried his head in his hands.
“Mom?” I approached slowly, and she went stiff when I put one hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She looked at me then, and I had to close my mouth to stifle a gasp. She was covered in Ethan’s blood.
Smeared
in it, like she’d hugged him. As soon as I thought it, I knew that’s exactly what had happened. I had to get her out of those bloody clothes. My father acting distant and morose was unsettling. But it was even worse to watch my mother’s quiet anguish.
My father was the front man. The obvious authority. But my mother was the steel backbone of my family, and without her standing tall and strong, we would all start to bend and wither.
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Come on, Mom.” I took her arm, and she let me help her up. Then she surprised me—and frankly scared the
shit
out of me—by clinging to me. Her arms went around my neck and her head found my shoulder, instantly damp with her tears. Her weight went almost limp in my arms and all I could do was hold her tight while she cried, each sob shuddering through both of us.
When the tears slowed, I squeezed her and gently loosened my grip until she was supporting her own weight. Then I stepped back and met her eyes as she wiped her face with both hands, streaking Ethan’s blood with her own tears.
Her eyes were red, her face swollen and splotchy, and her usually perfect makeup was now a distant memory.
“How ‘bout some hot tea?”
“Of course.” She stood straighter and squared her shoulders. Her head kind of twitched, as if she wanted to glance back at Ethan but had stopped herself at the last moment. “What kind would you like?”
“No, I was going to make
you
some tea.”
“Don’t be silly, Faythe. You’ve never made a pot of tea in your life, and I’m not going to be your first-brew guinea pig. I’ll make it.” Her eyes wandered down to
my shirt, where blood from her clothes had soaked into mine. “But first, I want you to change clothes. I can’t stand the sight of any more blood today.”
That made two of us. “Mom…” I didn’t know how to tell her without triggering more tears. “You, too.” I glanced pointedly at the front of her ruined cashmere sweater, and her gaze followed mine.
Her face paled. “Oh.” She turned and walked not quite steadily into the hall.
Owen followed, hopefully going to Shift and dress. Which left me alone with my dad. And with Ethan, of course.
My father stood at the living room window now, staring out at the sunrise just then lightening the front yard, a short, clear glass in his hand, empty but for a few drops of goldish liquid. I knew from the scent that it was Scotch. The good stuff he kept locked in his bottom desk drawer. But now the bottle sat on an occasional table against the wall, its lid off, its contents flavoring the very air.
My dad didn’t seem to realize everyone else had gone. I crossed the room toward him, achingly conscious of my stained clothing, of Ethan’s scent all over me. “Dad?”
“Hmm?”
But I hadn’t thought the rest of it through, and had no idea what to say. Finally I decided to look forward, because my memories had nothing to offer but heartache. “Do we have a plan?”
He nodded, and when he turned, I saw that the pain
in his eyes had been almost overtaken by a toxic, seething rage. I could see it churning just beneath the surface of his expression, his anger mounting with every passing moment. And I knew that when the pressure became too great, he would explode, and I could only hope I wouldn’t become collateral damage.
“Yes, Faythe, we have a plan.” His jaw tightened, and his gaze seemed to burn through me. “We will repay in kind.”
“We’re going to fight?” A vicious chill clawed its way up my spine, part grim satisfaction, part eagerness, and part fear. My dad wasn’t talking about just any fight. Malone’s men had killed the son of an Alpha on his own land. If we responded in kind, we wouldn’t be finishing what they had started. We’d be starting something much bigger.
We’d be going to war.
“Of course we’re going to fight. It is now obvious that Calvin Malone plans to be head of the Territorial Council no matter what it costs him, or anyone else. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he intends to have me assassinated next, and if that’s his plan, so be it. He’s welcome to try. But I will
not
stand by while he invades my territory and slaughters my children. He’s going to pay in full for what he’s taken from us.”
Damn right!
My fingers were tingling, eager to Shift into claws and get going on the retribution. “What can I do?”
He hesitated, his eyes still aimed at me, but unfocused. “Nothing yet. I need to think. Go get cleaned up.”
I made my way to my room in a daze. My legs felt heavy, and dimly I noticed that my abused feet were leaving bloody footprints on the tile in the hall. I passed the dining room, where Dan sat at the long table, staring blankly at the wall, then the kitchen, where my mother was crying. But these were the soft, controlled sobs of acceptance. Terrible in their own way, but much easier to deal with.
In my bathroom, I stripped and stepped into the shower, letting my tears fall with the water as I watched blood—both Ethan’s and mine—swirl down the drain.