Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
“Why have you called me back from Asia, Aristotle? I need to run wild for a while.”
His father gave a dark laugh. “You've been running wild for too long now, Karina. It was long past time for you to come home.”
“Why?” She slammed something down.
“I've learned some interesting things about Wren. As his motherâ”
Something shattered. “Don't you dare start that. I gave you your heir that you stupidly accepted. You have no further need of me.”
He heard his father's voice deepen. “You need to see what Wren can do.”
“So it can change into a human now,” she said in a bored, sarcastic tone. “Well, la-di-da. It's long past time for it to start changing. I told you it was retarded.”
Marguerite drew her breath in sharply at those harsh words. She saw the pain on Wren's face that he tried to hide and felt rage consume her. Honestly, she wanted to kick open the door and beat his mother for her cruelty.
How could anyone say such a thing about a child she'd birthed?
“Don't you dare walk out of here, Karina,” his father growled.
Marguerite heard cold laughter from Wren's mother. “I'm not one of your people you command, Ari. Nor am I your bitch. I don't have to listen to you.”
“Fine. But just so you know, I changed my will while you were gone.”
Dead silence came from the bedroom for several heartbeats.
“You did what?” Karina finally screeched in a tone that should have shattered glass. As it was, Marguerite was rather certain her eardrums would never be the same again.
“You heard me.” Wren's father's voice was cold and emotionless. “I'm sick of you catting around and flaunting it in my face while I pay your bills. I know about your leopard lover and I know he came back here with you. Fine. I set up a separate residence for you in New Jersey.”
“New Jersey?” she snarled. “Are you insane?”
“No, I'm pissed. If you think I like the fact that the Fates damned me to mating with you, you're wrong. You are my mate by their decree and yet you won't let me touch you. I am damned to celibacy while you whore around with any leopard male who comes near you. Yet you expect me to keep you up. Dream on, my love. Your days of freeloading are over.”
“You owe me,” Karina said from between clenched teeth. “I didn't ask to be your mate any more than I asked to give birth to a mutant abomination. If you were really a tiger, you would have killed that thing when it was born instead of stopping me from doing what was necessary to preserve our species.”
“Wren is my son.”
“You human,” Karina sneered in a way that said “human” was the worst insult she could imagine.
“Yes,” his father said angrily, “and like a human, I've made Wren my sole heir. If something happens to me, your entire future rests in his hands. So if I were you, I'd be praying that he's more human than animal. Maybe he'll take some mercy on you. But I wouldn't count on it.”
“You bastard!”
“Yeah, and before you tear the house apart looking for the will to destroy it, it's already on file with the Laurens firm in New Orleans.”
“I hate you!”
His father's response was immediate and filled with the same scathing hatred. “The feeling is entirely mutual. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to go spend some time with
my
son. When I come back to this room, I expect you to be gone. Permanently. Taylor will drive you over to your new home, where you'll find your new checkbooks and credit cards waiting there for you. You're off all my accounts entirely and eternally.”
A door closed an instant before something shattered. Marguerite could hear Karina screaming and breaking things in the room. It sounded like she was about to tear down the walls. Then Marguerite heard the sound of a feral cat roaring and hissing.
Finally, it stopped.
The sudden silence was unnerving.
Marguerite froze, half-afraid the woman would come into the closet to shred Aristotle's clothes or something.
She didn't.
Instead, Karina made a phone call. “Grayson?” she said in an almost reserved tone. “It's Karina. I believe you now. Aristotle has completely lost his mind. I'm back in town. Is there someplace where we can meet and discuss what needs to be done?”
Marguerite was stunned by how rational Wren's mother sounded while speaking on the phone. It was hard to believe this was the woman tearing the house down only a few heartbeats before.
His poor father for having to tolerate such a volatile beast. Marguerite was just grateful that Wren hadn't inherited his mother's personality.
There was a brief pause. “Yes, I know where that is. Three o'clock. I'll see you then.”
Then Marguerite heard Karina hang up the phone and leave the room.
Marguerite turned to Wren, unable to believe what had happened over the last few minutes. “I think your mother and my father should have married each other.”
There was no trace of amusement on Wren's face.
“I'm sorry, Wren,” Marguerite said, feeling instantly contrite. How could he find humor in the fact that his mother was a vicious cur who was about to murder his father? A cur who had practically ruined his life. “But at least you know your father did love you.”
“That's what hurts,” Wren said in a low whisper. “I keep thinking that if only he'd lived ⦠My life would have been so different.”
She hugged him as she felt for his pain. “I know. I spent a long time hating my mother because she left me. At least your dad didn't go by choice.”
Wren's eyes flared at that. “No, he didn't.” He gave her a harsh stare. “Thank you.”
She was completely baffled by his words. “For what?”
“For making me come back here.” There was a grim determination that burned brightly in his eyes. “I was happy to let them get away with what they did to me and my parents. You were right. There is more human in me than I thought. 'Cause right now I want revenge, and I'm not leaving here until I get it.”
“So what do we do?”
He glanced away as an angry tic beat furiously in his jaw. “First thing, we have to make sure that we don't alter anything here in this time period. We need to try and stay away from anyone who might remember us in the future. Second, we have to make sure I don't run into myself.”
She nodded in understanding. “It'll cause a paradox.”
“Yes, and it would cause me to drop completely out of existenceâreally not a good thing for either me now or me then. But luckily, at this time and place, I'm pretty much confined to a bedroom down the hall.”
He opened the closet door and peeked outside, into the bedroom. “It's clear.”
She followed him back into the bedroom. “Any game plan?”
“Follow my mother. Grayson is my uncle, and since they're meeting, my money says that this is when they planned my father's murder.”
That made complete sense to Marguerite. “Okay, but how do we do that?”
Marguerite gasped as her clothing changed into a bright red, ruffled shirt and a beige prairie skirt. It was an outfit very similar to some of the ones she'd seen her mother wearing in old pictures taken around the time she'd been born.
Wren grinned at her confusion as his own clothes changed to a black Izod and dark jeans. “We need to look like we belong in this time period.”
“How do you do that?”
His grin widened. “It's magic.”
Yeah, but his magic was starting to creep her out. It was one thing to travel through time, quite another to find herself wearing outdated clothing that was actually the height of fashion right now.
A woman could really lose her mind thinking about these things.⦠Then again, maybe she had. Maybe all of this was nothing more than a grand hallucination â¦
It was certainly a possibility.
As Wren took a step toward the door, it swung open.
Time seemed to hang still as they both faced a man who was an exact, only older, copy of Wren. Dressed in an elegant black suit, the man had blond hair cropped short. His blue eyes were electrifying as he narrowed his gaze threateningly on them.
Wren wasn't sure what he should do. He could flash him and Maggie out of the room, into another part of the house, or even outside, but his father would be able to trace them and follow.
Damn, they were caught and they were screwed.
His father sniffed the air, then frowned in obvious disbelief. “Wren?”
Wren swallowed as he met Maggie's wide brown eyes. Repressed emotions tore through him. Grief, rage, but at the bottom was the part of him that had wanted to love his father.
The part of him that had wanted his father to love him.
His father moved closer to Wren with a deep scowl marking his brow. “It is you, isn't it ⦠from the future?”
There was no need to lie. His father was far from a stupid man, and there was no other explanation for the two of them being in his house.
Double damn. This was against every rule Wren knew of time traveling ⦠not that he knew many. Since he didn't practice jumping, he wasn't all that familiar with the laws of it.
He took a deep breath before he answered his father's question. “Yes.”
“Why are you here now?” His father frowned as he looked back and forth between them. “You're not supposed to be, are you?”
As every second ticked by and nothing odd happenedâlike he didn't cease to existâWren began to wonder about that. “No ⦠Yes ⦠Maybe? Since I'm not dead now, I'm not sure anymore. If I wasn't supposed to be here, wouldn't I have died when you came through the door?”
His father let out an exasperated sigh. “You still haven't mastered your powers?”
Anger flashed deep inside him. How dare his father judge him lacking? He wasn't a callow cub anymore. He was an adult who was more than able to take care of himself, and he resented his father thinking otherwise. “I could take you down, old man, and not blink or flinch.”
His father looked at him with pride in his eyes. A slow smile curved his lips. “But you don't time jump?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “I was told a long time ago that it wasn't in my best interest to learn it.”
“Why?”
“He was raised in Sanctuary,” Maggie said. “There are a lot of people who want Wren dead.”
Wren narrowed his eyes on his father in case he misunderstood Maggie's words. “Not that I've ever feared a fight or backed down from oneâ”
“That's the truth,” Maggie inserted. “I swear he's half beta fish. He'd fight his own reflection to prove a point.”
Wren ignored her interruption. “But likewise, I'm not stupid and I've never wanted to make it easy on anyone. Especially not my enemies.”
There was no mistaking the pride on his father's face. “Good, boy. I'm glad to know they haven't killed you yet.”
“And they're not going to.”
His father looked at Maggie. “Is she your mate?”
Wren took her hand into his and squeezed it as Maggie watched him expectantly for that answer. “Not exactly ⦠but we're working on it.”
His father laughed until he sniffed the air again. He cocked his head curiously. “She's human.”
Wren wrapped his arms around her as if to protect her. “You have a problem with that?”
“Not at all,” his father said firmly. Sincerely. “My mother was human, too.”
Wren gaped, letting Maggie know that his father had just imparted a secret to him. “Pardon?”
His father moved to lock the bedroom door as if he was afraid of someone overhearing them. “You heard correctly. It wasn't something that we ever spoke about outside of the immediate family, but yes. My mother was an Arcadian tiger.” His face softened. “Hell of a woman she was, full of fire and spirit. I wish to the gods that I had been mated to a human, as opposed to the bitch I fathered you with.”
Marguerite felt Wren tense around her, but she wasn't sure why. She rubbed his arm to offer him her support. Poor guy was having one hell of a day.
But then, they had come back here for answers. Even hard ones.
“I want you to know that I don't regret you,” his father said, reaching out to touch Wren's shoulder. “I never did.” And then his handsome face turned sad and wistful. “I take it by your presence here that I'm not around in your future.”
Wren leaned his head against hers. His tenseness increased before he answered. “No.”
His father winced as he dropped his hand and sighed. “Do I ⦠Did I do right by you in the end?”
Wren didn't answer the question. Instead he asked, “What day is today?”
“August 5, 1981.”
Marguerite gasped at the date as a chill went down her spine.
“What?” both of them asked.
“I'll be born at noon tomorrow,” she said incredulously. “It's just kind of eerie, isn't it?”
Wren's father snorted. “Not in our world. You get used to such weirdness.”
Wren took a deep breath while he continued to hold her close. “Three days from now, I'll be in the back of a car headed for New Orleans.”
His father opened his mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut. Emotions played across his face while the reality of his imminent death hit him.
Marguerite couldn't imagine anything worse than to know just how limited your future was. All the regrets. All the concerns. His poor father.
He sighed heavily. “I'm going to assume that I'm not the one who sends you there.”
“No.”
His father sat down on the edge of the bed with a sad, faraway look in his eyes. She could tell he was struggling with the news.
“I only have three more days left alive,” he breathed.
“You shouldn't know that,” Wren said.
“No.” His father looked up at them. “If you're here, then it was meant to be.”