I was already turning and running when a human voice erupted behind me. Didn’t understand that the tone was high-pitched and female, in fact, until I was already twenty feet into the sheltering trees.
“What’s wrong with you?” Elle demanded. She’d caught up to me already, was slinging me around to face her while her left hand pressed against her streaming nostrils.
My wide eyes and raised brows must have said everything because my mentor’s tone softened. “I thought you recognized me....”
“I thought so too,” I murmured, adding up two and two and getting twenty-nine and a half. Of course Elle’s wolf looked a lot like Ransom’s. Because if her twin was the brothers’ double cousin then Elle shared the same genetics...and the same likelihood of her wolf possessing red fur and white brows.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I continued, struggling to keep my legs from folding as adrenaline left me. That last shift had been a doozy and I suddenly wasn’t sure I could do anything until I rested and ate.
“It’s okay.” Elle brushed off my apology almost curtly, unworried about both the blood slowly dripping from her nostrils and my lack of further explanation. Clearly she had something else on her mind.
“Mai,” the other female started, and I swallowed, not wanting to hear the rest of her sentence. “Your sister didn’t wake up this morning. Gunner sent me to find you. He wants to give her blood.”
Chapter 27
The forest was so much harder to walk through two-legged, with neither shoes nor clothes to protect sensitive human body parts. Still, it wasn’t pain that raised my blood pressure. Instead, the infuriating part was my mentor, who turned out to have been keeping secrets from me all along.
“So you knew I could use werewolf blood just like you could use kitsune blood,” I stated, pausing for only a second to pry a minuscule thorn out of the pad of my big toe before pressing onward after my companion. “How could you not mention that when Kira got sicker and sicker? Didn’t you think it might help?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘help’ exactly,” Elle countered, leaping over a fallen tree as agilely as if she was still in wolf form. I didn’t realize how much I was dragging until I tried to follow...and had to sit down on my butt then swing my legs across rather than risk falling flat on my face.
“Ignore the semantics,” I ordered, hating the fact that exertion made my voice uneven. “Why didn’t you tell me there was an easy way to tap into the powers you were supposedly teaching me to harness?”
I was breathing heavily now, and not just from the effort of bushwhacking. No wonder Elle glanced back over one shoulder, her lips pursing the way mine had done when Kira slicked up her hair into a mohawk ten minutes before we were due to leave for school one day last year.
“Because there are implications,” my companion told me after one moment of loaded consideration. “I showed you how dangerous it is for your blood to fall into the hands of a werewolf. When blood flows the other way, between a werewolf and a kitsune, bonds are formed that might not be productive. Which is why I told Gunner to wait before doing anything rash with Kira.”
Her words made sense...but they didn’t entirely salve my disappointment. Because I’d thought pack mates trusted each other, and Elle had treated me with a distinct lack of trust.
Still, her knowledge was all I had to go on at the moment. And Kira had to be in bad shape for Gunner to send Elle out to track me down in the middle of the Solstice Hunt....
“We’re almost there,” the female in question promised, as if sensing my worry. Sure enough, the sound of a raging waterfall had overcome the residual dripping of rain off tree leaves. “Can you feel them through the pack bond?” she continued. “That’s how I found you....”
And I could feel something. A warmth from in front of me, a vague indication of direction. So that’s how Elle had managed to appear just as the Master’s trap snapped shut. I supposed pack was good for something after all, even if it didn’t provide the unconditional support I’d initially supposed.
“I’m actually surprised the rest of them haven’t shown up already,” Elle rambled, filling the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between us with a steady flow of words. “We went looking for you at dawn, but it was pretty obvious where you were once you tapped into the pack network....”
“The rest of them?” I interrupted, a shiver running up my spine as I realized my sister wasn’t encircled by the handful of watchful werewolves I’d imagined. “Aren’t Tank and Crow and Allen protecting Kira?”
Elle didn’t turn back to face me this time, but I still sensed the reproof in her voice when she replied. “Gunner is protecting Kira. Everyone else went out to find you. And...here we are.”
Here we were indeed. At the top of the same steep path Liam and I had traversed the night before, the rocks looking even more treacherous wet than they had in the dim light yesterday afternoon.
But the slick stones weren’t what provoked a gasp from my companion. No, it was the sight of the alpha werewolf beneath us, blood dripping from his mouth as he hovered over the supine body of my sister. Matters, it appeared, had advanced in a direction neither Elle nor I had anticipated while we were gone.
Chapter 28
Elle realized what was happening before I did. “No!” we shouted in tandem, tumbling down the path so quickly I barely felt the stones slicing into my left foot’s instep.
At the bottom, I hurled myself atop my sister to protect her while Elle hung upon Gunner’s non-dominant hand as if preventing him from throwing a grenade. Only when I saw the blood welling up between her fingers did I realize what was going on.
Gunner wasn’t trying to harm Kira. He was trying to help her. And his cousin was intent upon preventing the alpha from carrying out his humanitarian task.
“Mai?” Kira’s reedy voice was nearly inaudible. And yet, the evidence that she’d regained consciousness still stopped the scuffle in its tracks.
“How are you feeling?” I demanded, rising so I could press my wrist against her forehead. The guys had rigged a canopy out of tent canvas and arching sticks, so the rain shouldn’t have soaked her the way it had me. And yet, Kira’s skin was cold and clammy, as if she’d run hard in the winter cold then chilled down without bothering to towel off.
“I’m...” Whatever lie Kira had intended to tell me was cut short as she began to cough. Deep, racking quakes shook her body for so long I could hardly bear it. And when she finally spluttered into silence, Elle released her cousin’s hand.
“I still think it’s a bad idea,” my mentor whispered, as if we weren’t all shifters and able to hear her as easily as if she’d spoken at full volume.
Only, we weren’t all shifters. Or at least, Kira didn’t appear to have caught the murmur. Instead, my sister nestled into my side the way she had as a toddler, wrapping both of her arms around my naked waist. “I don’t feel so good, Mai,” she murmured. Then her eyes closed as she drifted back into sleep.
I stroked her hair gently, even though, to all appearances, Kira was no longer conscious enough to feel the soothing gesture. And as I petted her, I couldn’t help wondering when the strands in question had stopped being smooth and glossy. Had Kira been fading for months without me noticing, or was the Master only now sucking out her magic the way he had mine when I stumbled into that illusory tree?
Feeling the brittleness of my sister’s body, I was more than willing to accept Gunner’s offered strength no matter what the consequences. Elle, on the other hand, continued to harbor second thoughts.
“If you do this, there’s a good chance whoever has the other star ball will be able to manipulate you,” Elle argued in a hushed whisper. “And you know you’re the shepherd of this clan.”
“I’m not the pack leader. My brother is.” Gunner spoke the words not as if he really meant them, but as if he’d said them so many times before that they came out by rote. And yet, the whole time, his gaze never left mine. The decision, he was telling me, was in no one’s hands
but my own.
I swallowed, weighing two bad outcomes. I’d sworn to uphold the Atwood pack...but my deeper allegiance lay with my sister. And even though desperation never led to smart choices, no other solution came to mind.
Meanwhile, Kira turned fitfully, her breath catching in a moan that jabbed at my stomach. Her vitality was slipping away so quickly, I wasn’t sure there’d be anything left if I went off to hunt the Master a second time. No, we needed to solve this now...or at least delay Kira’s deepening malaise.
So, even though I knew I’d regret it later, I met Gunner’s gaze directly. Then I dipped my chin into a nod.
ELLE DIDN’T STAY TO watch the bloodletting. Instead, she muttered something about gathering up our pack mates then picked her way back up the slope nearly as quickly as she’d run down.
Which left me and Gunner to get blood out of his wrist into my unconscious sister, a task that wasn’t nearly as easy as it had initially appeared. In the end, I was forced to suck up the liquid and dribble it between Kira’s lips mouthful by mouthful, Gunner holding the child’s lax body upright and rubbing at her throat to prompt her swallow reflex.
But the transfer, though slow and messy, worked admirably. A pink flush returned to Kira’s cheeks within seconds. And as a bonus, the bits of blood that seeped into my own system rekindled my magic as well.
I only realized how pale Kira had grown, in fact, once her lips were no longer purple. And this time she curled into my lap like a sleeping child rather than like an invalid ready to collapse for good.
Gunner’s blood wasn’t a permanent solution, but at least we’d bought a pocket of breathing room. And I used a few of those precious moments to share information—and suppositions—with the alpha who had so willingly risked himself to give my sister a new lease on life.
“I don’t want the culprit to be Ransom,” I concluded at the end of a rough rundown of the morning’s happenings. “But I think he really might be it.”
Because Gunner’s brother was a slimeball. Mama’s hints led me directly to the male time after time. And, not only that, the elder brother had a supreme motive to delve into kitsune blood magic—he needed a dominance boost if he hoped to truly rule the Atwood pack.
Beside me, Gunner sighed and let his neck bend until his forehead rested on one upraised kneecap. “I don’t want it to be Ransom either,” he said after a moment. “But I wouldn’t be entirely surprised.”
And then, finally, he told me the story of Ransom’s mistake.
Chapter 29
Ransom and Gunner were inseparable as children. Their father was a traditional pack leader—strong, gruff, and apparently incapable of softer sentiments. Their mother died when they were young, after which they largely raised themselves.
Ransom was the more dominant sibling. After all, one year makes a huge difference when you’re five and six, respectively. The older brother coaxed Gunner into crazy adventures that became crazier as the pair grew older. Somehow, though, they always managed to get the aftermath cleaned up before their father found out.
“Until I turned eleven, that is,” Gunner told me. Without me noticing, he’d scooted in closer so Kira draped across both of our laps, my stroking hand slipping off my sister’s hair to tease the fabric covering Gunner’s thighs. He didn’t seem to notice, but I might as well have stuck my finger in an electric socket for the way the near-touch sent tremors racing up and down my spine.
“What happened when you turned eleven?” I asked. The rain had stopped, but the day was still far too cool for summer. I tried to tell myself the urge to lean into Gunner’s side was just exhaustion combined with the appeal of his furnace-like body heat. But even in my head the argument sounded an awful lot like a lie.
“When I turned eleven, Liam and Elle came to visit,” the werewolf beside me rumbled. And, as if it was nothing, he reached over to tuck my head into the hollow beneath his shoulder. I think I lost a sentence or two as I melted into his body, but then the story caught hold of my interest once again.
Gunner hadn’t known about this particular set of cousins, so the two strangers invading clan central came as both a surprise and a delight to him. The twins were almost exactly his age and were even more like-minded than his sibling. He spent hours showing them every secret he and his brother had ferreted out.
“If I’d been a little older, I would have understood that Ransom felt slighted by my changing loyalties. I would have included him in our adventures even when he told me he was busy with twelve-year-old things.”
I shivered, suddenly not wanting to hear where this story was going. But Elle was now Ransom’s favorite cousin. How badly could the childhood misunderstanding have played itself out?
Plenty badly, as I soon discovered.
One morning very much like this one, Gunner woke before dawn to find his brother’s face looming over his in the dark. The older brother’s eyes were wide, his body soaked as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. “Let’s go hunting,” Ransom whispered.
Gunner—young, innocent, glad of his brother’s attention—willingly agreed.
It was afternoon before the rest of the pack found them. A hot, sweltering humidity had pushed the two siblings to shed their fur after sating themselves on the fawn they’d chased down and eaten two hours earlier. So when wolves raced out of the forest toward them, they just assumed the crossing of paths was coincidence.
But the adults didn’t pass by and go on about their business. Nor did they shift back to two legs and speak. Instead, neighbors and relatives acted like strangers, herding Gunner and Ransom back toward clan central in a forced march that lasted the better part of an hour.
There, Gunner was shunted off to the kitchen where his twin cousins picked at cookies and pretended not to worry. “What’s going on?” he whispered once the pack second had retreated a few steps to guard the open doorway.
Liam shrugged. Elle’s lip quivered. But their throats remained mute.
Time stretched out after that the way it does when you’re a child. Gunner wasn’t sure if he and his cousins waited for ten minutes or ten hours. All he remembered was straining to hear the raised voices coming from the pack leader’s study, being unable to make out words but catching the angry tone well enough.
Eventually, the meeting disbanded. Peering around the legs of the pack second, Gunner caught a glimpse of his brother slinking out of the office on two legs. The twelve-year-old’s body was covered in scratches, his eye black and his nose dripping blood. He looked like he’d fought in wolf form and lost, but his spine was straight and his raised chin was proud.
Then Gunner’s father was the one emerging. The pack leader marched into the kitchen and dismissed his second with a jerky nod that sent all three youngsters cowering backwards. Despite being Gunner’s father, the alpha wasn’t the sort of relative you could confide in. At that moment Gunner wished very much that he’d been raised by the aunt and uncle who were spending the summer in clan central along with their kids.
This time, though, Gunner’s father managed to look almost approachable. He crouched down until he was several inches lower than the seated children’s head level—a very un-alpha-like thing to do. Then he placed one large hand on each twin’s knee and looked directly into their eyes.
“I’m sorry, children. You may not have known this, but your mother was very sick. She passed away during the night.”
Elle inhaled the tiniest gulp of air as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Liam remained stoic as an Atwood male was expected to be.
“Where’s Uncle Lucas?” Gunner demanded, suddenly feeling the need to protect his cousins. He straightened and glowered as if he had a chance in hell of staring his father down.
“He went home. He’s mourning. You two will stay with us until he’s better.”
And that, apparently, was the end of the matter. The pack leader left. The twins collapsed into a heap of sobbing. And for the first time Gunner felt like a third wheel in the face of their o
bvious need for each other and equally obvious disregard for anybody else.
The children had been locked into the kitchen this time, the pack second having stepped outside and closed the door in the face of the children’s audible grief. But Gunner knew every secret passage in the sprawling mansion—or, rather, he knew every servant’s passageway left over from when the property had been owned by humans rather than by wolves.
So he padded over to the pantry and closed himself into the darkness. Then, feeling his way past huge chest freezers and shelves of non-perishables, he yanked open the small door at the other end and slipped up the stairs without bothering to turn on a light.
The visitors were staying in a suite on the third story, one room for the twins, a bathroom, then another for their parents to share. Gunner had intended to invade their territory and find something that would soothe his cousins’ anguish. Maybe a stuffed animal, if Elle still slept with one. Or the locket his aunt had always worn on a gold chain around her neck.
But the suite smelled strange when he entered. As if someone had gone hunting then nestled into their sheets without bothering to wash away the blood. Curious, he crept past the twins’ bunk beds and hesitated outside the door to the bathroom.
Only to hear voices from the hallway. “Clean it up,” the pack leader growled. Not wanting to be caught where he didn’t belong, Gunner opened the bathroom door and slipped inside...
...where he faced his aunt’s body splayed across the tile, her skin torn as if a wolf had lit into her in a rage. Congealed blood splattered every surface, the rusty red stark against the bathroom’s white tiles. This was no slow slipping into death as his father had suggested. This was clear evidence of foul play.
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