by Kat Kinney
I poked at a cherry. “Blood Moon holds a lot of bad memories for her.”
My mother was a web developer who worked remotely for one of the big tech firms out of Austin, shopped organic, and had successfully petitioned Blood Moon to start a city-wide composting program. She was smart, competent, attractive, and put together. To pass her on the street you probably wouldn’t pick up on the thread of anxiety that lived below the surface now, and had every day since the night I went out to a party nine years ago in high school.
And never came home.
The night I was changed, Sofia Montemayor-Caldwell handed me a burner phone and wrote down what I had to say to ensure my mother wouldn’t try to look for me. I was seventeen and still in school, my knowledge of werewolves limited to having read Twilight and screaming when Dallas’s younger brother River shifted into a wolf in front of me ten minutes before. Given the volatile combination of the lycan virus and teenage hormones, I would have to stay sequestered away from the human population for an entire year to ensure I didn’t lose control and kill anyone.
Experts said that during a traumatic event, spikes in heart rate caused tunnel vision. Auditory hallucinations. Blackouts. Memory loss. What I remembered from that night were three things: the hard plastic edge of the phone digging into the side of my thumb, the corner of the Caldwell’s Turkish area rug where a terra cotta flower swam in a sea of cream, and the sensation I was slowly drowning as my mother pleaded with me to come home.
And I had no choice but to tell her no, knowing that if I gave in and admitted the truth, I would be condemning her to certain death.
Numb with shock, I wanted to pull the covers over my head in my own bed and wake up in the morning to find it had all been a terrible nightmare. I wanted my mother to drive me to school while we listened to podcasts and debated current events. I wanted to feel her arms around me as she squeezed me tight, telling me whatever it was, she would make it better with Stars Hollow and samosas. That nothing could ever go wrong as long as we were together. And I wanted Dallas, who had been torn away from me by his father the moment we reached the Caldwell ranch. Dallas, who I had not seen nor heard a word from since, as if he had disappeared off the very face of the earth.
And so I made the choice to save the one person I still could.
Back when I was little, when it was just me and her, my father having never been a part of the picture, I had a little purse from the secondhand store. It was full of glittery stickers, a mood ring that had been hers as a girl, a fat rubber eraser shaped like a strawberry, and a tiny sample spray card of perfume—every secret stored inside a hidden treasure. That was another lifetime, back before I was old enough to realize secrets could be a poison that ate you alive from the inside, a cancer no doctor could see until it was too late. That secrets could destroy any relationship if given enough time.
No one ever told me if what happened that night was because of my failure to tell a convincing enough lie, or if the Southern Territorial Council simply didn’t leave things to chance. But when Sofia handed me the burner phone a week later and told me I could call my mother again, I immediately sensed something was off.
Neural manipulation was like going in with a weed whacker. You might pulverize everything on the surface, blank out images, words, the sort of concrete memories you could post to social media or joke about with friends over margaritas. But memory didn’t exist only in what we could consciously understand, physically touch or put into a medium so formal as words. It was the ghost of lilac on that card of perfume. The funky retro dress printed with tiny pale violet strawberries that you saw in a thrift store and loved for no particular reason. And there beneath the soil would always remain the deeply knotted roots of what had existed before. A phantom echo. A face that haunted you with its familiarity. And while the most powerful werewolves on the planet might have overwritten my mother’s conscious memory with lies, erasing my failure, erasing me, there was no silencing the far more powerful instinctual voice in the back of her mind whispering that her only child was in danger.
I’d started lying to my mom that night. And I hadn’t stopped since.
“There’s no way to know what the dynamics would be like in a new pack. Brody’s a good Alpha. The pack structure here is progressive, and everyone has a voice even if he makes the final call. I go somewhere else,” I gestured with my fork out at Main Street where the stoplight was flashing amber, “and I’d be on my own with an unfamiliar Alpha, unable to tell my mother if I got into trouble because she isn’t a shifter.”
Dallas nodded, fork slowly stirring through the syrupy lake of melted ice cream and cherry filling. “But?”
“But how can I say no? What happened to her—”
“Don’t,” he said in a low voice. “What the Council did to her, what happened after, none of it was your fault.”
And for the space of a breath, the room seemed to shrink, no one left outside of it but the two of us. I’d been asked countless times over the years how come I didn’t hate Dallas Caldwell. It was a fair question. And believe me, that first year, I’d worked through my fair share of pent-up rage at a world where I’d been infected in a freak accident, then had the first boy I ever loved sent away for a harm he never meant to inflict. How did you explain to someone who’s never had to live with the guilt of having caused an accident that it was possible to feel anger and love in the same breath? Could anyone who hadn’t lived this understand that some nights you ached with resentment and longing so palpable you thought your bones would shatter from the strain, that it was possible to twist yourself up in a knot so tight that unraveling it seemed impossible without forfeiting a piece of your soul? I wanted to tell them all that at times it felt like no one else but the two of us understood the crushing guilt that came with being the one responsible for hurting someone you loved, for changing their life in a thousand immeasurable ways, for wishing more than anything there was some way to go back in time, turn left instead of right, not get in that car, not accept that kiss.
But life didn’t work that way. You either found a way to move forward, or you let the past consume you like the flames of hell licking across your skin.
I’d made my choice.
“I keep asking myself if I shouldn’t just come clean.” The timer dinged again and I got up to pull more pies from the ovens. “About the party. About that night. Why I couldn’t come home. What they did to her.”
“Only two ways to reverse neural manipulation,” Dallas said from behind me. “The Council will never agree to send in Tracers. And regaining tampered memories without intervention is practically unheard of in humans.”
I moved a velvety orange pumpkin pie to the cooling rack, inhaling the scent of nutmeg and cloves. Usually the effort of trying to force the buried memories back up caused migraines and blackouts, which were enough of a deterrent to keep her from trying again for a few weeks.
“I’d have to change her.”
Dallas swore. “For real, Lace?”
“I have to do something. I won’t lose her.”
“I know. But you’re talking about something that violates both shifter and human law.”
“I would never change my mother by force. Never. If she says no,” my voice cracked and I turned away, quickly swiping my cheeks, “then that’s it. She and I leave town.”
“If the Southern Territorial Council gets wind of this—”
“They won’t.”
“You’ll be a fugitive,” he went on, brow furrowed, hands on hips. “And how would you even do it? Females can’t transmit through biting. Are you two even the same blood type?”
“No.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“I’m just thinking through all the options. And could you even pretend to be behind me for like two seconds? Look me in the eye and tell me if it were Sofia, that you and your brothers wouldn’t break every rule in the book if that’s what it took to save her.”
“You know who my uncle is, sweetheart. My
mother got out of the Tracers, left that life behind because she couldn’t take what the Council was forcing her to do anymore. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” He looked down. “There’s always the money—”
“No.”
“Hear me out.”
“Keep it,” I growled. “And stop trying to sneak it into my bank account when you think I’m not looking. It’s like you forgot I beat you on every Calculus test.”
A muscle in his cheek twitched. “One, I was distracted. And two, whether you want it or not, under pack law, it’s yours.”
Sires were required to support the wolves they changed until they were stable and could live independently. From the time he’d been up in Calgary, ten percent of everything Dallas earned had gone into an account for me. Even after I’d reentered the human world, gone back to my old job at Blair’s, and his obligation had technically ended, the deposits continued to come.
“Just take it,” he said softly.
I crossed my arms, tears pricking my eyes, and he sighed.
“C’mere, sweetheart.”
For a second, time stood still. I didn’t remember getting up. Didn’t notice the clatter of the fork or the scrape of the chair. Only that a heartbeat later, I was pressed up to Dallas’s chest, drowning in the scent of woodsmoke, cherries and Old Spice. And I knew then that I was in trouble.
As a rule, Dallas and I didn’t hug. Our history was all sorts of too complicated for more than the occasional inappropriate text or suggestively positioned reindeer left up on the roof of The Spoke at Christmastime (guilty.) He’d made it clear from the day he got back to town that anything that had existed between us before was over. That he couldn’t be with anyone that way. And especially not me.
But as he moved over me, all six foot three of him swallowing up my smaller frame, the only thought hurtling through my brain, dizzying as a runaway train, was why hadn’t we been doing this all along?
Moonlight filled the suddenly intimate space, causing my pulse to spike. The edges of the room blurred, the raw feral need I was forced to slake every month rising wild and terrible in my blood. Fight, fuck, feed. That was the code, the rules every shifter lived by if they didn’t want to risk losing control of their wolf and going feral. I’d spent the last two nights hunting vampires, had run five miles before coming in for my shift to the bakery. So why, as I smelled Dallas’s scent sharpen, saw his eyes glow gold, did I suddenly ache all over?
Never breaking eye contact, I removed my apron, slowly dropping it to the floor. His breathing hitched. I felt more than heard his quiet sigh ghost past my ear, that fractional beat of hesitation disappearing as all space between our bodies was erased. He backed me up against the counter, trapping me in the hot, hard cage of his arms, and I allowed myself, for the space of a breath, to drown in the heat radiating off his chest, in the broad width of his shoulders, and in the way he smelled like woodsmoke, meat, and a hot Texas fire on an icy night. And god, I wanted that scent all over me.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he growled against my throat, and I felt the wolf so close to the surface, so dominant in his blood, that a shiver snaked up my spine. “I’m not safe.”
“You would never hurt me.”
His eyes flared gold. As he leaned over me, I felt my pulse quicken, raw animal instinct heating my blood. His fingertips slipped under the back of my tank, grazing the bare skin over my spine. My nipples instantly tightened. I shuddered, tracing the muscles of his pecs beneath his white cotton tee, picturing his hands learning every inch of my back, mapping the curve of my breasts, gripping the nape of my neck as his teeth—
And, oh god. Dallas Caldwell just got me wet.
At my sudden intake of breath, he lifted his head, eyes flicking to my mouth. My heart stuttered, fluttering like a trapped bird in the cage of my ribs. Dallas wanted to kiss me. And much as the faint human voice in the back of my mind screamed it could complicate things, it was no match for the sharp ache growing low in my hips. He leaned in, nose grazing mine. I felt the heat of his breath warm my lips. Waiting. Giving me permission to stop him.
I didn’t.
Our mouths met in a kiss that tasted of cherries and sugar, of woodsmoke and sex, and as his hand fisted in my hair, the ache between my legs grew to a desperate hum. Raw moonlust surged in my blood, the image rising unbidden of Dallas in front of me on his knees, sucking a hot trail of kisses down past my navel, then splaying me out over the counter and showing me just what nine years had done for him downstairs.
Dallas growled, hand tightening possessively at the back of my neck.
Yeah. Pretty sure he’d just seen the gist of that.
Yanking up his shirt, I kissed a path up the hot skin of his throat, panting when he tore it off and moved back over me, muscles flexed and chest bare. I’d seen Dallas half-dressed plenty of times on pack hunts, nights where I’d tried not to stare as he pulled off his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face and smoothed back the loose strand of hair that always fell past his ear from the knot at the back of his head, giving him a striking resemblance to Thor. Not that I’d noticed. Really.
He half lifted me onto the counter, pressing into my center so I could feel how hard and ready he was.
“Just. Like. That,” I groaned, nails digging into his back.
I shivered as he lifted my tank top away, his hands warming my bare skin. With a growl, Dallas pushed me back onto the counter, ravaging my mouth, the two of us grinding like teenagers. His lips and teeth grazed the column of my throat, pulse slamming in his veins, and I realized in a dizzying rush that he wanted to bite me, fuck me, mark me.
“Do it,” I rasped, head tipping back, offering him my throat.
Growling, he pressed his mouth to my pulse point, soft hot lips tasting sensitive flesh, and with a gasp, I came. Dallas threw his head back, teeth gritted.
My wolf arched in my bones, the primal part of me responding to the heat radiating off his skin, the fire raging in his blood as I watched him release. I’d never seen him like this, so close to losing control, his wolf barely caged. And I wanted him just like this. Raw. Hard. Unleashed.
“What are we doing?” he whispered against my throat.
Instantly my stomach shriveled, that morning from almost two months ago when I’d confronted Ethan rushing back.
Look, we said up front this was just casual—
—and then the way he and Hayden had both stared. Like they couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or pity me for being that pathetic. For all the good intentions people had at the start of something new, feelings faded. Those blissful I-can’t-wait-to-see-you texts stopped. You started fighting more than making out. Nothing in life was permanent. It was easier to understand that going in. And even worse than the idea of ever letting someone make me feel that pathetic again was the idea that I might inadvertently hurt someone else in exactly the same way. Worst of all, Dallas, my best friend and maybe the only man I’d ever truly allowed myself to love. Because much as I wanted this, wanted him, it couldn’t happen, and we both knew why.
I grabbed for my shirt. “We should get dressed.”
Dallas lifted his head, eyes a dark inferno. After a beat, his gaze slid away.
“Yeah. Sure.”
We fumbled for clothes. The silence stretched until I thought my chest would explode. God, could the sound of two people breathing be any louder?
Kill me now. I was so going to regret this.
“You’re my best friend. But we both know you and I can never be endgame.”
Back to me, Dallas stilled. “This about your mom?”
“She has no idea we’re still in contact. If we were to start seeing each other—” I bit my lip. “We could still hook up. This doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“You think I came here looking for a random hookup, sweetheart?”
For one hopeful, breathless moment, my heart fluttered in my chest, that in
describable, incandescent feeling of being seventeen and in love, of having a boy who looked at you like you were the only person in the world, and nothing could ever go wrong as long as your hand was clasped in his warming me from my fingertips to my toes. And then reality came rushing back like a knife to the chest.
“I can’t.”
Striding over to the window, Dallas raked a hand through his mop of dirty blond hair. I stared at the rigid muscles of his back, trying to ignore the way my heart was pounding so hard it was starting to hurt.
“You never want to talk about those four years I was gone.”
I closed my eyes, the kitchen suddenly so quiet I could hear the heat radiating off the ovens, the buzz from the fluorescent lights overhead causing my pulse to spike. I was suffocating, sure every terrible, shameful secret I’d ever buried beneath a pillow, scratched from a page, and sworn never to think of again was written across my face.
“I know you say you’re past it, but I would understand if there was a part of you buried deep that still hates me for what I did to you that night. And for me being so closed off when I first came back. But you’re beautiful, funny, and you bake the best damn cupcakes in Texas. Any man would be lucky to have you. It’s killed me watching you date loser after loser when you deserve someone who will trip and fall on his ass running up the steps to kiss you when he gets home every day.”
“Ugh, can we not do this?” I blinked at the sudden stinging in my eyes, begging, pleading with him not to come any closer, unsure what I would do if he did. “And for the thousandth time, I don’t blame you.”
“You should. Everything that happened that night was my fault.”
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
“You think I don’t beat myself up every day for accidentally infecting you? For everything that happened to you after, to your mom? You think I wouldn’t give anything to go back in time and make a different decision? If I’d thought, for even one second—”
“I forgave you a long time ago. It wasn’t… it was a freak accident.”