He’s lost everything. His parents are long gone, and his younger brother hasn’t seen him in so long I would be disgusted if not for the pain I see in Noble whenever Lync’s name comes up. I get that seeing him this way hurts, especially as he was a few months ago, mindless, confused, angry.
Right now, everything that Lync has is wrapped up in Cass because she doesn’t see the feral part, she sees a guy she loves and refuses to give up on. To her he isn’t lacking, crazy, pitiable. He’s strong and funny and perfect because he’s Lync, not the feral but his own person.
Closing my eyes, I let the first tear fall and gasp when he closes his arms around me in a gesture meant to comfort.
“Blood. Heal,” he rasps again.
Looking up, I see an awareness there. He’s not Lync, not the male I once knew and loved but he isn’t mindless and wild either—and just seeing that gives me hope for him.
“Blood.”
“Bro, please. Christ, you’re killing me here. My blood could make her sicker. Her body fights my mark because she’s already marked,” I say gently, swaying when he sets me down on my feet and grabs my nape.
I don’t protest when he practically drags me out of the room and downstairs into the kitchen where he dumps me into a chair before storming to the fridge to remove a beer.
He doesn’t offer me one, and I’d laugh at his sniff when he passes me, but I feel nothing good right now. When he comes back carrying a bowl, a straw and water I shrug and scrub at my face tiredly, wondering what the hell he’s up to now.
My eyes drooping from the buzz I have going, I watch him pour water into the bowl. Once it’s full, he adds a drop of red coloring, the shit Cass bought when she tried to teach him to make cookies.
The water turns a muted red and I stare at it blankly wondering if he’s just expecting me to play around with water and colors.
“Sick,” he says, pointing to the water.
I throw my hands up, reaching for his beer and get a snarl from him when I crack it and take a sip. He turns on his heel, gets another from the fridge and cracks it before he comes back, taking a huge gulp before he meets my eyes again and points to the bowl.
I nod, letting him know I understand, even if I really don’t. All I want to do is go upstairs and pass out in bed before the sun rises and I don’t get to see Cass come through the door with a cheery trill of greeting.
Lync slams a hand onto the table to get my attention when I drift off, and I grunt, feeling my anger rise when once gain he points to the bowl and repeats.
“I fucking know! Blood. Sick. I heard, you big bastard. Get to the goddamn point.”
He smiles, slamming his hand into his chest, and he points at me.
“Me? What about me?” I ask tiredly, digging a finger into my eyeball where a hangover is starting to form because my buzz is wearing off pretty fucking fast and hard.
Lync grins at my annoyed tone and picks up what I think may be baking soda and pours it into the red water. It bubbles and fizzes, creating clouds of pinkish foam that hiss.
“Banner,” he says, looking at the foam. “Blood. Banner.”
I narrow my eyes and nod, my mind stumbling over his actions and watch when he takes a fresh bowl of water, pours red coloring in and grunts.
“Blood.”
“Okay.”
He picks up blue coloring and holds it up for me to see before adding a few drops to the red water. We both watch as it turns a light purple, and then Lync grunts and points before slapping his chest.
“Me.”
“You?”
He points to the red bottle.
“Cass. Blood. Sick.”
“Yeah?”
He points to the bowl of dissolved baking soda and red water, the stuff that looks like a mess.
“Cass. Poison. Banner.”
“I’m the baking soda?” I ask, frowning when he nods.
“Not the poison,” I say, getting a nod from him.
Pointing to the blue, he slaps his chest again and something inside me lights up with thought.
“You’re the cure?” I ask slowly, hating that it is another male if I’m the fizzing shit that makes a mess of everything.
He shakes his head though, no, and walks to grab a smaller jug to fill at the sink. When he comes back he holds it up and points to me then dilutes the purple water until it’s so light it barely holds color.
This time when he picks up the red coloring he points to me, and it’s when he pours it and the water start sturning more red than purple that I jump up and yell out a curse, one that is all joy and victory.
“You want us to take your blood and give it to her to dilute the essence and then you think she’ll take mine without getting sick?”
He nods, looking down at the bowls before grabbing his beer and taking a long swig. I’m so filled with hope, something I thought was gone that I don’t wait for a moment where doubt could set it.
I leave the house at a run, the front door slamming shut when Lync abandons his beer and lopes behind me. I reach the clinic in mere minutes, my chest heaving with hope and burst through the doors, faltering at the thought that Althea could be at home in bed, sleeping since it’s barely sunrise.
I should have known though, I think, when she peeks out of her office and frowns at me, her eyes rimmed with dark circles that testify to her insomnia since she started working on the scentless formula.
“Ban?”
“Lync thinks…we can dilute…essence…with other…blood…his… before…giving mine!” I wheeze, winded more from the anxiety than the short run over here.
Her head tilts, her eyes going skeptical before she shakes her head and sighs, looking back at me sympathetically.
“Banner, I’m sorry honey, but we’ve already tried that. I gave her Grogan’s blood and all those blood sups I made from Logan’s DNA. None of that worked. It only held off the inevitable,” she says, her eyes sad before she stills, blinks, and then slaps her head. “Oh Jesus, he’s right! I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I missed this!” she yells, turning on her heel to run to her lab.
Lync and I both follow to see her grabbing a slide, dropping blood onto it and shoving it under a microscope. The screen on her laptop lights up, and I see a whole bunch of little blobs against a red background before she grabs Lync and drags him over to her bench.
He howls when she pricks his index finger with something sharp but stops when she holds the digit over the slide and lets a drop fall onto it. I have no idea what the hell is happening on the screen, but things start changing, and Althea lets out a whoop and throws herself at Lync, hugging him while he stares down at her silently.
“You’re a genius! Oh my God, Banner, all this time and, shit, no wonder she was getting sicker!” she growls, shaking her head.
I may have the basics down here, and I get some of the logic, but I’m stumped, and I tell her so after she stops trying to climb Lync in her excitement.
“Don’t you get it! Cass has this essence in her blood, like an infection that was dormant until her body recognized yours. Once that happened, the essence acted and fooled her blood into rejecting yours so that any time she got any part of you near her she got sick because her body produced all these white cells that would attack her blood to get you out of it.”
“But I didn’t give her my blood,” I point out, frowning when she laughs.
“No! But we gave her Logan’s. Remember when Bear scented and started Mika’s heat? We gave her Nick and Prissy’s blood. Because they have markers that fooled her body for a while.”
I frown, nodding because I remember that vaguely.
“Yeah. Just like you assumed that Logan’s blood or Kilter blood would still her heat.”
“Except that I should have understood that if she couldn’t take your blood, then her body would reject Kilter blood!”
I blink and frown, understanding what she’s saying but…
“It did still her heat though.”
“Bu
t it didn’t! It made her sick, slowly so that it wasn’t recognizable at first. The illness masked her heat, it didn’t stop it. So being slowly poisoned and in heat drained her body. Slowly.”
I breathe out after the last word, my mouth curling into a smile because this means that we can be together. If this can work.
“Will this work?” I ask, leaning back against the wall and chuckling when Lync snarls and extracts himself from her.
Althea blushes, bites her lip, and rebounds with a smile.
“This will work. I’ll take blood from Lync since he doesn’t share family markers, or if he does they’re very weak, if that’s okay?” she asks, peering up at Lync.
He grunts and turns, walking out of the lab without another word. God, that bastard is adorable. I’ll never admit it, never let anyone know that pansy ass thought crossed my mind but it’s true. He’s just…
Closing my eyes, I feel myself settle, the purr of both animals and the relief that floods me. I can have Cass now. I can have everything I almost died trying to deny for her sake.
If she’ll still have me.
“Uh, not to burst any bubbles here, but I still can’t explain the way her reaction slowed down, especially not if she was killing herself popping the pills I gave her. In fact, I would go so far as to say that right now Cass should be dead. Whatever stopped it, it saved her life.”
I growl at the thought, my whole body tightening just hearing the possibility of my Cass not being on this earth.
Now I just need to get my girl and finish this.
I’m just saying thanks to Althea and turning to leave when I hear an enraged howl split the air and echo around the building. I know that direction, Cass’s direction, and I know that howl.
I’m running before I can form a thought and break through the trees as Logan bursts out of his house and starts running. I have the overriding need to let my bear free, but I strangle him down and keep running, wanting to be in control in this moment. When I reach the cabin, it’s to see Lync on the front porch with his head thrown back, howling. Furiously.
“Cass!”
I skid to a stop and Logan slams into me, almost toppling us both before a hand shoots out to grab me. Nick.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Gooooone!” Lync howls, his angry voice carrying in the night with such mournful rage I feel my knees buckle.
Growling, Nick grabs me and keeps me up until we’re in the cabin. Everything looks like it’s in place, so I stalk to the bedroom and see the empty closet. The case that she keeps under the bed is gone.
It’s all gone, and I’m ready to scream when Logan stiffens and runs into the bathroom, yelling a triumphant curse and coming out with Cass’s pink toothbrush and toiletry bag.
“Ever heard of a female who doesn’t pack her toiletries?”
No, no, I fucking haven’t. My spirit settles minutely when it registers that this isn’t her leaving me, so I turn back to the living room and take a deep breath, closing my eyes as I inhale deeply.
I scent Cass immediately. Pain. Tears. Fear. I hear Nick growl just as I catch a familiar scent that has us looking at each other in confusion.
“Julia.”
“I don’t know what the hell is going on here. There’s no trail from the doorway into the yard. It’s as if they stopped here and just disappeared.”
“Kiiiiill!” Lync growls from the doorway, and for once, we’re all in agreement.
“They’re all dead.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Cass
“This is my fight song, take back my life song, prove I’m alright sooooong, my powers turned on, starting right now I’ll be strong…I might have only one match, but I can make an explosion!”
I sing under my breath, clicking my fingers to the tune in my head while Julia groans and rolls over on her cot, throwing me a nasty look filled with irritation.
“Would you stop! You can’t sing about being strong and taking back your power when you’re locked up in a basement cage with your ex-boss humming around upstairs and his crazy-ass mother peeping in here every two seconds!” she yells, huffing when I don’t get mad, just frown.
I would totally agree with her and stop my power anthems of inspiration if I actually believed that we were in deep trouble here. Admittedly, it sounds and looks like we are, I get it, but I have faith, man.
Faith is keeping me strong, even if I’m so faint and sick inside I want to lay down and go to sleep and never wake up. My little pep in the step wore off sometime during the evening, a lot faster than the previous one did, making me think that I am seriously in trouble because it’s not Blain who’s going to kill me, it’s my own body.
Blain. I have faith that he’s struggling with himself and that he won’t harm us. For one thing Julia is his Faaaaaated. His one. Julia Roberts to his Richard Gere. Amal to his George. Angie to his Brad.
No wait, those two are so totally split up. You get it though. I refuse to believe he could hurt her. And me and Blain. We’re pals. He loves me. He won’t hurt me.
I just don’t believe it.
“Stop it. Just stop it. You keep talking out loud, and I can hear it all, and you just don’t make any sense. Of course, he’s going to kill us. That’s what bad guys do,” she sneers, flopping back with a growl of impatience.
“But he’s not a bad guy.”
“He is.”
“Is not.”
“He fucking is.”
“He effing is not. Come on, Julia. The man is a good person. He just needs someone, one person, to believe in him and see him, not the elite, or the guy who’s bad and wants to kill everyone. If that’s what people see when they look at him, then it’s easy to be that guy. I choose to see the good guy. The guy who is kind even if he’s too shy to show it openly and is sneaky about it,” I tell her, swallowing when bile coats my throat.
Oh good, the nausea is back.
“Tell me one kind thing that asshole has ever done.”
I consider this for a moment, thinking hard because I want this to be a good one, not just something that Miss Negativity can bat away with a hundred different examples of the bad. I personally believe that if a person has one good quality for every ten bad ones then they’re still worth knowing. But that’s just me.
“Okay, well he protected Barbie when she was in danger at the trial. She herself told me that he caught her when Brig tossed her to him, and he made sure she was okay.”
Julia snorts, not saying a word, and that’s how I know I own that battle though goodness knows the woman is so negative about everything she’ll find another battle for me to wage soon enough.
I wish I had the energy for it though. My body is on fire from the inside out, and I feel as if someone took a hammer and beat on every bone I possess. My belly hurts, deep inside where I am a woman, and my head is fit to explode in a huge way.
I can hardly keep my eyes open I feel so tired, and yet the pain won’t let me sleep. I don’t whine though because there’s no sense in it. Julia will probably freak out, and then I’ll get anxious.
Naaah, I’ll just lay here and pretend that I am not terrified that I’m about to breathe my last. The thought makes my chest ache because I don’t want to die without telling Banner that I love him. I want it to be in Technicolor. A huge declaration that is sappy and sickeningly sweet and everything that I could have told our eleven kids about one day.
“If he’s good, then why did he do all this?” Julia asks softly, bring me back to reality with a bump.
“I think because everyone has proved to him that his ugly version of life is all there is, Jules. Look at it from his perspective, his father was not a nice man, his mom wasn’t strong enough to protect her children, and the one person he trusted and believed in failed him. I think if Nick could have seen the good in Blain and not panicked about the Fated thing, he’d have been someone else entirely. It’s not too late though,” I whisper, hearing her snort.
“How’s th
at? I’m pretty sure kidnapping and planning to murder two innocent females is the point of no return. Not to mention that he created an entire army of killers!”
“So? What if he decides to use his power for good instead of evil? He could take that new formula and let the enforcers use it as an advantage if they ever have to go in somewhere dangerous. He could use his network to help other packs. There is a lot he could do, Julia, but mostly, if all he does is just decide not to do this, then I forgive him, and he’s still my friend,” I say, meaning it with everything I am because real friendship is good and bad.
Blain is my friend. He needs me to believe in him, and if no one else is willing to try, then it’s all me.
“God, you are so freaking irrationally sweet and kind. It saddens me that you’re hurting at all. How are you feeling?” she asks, obviously changing the subject because she doesn’t want to talk about something that difficult.
I sigh and go with honesty because it’s really useless to lie right now.
“I don’t feel so good. My head and stomach are roiling, and my whole body hurts. I can barely lift my head. I’m so tired I think I could sleep forever if the pain wasn’t so bad,” I slur, swallowing again when a fresh spate of sickness hits me.
Julia turns her head to peer at me, and I try to smile, failing miserably when a grimace of pain throbs through my skull. Her own face goes white when she looks at me, truly looks for the first time in hours, and from her expression I know I must look pretty bad.
“That bad, huh?”
“Blain! Blain, you useless sack of fermented bile! Get your ass down here. She’s sick Blain, really sick. Oh God, oh God! Don’t you dare die on me down here, Cass. You hear me?!” she yells, dropping to her knees near the bars and peering at me with fear in her eyes.
I can hardly smile, but I try and want to cry when her own mouth wobbles and tears fill her eyes.
“Banner will never forgive you if you don’t fight. He’s a fighter. He deserves a fighter. Oh God. Blain!”
Greyriver Shifters Page 93