A dark-skinned Hunter with freckles covering every inch of his exposed skin stepped forward and peered down at Cambria. “She volunteered to go through that?”
I winced as the pain crawled around inside Cambria’s veins, seeping into her organs, stretching and pulling against the confines of her skin.
“Are you all right?” the man asked, peering at me.
“I’m...” I doubled over, the pain rushing up and out into the reaches of my mind. It wasn’t even a fully formed bond and already the pain was overwhelming. I hoped, for her sake, Cambria didn’t fully wake up.
My knees buckled and the freckled man caught me inches before I hit the ground. “She’s in pain,” he said and I looked up at him, startled.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I’m Koby,” he said quietly, cradling me in his arms. It was strangely comforting and I had to remind myself this man was a stranger, not someone to lean on and cuddle. “I’m an empath and a healer. I can take some of the pain from you but you have to keep your arms around me. Can you do that?”
I didn’t bother to speak; I figured my compliance was answer enough.
Growls were everywhere and I wondered if Derek had managed to take that hybrid down yet or if there were any more trying to sneak through, but the crowd pressed around me and Koby and I couldn’t see beyond all of their legs.
“Her pain,” I managed through clenched teeth. I wondered how Koby would understand but he simply nodded and pulled Cambria closer, tucking her sleeping form underneath his opposite shoulder.
The pain dialed back a little, but I could see her arms and legs stretching and lengthening into something new. There was a loud pop and I watched her knee jerk forward. Her bones were breaking.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stared down at my friend. A wolf appeared beside me, nudging my hand until he’d slipped in underneath where I’d braced my palm against the ground. I looked over at the russet coat of fur and a narrow face containing a pair of caramel eyes.
“She’s strong enough,” Logan said from where he stood over us.
My gaze flicked from him to Cambria and back to Wes. The pain had receded but I knew it was thanks to Koby. It was evident in the strained expression he wore as he smoothed Cambria’s hair from her sweaty brow.
I dug down into the depths, reaching and straining to read the bond that hovered like a shadow between us. I couldn’t tell if Logan was right. And I wasn’t going to abandon her.
“Look,” said a growly voice. The gray wolf.
My head snapped up and, as I watched, fur sprouted from Cambria’s bare arms. Her jeans, already ripped at the knees from her bones lengthening and snapping, tightened until the seams burst. Derek arrived, panting and wincing at a rip along his left flank. He planted himself over Cambria just as the rest of her clothes filled with her expanding torso and her pants and shirt ripped free.
He growled up at us, his eyes intent on Koby. “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Koby was helping take her pain away.”
Still, Derek didn’t move. I knew the only thing he cared about now was protecting Cambria, including her dignity. Koby and I scooted away.
Cambria’s lids fluttered and then sprang open. She screamed, her back arching off the ground as her body gave another loud pop.
“What’s happening?” someone asked. I recognized the boy Alex had left with earlier. He was panting but unharmed. I strained around the others, my panic spiking all over again.
“He’s right there,” Wes said in a low voice and I followed the direction of his nod. My shoulders sagged in relief as Alex returned, sliding through the crowd until he reached me.
“She’s shifting,” Logan answered the boy in a strained voice.
Alex reached out and squeezed my hand. “You okay?” I whispered.
He nodded. “You?”
Before I could answer, Cambria’s awareness rushed in and the mental whiplash knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for air. Wes jumped up, hovering nervously beside where I’d doubled over. Alex lowered me to the ground.
Wes whimpered and Logan shouldered his way in until he was crouched between us. “Give me your syringe,” Logan said.
“No, I have to make sure she’s okay,” I said.
“She’s shifting, Tay. If you don’t redirect the bond now to clear things, this won’t work,” he explained. “You both agreed.”
“What about the darkness?” I demanded. “What if she’s not strong enough?”
He leaned down so we were nose to nose and said, “This is Cambria we’re talking about. There’s no one stronger.”
Cambria coughed and sputtered and her skin disappeared. Derek was forced aside as she rolled and convulsed. Fur sprouted along her torso and her human parts were replaced with a heavy black coat. The crowd behind us backed away.
Cambria sat up, her face a strange and disturbing collage of human and wolf parts. She looked right at me, her mouth pinched in pain. “Do it,” she said. “Get out ... of my head.”
Logan raised the syringe and jammed it into my arm.
“Wait!” I tried to pull away but Logan held my arm until he’d emptied the entire contents of the syringe.
I whimpered and tried to escape, but Wes crowded in, licking at my face until I couldn’t see enough to get free. “I’m sorry,” he repeated over and over again. “I’m sorry. So, so sorry. Don’t be angry.”
“Did you do it yet?” My mother’s anxious voice penetrated the dull fog that coated over my connection to Cambria. There was something else in her voice, something besides the expected note of worry. But I couldn’t break through to ask what.
The chemical cocktail Logan had dosed me with ate through slowly, erasing as it went. No more flashes of memory. No more magnetic pull. Only blank space. My mind was once again empty and alone in its thoughts.
Despite the weak connection we’d shared, this one hurt much worse than losing Steppe.
“Logan just gave it to her,” Cord said. I kept my eyes shut so no one would ask me to talk. It hurt too much to admit out loud. “What about the hybrids?” Cord asked and I knew she wasn’t speaking to me.
“They’re dealt with,” Grandma said.
“How’s Tara?” Professor Flaherty sounded breathless and antsy. I couldn’t look but I knew there were all there, watching me. The air felt expectant. Like it was about more than just waiting for the bond to redirect.
“Why haven’t you injected Wes?” I asked.
No one answered. Logan drifted back and disappeared. I caught sight of him hurrying into the house before the door slammed behind him.
“Where is he going?” I demanded, but the words sounded weak. Everything felt weak. I caught whispers—some belonging to the audience gathered and some containing orders, instructions for the others.
A few were aimed at Koby and Derek, who were still attending to Cambria. A few were given to Fee to help the wounded fighters returning from the forest. But mostly, everyone was centered on me.
The numbness in my head dialed back and in its place was something else. I forced my eyes open wider, searching their faces for what was really happening to me. Cord refused to meet my eyes. Wes stopped apologizing—which only heightened my panic.
“Why aren’t you injecting Wes?” I repeated, my voice high-pitched in panic.
“Because we aren’t bonding you two,” Grandma said.
“What? Then who ...?” I trailed off, thoroughly confused and struggling to name what was happening to me.
I waited for Grandma to say more but she just watched me, tight lines pulling at the corners of her mouth. No one else offered anything more either and I held back a scream of frustration.
I shook my hands and feet, testing them. When I was certain they were working again, I scrambled to my feet and ran, putting distance between me and all of them. When I turned, I found all of the faces of those I loved staring back at me—and I felt no connection to a single one of them.
“We weren’t sur
e you’d go for it,” my mom said slowly.
“So we decided to let it be a surprise,” Grandma added.
“And we knew you’d be disappointed if it didn’t work,” Cord put in.
“It was Cambria’s idea,” Derek said.
“What are you all talking about?” I yelled. “What is going on?”
No one answered. They watched me, waiting expectantly, and I knew they weren’t going to tell me a thing until I figured it out. Or until they knew if it’d worked. Whatever it was.
Inside my mind, far back in the depths of memories cast off and forgotten, a fissure cracked and opened. It felt like the moment you remember something long lost, like a light going on in a dark room. It was something you wanted to grab for before it skittered off again, something on the tip of your tongue.
I looked into the trees without seeing a bit of it, concentrating on the images forming.
Vera, in the conference room at Wood Point. So beautiful and regal ... and already frail with the sickness. “I’ve seen you in my visions. An older you. A different you. You’re amazing, breathtaking,” she had said then.
And sitting by her beside at Jack’s, wishing it wasn’t the end. “I’d hoped for more time...” she’d said. I’d wished it too.
Every vision, every prophecy, every prediction Vera had ever made came rushing back. But this time, so did the affection and the certainty. She’d believed in me so completely. She’d seen this very moment. She’d known all along the choices I would make.
I looked back at my mother, my mouth open
“Fee took countless blood samples before she—” My mother halted and started again; she still couldn’t bear to say the words. “Anyway, we preserved a few for research in case her debilitation becomes hereditary,” my mother explained.
“So? Did it work?” Jack asked, leaning forward in excitement.
“Do you have her memories inside you?” Grandma demanded.
“Yeah,” I said, still in shock that it was even possible. “I do.” I looked back at Cambria—now fully a wolf with ebony black fur that was, impossibly, streaked with neon blue—and smiled. “It worked,” I told her. “Vera is ... her essence or something ... is in my head.”
Cambria tried responding, but it came out a growl and I laughed, the sudden surge of joy inside me too big to contain. I found Wes, my russet wolf, and started to go to him, but he danced away.
“I will be right back, I swear. But I need clothes because I’m definitely making out with you in front of all these people.” He dashed off to the sound of several whistles.
Our audience drifted back in, asking questions and listening to my friends as they attempted to explain everything that had happened. With Cambria, with The Draven, with me, and finally, with the peace treaty Alex was passing around the group.
“We’re going to sign a new treaty,” Cord explained. “One that recognizes The Cause and its members for providing amnesty but also one that outlines a plan where amnesty isn’t a privilege, it’s a right. There will be rules and punishments for those who break them but there will be fair trials.”
“How do we know that?” asked one of the wolves.
“Because you and I both will serve on that jury,” she told him, and instead of scoffing like they’d done earlier in the day, the wolves tilted their heads, considering her idea.
At the back of the crowd, I watched the large gray wolf—the Werewolf pack leader—dart away and disappear around the corner of the cabin. I started to follow but Cambria stopped me.
“You okay?” she asked. Her voice came out somewhere between concise language and a growl. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“I’m not mad,” I assured her. “I was worried for you.”
“I’m okay,” she said, clearly still just as surprised as everyone else at her new appearance. She tilted her head, her eyes deep pools of curiosity. “I’m still me inside,” she said. “But I’m ... more. It’s so weird.”
She shifted her weight, stepping sideways as if off balance. “Can we run? For some reason, I seriously need to move.”
I laughed. “Logan was right. I don’t know why I was ever worried. You’re clearly the strongest of us all.”
“Clearly,” Derek agreed, rubbing up beside her. My heart warmed watching them.
“Is my mom okay?” Cambria asked, her wolfish face clouding with worry.
“She will be,” Derek assured her. “Victoria updated me a little bit ago. Fee’s in with her now. She’ll pull through.”
“Maybe we can send Koby to help,” Cambria said. “He’s pretty great at pain management.”
“I’d be happy to,” he said.
“I don’t think it was management so much as a time share thing,” I said.
“Tara, can you come here?” Alex called. I joined him at the head of the assembled group, next to Cord, and he handed me a pen.
“Tara’s going to join Wes as leader of The Cause,” Cord said.
“I am?” I stared at her and she continued, ignoring me. All I could do was listen along with everyone else.
I caught Jack’s eye and he grinned—the equivalent of his blessing. “There will be a training period, of course,” he said. “I’ll get to teach you again.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically but I was smiling too.
“They’ll act as ambassadors to spread the word of our treaty and all that’s happened today,” Cord explained. “They will still act as a safe haven for Werewolves and Hunters alike. One day soon, we hope you’ll come to trust that you don’t need sanctuary. You’re safe already no matter who or what you are.”
“You want us to sign that thing?” Kristin asked.
“We aren’t going to force you but we hope you will. You did stand with us today against my father’s army.” Cord flashed a smile and a few of the men in the crowd—including wolves—blinked at the sight she made. Blonde hair glowing in the sunlight, teeth flashing as she offered an encouraging smile, shoulders squared with confident power. “We’re already a team,” she added. “Don’t you think?”
There was a heavy silence and then Koby appeared. “Where do we sign?”
I faltered—too overcome with relief and surging hope to even answer—but Alex stepped up and held out the Draven where the parchment with the treaty lay over the page naming Cord as successor. “Here.”
Koby shrank away. “I can’t sign that. It’s the same paper from the book.” His eyes flickered up to Alex and away. “We don’t write in each other’s books.”
“You do now,” Cord assured him. She held out a pen and pointed. “Here, next to my name.”
Slowly, Koby pressed the pen to page and scrawled his name. When he’d finished, he stepped back and flashed me a small smile. One by one, the others leaned over and clapped his shoulder or patted his back. The Hunter woman I’d met first stepped up and took the pen.
“Thank you ... Gail,” Cord said, reading the signature as Gail handed her pen back.
“Thank you,” Gail said. “It’s an honor.” She handed the pen back amid applause and shouts.
“I’d like to sign,” said a deep voice.
From the back of the crowd, a man with a long gray beard shouldered his way to the front. He wore a pair of ratty sweats that had thinned to holes in several places. “What’s your name?” Cord asked.
“Abraham,” Jack said, clapping the man on the back and walking beside him to stand in front of Cord.
“You know each other?” Cord asked, looking between them.
“You know me too,” the gray-haired man said. “After today, I should think we can call each other friends.”
“The gray wolf,” I realized.
“My friends call me Abraham. Nice to meet you, Tara,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” He looked at Cord. “And you. I’d like to sign your treaty if you’ll have me.”
“We would be honored,” Cord said, handing him the pen.
He scrawled his name and handed the pen to Cord with
a broad smile. “My pack will sign but we’ll need some clothes first. Otherwise, your first official gathering as leader might lead to unnecessary frowns in the community.”
“Sir,” Cord said, her eyes sparkling, “We’ve been causing frowns our whole life.”
Abraham laughed at that and Jack joined him, their deep voices filling the clearing with the last noise I expected to hear today. Everyone began talking and moving at once.
Everyone with two hands and working thumbs pressed in to add their names to the treaty. A few at a time, wolves ducked behind the house to shift and share clothes in order to add their names. Somewhere during the commotion, Cambria and Derek slipped away. I started to go after them, still worried for how Cambria was adjusting to her new body.
“Whoa, there.” Wes grabbed my hand, spinning me around to face him. “Don’t run off just yet.” His arm snaked around my waist and he pulled me against him, torso to torso. His hair was disheveled, his jeans slung low on his hips, offering a peek of abs from underneath the hem of what was obviously a borrowed shirt.
“I hurried back just for you,” he said, his voice seductively low.
“I was checking on Cambria. She and Derek—”
“Will be fine,” he assured me, leaning close. He brushed a hand over my cheek, catching strands of my hair between his fingers as he inhaled deeply. “You smell amazing, whether I’m human or wolf, you know that?”
I smiled and leaned in, my mouth upturned to meet his.
From somewhere behind him, George yelled, “Is that my shirt? Are you wearing my clothes again?”
Wes pulled back just far enough to wink at me and I laughed.
“Wes, I’m talking to you,” George said.
“We did it,” Wes whispered. “Me, you, all of us, we did it.”
“We did,” I agreed.
The kiss was magic—pure joy, love, and hope. All light, no darkness or fear, and I pressed harder into it, breathless with the ecstasy of the moment. Wes was right. We did it. And tonight, we’d do the only thing left for us. The one act we’d yet to perform out of such love and light.
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