by Reine, SM
Abel stood and pulled a wad of twenties out of his pocket. “What a freaking mess.”
“No kidding, brother,” said another drunk patron, who did a double-take at the sight of Abel’s scarred face.
“Want your change?” the bartender asked as she collected Abel’s cash.
“Hell yes, I do. I’m not just standing here for this dive’s ambiance.”
She went to the register, returned with three dollars and ninety-six cents, and muttered, “Tightwad.”
He stuffed the change in his pocket and headed out onto the cold city streets.
Scott Whyte had sent Abel into the city to pick up supplies for spell-casting. Apparently, the old geezer was still hoping that he could do necromancy, even though he was a zombie himself. But Abel knew that wasn’t really why he had been sent on an errand that required over an hour of driving in each direction. It was because the doctor was going to look at Rylie, and nobody wanted Abel there for that.
“Screw them,” he muttered at nothing as he stalked up the street. A group of people were clustered by the window of an electronics store to watch the news on six different flat screen TVs, and Abel had to step into the street to get around them.
Tate had picked a hell of a time to drop that bomb on everyone. The pundits were talking about what the new Office of Preternatural Affairs would mean. Registration? New laws? Rounding up all the “evil” and shooting it?
Shitty time to be a pregnant werewolf.
Abel headed down to a corner drugstore and gave Scott’s list to the guy behind the counter. The pharmacy only had a few of the items, so he had to go to the organic grocery store to find the rest. All in all, it cost almost a hundred bucks. He had just barely enough money left after drinking the rest of Scott’s cash away.
Abel tossed the grocery bags in the backseat of the Chevelle and headed out of the city with the windows rolled down. He hit evening traffic immediately. The bridge was backed up all the way downtown.
He blasted classic rock for a while, but once AC/DC faded away, Tate’s voice piped over his speakers. “Evil is real. I’ve seen it.”
“Shut up, Tate,” Abel said, punching the button for the next preset station.
“—of Preternatural Affairs claims that the assassination of Senator Peterson—”
Next station.
“Demons? Werewolves? Are you kidding me? It’s kind of early for April Fool’s Day.”
Abel gave up on the radio.
Traffic finally broke up enough for him to get moving. He swerved into the fast lane, ignored the blaring horns, and took the first exit off of the bridge. His headlights cut through the darkness like twin moonbeams on the slushy pavement. The tires whooshed through the snow, mud splattered on the side of his Chevelle, and the windshield wipers whisked rhythmically. But none of that was loud enough to drown out his thoughts.
It was a long drive back to the ranch. The gate was locked when he arrived, and he had to get out and climb to the other side to open it.
He parked between Gwyneth’s truck and Stephanie’s Lexus sedan. Before he cut the headlights, he glimpsed figures moving in the shadows behind the house.
Abel sniffed the air. Werewolves. Definitely werewolves.
When he approached, Levi’s voice became clearer. Judging by the kid’s body language, he was arguing with his twin sister, Bekah. He poured stress hormones into the air.
“That wouldn’t solve anything,” Bekah said, following Levi as he paced down to the apple tree and back. “Violence only leads to more—”
“Maybe violence is what we need!”
“Guess this means you were watching your boyfriend on the news,” Abel said, unable to control a smirk.
Levi flipped the bird at him and stalked into the darkness. As soon as he was outside the ring of light from the kitchen window, he stripped off his shirt, changed into his wolf form in an explosion of fur and blood, and shot into the night. His howl echoed over the hills as he fled.
Bekah leaned against the wall with a groan. “What were they thinking? ‘Office of Preternatural Affairs.’ What does that even mean?”
“It means that our miserable lives are gonna get a lot more miserable. Whatever. How’s Rylie?”
“I think Stephanie’s talking to her again.” Bekah caught his arm when he tried to pass her. “You can’t go in there. You know that.”
He loomed over her. Abel was at least a foot taller than Bekah, and twice as wide, but she didn’t look intimidated. “What are you going to do to stop me?”
“I’m going to appeal to your sense of decency. Don’t look at me like that, I know you must have one. Give Rylie some breathing room. I’ve watched you guys together, and I know that she loves you; she’ll find you when she’s ready.”
Abel gave a low growl. “Your miserable attempt at a pep talk won’t fix anything, so save your breath and shut your mouth.”
Bekah threw her hands in the air.
“Fine. Then let’s see what we can do about our zombie problem, huh?”
Scott Whyte had been confined to the cellar beneath the Gresham house for several days, and it had quickly turned from storage for canned goods and camping equipment into a witch’s workspace. He had been keeping busy during his incarceration, too: one of the crates had been converted into an altar, complete with representations of the Mother Goddess and Horned God woven from dry grass; a small circle of power had been painted on the floor in strawberry preserves; and the shelves were filled with crystals and odd rocks.
Abel glared at the giant wooden pentacle hanging on the wall. Scott was a big fan of Satanic imagery.
Bekah caught his look and jabbed a knuckle in his ribs. “I know what you’re thinking. Stop it,” she whispered.
“Like hell you do!” he hissed back, jerking away from her.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re thinking that we should have known Scott was bad because of the pentagrams. How many times do we have to tell you there’s nothing inherently evil about witchcraft?”
Okay, so she had known what he was thinking.
“But he did turn out to be evil,” Abel pressed.
Bekah rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother arguing. Everyone was pretty stung by Scott’s betrayal, even though he had insisted that he didn’t think resurrecting one dead woman would hurt anybody. His youngest daughter seemed happy to accept that excuse, but Abel still thought it was bullshit.
“This will work for the spells I have in mind,” Scott announced, breaking the tension between Abel and Bekah. He was seated at his altar, and being watched by Gwyn closely—very closely. She had her rifle and everything.
The cellar doors creaked open, and Stephanie ducked inside. “What’s the verdict?” Her hair was pulled back in its usual tidy bun, but her clothes were rumpled. She looked frazzled.
Scott was already mixing something with a mortar and pestle. “If I can heal my cranial wound, we’ll know if I can keep doing magic or not.” The doctor reached him in less than a second and snatched it out of his hands. Stephanie scrutinized the herbs, smelling them and stirring the bowl with her finger. “It’s just lotus,” he said.
“Forgive me if I don’t trust you, Father. Learning that you’ve lied about your abilities for my entire life has made me a little testy.” She set his tools back down. “You can continue.”
Scott glanced around the room. “Are you all going to stand here and watch me put the spell together?”
“Yep,” Gwyn said, stroking her rifle like it was a kitten. She was starting to smell a little funny, like stale flesh and graveyards. “We sure are.”
He pushed his hat back to rub the gunshot wound on his forehead, then got down to work.
It took a long, boring hour to prepare the spell. When Scott finished preparing his ingredients, Stephanie took them from him again. “I’ll cast the circle for you,” she said.
“Why?” Bekah asked without looking up from her phone. Her thumbs were a blur as they flew over the screen.
&n
bsp; “Whomever makes the circle controls the spell,” Stephanie explained as she finished constructing the circle using the messy ring that Scott had drawn in jam. “I’ll be able to see what he’s doing, and if he tries anything strange, I’ll know immediately.”
Scott hung back, looking more than a little insulted, as his daughter finished putting everything together. Once she was finished, he sat on the floor inside the circle.
Abel never paid attention to the witches at work, so he wasn’t sure how he expected the spell to progress from there. Would Scott sacrifice a kitten? Smear blood all over his face? Speak in tongues?
None of that happened. Scott did hold a small animal skull in one hand, but aside from that, all he did was sit with his eyes closed.
His eyes opened in two seconds. “I can’t do it.”
“Are you even trying?” Abel asked. “You’re just sitting there.”
Scott glared at him. When his forehead wrinkled, it made the gunshot wound on his forehead pucker. “Witchcraft is subtle. I must be able to access a wellspring of power within my core to do any magic, but even though I can feel that it’s there, I cannot reach it.”
Abel rolled his eyes. “Being dead probably doesn’t help.”
“I think I might be able to channel my abilities with the help of a strong witch.” Scott faced Stephanie. “If we could speak to Cain, maybe he would know someone else among the Apple—”
“No way,” Bekah said.
“I agree with her,” Abel said. “Guess it had to happen eventually.”
Scott scuffed part of the circle on the floor, then started putting things back onto his altar. He slammed the mortar and pestle on a shelf. “Do you want me to come back to life or not?” he snapped.
Stephanie took a bottle from him before he could strike that against something hard, too. “You can’t talk to Cain or anybody with the Apple, and that’s that. Now stop being so dramatic.”
“Dramatic? Dramatic? She shot me!” He pointed at Gwyn, who gave him the kind of look that said she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
“Why can’t you do it?” Bekah asked the doctor. “You cast the circle.”
“She’s too weak,” Scott said, yanking the bottle out of her grip.
Stephanie didn’t look offended. She picked up the remaining crystals and the animal skeleton and set them on his altar. “It’s true. I’m fine with ritual, but my abilities in magic are very limited. If we need a powerful witch…” Her hands stilled over the grass figure of the Horned God. “Well, I might have an old friend that could help us with that.”
It took Rylie a long time to fall asleep after her appointment with Stephanie. Seth stayed in bed with her until her breathing grew deep and even. Then he extricated himself from the sheets, grabbed his cell phone from the desk, and slipped outside.
Seth hesitated on the snowy front step. Most of the wedding massacre had been cleaned up, but the gazebo was still standing, and the fairy lights they had used to illuminate the aisle were still glowing. It was bright enough that he could see the places they had tried to shovel snow over the blood stains.
He wandered down the aisle, clenching his cell phone in his fist.
If he closed his eyes, he could still see Rylie in her wedding dress with the long white train, the red highlights, and her hair done in curls. She had been more beautiful as a bride than he had ever seen her before. Seth hadn’t been happy ever since Cain came into their lives, but in that moment…everything had been perfect.
And then his brothers ruined everything.
Seth passed the gift table that he had toppled while fighting Cain and sat down on one of the few chairs that was still upright. He took several deep breaths to calm himself before speed-dialing Yasir.
Two rings, and the answering machine picked up.
“This is Seth,” he said. “I watched the speech tonight. I think—I think I saw Cain there. I don’t know if I’m imagining things or if something has gone wrong. I need you to check and see if he made it into the Union’s prison. Give me a call back.”
He hung up and pocketed his phone. He had barely pulled his hand away when his pocket buzzed with a responding text message.
The number belonged to Yasir, and all it said was, “Cain is secure in prison.” That was fast.
If it hadn’t been Cain behind Secretary Zettel, that was one problem he wouldn’t have to worry about. But it still left him with the issue of what to do about his other brother, his fiancée, and a world that suddenly knew werewolves existed. Yasir’s confirmation didn’t make him feel any better at all.
Seth heard a creak, and he realized that the cellar door had been opened. Pale yellow light splashed onto the snow, broken into halves by the shadow of someone tall emerging.
Abel.
The sight of him choked Seth with a powerful mix of anger and jealousy, so strong and sudden that he felt like he had a monster of his very own living in his chest.
Abel strode toward the Chevelle, and Seth moved to intercept him.
“Hey!”
His brother turned at the sound of his voice, but when he saw Seth, he rolled his eyes. “What now?”
“What were you doing in the cellar?” Seth asked.
“Trying to fix the zombies.”
“I probably wouldn’t call Scott and Gwyn zombies.”
Abel snorted. “You also wouldn’t call me your competition, but just because you don’t want to say something doesn’t mean it’s not true.” And there it was, laid out in the open. Abel continued walking, crunching through inch-deep snow, and Seth hurried to catch up with him.
“You really think that you’re my competition?”
“No, not really,” Abel said. He smirked. “But I’m trying to be fair to you.”
Seth clenched his jaw so hard that it felt like his teeth might crack. “We have a new werewolf coming soon. I want you to pick him up from the airport.”
“Why? So you can get me out of the picture?” He didn’t wait for Seth to respond. He flung open the driver’s side door of the Chevelle. “I’m not doing it this time. Tell the newbie to rent a damn car.”
Abel sat at the wheel, but Seth grabbed the door before he could close it. He had been trying not to talk about Rylie, but it all came spilling out before he could stop himself. “You need to stay away from Rylie. Don’t talk to her, don’t look at her, just—don’t go anywhere near her. She doesn’t need the stress right now.”
“Fine,” Abel said.
Seth had been braced for a fight, so the response shocked him. “Fine?”
Abel’s lips peeled back. It almost could have passed for a grin if his golden eyes hadn’t been gleaming with barely-restrained anger. “I won’t have to go anywhere near her. She’s my mate. She’ll come looking for me.”
He wrested the door from Seth’s grip, slammed it shut, and peeled down the road.
THREE
Beta
The entire pack treated Rylie differently once they knew she was pregnant. Whenever she stepped into a room, the conversation died off instantly. People stared at her stomach. And none of the wolves seemed to want to talk with her except Bekah.
“They’re just worried about what this will mean for the pack,” she explained a few days later while they took an easy walk along the highway. “They’re worrying that you won’t be able to control everyone on the full and new moons while you’re pregnant.”
Rylie somehow doubted that was the only reason they stared at her, but it was still a legitimate worry. She had been kind of freaking out about it herself. “It shouldn’t change anything,” she said, rubbing her arms to warm them. Now that the morning sickness was starting to subside, she always felt weird and prickly, like the wolf was restless inside of her skin. “I’m still the Alpha.”
“So maybe you should tell everyone that. I think everyone could use a pep talk after the wedding, and the whole Office of Whatever the Crap is Going On.”
Give a speech? In front of a bunch of werewolves th
at thought she was a philandering fiancée? Rylie would have preferred to bury herself in a snowdrift without food of water until the spring thaw.
“Maybe,” she said.
Even though neither of them was winded, they kept the walk short. Werewolves could run for hours without getting tired, but Rylie was avoiding the town. She had gone to sleep one night looking bloated and woke up the next day with a big belly. It was like the baby had turned around to jam its feet against her navel. There was no mistaking her bump for anything but a pregnancy now, and she didn’t want to have to explain it to anyone. Especially not when Tate’s speech was still being played nonstop.
After just an hour, they returned to the ranch. Rylie’s mind spun with thoughts of speeches and cheating and failed weddings.
Levi was on the hill outside the house, and he had an audience. Analizia, Pyper, and Daven watched with rapt attention as he paced in front of them. “We’ll have to band together to survive this,” he said, speaking so loudly that Rylie could hear him from the mailbox by the gate. She had never seen him so animated before. “It’s more important than ever that our pack be united and strong.”
The onlookers shifted, and Rylie realized that Trevin was among them. Her heart plummeted. He was one of the only wolves she was certain to be loyal to her.
Bekah caught Rylie’s expression. “He’s just talking to them.”
“Yeah, like how a general ‘just talks’ to his troops before marching to war,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Rylie picked up her pace as she headed for the front door, hoping to pass by Levi’s speech without attracting notice. It totally failed. Every single head turned toward her as she passed.
Bekah got to the door first and held it open for her. “I’ll be inside for yoga in a few minutes,” she said.
Rylie never made it to the shower. Instead, she paced in the living room, fuming silently.
Abel had warned her that Levi was getting big ideas about what role he played in the pack, but Rylie had assumed that he wouldn’t challenge her authority while she was around.