by Lilly Pink
A hush fell over the group and Eloise felt her heart jackhammering in her throat. What if her new and much-needed friend had been wrong? What if this meal, this breaking of bread, didn’t do the trick after all?
The way they were all looking at her now, the only one not present being Vera (who was refusing to come anywhere near the one she called the interloper), Eloise couldn’t tell if they were impressed by the gesture or even angrier than they had been before.
As it turned out, what they were was unsure. This became abundantly clear to Eloise when Gram pushed silently through the little throng of werewolves surrounding the communal fire in a tight knot. She let her eyes wander over the scene before her, taking enough time to contemplate what she saw that, for Eloise, the wait was excruciating.
Finally, after the tension had become so thick it was almost suffocating, she smiled. A moment later she began to laugh, and following that she raised both of her withered arms into the air.
“See here!” she shouted, her voice much stronger than looked possible coming from such a gnarled old body. “See here what this girl has done and take heart. She is enemy no more. Her blood has been shed with our blood, and yes, spilled our blood too. Is there any among us who can say he has not spilled the blood of a brother or sister, be it in jest or in quarrel?”
The question was met by silence, but it was a silence that felt to Eloise to be sheepish rather than hostile. She hardly dared to get her hopes up, but she also couldn’t quite stop herself from doing so. When she felt Archer step silently behind her, appearing out of nowhere and slipping his arms protectively around her waist, that hope only grew. She felt the fierceness of her love for him rolling over her and knew that it was that love Gram was speaking to the heart of.
It was the understanding of that love that lay in everyone present that she was appealing to, and it was working. She could see in their uncertain faces that it was working and her heart was so glad she felt as if it might burst. When Gram’s eyes lighted on her, only for a moment, she saw in them all of the confirmation she needed. Archer’s grandmother might never like the fact that he had chosen a lion shifter for his mate, or that fate had chosen one for him, but she would support the two of them now.
She had made that decision when she had agreed to heal Eloise and the rest of them would now follow her lead. All that had been missing was this grand gesture and with it executed there was nothing standing in the way of a real chance at happiness.
“Look upon this feast!” Gram continued, drawing her audience in even more deeply. “Look upon this feast and know that it is the same as the one that was prepared by your fathers and their fathers before them. It was her hands that prepared this for our tribe, her hands that worked the dough and seared the meats lovingly. She brought us this offering on the night of the full moon and it is her act of contrition. Is there any here who will deny her that? I have given her my energies, my blood to make her well. Is there anyone who will deny her that?”
Again, her words were met with silence. Eloise stood stock still, her mind racing with the influx of information she was receiving and with anticipation of what the final word of the people was going to be. Somehow, she understood without needing to be told that this was the moment in which they would either take her in as one of their own or label her a pariah forever. It was a pack decision and Gram was essentially calling for a vote.
Gram, who had saved Eloise with her own special blood. Gram, who knew what Eloise and Archer meant to each other better than they yet understood it themselves. She gazed around her, arms still in the air, and her look was one of defiance. Her look was a dare. She was daring someone to challenge her, daring someone to make a case against Eloise after all that had been said. When nobody spoke, she let her arms drop to her side and nodded. She looked suddenly very tired and it was a tired nod she gave, but it was also one of satisfaction.
“Let it be done, then. There will be no more fighting, no more blaming. There will be no more shunning because there is no “other” here any longer. She is one of us now. Remember that. Remember that when we break this bread, when we hunt, and be glad.”
And then she was done. Without any kind of fanfare whatsoever, she shuffled forward and sat wearily beside the fire. Carmella, who still stood at Eloise’s side, nudged Eloise’s arm.
“Go on,” she whispered, cocking her head in Gram’s direction, “go sit beside her. Serve her meal and then the rest of us will join. We’ve done it. You’re finally in.”
Eloise did as she was told and before she knew it they were all sitting around in the steadily dimming light, laughing and eating as if they had been friends for a thousand years. People who had acted as if she didn’t exist, people who had called her terrible things, now patted her on the back and treated her like kin. Halfway through the meal Vera was even brought out, albeit grudgingly, and after a tense whispered conversation with Gram she approached Eloise.
“I suppose I owe you an apology. Gram tells me you’ve prepared the sacred meal.”
“I owe you an apology as well,” Eloise said slowly, doing her best to decide whether or not Vera was being halfway genuine. “I shouldn’t have fought.”
“Right, well it’s done now. Gram tells me there’s to be no more of that and I guess that’s alright with me. Besides, Archer was going to grow old sooner or later. I’m not the settling down type.”
Eloise nodded gracefully, which seemed to please Vera, who nodded in return with a curt smile before taking her leave. Eloise could see that the last statement had been a bald-faced lie, that Vera was still very much taken by Archer, but she was strangely touched by the attempt at burying the hatchet.
She was more touched still when Archer’s friend Roman came to give her a hug and to tell her she would be like the sister he’d never had. By the time Archer walked Eloise to their trailer door, she was practically floating with how wonderfully everything had turned out. She turned to face Archer, threw her arms up around his neck, and got up onto her tiptoes.
“You’re pretty wonderful, you know that?”
“Me?” he laughed, hugging her to him so tightly she could feel his heart beating against her body. “I didn’t do a damn thing, much as I should have. I think it’s you who’s been wonderful. Amazing, really. You’re simply amazing.”
She kissed him, lightly at first and then with the unique passion that still surprised her every time she even thought about Archer. The only thing that stopped her from carrying things further, hell, maybe even from stripping down naked right there for anyone and everyone to see, was the knowledge that he would be changing soon.
There was the full moon to think of, and the hunt. It was something she had dreaded before, but now that everything felt so right she didn’t mind it a bit. There was only one thing she wanted to do before he went, one thing she felt so compelled to do she couldn’t come anywhere close to containing herself. She pulled away from him and laughed when he groaned his disapproval.
“Don’t whine,” she chided playfully, reaching up to brush his dark locks out of his eyes. “You’ve got to get going.”
“Maybe I don’t. I can fight it.”
“No, you shouldn’t do a thing like that. It’s who you are. And Archer? I love it. I love who you are. I love you.”
He kissed her again and assured her that he loved her too, more than he loved himself. It was the last thing he said to her before he left for his hunt and when Eloise slipped into bed, ready and grateful for her impending sleep, she felt completely whole. She drifted off with his voice still ringing in her ears and with the knowledge that when she woke again, it would be to the sound of Archer coming home to her. Because that was where she was, she told herself happily in her semi-conscious state, she was home. It was home, and it belonged to both of them now.
CHAPTER 15
“Archer? Is it you?”
The words came out in a jumbled slur, words that were almost completely unintelligible. They didn’t sound like Eloise’
s words, but that was about right because she didn’t feel quite like herself. She didn’t feel like herself at all, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why that should be so. The only thing she could think of was that she had fallen into too deep of a sleep and was now struggling to pull herself back out of it again.
It seemed to her that some kinds of sleep were so deep they were halfway to death, and this had been one of those sleeps. That was why she felt so strange. That was the only reason that made any sense. She had been too deeply asleep when a noise had pulled her back to consciousness and alarmed her.
But there was no reason to be alarmed because it was only Archer coming back to her. Despite her lingering feeling of disorientation, Eloise smiled dreamily with her eyes still closed. Archer and the rest of them must have finished their hunt and now he had come back to her again. Archer, whom she loved and who loved her in return, had come back to their home.
He would crawl into bed with her as the light continued to change from the swirling gray of predawn to the sunny day and as that change happened, they would make love, and then perhaps they would sleep some more before rising to meet the day.
They could do that, could do whatever they wanted to, because the world belonged to them. It was the thought all people who were still young enough to have not yet fully grasped the idea of mortality had, but for Eloise it felt true enough.
It felt so true, so real, that she could feel him sliding under the covers beside her before he even did so. It felt so real that when a voice finally spoke, she could not believe what she was hearing. Even when she finally opened her eyes to see what there was to be seen, she couldn’t believe it.
“That’s right, princess, time to open your eyes. The time for beauty rest is done.”
“I don’t—”
“Understand? Of course, you don’t. Princesses like you aren’t made for understanding. You aren’t made for anything aside from causing trouble. All of you uppity bitches, that’s all you can do. All any of you ever do.”
“I’m no princess,” Eloise answered carefully, never taking her eyes off of Roman Morrow as she did so, “so you might as well stop calling me that. I’m just a shifter, same as you and all of the rest of the family.”
“No,” he spat out, his eyes flashing in the thick, murky early morning light, “you’re nothing like me. Nothing like any of us. I know all about your family, your people. Don’t think I don’t.”
“But I’m not a part of them anymore. You must see that, Roman. You heard what Gram said.”
“You leave her out of it!” Roman snarled, lurching towards Eloise and showing her how close he still was to shifting into his werewolf self. “You don’t get to bring her up. Gram is blinded by her love for Archer, same as most of the rest of them are. They don’t see what needs to be done, not like I do.”
“And what’s that, Roman? What needs to be done?”
“Why, that’s simple, princess. You need to be removed from the equation. It’s just like a cancer, like a tumor. It’s got to be culled before it can spread and since I’m the only one that’s still got the guts to do the cutting, well, then I guess it’ll have to be me.”
“But Archer is your friend!”
“He’s more than a friend, he’s like a brother to me.”
“And still you would do this to him? Still, with him being like a brother, you would hurt him in this way?”
“It’s for him that I’m doing it! He can’t see past his own pecker, for Christ’s sake. He can’t see past the lie of having found himself the one true love. Seems like the rest of them have forgotten how to see it, too, which means this needs to be taken care of now. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Roman lurched forward again, unbelievably fast despite the distinct smell of cheap whiskey permeating from his pores. Eloise scrambled back instinctively, only there was nowhere for her to scramble to. The bed of the silver camper was positioned at the very back and when she tried to move her back struck the wall. She was trapped with this man who was also a monster shambling towards her, the glint of a long, curved knife in one hand. She could shift, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to do it before he gutted her, and she didn’t want that.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, she opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn’t get that out before he reached her, either. Before a sound left her throat, which felt like it was tightening steadily so that she would soon lose the ability to speak or breathe, one sweaty, grimy hand clamped over her mouth. Roman leaned into her, his face so close to hers now that all she could see were his bloodshot eyes. Those eyes felt like the only thing left in the world and Eloise wondered desperately how things had gone from so good to so bad in such a short amount of time.
“Try it,” Roman dared quietly, his face full of menace and his breath ripe with the stink of sour drink. “I dare you. Try and scream and see what happens to the girl.”
Eloise’s eyes widened, not understanding, not wanting to understand. Roman saw that and chuckled, a sickening sound that made her stomach lurch uncomfortably. When Roman spoke to her again, she could hear that his voice had gained confidence and she understood that he felt enough in control of this situation now to start to get cocky.
While she might be able to use that to her advantage, she had a very bad feeling that it actually meant the exact opposite. Roman knew what she was and what she was capable of. If he was feeling confident enough to speak to her in this new, sure tone, he must have a reason. As it turned out, he did, and it was more terrible than Eloise knew what to do with.
“If I take my hand off of your mouth and you scream, I’m going to kill her. Would you like to know who ‘her’ is?”
Eloise nodded, resisting the urge to bite down on his hand and take her chances. Roman nodded back and Eloise felt a dawning horror as she realized that he knew what she was thinking and that it was something she was now too afraid to do.
He removed his hand slowly, ready to incapacitate her at any moment if need be, and stepped aside. He was grinning as he did so, and very shortly Eloise saw why. She gasped, which prompted Roman to laugh an ugly laugh, a laugh that made her sure that he was either crazy or genuinely lacking any kind of heart at all.
“I couldn’t help but notice how well the two of you were getting on yesterday. It was sweet, really. Nice to see you finally found a friend. And it certainly made things easier on me, I have to tell you. It’s always easier to get unpleasant things done when you’ve got some kind of leverage.”
It was Carmella, just as Eloise had known the moment Roman had spoken of killing a “her.” Still, knowing it and seeing it were two different things and Eloise had to bite down on her fist to keep from crying out loud. She had promised that she wouldn’t and she was terrified that if she did so anyway, Roman would use that knife to slit the girl’s throat. He had her gagged and hogtied, her wrists and ankles bound and then tied together so that her body was forced into a terrible arched contortion.
Her eyes were wide with fear, but also with something else that made Eloise very, very afraid for the younger girl. That look said that she would take the first possible opportunity to try and thwart Roman, whether or not it would cost her own life. It was the look in Carmella’s eyes more than anything else that made Eloise do what she did next. If Carmella were to get hurt, or even worse, killed, Eloise knew she would never be able to live with herself. When she looked up into Roman’s eyes, she made sure she showed nothing but compliance in her expression.
“Alright.”
“Alright, huh? Alright what?”
“Alright, I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do. I won’t scream, won’t make a fuss. I’ll do whatever you want me to, only don’t hurt her.”
“Excellent! Exactly what I wanted to hear. That means she gets to stay here and you can come with me.”
“But you’ll untie her, won’t you?”
“Now Eloise, really,” Roman answered in a regretful voice
that sounded so campy it was almost cartoonish. “I wish I could, but that’s just not possible. She might run off and find someone to alert, and I can’t have that. Best to wait until someone happens to find her, which should be a little while.”
“Why? What did you do to Archer?”
“Nothing permanent, dearie, not to worry. Just a knock upside the head to make him sleep for a while. Still, not long enough for us to dawdle this way. We wouldn’t want to still be here when he comes to. That wouldn’t be good for any of us. Now, come on. Let’s go. Do I need to lead you by the arm or are you going to come on your own?”
“I can come on my own, thank you very much.”
“Oh! Getting haughty now, are we? That’s fine, you can come of your own volition. Just know that if you try anything, I’ll gut you like a fish. I don’t want to do it, it’s not going to get any of us what we want, but I will do it, and I won’t think twice. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she answered through gritted teeth, “I believe you.”