At last, Aidan stood from her seat, her face grim as she faced me. “I understand you were covered in blood when you woke up on the beach.”
“I was.”
“Human?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
“There! She admits it!” Nicole hissed.
“Say one more word,” Tristan growled with a black look. “I dare you.”
Aidan shot her sister a severe look and then went on with her interrogation of me. “Whose blood?”
“Andy’s, I think.” Revulsion settled heavily in my gut. “I-I think I ate him.” I remembered waking up feeling as though I’d consumed a horse. The thought of any carcass rotting in my belly had always disturbed me, but knowing I’d eaten Andy…! Well, that was inconceivable.
“That’s impossible, Lippy,” Augustus said matter-of-factly. “I examined the body. All organs and limbs were accounted for.” He folded his arms, smirking. “Hate to break it to ya, but you’re no cannibal.”
Bemusedly, I shook my head. “How do you—”
“You ate a loggerhead. I found it next morning—looked like a shark had been at it. Reeked of mutt though.” His teeth were long and sharp as he sneered at Tristan who was bristling, the word having stuck in my mate’s craw yet again. “Jus’ sayin’.”
“Wish you wouldn’t,” Tristan snarled.
“Wait!” I gasped, “I wouldn’t have had either Lydia’s or Andy’s blood on me. I couldn’t have!” My eyes narrowed. “I was running in the surf.” Bits and pieces were slowing becoming coherent—like a lost dream coalescing into something tangible. “And it was raining so hard.” I remembered my teeth sinking into the soft shell. The flesh had been tough and the turtle had tossed its limbs out desperately. I remembered it struggling. “I didn’t kill Andy!” I came out of my chair with the force of my epiphany. “It wasn’t me!”
“But you just told us you woke up coated in his blood,” Max argued, ignoring the bit about my saltwater bath.
I gritted my teeth, frustrated, willing myself to remember more.
“What else do you remember, Evan?” Aidan’s body was tense with expectation. “A smell maybe? Something other than blood.”
Where was she trying to lead me? I could feel it on the tip of my—holy shit! Incredulously, I turned to face Tristan. “Petrol. I smelled petrol. Faint, but it was definitely there.”
Aidan sank back down into her chair, her eyes closing briefly. Sadly. There was no need to silence the room—everyone was already struck dumb with confusion. “You’re free to go,” she said, gesturing me from the hot seat.
Feeling as though I’d just been pardoned from death row, I allowed Tristan to pull me away. I could hardly believe it.
Max followed my progress with a lowered brow.
“Let’s not waste any more time,” said Aidan, turning to her sister. “Take a seat, Nicole.”
Amidst the sudden deafening uproar, Nicole stood paralyzed. “What?”
Aidan said nothing, merely nodded peremptorily towards the chair I’d vacated, her impatience sublimating that impenetrable poignancy.
Poleaxed, her sister slowly made her way to the center of the room. “I-I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Augustus answered coldly.
All this time, I’d mistaken that coldness in Augustus for flippancy, but as I watched him scowl at his pack mate it dawned on me that he was livid. He had taken pains to hide it till now. I glanced up at Tristan, a little disturbed to see a look of bloodlust filling his eyes. They were eerily fixed to Nicole.
The mist of confusion had slowly lifted from my mind by now. In a bizarre and unexpected twist of events, I’d been absolved of all guilt. Nicole’s innocence, however, was now evidently in question. I searched her face for clues, summoning the vengeful hate I knew I ought to feel for her—the same malice that had driven her to bite me. The same spite that had craved such a hideous death for me. But as I took in her gaping mouth, inhaling her dawning horror, as she silently begged her sister with watery eyes, I felt my own thirst for blood subside. There had been enough blood spilt already. Mine; Lydia’s; and Andy’s. But her fate was out of my hands, she’d brought this on herself.
“You told me yesterday,” Aidan said without preamble, “that you’d spilled gas on yourself filling up your car.”
“I did! I swear—”
“Where were you the last few weeks?”
“I sure as hell wasn’t in Florida if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Stop lying to me!” Aidan had finally lost her patience. “You’ve always been a good liar. Even I have trouble smelling them out, but I expect that’s because you almost believe them yourself.” When she’d regained her composure, she addressed the alphas. “Gasoline, as we all know, is a very effective scent-inhibitor. It confuses the senses. Coupled with the rain and the wind that night, Nicole was presented the perfect chance to frame an easy target.”
“No! It wasn’t me. I was staying up north with—”
“I checked your credit card, Nicole.” Aidan promptly pulled a sheet of paper (a bank statement by the look of it) from her back pocket and handed it to Max. “I know exactly where you were staying.”
Max’s mouth fell at the corners as he skimmed his eyes over the page. The evidence was, in turn, passed to the rest of the alphas, Dean included.
That this was Nicole’s own sister signing her death warrant appalled me a little. These people—wolves—were so cold-blooded in their meting out of justice. Not even the blood of sisterhood seemed to sway Aidan.
But, I conceded, this was the Law of the jungle… And the wolf that may keep it shall prosper. But the wolf that shall break it must die. Aidan was an alpha, she didn’t have the luxury of sentiment. Not even towards her own toxic sister.
“W-why are y-you doing this?!” Stark betrayal spilled wetly from Nicole’s eyes as she glowered at her sister. “I love you! I love my pack!”
“No, you love only yourself,” Aidan sighed tiredly. “You were spoiled and indulged by Father. I hoped you’d grow out of it, but you only became more selfish and cruel. I protected you once…”
When she’d bitten me, I thought darkly.
“And only because Evan survived.” Aidan paused to collect her tattered thoughts (at least I thought they were tattered. She was too stoic to tell for sure). “I thought to validate your statement—” Aidan’s voice dropped to a whisper “—by testing the fur and blood I found under Evan’s fingernails when you brought her to us after she was bitten. I don’t need to tell you what I discovered, sister. You lied to us.”
“Aidie, please…” Nicole was hoarse with terror. The cloying scent of it permeated the hall, exciting the wolves to a low murmur.
“I won’t protect you again. I can’t.” Her breath hitched with anguish. “You have blood on your hands, Nicky.”
“She—” pointing at me “—woke up with blood on her hands!”
“Blood,” Augustus seethed, “That you planted while she lay comatose on the beach. Bit of a rookie error to plant your victim’s blood on a mutt that’s already gone swimming.”
“I hate you!” She howled shrilly. She was looking wildly at me and then Augustus. “Stop treating me like a mutt! I’m the daughter of Forest Rex!”
“And you’ve tainted that good name!” Aidan slammed her hand down on the table for emphasis. “He’d be ashamed of you now. Don’t be a coward, for God’s sake. Tell the truth.”
Nicole finally shifted her crazy eyes to me. “You stole him. You were supposed to die! You’re just a mutt.” Then, shaking her head desperately, she turned to Tristan. “Why?” Her tears spilled down from her trembling chin into her lap. “I don’t understand why you chose her.”
“Because,” I answered for him (and for myself), “I don’t bite.” From the corner of my eye, I caught the inconspicuous twitch of Tristan’s lips. I knew he loved me for far more reasons than merely that, but, besides Tristan and I, it was no one’s business why he’d chosen me over her. “You’r
e just filled with hate and entitlement. That makes you the mutt, not me.” I had done nothing but act with integrity. All I was guilty of was loving a werewolf.
“And if being a pureblood,” said Dean, “means being like you—” glancing very briefly at his father “—then I’d sure as hell rather be a damn mongrel.”
With that, Nicole sprang at me like a spitting cat, screeching with vengeance. But she was forcibly restrained by Augustus who received a few good blows and scratches.
“Down, kitty.” Despite his words, Augustus was anything but amused.
I dragged my gaze from them to see Dean watching me. It was a very brief and inconspicuous movement—had I blinked, I’d have missed it—but I caught the subtle quirk at the corner of his mouth. The secret smile that was so like Tristan’s. It was the first time he’d ever genuinely smiled at me, though, granted, it was tinged a little blue.
“Dean,” said Aidan. The way she’d said his name, her voice like a hollow whisper, instantly commanded his attention. “Since it’s your pack that has suffered the loss of Lydia, and born the injustice done to Evan, you must decide how we Athabaskan’s may requite ourselves.”
“That’s simple,” Tristan said before his brother could answer. He stalked past Nicole, ignoring her frightened whimper, and stood directly before his father and the pantheon of grim-looking alphas. “I demand Lupum Caedes!”
44
Little Red
“So do vampires exist?” My eyes were closed and my head was resting back against the side of the hot tub.
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as vampires.”
I chuckled at Tristan’s tone, peeling my eyes open for the sole purpose of rolling them at him. “Says the werewolf.” After that, we lapsed into companionable silence.
The moon was suspended high over the trees, engorged and silent. An inviolate hush filled our forest. There was only the vapor drifting off the water, and the soft flutter of snow flurries kissing my shuttered eyelids. Tristan had turned the pumps off in the hot tub so that we could lose our thoughts in the gentle silence of a winter night festooned with ice lusters. Our wolf tracks had long since vanished beneath a fresh blanket of snow.
What a difference these last few months had made—running was something I no longer feared but craved and relished. Admittedly, though, I’d been repulsed by the idea of being nominated a runner in Nicole’s Lupum Caedes. No matter how much I hated what Nicole did to me, I couldn’t bring myself to be part of the triad of bloodthirsty hell hounds hunting our own kind, galvanized by the sweet tang of terror. I wouldn’t have done it, not for anything. After all, I’d been on the wrong end of that disgusting custom once before. I was done with violence. Nicole had forfeited her right to live, I couldn’t very well dispute that—I was no bleeding heart. She’d coldly stolen not one but three lives (though I couldn’t very well regret my lot now that I’d so fully embraced it) and, as Tristan had explained it to me, once a wolf went off the rails, as she’d done, there was no conceivable way that she’d be suffered to live. All our lives hung in the balance. It was our inviolable covenant with nature, a means to protect ourselves from the destructive laws of man. We were a secretive breed and any threat to the pack was to be swiftly expunged. In short, human sentiment and bureaucracy had no place within pack law.
Still, I had no taste for Nicole’s bloody ‘expunging’. It was bad enough my she-wolf was controlling the local rabbit population with ravenous dedication. Fortunately, I was saved from that morally impossible dilemma. A week before (what was supposed to be) Nicole’s last night on earth she’d thwarted her sentence and taken her own life. Maybe I should have felt something—rage or sorrow—but I’d felt nothing. How she’d done it hadn’t been divulged. The Athabaskans had remained very reticent on the exact details of her death. In the end, I believed, she’d abhorred the thought of dying like a disgraced mutt. She hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of the very death she’d intended for me.
“Alcoholic beverage for your thoughts?” Tristan playfully flicked some water at me, startling my eyes open.
I knew he hated talking about what had happened to me. As far as he was concerned, we’d talked it to death and it was time to move forward. I supposed I agreed. Not wanting to ruin our peaceful interlude, therefore, I decided against broaching the subject of Nicole’s death. “Yes, I was just thinking that you still owe me a Sex on the Beach.”
“That’s not true.” He smirked over the rim of his camping mug as he sipped his bourbon. “Or does last night mean nothing to you?”
I hid my own smirk behind my fingers, acknowledging his point with a reminiscent sigh. We had indeed spent a glorious interlude on the beach last night.
He pulled his hand from the water to stroke Odin’s brow as the dog raised adoring eyes to his alpha. The wolf usually joined us at the hot tub most evenings, resting his head on the edge so as to be near his pack.
I turned my head towards the green shale beach, listening as the humpbacks sang their midnight lullabies. “How old are you exactly, Mr. Thorn?” I couldn’t believe I’d not asked this till now.
“In doggie years?”
I pursed my lips. “Just use the Gregorian calendar, wiseass.”
“I was born July seventh.”
“Of what year?”
“By human standards I’d be considered about twenty-eight.”
I folded my arms and considered him with a determined lift of one brow. “What year were you born, Tristan?”
The corner of his lip twitched. “The same year the Hubble Telescope was launched.”
“Oh.” He really was only twenty-eight. Well, that was anticlimactic. “I thought you were a lot older.”
“Excuse you.” With a sharp flick, he sent a hot tub tidal wave at my face. “I have fewer wrinkles than you.”
I laughed. “Relax, old man, I thought werewolves age differently.” Though he looked his age, I’d anticipated him being much older.
“We do age differently, but it’s hard to quantify. An adolescent werewolf ages a lot faster—on par with humans actually—but as we mature, senescence slows down drastically.”
“How drastically?”
“By now, I’m aging about three times slower than the average human.” He leaned over to close my gaping jaw with a gentle nudge of his index finger. “My dad’s seventy—still a spring chicken.”
“Seventy!” If I hadn’t known better I’d have guessed Max’s age to be around forty-five at most.
“Yup, you’re going to be stuck with me for a very long time.”
“Vampires are still way cooler—they’re immortal.”
“Yeah,” he said blandly, “but they sparkle like fairies.”
“Not Lestat.”
“You do realize that if you have sex with a vampire it’s basically necrophilia—that’s if they can even get it up.”
“Tristan—”
“I mean they’re stiffs but not in the sense that—”
“Okay, Tristan.” The sternness I’d been valiantly trying to affect evaporated in one fell fit of giggling. “I repent, just stop already.” The comfortable silence that followed Tristan’s smug grin lasted only as long as it took for me to recall that I still had more questions. “You still haven’t filled me in on Aidan and Dean’s story.” I was a sucker for a tragic romance.
“That’s because I don’t poke my nose where it doesn’t belong. Well, except in the case of beautiful South African dart-throwers.” He sighed when I only drummed my fingers impatiently. “It’s a long story, Ev.”
“A sad one too, I bet?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s still time for a happy ending though.” I was more hopeful than determined that there should be.
“Hmm.” He left the opposite side of the tub, the water sloshing excitedly, and angled himself next to me, pulling my legs over his lap so that my calves were resting on his hip and thigh. “The only happy ending I care about is ours…” There was a
very provocative twinkle in his eyes.
I lifted my face to his, my fingers gliding gently over his jaw. “I love you, Tristan. Best damn decision I ever made was letting go of that dart.” And following my heart. “Sometimes I can’t believe you’re mine.”
“It’s my life’s privilege to belong to you, my beautiful woman.” His eyes glowed tenderly. “And I’ll love you forever.”
“You better live at least that long,” I said firmly.
He leaned in for a heated kiss, stealing my breath. His hand descended leisurely down my naked chest, then over my ribs before finally settling on my hip to pull me tight against him. “What time are Melissa and Matt getting here?” He asked, his breathing ragged and hungry.
“There’s no time for that,” I said, snickering.
“There’s always time for that.”
“Well, I don’t know”—poking him in his ribs with a teasing finger—“I still have to slip into my creepy cult uniform or they’ll never believe I’ve joined your freaky secret society. Gotta make it all look legit.”
“Yes, please don’t ruin my reputation with your sneaky normalcy. Poor Dinwiddie would have a stroke.”
“Only if you eat her poodles.” Actually, she was more likely to have pet raccoons than froufrou dogs.
Smirking, he pulled away, shaking his head at me. “Seriously, Evan Spencer, never change.”
“That’s out of my control,” I said, looking up at the full moon. “I kinda don’t have a choice in the matter.” Yet.
“It’ll get easier.”
It already had.
He ran his knuckles lovingly down my sternum before resting a splayed hand over my heart. “You’re still you. She—” tapping a finger where the patch of white fur ought to have been “—is still you.”
“My she-wolf?”
“Yeah.”
“I know.” I smiled up at him. “Funny, the moment I accepted her she stopped fighting me. I felt so mindless before. So terrified. Now everything has changed. It’s like there’s this constant vibration of power in my belly.” It was humbling and exhilarating to feel her life-force beat in sync with mine as though we were finally one and not two spirits.
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