by Nancy Holder
And I don’t have to. One little nip, that’s all it would take, and then we could be together.
She put her teeth on his bottom lip.
I could do it right now.
She froze. She quickly let go and pulled away.
“What is it?” he asked.
She leaned her head against his shoulder and sobbed. He held her, rubbing her back. He was Trick.
“Trick, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Anything.” He kissed the crown of her hair.
“I need you to know.” She took a deep breath. She knew what she wanted him to know, but what exactly did she need him to know? “I need you to know that I want to be with you.”
“Works for me,” he said, giving her a squeeze.
She lifted her head and forced herself to stare him in the eyes. “But there’s stuff about me, terrible stuff, that you don’t know. I just can’t be with you. I can’t risk hurting you anymore.”
He didn’t blink. Didn’t smile. “Katelyn, if you care for me I’m willing to risk anything, do anything. Just let me help.”
“I can’t.”
She twisted so she could get her feet on the ground and she stood up, feeling light-headed. He was still kneeling, looking stricken. “Trick,” she said, her voice strangled. “If I were free . . . but I’m not. And you’re better off without me.”
She hurried away before he could stop her. She had only made it a few steps before the tears started gushing down her cheeks. Any delusions she had harbored that someday she and Trick could somehow be together were gone. In the span of an hour she’d almost bitten him twice, once in anger and once in passion. If she tried to be with him, it was only a matter of time before an accident happened.
And she loved him too much to curse him as she’d been cursed.
“Darlin’,” he called after her.
“Please, I need to be alone,” she cried, without looking at him.
“No way.”
“Please,” she said again, and as she walked away, he let her.
She wandered around for nearly half an hour before finding her way back to the school parking lot. Trick’s vandalized car was still there, but there was no sign of him. She figured he was hovering nearby, giving her space, and she climbed into her Subaru and left as quickly as she could. She tried to force herself to calm down, but even after she had put the town behind her and driven well into the forest she couldn’t.
Her cell phone trilled and she snatched it up. The number was unknown.
“Hello?” she asked carefully.
On the other end of the line all she heard was very gentle breathing.
“I’m alone,” Katelyn said, clearing her throat and hoping that that hadn’t been the worst thing in the world to admit.
“Kat?”
It was Cordelia, but her voice was strangled, barely recognizable.
“What’s wrong?” Katelyn asked, all senses on high alert.
“It was never supposed to happen like this,” Cordelia said with a sob.
She’s crying. She felt a terrible chill. Cordelia had been so cautious about communicating at all.
Something’s very, very wrong.
“What is it? What’s happened? What can I do?”
“It’s Dom.”
“Has something happened to him? Has he hurt you?” she asked, her mind racing to different extremes.
“My time’s up,” Cordelia whispered. “I have to do it.”
“Do what?” Katelyn shouted into the phone. “Cor, tell me.”
“Please. I am — I was — your pack sister.”
“Cor—”
“I have to marry him. If I don’t, I have to leave. And I have nowhere else to go.”
“No, that’s crazy. Don’t. Wait. I’ll think of something.”
“Then do it now,” Cordelia said.
And then the phone went dead.
Katelyn tried calling back but the call went straight to voice mail, the automated robotic female voice informing her that the mailbox hadn’t been set up, so she couldn’t even leave a message.
She became aware of a rumbling sound that seemed to grow louder. Was it thunder? She frantically tried calling again. Straight to voice mail once more. Before she could hang up something slammed into the side of her car, sending it careening out of control, and Katelyn stomped on the brakes, sending herself weaving as something flashed by her on the narrow road. It was a truck.
Her Subaru slowed and rolled against a tree, which groaned under the impact. They hit me, she thought, shocked.
Ahead of her the truck had also pulled over, and the driver was getting out. Katelyn started to reach for her insurance card in the glove compartment when her hand froze.
Mike was sauntering toward her, a huge triangular shaped apparatus on his nose, a leer on his arrogant face, and a tire iron clutched in his hand.
17
Katelyn stepped out of her car in a rage. “What the hell?” she screamed at Mike.
“Payback’s a bitch, bitch,” he said, snarling.
“What, you want to break my nose?” she demanded. “You really think you need a tire iron for that?”
His smile broadened and there was something so terrible about it, so leering, that an awful suspicion crept into her mind.
“I was thinking of taking it out on you a different way,” he said, eyes moving down her body.
His look and tone confirmed her suspicions. And while the Katelyn she used to be screamed at her to get in her car and run over him, the new Katelyn began to growl.
Mike cocked his head to the side. “What the hell—”
She leaped at him, kicking the tire iron out of his hand before he could even move. She hit him in the eye so hard it snapped his head back. She growled again, an angry, throaty sound that started to turn into a howl. She kicked him in the stomach, doubling him over, and slammed her fist into his chin with everything she had in her. His eyes rolled back but she kept him upright, hitting him again and again in the stomach.
He was wheezing when she finally let him fall to the ground. Blood was pouring out of his nose and mouth. Both his eyes were already turning black and his breathing was uneven. She stood over him, waiting for him to get back up.
A few seconds later, his eyes flickered open and he stared up at her. He looked like something out of a horror movie, and she couldn’t stifle her satisfaction.
Panting, she leaned over him. “This ends now, do you hear me?”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“You leave Trick and me alone and I’ll leave you alone. Understood?”
He nodded again. Sheepish, scared.
She left him there, got into her Subaru, and roared away.
When she pulled up in front of the cabin she flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. There was blood on them. Mike’s blood. She’d have to make a break for the bathroom to try and clean it off before her grandfather could see it.
She left her backpack in the back and headed inside. As soon as she had opened the door she ran to the stairs. “Hi!” she called out when she was halfway up them.
“Katie, you okay?” her grandfather called.
“Fine,” she yelled back just before she closed the bathroom door behind her.
A couple of minutes later she emerged, having gotten all the blood off. Her hands had stopped aching, which was an added bonus. She went back downstairs. From the living room her grandfather looked at her expectantly.
“Sorry, bathroom,” she said with a grimace.
He nodded as she went back outside to grab her backpack. Somewhere in the distance she heard a wolf howl and it took all her willpower not to join in.
Katelyn.
Katelyn woke with a start, a dream fading too quickly from her memory to hold onto. The nearly full moon poured light down through her skylight, bathing her room in silver. Every nerve sizzled. Branches tapped impatiently against the glass above.
Wearily, she picked up In
the Shadow of the Wolf. There hadn’t been any more information on the mine or the Hellhound and she was beginning to think there wasn’t any more to find. She had finished Cordelia’s diary, a litany of disappointments and excuses for the erratic behavior of her father. She and Cordelia had one thing in common: they hated Regan and Arial.
She put the book away and took out the paper with the picture of the heart-shaped boulder again. And she wondered for the thousandth time if the real painting had been hanging on their wall all that time.
She spent the next morning pretending to study and surfing the net for aerial photos of Wolf Springs — there were none — but mostly just freaking out. Full moonrise would occur in less than ten hours.
When it was finally time to head over to the Fenners’ she made it downstairs with her duffel bag.
“Have fun at Paulette’s,” her grandfather said, his smile strained. “And be careful.”
“I will,” she promised.
She kept forgetting to breathe. It was only her second full moon, and the first one as a full-time pack member. Her skin was tingling; she felt different compared to the day of the previous full moon, as if she was even more hyper-aware of everything around her. The sun was too bright; the wind whooshed with the rush of heavy breakers. An owl seemed to shout into her ear.
When she reached the house, dread wrapped around her as she took in the sight of the vehicles parked in the driveway. Arial and Regan were there. As she got out of the car, the front door opened and Justin came down the steps, his expression somber.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, queasy and anxious.
“Nothing,” he muttered, offering her his cheek. She kissed it, and he returned the kiss on her cheek. She felt nothing, no desire, just the certainty that something else had happened. Something bad.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He headed for the trees and she had to pick up her pace to stay beside him. He dodged a branch; not as quick, she pushed it back with her hands, nearly catching her foot on a gnarled tree root.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To rendezvous with the rest of the pack. Everyone else is gone.” He gave her a look. “You were late.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be late again.”
“Okay.”
As he passed a pine tree, he broke a twig and pulled off the needles, then let the bare branch fall to the ground. “I guess you’ve probably noticed that we get on edge a smidge the closer it gets to the full moon,” he said.
She nodded, so uncomfortable around him that she took a couple of steps away, trying to make it appear as if she were avoiding a couple of large rocks in her path. His scent followed, and she stumbled. He reached out a hand, and steadied her.
Flashfire.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to mask her reaction. “Like hyperdrive.”
“That would be the wolf, clawing to come out.” He held her hand for an extra beat, and then he let her go.
“Wow, that sounds so awful.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she cleared her throat. “Awful,” she tried again.
“It’s not, Kat,” he said, exasperated. “I swear it.”
They were deep in the forest now, weaving between trees. He seemed to be following a path only he could see. She smelled the air but there was nothing she could pick up on that might be guiding him.
“Come on, Justin,” she said. “I know something’s wrong.”
“More evidence that the Gaudins have been paying us visits. Uncle Lee is convinced they’ve got a spy here.”
“In the pack?”
“No, but here, possibly in Wolf Springs.”
“How does he know?” she asked.
Justin shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I know we’ve got a spy or two on the other side ourselves.”
She felt her throat closing up as she wondered if any of those spies knew that Cordelia had been in contact with her.
“How much farther ’til we get there?” she asked. She wanted to know if they were going to the same clearing where Cordelia had taken her for her first change, but she remembered that the pack was supposed to hunt far from there. That was why they had both been so shocked when the others had appeared, just as Katelyn was shifting. Uncovering her terrible secret. Ruining Cordelia’s life.
“About two hours,” Justin replied.
“Two hours?” she asked, coming to a standstill.
He huffed. “Our pack hunts deep in the forest, Kat, far away from people. That’s what keeps everyone safe.”
She shuddered when he said our pack. She wanted to protest, to tell him that it wasn’t her pack at all. But off in the distance a wolf howled and the urge to howl back was nearly undeniable.
“They’re calling us,” he said. “Let’s go. We can run if you like.”
“No, I’m good with walking,” she said hastily. She still didn’t want to join up with the pack, no matter that she couldn’t stop herself from walking faster and listening intently for another howl.
They trudged together for a while in silence. The blue of the sky faded to gray, and Katelyn sensed a change deep within her. With every minute that ticked by, her senses sharpened. The last few autumn leaves were brighter, more vibrant, even as the forest grew darker. She could hear tiny creatures scuffling under the bushes and the wind sighing in the trees even though the branches stood still.
And the more she saw and heard and smelled the more she wanted to run away. The heightened senses, the feeling of power that coursed through her body — all of it terrified her more than she could even give voice to.
Beside her, Justin walked as though nothing in the world was wrong, as though they were just out for a hike and they weren’t werewolves, and their leader wasn’t insane, and he didn’t have a girlfriend, and it wasn’t death to get between them.
A twig cracked somewhere to her right. A deer bounded in front of her, startling her, and she jumped sideways, slamming into Justin.
The deer ran off and Katelyn’s heart raced. She wanted to urge it to run far and fast. Because tonight we hunt and I don’t want to kill you.
“Kat, it’s just a deer. Relax,” Justin grunted.
“Don’t tell me to relax,” she hissed. “Imagine for five seconds that this wasn’t the life you were born into and suddenly you’re facing all this.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said, sounding tense.
“Oh, really? Mr. Fenner wants me to get married. And if I piss him off he’ll kill me. So, where does that leave me?”
“In a pack, and behaving like a pack mate,” he replied.
“I’m barely seventeen. I’m too young to even think about any of this stuff.”
“No, you’re not,” he said, voice husky. He reached out and took her hand again. And the contact sent fire running through her veins. But she had something to say, and she needed to get it out, no matter how hot he was. She forcibly removed her hand from his.
“Yes, I am!” she shouted. She couldn’t stop herself. There was too much pain, too much change, and if he didn’t understand, she would make him understand.
“You’re overreacting.” He moved his shoulders. “Even though my uncle’s got his . . . problems, he knows enough to give you some time to adjust. He’s not making any wedding plans for you.”
“You know he is,” she insisted. “You heard him.” She didn’t know what had happened after she’d left. What had been said. What had been done.
“That was only because he got you mixed up with . . . her.”
“But what about her? He was pushing her to get married and he wouldn’t even let her choose the guy.”
Justin frowned. “You mean the football player she was dating? He wasn’t pack material. And wolves can only marry other wolves. She knew that. She probably would have married Steve.”
Katelyn shook her head fiercely. “No, she wouldn’t have.”
He grabbed her by the arms. She could feel his fingers curled around her
biceps and they seemed to burn into her skin. His nearness was making her head swim.
She stared at his lips and struggled to focus on what he was saying, but it was becoming difficult. She was having trouble thinking and for a moment she wondered if the change was happening already.
The wolf is trying to claw its way out.
“What makes you so sure about that?” he demanded.
“Maybe he was the one who started all this, trying to discredit her because she was going to reject him,” Katelyn said, feeling like she was babbling.
Is that right, is that what I meant to say?
She stared at Justin. His pupils were dilating and the way he was looking at her, she knew she should back away.
Run away.
“How do you know she was going to reject him?”
Let go of me. Now, she thought. Please.
“Because she didn’t love him.”
He smiled. “It’s not always about love, Kat.”
He’s right. This isn’t love. This is just desire. The wolf wants him . . . and I — I don’t.
But she did. She felt horrible about it, but there it was.
“Is that why you’re with Lucy?” she snapped before she could stop herself. She was trying to push him away with her words. She just didn’t know how far she could push. Her fuse was shortening. Darkness was falling. The moon would soon rise.
He made a strangled sound in his throat and his hands tightened on her arms. “I care deeply for Lucy.”
“But do you love her?” It seemed like the only question in the world.
His gaze took on a faraway cast, the muscle in his jaw working. “We can’t always have who we love.”
Like Trick, she thought in despair.
His eyes bored into her very soul. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
“Kat, I’m only so strong,” he whispered against her cheek. “I think about you constantly and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Her pulse was skittering out of control at his touch. And she could hear his heartbeat, strong and fast. And then his lips were on hers and the world seemed to tilt and spin around them as she tried to turn her head. This was wrong. No matter how good it felt, it wasn’t a good thing to do.