“I wish I hadn’t had to.” Anita gave his arm a squeeze, then let her hand drop to her side.
“Are you going to be all right? If it were Lou or Nicole who started this fire, you could still be in danger. Both of you.” Shane glanced between them. “I think it would be best if you stayed with pack members tonight. Just in case.”
Just in case. The culmination of every what-if speculation she’d tried to ignore since she’d told Shane that Nicole had cheated on him, and had perhaps even set the fire. Hearing it out loud drove the reality of the situation home. Just in case, she could put more of the pack in danger. Just in case, she could endanger people whose lives she’d already upended this week.
It wasn’t me. This isn’t my fault. It’s Lou, and Nicole. Yet Nicole’s insidious words when they’d spoken earlier haunted Anita with a pernicious persistence that refused to keep silent. Lou would never change. He wouldn’t stop. He would heap trouble on her, and on everyone who tried to help her. Jake, Shane, the pack, all of them. They would come to resent her, and Jake as well. These kind people, this pack who had come on the run when they heard a tragedy had befallen one of their own, the only family Jake had would come to hate him. Because of her.
No, it wasn’t Anita’s fault. But she was the catalyst for everything. Now it had come to a fire that had almost killed them both. Would it be almost next time?
She knew with a terrible, heartrending certainty what she had to do.
“Go ahead, Jake,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “You should stay with the pack.”
Jake looked sharply down at her. “What are you talking about? You’re coming, too.”
“No. No, I’m not.” She took a deep breath to steady herself for what she had to say next. “I’m going to grab a hotel tonight. Tomorrow, I’m leaving town.”
Jake put his hands on her shoulders and spun her to face him. Fear and a dawning pain carved lines across his brow. “Don’t say that. Anita, we’ll handle this, all right?”
“I’ll handle it. Like I should have done from the start.” Anita took a step back, out of his hands’ grasp. “You lost everything but your bike tonight. What about tomorrow night? Or the next? This isn’t going to stop until I’m gone. You’ve already lost too much. I won’t be the reason you lose everything else.”
“And what if you’re the one thing I can’t bear to lose?” The words came out rough with emotion.
“That’s why I have to go.” Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. Someone far away, a strong, assured woman who knew how to do the hard thing for the good of everyone involved. Not the heartbroken woman who needed to flee the source of her pain before the next blow fell. “Better we end it now, before it really had a chance to start.”
He took a step toward her, reaching out to try to pull her toward him again. “Then let me go with you.”
She stepped back so his grasp would fall short of her. “You can’t. This is your home, Jake. Your home, your family, your pack. They all need you.”
“And I need you.” Awkwardly, he dropped his hands to his sides. “What does any of that mean without you in it?”
“What will I mean if you have to leave everything to have me?” With a gesture, she indicated the town, the people, the alpha wolf who’d stepped away to give them privacy. “You follow me, you lose another home. Another pack. Already tonight, you’ve lost anything you had to remember your old pack by, and it was because of me. It sounds so fucking romantic to chase off after me now, but give it a while. You’ll resent me for being the reason you lost everything a second time.”
Jake straightened. His lips flattened into a thin, upset line. “Sounds to me like you’ll resent it more than I ever will. And it sounds to me like you’re afraid to even try.”
The statement stung her like a slap in the face. “Maybe I am. And I’m pretty sure I’ve earned it, Jake.”
“So that’s it.” He folded his arms across his chest. His entire posture closed, an emotional drawbridge raised to protect the wounded heart within. “We both lose everything, and you disappear. Hell, maybe we both just lose, and tell Lou he’s the winner.”
“Lou has already won.” She stabbed her pointed finger toward the wreckage of the trailer. “That’s his trophy. I lost my home, my job, my dignity, and then? I almost got you killed. And after all that? I have no way to prove Lou tried to kill us, or even if it was him. Could have been one of his pissed-off fans in town. Or Nicole. God, marrying Lou was the biggest mistake I ever made. Maybe my whole life has been one big, fat mistake.”
This time, it was Jake who took a step back. “I was a mistake? What we shared, that was a mistake? When you said you’d have me, and you’d be my mate, was that a mistake, too?”
I meant it. I meant everything I said. That I loved you, that I wanted to stay with you. But I couldn’t take it if you got hurt. I’ve gotten up every time Lou knocked me down. If he stole you away, I’d stay down, because I couldn’t bear to get up again. The only mistake I made was letting myself love you.
“Maybe it was,” she said softly. Then she turned and fled, before the devastated look in his eyes could convince her to take it all back.
8
Out of the Ashes
The rich smell of homemade tamales filled the house. Beneath that wafted the piquant scent of fresh salsa, mixed that morning to go with a breakfast of huevos rancheros. Another day, Jake’s stomach would have tried to stage a breakout through the prison bars of his ribcage to get at the delicious food. Today, he couldn’t muster an appetite to save his immortal soul.
Only outright exhaustion had let him sleep at all the night before. Even then, he’d spent an hour staring at the ceiling of the guest bedroom before weariness dragged him into slumber. A long, lonely hour in which he tried not to remember Anita’s stoic expression and tormented eyes as she’d told him she intended to leave him behind.
He couldn’t decide which hurt worse: that she’d left him, or that he understood her reasons. All too well, he knew the pain of realizing you were a threat to the ones closest to you, and the primal desire to hole up until you felt ready to face what the world wanted to throw at you. After L.A., after the death of his last pack, he’d wanted to do the same.
It had brought him to Coyote Trail. To Anita. And deep down, he’d always thought that when a person holed up until they could face the world, that person’s mate went with them. Two lovers against the world, protecting each other until they could emerge to take the place by storm.
So much for that. Simplistic. Idealistic. Stupid. Just like his desire to go beat Lou’s face until it turned inside-out. This had gone past an abusive ex-husband now. Cathartic though it would have been, kicking Lou’s ass wouldn’t solve a thing now that Anita had made her decision.
“When you said you’d have me, and you’d be my mate, was that a mistake, too?”
“Maybe it was.”
No amount of bruises on Lou’s ugly face would erase that memory.
The door to the home office opened, and Rodrigo slipped inside with a plate in each hand. Tall and rangy, Rigo had a build that inspired overactive maternal instincts to feed him up before he wasted away. It never mattered that the scout was made of solid muscle and whipcord, or that he could run miles across the desert each night and still have enough to fight a pack of Ferals at the end of the journey. He would disappear into a two-dimensional Hell if he did not eat at every moment in which his mother could stuff food into his mouth.
With a wry look, he offered over one of the plates. “My mother says you need to eat. Then, she told me not to take ‘no’ for an answer. ‘You must feed a broken heart,’ she said.”
Jake took the plate of tamales and refried beans. “I thought you were supposed to feed a fever. Or a cold. I can never remember which.”
Rigo managed to shrug without displacing his own supper off the plate. “Between you and me, amigo, I think my mother would tell you to feed everything. Twice.”
; The scout’s mother and four sisters lived with him in a sprawling ranch house at the edge of town. At the height of the Great Beast Plague, in the days before the World Health Organization had recommended the complete lockdown of Hermosillo as first a quarantine zone, then an exclusion zone, Rodrigo had gotten them all out. He’d guided them north, through the deserts and the corrupt territories of the drug lords, avoiding the human coyotes who trafficked frightened refugees and the military forces at the border, until they reached Coyote Trail.
No one knew the desert like Rigo. When it came to accomplishing damn near anything, Rigo was the man to talk to. But in his house, he was the family pack omega, and his mother defended her place as alpha with a wooden spoon, a mother’s love, and a blistering stream of Spanish.
Jake sure as hell wouldn’t cross her. He picked up his fork to shovel a bite of the green corn tamales into his mouth. “Thanks again for letting me stay, Rigo. I know your house is damn full as it is.”
“No trouble, Jake. There’s always room for you here.” Rigo threw himself into the beat-up recliner he hid in his office. “You need family around you now. I’ve got plenty to share. How are you feeling?”
“Trying not to,” Jake answered honestly. “Nothin’ good’s coming from feeling right now. I either want to pull Lou’s lungs out through his nose, or tear my own heart out of my chest. Maybe both at the same time.”
“Don’t bleed on the floor, por favor,” Rigo said. He quirked a wry smile. “Though maybe instead, you should call Anita and talk to her.”
Jake shook his head. “Love to, but Lou had her phone disconnected. Tried calling the hotels around town, but no one had her registered.”
“She probably asked them to put her under a fake name. After what happened, I would have.” Jake couldn’t tell if Rigo meant the fire, or the breakup. “You want me to call around?”
“Nah. Let her be. She’s probably halfway to wherever she’s headed by now.” It cost Jake in pain to say it. Anita, with only her borrowed sweats to her name, headed to God knew where. Without money, without a car. Without Jake.
Rigo cocked his head, a very lupine expression. “I’m not an expert in women, amigo, but-”
Jake stopped him with a stare. “You live with five of them. How are you not an expert, again?”
“Because I’m not stupid. Julia is angry at her boyfriend? I take her cussing on behalf of all men, because all of us are pendejos right then. Alejandra wants a ride to Vegas for a concert? I am just the driver. I keep my head down and my mouth closed, because then, I stay out of trouble.” Rigo’s moustache and goatee made his smirk all the more impish.
Jake chuckled, because he knew better. In the few hours he’d stayed here, he’d seen how much love the family had for each other. It took only a glance to see way the four sisters looked up to their older brother, and even the most oblivious person couldn’t miss pride in Mama Hernandez’s eyes when she watched her son. Sure, they showed that love in a boisterous and often loud manner, but everyone knew it for what it was.
“So you’re not an expert, but you’ve got advice anyway?”
“Of course.” Rigo tossed one long leg over the other. “Anita is shaken up. She’s trying to protect her mate, like good mates do, the only way she knows how.”
“By leaving.”
Rigo spread his hands, then nabbed his fork as it fell off the plate. “She’s going about it wrong, but I tell you this, Jake. She said ‘mates’. Mates are for keeps. No takebacks. Believe in that, si?”
“If you say so, Rigo. Right now, that’s not easy to believe in.”
“No one said love was easy. Worth it, si, but not easy.”
They lapsed into silence as they polished off their food. Easier to chew than to navigate the sticky topic. When Jake got tired of the quiet, which let too many thoughts trickle in, he said, “That map have all the recent Feral attacks on it?”
Rigo glanced at the big map that he’d fastened to the wall. Colored pins stuck out of the land around the town, showing both the year’s attacks and the places where the scouts found signs and curiosities. Shane had a similar map in his house, but Rigo kept his own so he and Holly could best coordinate their efforts. “All but yesterday’s. You can add it if you want.”
Jake set his plate on the corner of the desk. A loose forest of tacks stuck in a corkboard next to the map. He picked the proper color, then stuck the pin in the map on the road near his house. Where he’d seen Anita, terrified but strong, as she faced off against the Feral. The last time he’d felt that flare of righteous wrath, before he’d even met Anita, he couldn’t arrive in time to do more than clean up in the aftermath. Seeing Anita there, he’d vowed he would make it in time to keep her safe…
With a blink, he dismissed the memories and focused again on the map. Last night’s pin there. Night before’s, way over there. Two nights ago, there, and the night before that, there. A pattern emerged, but the pattern didn’t fit right in Jake’s mind. “Rigo, I was saying to Levi yesterday, the Ferals aren’t behaving like I’d expect. The group that attacked out here the other night. This pin, way over here. They weren’t a pack of their own, and I’d bet my boots on that.”
One of the scout’s eyebrows went up. “How do you mean?”
“They looked like the dregs of another pack. All the weak ones what’d get culled when the leader got pissy. And look.” Jake touched three other pins, closer to town and on the other side. “These are closer in. Not just closer, but, hm, smarter. That little pack of weaklings, it was hanging its ass out any-old-where. These other three? Those areas have better cover, better ways in and out, all of it.”
Rigo stood with powerful grace to stride over to the map, all business now. “That odd attack was a distraction. They were bait to throw us off. Baiting means tactical planning. Planning means thinking. And Ferals are not known for their strategy.”
“They aren’t known for talking, either. But the one who went after Anita talked to her,” Jake said quietly. “He was smarter than the others. And I don’t think it’s coincidence that the weak ones got thrown under the bus in the middle of nowhere, while the smart one was on its way toward my trailer.”
Rigo frowned. He stared at the map, stroking his moustache with his thumb and forefinger while he considered the data in front of him. “Do you remember, around Christmas time, how the Feral attacks stopped for a while? My mother said it was God giving us a gift.”
“Then she made everyone enchiladas, yep.”
“Look at this.” Rigo turned from the map to jiggle the mouse on his computer. Once it had come back up, he started a mapping program he used to store attack data in the long term. “These are the attacks in the months before that break in activity.”
Jake stared at the markers, then looked back at the wall map. “Those patterns changed wholesale.”
“Si. And here?” The scout touched an attack marker way out in the nearby mountain range. “Holly and I saw Feral corpses at the bottom of a ravine. Too far down for us to see details, but easy enough to see they were bodies. We thought they might have run off a cliff in the dark. A few weeks after we found them, the attacks started up again.”
“Bunch of dead Ferals. Change in patterns. Then strategic attacks.” The hairs on the back of Jake’s neck stood up. “The local Ferals got themselves a new leader.”
“A smart one.” Rigo stood up again. “I could have gone all year without hearing this.”
“You and me both.” Jake glanced at his friend. Rigo served as an informal second-in-command when Shane had nights off. “You think we ought to call Shane?”
“I’ll send him a message to call me when he wakes up.” Rigo dug his phone out of his pocket and started typing on it. “This is his first night off in most of a week. Last night, he found out Nicole had cheated with his friend. Let him sleep for a while. He will think better if he’s had rest.”
“True. The man deserves some time unconscious. Probably a good, long drunk, too, but…” But
werewolves didn’t get that luxury. Jake had cursed his metabolism more than once since he’d embraced his furrier side. “I don’t want to ask about what’s not my business, but I can’t help but wonder. There a reason Shane was dating that woman? They never did seem right to me.”
Rigo flattened his lips into a thin line of grim contempt. “That relationship is the ugly love child of guilt and honor. We never expected it to last as long as it did. She just never went away.”
“But how in hell did they get together to start with?”
“Now, that’s-”
An electronic chirp cut off whatever reply Rigo intended to make. He dug his phone out of his pocket to look at the screen. A hard, narrow-eyed frown creased his face. “Get your shit, amigo. We have to go.”
Jake headed for the door before he asked the question. “What’s up?”
“Ferals ambushed Holly. In her house.”
Blood. Jake could smell it from the front yard. Coppery, sticky blood with a scent two steps left of human. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as the stench teased at the beast within, who understood at a primal level that blood meant danger and fighting.
He and Rigo hopped off their bikes and hurried around to the back of the brown brick home. “Holly?” Rigo called, as they trotted past the wooden swing and pots of plump succulents. “It’s Rodrigo and Jake!”
“Watch the glass!” came the shouted reply.
Diamond-like shards of tempered glass glittered on the back porch, over the doormat and scattered across the concrete. They picked their way through the mess, crunching stray fragments of the ruined door beneath their boots as they crossed the patio. Inside, the shimmering shards of glass shone from a puddle of blood that coagulated on the dining room tile.
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