“It has to be better than her strawberry-jalapeño salsa,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Nic didn't smile back, turning his head and running his hand down his face with a sigh. “Let's just try for normal for one more night,” I said, my voice firm enough that it almost sounded like a command.
When Nic glanced back at me, his eyes were raw and open, emotions spilling out like the tears he'd never shed.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, nodding his head, both of us painfully aware of the changes that were coming hard and fast, unstoppable changes, necessary changes. For Ebon Red, I reminded myself. For the pack.
I turned away as the front door opened, convinced that Faith would be able to see my expression and know, know, that something was wrong. I made myself smile as I moved through the growing shadows and paused in the golden halo of porch light by the front door. Nic and I had discussed running away, really and truly discussed it. But it wasn't right. And it was foolish. Stupid. Two lone wolves cast out from their packs? We'd be lucky to survive the year. And without me, without the White Wolf, what would happen to Ebon Red?
So. I'd stand here and put a smile on my face, hang out with my best friend who'd still be my best friend when this was all over. I'd still go to school, still be the Alpha-Daughter, still see Nic every once in a while. Things would be different, but they didn't have to be bad. They didn't have to suck.
“What are you guys doing?” Faith said, tilting her head to the side, dark hair cascading over one shoulder. “It's freezing out there. Come in and have your lover's quarrel inside the house.”
I rolled my eyes, moving past Faith and listening for Nic's sturdy footfalls behind me. He breezed past the dining room and the kitchen, plopping down on one of Faith's overstuffed mint green couches. Without skipping a beat, he slid his phone from his pocket and texted Nikolina to let her know we were home safe. Of course, that was a lie, but it was one she'd never hear about so it didn't matter.
“Hello to you, too, Nic,” Faith said, slamming the door and shaking her head. However he felt about her, the feeling was mutual. “Come try this before it gets cold,” she said, brown eyes sparkling as she moved into the open kitchen and gestured to a series of cups and saucers, all perfectly filled to the rim with steaming cocoa, dolloped with whipped cream. Bits of lavender speckled the white puff of cream; I could smell it from across the room and all I could think was soap. “I started with all milk chocolate and then experimented until I got the perfect ratio of dark in there. Not enough to overpower the delicate lavender taste but just enough to cut the overwhelming sweetness of the milk.”
Faith grinned at me, her teeth bright white in a red-brown face, her dark hair braided and draping down the front of her body, past her orange T-shirt and halfway down her thigh. She was short, sure—barely five two—but that hair … it was still impressive, like Rapunzel or something.
“Taste, taste, taste,” she encouraged, waving me forward and propping a hand on her hip to watch. She always got this little twinkle in her eye when she was watching someone sample her art. “I think I've really nailed it this time. Nic?”
“Yeah, one sec,” he said, probably still in communication with my mother. I felt my hands curl into fists and had to force myself to relax them. I was still toying with the idea of asking her to leave Nic as my guard, but I doubted that would happen. Pack numbers weren't good, and they weren't headed anywhere great. Anyone of breeding age would be put to the task, raising pups for the pack, completely at odds with the very nature of our wolf sides. Alphas mate and raise pups—betas too if there's enough food to go around. But everyone? Unfortunately, even with six generations following this unnatural order, we could hardly keep our numbers from dropping.
I picked up the cup and saucer, looking at Faith across the rim with a forced smile. Declining numbers, missing pack members, mating pairs, I didn't want to think about any of it right now.
“Where's your mom?” I asked, because it was always the first thing we talked about when I came over. Faith was a year older than me, in college and desperate to get out, but her mom didn't want to let her go.
“She's working the night shift as a float nurse,” Faith said, shrugging her shoulders. “She's got her eyes on a new SUV, and she needs the hours.” I tilted the cup back, trying to hold my breath, the dual scents of lavender and chocolate almost overwhelming. Holy crap, there's a lot of vanilla in there, too.
Hot, fragrant liquid hit my tongue, making my wolf side twitch as I struggled to swallow the pungent cocoa down my throat. It wasn't that I didn't like hot chocolate because I did, but this … oh god. It really did feel like I'd just chugged a bottle of hand soap.
“Wow,” I said as goose bumps rose on my arms and I struggled not to choke. “Definitely different.” I paused and smiled as brightly as I could. “But in a good way, of course.”
“I know lavender's not everybody's favorite, but I had to give it a shot.” She shrugged and pushed Nic's cup and saucer across the gray granite countertop. “I had to do something to salvage the day.” Faith sighed and rubbed a hand across her forehead. Her eyes, as rich and brown as the remaining cocoa in my cup, were ringed with smudged black liner, her lashes thick and clumped like she'd been crying. “Give me a second to let the dogs in and we can go upstairs,” she said, smiling and raising her brows. Sometimes when Nic and I were around, strange things happened with Faith's dogs.
“Go for it,” I said, lifting the cup to my lips and waiting until Faith's back was turned to pour the rest of it down the drain. I felt guilty for doing it, but another sip of this stuff and I might choke. I figured as long as she thought I liked it, then it was okay. After all, as a taste taster, I was pretty much crap—unless, of course, Faith was planning on catering a dinner for werewolves.
Faith slid the back door open and whistled, standing back for the stampede of muddy feet and wagging tails. The dogs breezed inside with a rush of cold air, heading straight for Nic before they calmed down enough to take in his scent.
I watched his face, saw the slight curl of his lips and the flash of teeth.
“Here they go,” Faith said, throwing up her hands as the two dogs crouched down and crawled on their bellies, licking their lips and gazing up at Nic with rapturous attention. Didn't help that her dogs were about three-quarters gray wolf, one quarter German shepherd. What were the odds that my best friend would be obsessed with wolves? Why couldn't she have gone down to the shelter and rescued a lab puppy like everyone else? “It's only with you two that they do this.”
“I'm just a strong pack leader, I guess,” I said with a wide grin, earning a fast, sharp glance from Nic for the pun. As soon as they heard my voice, Notch and Mila switched their attention over to me and quite literally came to grovel at my feet. Bellies were presented, tails were tucked. “You know what Cesar Millan always says: stay calm and assertive.”
“Yeah, I know, I'm a terrible pack leader.” Faith came back into the kitchen and knelt down, scratching the gray-brown wolf dogs on their exposed tummies. “That's why I keep you around.”
I looked down at the two dogs, reading their body language as easily as I read English. It was fluid, effortless. We couldn't communicate otherwise because—despite my shifting abilities—I was not a wolf. And I was most definitely not a dog. But the connection was there and they felt it, responding to me like any member of my pack would in wolf form … if a little enthusiastically. I blamed that—and their ridiculously small attention spans—on the remaining quarter of their bloodline.
“Nic, can you watch them while we're upstairs?” He shrugged one shoulder at Faith but didn't glance up as the dogs stood and stretched, moving slowly and carefully around me before pausing at the overflowing food dish in the corner, asking permission to eat. I let the wolf ripple through me and yawned, stretching my arms above my head, a very clear invitation to go ahead.
“You're not going to believe this when you see it,” Faith whispered as she wrapped her hand around the banister and we started u
p the stairs, walking side by side. “My mom … you know how she is about drugs.” I nodded, my lips slowly pulling down into a frown. Faith's mom was a nurse and uncomfortably familiar with the various types of drug users that passed through the county hospital's doors. Her hatred for them was a well-known and often celebrated source of conversation in the Cassidy Household. “Well, I went into her bathroom after she left for work today—she's pulling a double,” Faith explained as we hit the second floor, the soles of our shoes squeaking against the old hardwood floors. The downstairs had been redone in brand-new, faux wood linoleum, but up here it was all original, scratched and stained and beautiful in a shabby chic sort of a way. “Anyhow, I went in there to look for some toothpaste because I was all out and guess what I found?”
I didn't have to guess because Faith led me down the hall, past her bedroom door and into her mom's room to see for myself. The scent of fabric softener and laundry detergent wafted up to me from the neatly made bed and only the faintest whisper of her mom's smell was present, like she'd passed through here but hadn't stayed for a while.
I followed Faith silently into the bathroom and froze, my hackles going up, fingers curling into fists as an icy fear laced through me.
“Needles, Zara. Needles.” She gestured at the box of unused syringes and the vials of black liquid next to them. “If it was just this,” she began, her voice clouding with tears as she flicked the flimsy cardboard box with a red fingernail, “then maybe I wouldn't be so worried, but I haven't seen her in days. She just texts me or calls or leaves a note. And Friday, when she was last here, I saw track marks on her arm. She tried to tell me it was for some routine drug test at the hospital or something, but I didn't believe it for a second.”
I heard my friend's words, absorbed them, but all she was really doing was confirming what I had already started to guess.
“What is this stuff anyway? I tried looking it up online and I guess it could be liquid heroin or something, but … how do you explain this?” Faith lifted up one of the vials and shook it, sending clouds of red swirling through the dark liquid until the entire vial was as bright as freshly spilled blood.
Fitting, I supposed, since that's exactly what it was.
I closed my eyes for a moment, taking in the smells of the bathroom: soap that smelled suspiciously like Faith's hot cocoa, a bottle of unopened tea tree oil, a small garbage can desperately in need of being emptied.
And mint. Not a strange scent for a bathroom, not on its own. But that's not all that I smelled, taking in a deep breath and tasting a mixture of mint and apples on the back of my tongue, like a fruit salad dressed in a really good mojito. Mixed in with it all was the scent of copper, of blood.
There's only one thing in the world with a fruity, metallic scent like that.
Vampire blood.
Either Faith's mom was looking to become a vampire … or she was looking to kill a werewolf.
Maybe a little bit of both.
Moonlight slanted across the yard, silver bars falling like stripes against the dark green of the lawn. The blades were just starting to turn white at the tips, frost sliding and slithering down towards the muddy earth beneath. Come morning, the yard would sparkle and dance like it'd been coated in a layer of my little sister's glitter paint.
“I think we should go to your mother with this,” Nic said as I dropped the curtains and turned around, giving him a look with a raised brow. He was generally the last person in the pack that would ever encourage telling my mother anything. “She's still alpha, Zara. This is her problem, not yours.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head, reaching up and running my hands over my scalp and down the fall of wet hair at my back. First thing I'd done when I'd gotten home was shower; I needed the time alone to think.
“You know what the Contribution is going to be this year, don't you?” I asked as I watched his frown deepen, the muscles in his bare arms tensing as he squeezed his fingers tight, fingertips digging into his biceps. Watching him lean against the wall, dejected, burdened, depressed, arms crossed over his chest, I felt the first surge of real fear in my gut. Whoever I chose as my alpha male would be strong, determined, groomed from birth for the position, but … they were always open to being challenged. What if Nic got it in his mind to fight for me? He'd be killed. Or worse. When you're part of a group like ours, inextricably entangled with friends and family, there's always a worse alternative than death: ejection from the pack.
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, “I do.”
We both tensed as the sound of churning gravel reached our ears, pebbles pinging off metal, the sound of an engine. A car. My mother was home—or she would be soon, after she'd driven up the half mile long stretch of driveway that led to our place.
“If she finds out about Faith's mom, there's no telling what she'll do.” Nikolina was fiercely protective of her pack. I'd seen her destroy people with little to no evidence of wrongdoing. Four vials of vampire blood? That was concrete proof in Nikolina's eyes. Faith's mom—maybe even Faith herself—would be dragged to a meeting of the Convocation, tried, and … I'd turned to my friend, looked her straight in the face and promised I'd do whatever I could to help. I wouldn't betray that trust. “The Contribution this year … we'll be assigned to look into the missing members of all the packs, Nic. We can use this lead as a starting point.”
“Not we,” he said, his voice a near whisper. “Just you.” A tight smile. “I won't be taking on the impossible with you this time, Zara.” Nic turned and left my room, heading downstairs to meet my mother at the door.
I had seven sisters and brothers, all of them younger than me, all of them scared of me save one.
“Hugo,” I said with a smile, bending down and picking up a bundle of wiry brown fur. “What do you think you're doing?” He flailed around in my arms, kicking his back legs and attempting to kiss my face while his tail whipped around almost as frantically as Faith's dogs'. “When did he shift?” I asked Greer, the young woman that had taken over as the Castille family nanny last year. Our previous nanny, the omega female of the pack, had been kicked out when she'd gotten pregnant; ironically, omegas are the only wolves in the pack that are explicitly forbidden from breeding. I didn't know the exact details, or who the father was, but my mother's rage had been palpable and all-consuming. I still missed her though, and I hoped she was doing okay.
“About halfway through the school day,” Greer said, adjusting the bun on the back of her head with shaking hands. She was exhausted, overwhelmed; I could see it in the dark glaze of her eyes, the moisture resting there that she'd let fall into her pillow tonight. I heard her crying sometimes at night; it isn't easy to be the omega. “He's never going to learn to read with that attitude.” She paused, fear flickering across her pixie-like face before cowering back, a strange sight to see in human form. “I'm sorry Alpha-Daughter,” she whispered, waiting for the blows to come.
I exchanged a look with Nic, standing by the open front door and counting siblings as they appeared, moving into the warm room with breath frosting their lips and scarves wrapped around their necks. The older kids—like Avita and Morel—might pick at Greer, but I wouldn't. Nic and I, we didn't participate in dominance displays like that.
“Where's my mother?” I asked instead, cuddling the wolf pup in my arms. A few of my sisters gave me looks as they slunk past, their attitudes close enough to a challenge that I should've put them in their places. If Nikolina or Majka or—God forbid—one of my mother's betas had been there, I would have.
“She's at the Hall,” Greer said, removing her winter clothes and hanging them up in the large closet near the front door. It wasn't like we needed scarves and mittens and hats to keep us warm, but when it's forty-two and dropping outside, humans noticed a kid in a tank top and shorts.
Nic closed the door and locked it—once, twice, three, four times. We had two chains, a deadbolt, and a lock on the knob. Add in the security system, the fences that surrounded the property, and th
e surveillance cameras, and we were fairly well-protected up here in the woods.
I leaned down and let Hugo rain kisses on my mouth, showing not only his love but his sweet and submissive disposition, an attitude that would get him into trouble later in his life no doubt. Our mother might've been alpha of the pack, but there was only one alpha-daughter and that was me. The rest of my siblings, well, they'd have to fight for their position like everybody else.
“I assume everything's okay?” I asked, switching Hugo to one arm so I could sneak my phone from my pocket with the other. No messages from Nikolina.
Greer nodded, keeping her eyes downcast and her shoulders hunched. If she'd been in wolf form, her tail would be tucked. As she shrugged out of her coat, I noticed an alarming amount of new scrapes and bruises on her arms and shoulders, an inevitable byproduct of her position in the pack.
If Greer looked this bad, then what did Emil look like? Compared to him, she was lucky. Greer and Emil might've both been omegas, but Greer was our nanny. Emil … he was just the omega male, a virtual punching bag for the pack, the person who took the brunt of the tension to keep the rest of the group functioning as a unit. When internal stresses ran high, Emil took a serious emotional and physical beating. It wasn't something I was proud of; it just was. Wild wolves did it, and if they were honest with themselves, humans did, too. It might've been less formal than our method, but what was bullying if not seeking out an omega?
Nic and I exchanged a look, his eyes flashing purple for a moment before he turned away. I kept my eyes on Greer as she slunk from the room and headed towards the kitchen.
“Crap,” he whispered, running his fingers through his red hair again. “Things must be worse with the other packs than we thought.” I nodded; I was thinking the same thing.
Hugo's wet tongue made contact with my cheek, breaking the tension and making me laugh as I struggled to hold the squirming puppy. When Nic glanced back at me, even he was fighting a small smile.
Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1) Page 3