“Let's get you something to eat,” I said, knowing that no matter how big a meal Greer cooked, Hugo wouldn't get any. Four years old and my sisters were already asserting their dominance over him. Hugo wasn't going to have an easy life. “You hungry, Nic?” I asked and he sighed, nodding his head once before following me into the kitchen.
I sat Hugo on the floor, ignoring the glares of Avita and Morel as I moved to the fridge and grabbed a package of hamburger meat, tossing it onto the counter opposite the one Greer was using. Thankfully the kitchen was huge, so she didn't have to creep around while she cooked; there was plenty of room in here for both of us.
“So, Zara,” Avita began, licking her lips as I glanced over my shoulder at her. She was only pretending to be submissive. I knew that as soon as Saturday rolled around, she'd be at the Hall challenging me for my position. Five days from now I'll be wrapping my jaws around my little sister's throat and pinning her to the ground. Not a pleasant thought, but that was my reality. Even less pleasant was the idea of losing; that thought never crossed my mind. “Are you nervous for the Pairing?” she asked as Nic leaned against the counter next to me and glared daggers at her.
Avita was my most wicked sister, someone who delighted in the pain of others. She'd have made a terrible alpha. Good thing I knew I was strong enough to beat her. The sheer ecstasy in her face when she talked about the Pairing, when those big round eyes of hers locked onto Nic's discomfort, that drove me nuts. I had half a mind to walk over there and turn her onto her back, make her expose her belly. Somehow though, I felt that'd be letting her win.
“Not particularly,” I said, shaping up a few patties and leaving off the salt and pepper. Technically, we could eat the burgers raw and they'd still taste good, but I liked the warmth of a cooked patty. The reasons for that were decidedly morbid: a fresh kill is always warm.
I turned around, a raw patty in my palm, and smiled, letting all my teeth show.
“Why do you ask?”
Avita narrowed her eyes at me and looked away. At sixteen, she already thought she was strong enough to beat me, but I knew her reasons for waiting. She wanted everyone to see: our mother, Majka, my mother's betas, the alphas from the other packs. Unfortunately all they'd be seeing on Saturday was her continued submission.
“All those guys,” she said, drawing her finger across the shiny wood top of the butcher-block countertops, “vying for your attention.” Avita flicked her eyes back over to me for a split second. “All that pressure. Anybody who's anybody will be watching.”
I turned back to my burgers, setting them on the counter while I looked for a pan. I set the cast iron on the stove, turned on the burner and added some butter. Hugo loved his burgers cooked in butter.
“Good,” I said, waiting for the pan to heat as I glanced over at Greer, a heaping plate of bacon-wrapped steaks in her hand. She tiptoed over to the left side of the stove top, using the two burners on the other side of the griddle. I stayed as far right as I could, trying to be compassionate. Cooking in here with me was already stressing her out. “I want everybody to see.” I looked up at Avita, at the bloodred braid that hung over her shoulder, the defiant set to her jaw. “Because all of those rumors about the White Wolf”—she exchanged a glance with Morel and then snapped her eyes over to mine, a flicker of fear burning in those inky black depths—“I want to show everyone that they're true.”
My book bag hung loosely at my side, hitting my hip in a rhythmic fashion as I moved down the hallway looking for Faith. I could sense her from here, still smelling like lavender and cocoa. She'd texted me to say she was waiting in the student lounge, so I was on my way over there to meet her.
“Zara.” I heard the voice behind me and paused, a slight growl rising up in my throat before I pushed it back. When I turned around to look at Julian, I was smiling. The last thing I want is to hang out with a guy that smells like vampires, I thought, my mind on Faith and her missing mother. According to Faith's texts, she hadn't come home this morning. “Hey.”
“Hi Julian,” I said, refusing to let my irritation show. How was he supposed to know I was on my way to discuss a crisis? “What's up?”
He tucked his fingers in his front pockets like he was nervous, his skin pale and his blonde hair like ice, gleaming under the harsh hallway lighting. His brown eyes searched mine for a careful moment before he took a deep breath and nodded, more to himself than to me.
“I was hoping we could talk about the final project?”
Crap.
I'd almost forgotten I'd offered to team up with him. The plan was always that I'd be working with Nic. Maybe this is for the best? I wondered before I let myself back out of the plan, feed Julian some excuse about not being able to work together anymore. By the time our final was due, I'd be completely and utterly embroiled in the Pairing and everything that came with it. I might not have my alpha yet, but I'd be in the process of choosing one. If my mother refused to grant my request to keep Nic as my guard, he'd probably have to drop out of school anyway. It was a privilege to attend college in Pack Ebon Red.
Speaking of Nic … I pulled my phone from my pocket and glanced at the screen. No texts from him yet. We both thought we'd smelled a wolf in the hallway near our calculus class. He'd gone to check it out. No news was good news unless you were dealing with Nic. When he'd gone after Azure Frost and Jax, he hadn't had a phone on him; he did now.
I'd wait five more minutes and then go after him.
“Can you walk with me?” I asked Julian, making a show of studying my phone's screen. “I've got a friend waiting in the lounge.”
“Sure thing,” he said, falling into step beside me, his backpack slung over one shoulder. He kept smiling at me, an open friendly sort of smile. If I could have, I would've asked him about that mint and apple smell that always clung to his clothes. I knew from my first few years of home school that that refreshingly sweet scent was a biological adaption to hide the scent of blood. And it worked brilliantly—for humans anyway. I'd casually asked Faith about Julian once and she'd sighed, glanced over at him and smiled. “He smells clean,” she'd said.
But he wasn't a vampire; vampires can't come out during the day, not if they want their skin to stay smooth and unblemished. I'd seen my mother sentence a woman to death once, claiming the bright light of day would cleanse her wicked soul. Even in the hot golden light of a summer afternoon it took her three hours to die, three hours to burn.
Julian, he played football with his shirt off on the practice field behind the school and I hadn't seen a single scar, scratch or blister on him.
“I was actually going to ask you if we could get together Friday night and start planning.” I glanced over at his handsome face, at the fullness of his lower lip, those big brown eyes. At least half the girls—and a few of the boys—in our wildflower class were into him. Why shouldn't they be? He was friendly, cute, helpful in class. “I know it's a little early to get started, but since it's worth half our grade …” He trailed off and grinned sheepishly, a slight flush coloring his cheeks.
“Totally understandable,” I said as we turned the corner and found ourselves face to face with a set of tables, some old but comfy couches, and a small snack bar. Faith was waiting for me in the corner, slouched in an armchair, a Kindle in one hand and a paper coffee cup in the other. “But I'm busy on Friday night.” I turned fully towards him and switched my smile up a notch, laying a hand on his chest. “Tell you what? Are you free next Tuesday?”
“Uh, sure,” he said, disappointment creeping into his voice. Still, that smile never faltered. “Next Tuesday works great. Do you want to meet here after your class? Same time?”
“I'm already looking forward to it,” I said, raising my brows and wondering where the hell Nic was. “See you in class.” And then I turned and made a quick beeline for Faith, kneeling down next to her and putting my hand over hers.
She jumped and turned to face me, redness dotting the whites of her eyes, dark circles underneath.
“You didn't sleep at all last night, did you?” I asked and she shook her head, her thick, dark braid swaying with the motion. I let a slight frown take over my lips and stood up, surreptitiously checking my phone again. No messages, and it'd been a full five minutes. “Wait here. I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick and then grab a cup of coffee.”
“Okay,” Faith said, voice low and laced with worry. “But hurry up. Oh, and get me a refill. If I don't stay hyped up on this crappy coffee, I'll never make it to chemistry.”
I squeezed her hand again, dropping my book bag into the adjacent chair, and turned back to head towards the calc classroom. As I walked, I lifted my chin up and let my hair hang loose down my back, scenting the air gently, just a slight flare of nostrils.
I kept getting this whiff of cherry vanilla, like a really expensive lotion, almost edible. But underneath it all, there was the strong scent of earth and wild things—the scent of a werewolf. I steeled myself for another suitor-to-be, fully aware that curiosity didn't just kill the cat. 'Weres', we were kind of susceptible to it, too.
I followed my nose down the hall, around the corner and straight back to a set of double doors that opened onto one of the college's inner courtyards, complete with fountain, benches, and student run gardens. The first thing that struck me was the scent of cigarette smoke on a campus so anti-cigarette that they'd been known to lower students' final grades by an entire letter for catching them lighting up on the property.
My nose twitched and I felt a sneeze rising up in the back of my throat, but I moved forward, around the corner and past a box of half-dead flowers, wilted and drooping from last night's frost. I smelled Nic before I saw him.
He was standing with his fists clenched and his jaw tight, teeth bared, this close to letting the change ripple through him as he glared violent daggers at the Alpha-Son of Pack Obsidian Gold.
Silas Vetter didn't seem concerned as he glanced over at me, flashing a wicked smile, complete with a gleaming white tooth that I knew wasn't part of his human form. That wolfish leer was undeniably sexy, even with a cigarette half-hanging out of his mouth. His golden eyes were like mirrors, glinting in the shadows beneath the overhang he was standing under. From here, the scar over his left eye was barely visible.
I felt my pulse quicken and my blood heat, my eyes taking in the colorful tattoos that lined his right arm from shoulder to wrist, swirling bursts of brightness that drew my gaze down to the fingers stuffed in his right front pocket.
“Hey there, White Wolf,” he said, lifting his left hand up and withdrawing the cigarette from between his lips. I was surprised he could stand to smoke it; no werewolf I'd ever met could get within three feet of a lit cig and not start to feel queasy. As if he could read my mind, Silas moved over to a nearby trash can and snubbed the bright cherry out on the pebbled sides before tossing it in the garbage. “I was starting to wonder if you were going to come out and see me.”
“Friday at four-thirty, Silas,” I told him as those brilliant eyes of his swung over to me and took me in from head to toe, making me wish I was wearing something less practical and more for show, like him. Silas was in a pair of low-cut jeans and a tight T-shirt, a cluster of leather bracelets on his left wrist and entirely bare feet down below. If he was trying to fit in with the rest of the students here, he was failing miserably. I knew for a fact that Obsidian Gold was required to wear contact lenses at all times out in public. If any of the dozen girls walking by and ogling Silas were to stop and really look him in the face, they'd know he wasn't human. “You should leave,” I said, even though, somewhere deep in my belly, I didn't want him to.
I couldn't lie: the human half of me was attracted to the human half of Silas. Strangely, I'd never seen him in wolf form. But I knew the stories; we all did. Hell, I was one of them.
“I heard through the grapevine that Jax paid you a visit yesterday,” he said, moving over to me with Nic not far behind. We exchanged a look, Nic's eyes indigo swirls of rage that were just as brilliant as Silas' heavy-lidded golden shimmer. “That's not really fair, is it?” he added, moving close enough that his bare toes brushed the black soles of my sneakers. His tattooed hand lifted up and brushed a strand of hair away from my face.
I gave him nothing, meeting his gaze head-on despite the height difference between us. A staring contest ensued, lasting long enough that people in the courtyard started to notice. Nic tried to do his job, rolling his eyes and pretending to be irritated with us, like we were just three normal kids in the middle of an intense argument.
“This is my territory, Silas,” I said, letting a growl bubble up in my throat. “Don't make me fight you for it.” I flashed a grin of my own, all teeth, all wolf, and just hoped that no one noticed. If they did … well, I just hoped they'd think it was a trick of the light. Keeping humans ignorant of our existence was important; keeping my dominance during the Pairing was essential.
Thankfully Silas had some sense in him and looked away first, but, like Jax, I had the feeling that he didn't really mean it. Great. Two of my five possible choices were dicks. I could only hope that the other boys, the ones I hadn't met yet, wouldn't be so … wild.
“My friend, Faith, is waiting for me,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and glancing over at Nic. “And I could really use a coffee, so unless you have something you came here to say, I'm going back inside.”
Silas moved a few steps away and leaned his head back to stare up at the sky. Near the fountain, I spotted a pair of black boots that must've been his.
“Nothing to say. I just wanted you to know that I'm in the race.” He looked back down at me and smiled wider, turning his gold eyes to Nic for a moment. I knew the moment their gazes connected because Nic's spine went ramrod straight. “And,” he continued, turning back to me, reaching up to run a finger down the scar, over his closed left eyelid and onto his cheek, “that it was worth it.”
The drive home was silent and tense, Nic sitting in the passenger seat looking like he was about to puke, and Faith lying down in the back, head pillowed on her hands. I thought she might be asleep, but I didn't bring up pack business just in case.
“Are you alright?” I asked Nic, my fingers tight on the steering wheel as I glanced over at him.
“No.” Just one word. He turned away from me and looked out the window, resting his elbow on the door and cradling his chin in one hand. I knew he hated Silas, and I knew why, too. Because of me.
“Do you want to stop and pick up something fried and greasy to eat on the way home?” I grinned at him, trying to lighten the mood. Things weren't usually this rough between us. We had fun together, even if Nic had a naturally cranky disposition. He smiled, laughed, joked around. But these past few weeks, his face had been pulled into a permanent frown and he could hardly look me in the eye anymore. Even that tense, quiet night we'd talked about running away had been better. I couldn't stand to see him like this, but I didn't know what to do either. “Or I can make burgers again when we get home?”
He looked back at me and then glanced over his shoulder as if to remind me that Faith was in the car with us. Like I could forget. After I'd gone back to the lounge, I'd found her sobbing, arms curled around her knees, her Kindle and coffee cup on the floor. Apparently she'd called the hospital while I was gone and was told that her mom didn't work there anymore, that she'd up and quit in the middle of a shift last week.
“Sorry guys,” she said, as if she could tell Nic was irritated at her. “I didn't mean to fall asleep.” Faith yawned and stretched her arms above her head, fingers brushing the roof of the car. “And thanks for letting me come over. I know how Nikolina gets with guests in the house.”
I pursed my lips, not at Faith, but at the reminder of what I was going to have to deal with if my mother came home tonight. She and Majka sometimes spent the night down at the Hall, but if she did show up at home while Faith was there, I was going to pay for it. She could hardly stand other werewolves in the house, let alone humans.
I'd met Faith on my first day of sixth grade—and my first year at a real school—and she'd spent the night at my house a total of three times since then. It just wasn't worth the fight in most cases. Tonight, it was.
“I tried to sleep last night, really I did, but it wasn't just my mom that I was worried about. I thought I heard her car at one point, but when I went to check out the kitchen window, there was some weird guy standing in the street staring at me.”
A chill went up my spine and it took everything I had in me to hold back a growl.
“Why didn't you call or text me?” I asked, fear curling tightly in my belly. Whatever Faith's mom's motives were, she was obviously dealing with vampires. Depending on which kingdom, she could be in serious trouble if her mom had failed to make arrangements to keep her daughter safe. I knew it! I should've brought her up here last night.
I wouldn't make the same mistake again. Tomorrow morning, when Faith got up for school, I'd send a wolf or two with her. She might not be able to take on a vampire, but they could. I moved the mystery of her missing mother up my list of priorities.
It was the last thing I needed to deal with before the Pairing, but the first thing I'd look into. Faith might not be an actual member of my pack, but I loved her just the same. Nobody—nobody—hurt a member of Pack Ebon Red without making an unspoken promise to visit with me.
And the White Wolf always kept her promises.
When we pulled into the driveway, one of the pack's black SUVs was waiting for us, the black paint shining in a patch of light from the porch that turned the gray pebbles of the driveway a brilliant gold. Like Silas' eyes, I thought before I could stop myself, taking a deep breath of the sharp, clean forest air. It helped push back the memory of my first kiss—our first kiss—and kept my head clear.
“Oh my God,” Faith said, tilting her head back to take in the sheer size and grandeur of my mother's house. “I forgot how beautiful this place is. Too bad your mom's so opposed to visitors.” I smiled and wished for a brief moment that I could tell her everything. But … even if I could, I wouldn't. I liked having someone with no connections to the pack, someone I could sit with and talk to without wondering if I was seeing the real them, if they were acting differently because of my status.
Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1) Page 4