by Kat Kinney
“Please,” I breathed, close, so close.
Reaching above me, Ethan unhooked my bound hands from the carabiner chained to the wall and flipped our positions so I was straddling him.
“Ladies first.”
After, we lay entwined, sweaty and sated, the bond glowing warm as sunlight. Head pillowed on Ethan’s chest, I pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. His heart thrummed beneath my ear, the muscles of his abdomen flattening and cratering as I stroked his bare stomach.
My phone buzzed.
“Just ignore it.” He lifted a strand of hair off my forehead, twirling it around one finger.
It buzzed again. Pushing up, I swiped the screen. Ethan followed, kissing my bare shoulder as I checked the message.
The unfamiliar number stared up at me, this time along with a text.
Got to you. I’ll get to her, too.
Then
Ethan
HOURS AFTER THE FIGHT with Ben and Sofia I’d been dreading for months, I was perched on the edge of my bed, sneakers double-knotted and trash bag packed, when my little brother’s scream broke the stillness of the night.
We’d been staying with the Caldwells for just over a year. In that time, I’d stopped hiding food in my room, still wouldn’t let anyone touch me, and had clung to the car door like a lemur the one time Sofia tried to make me talk to a counselor.
And stupidly, had let my guard down.
Slamming out of the bunkroom, I raced down the hall. A dark shadow bolted from an open door.
River.
I plowed past him, the smell of sick so strong my wolf wanted to scrub its nose in the carpet. Wild with rage, I slapped the light switch. My brother screamed louder.
“Where, August?” I shouted, ripping open the closet door.
An avalanche of action figures, matchbox cars, and assorted game pieces, plus the missing Nerf gun West had been looking for all week, spilled out over my feet. I swiveled in search of the intruder.
Footsteps sounded behind me. Snarling, I sprang between August and the threat, only to come face to face with Sofia. Her eyes flared wolf-gold. Cowed, I backed down.
“I, um—”
“Mommy, my head hurts,” August wailed from behind me.
Steering me to one side, Sofia began swiftly issuing orders. Brody, peering in ashen faced from the hall, was to run a bath. West should find clean sheets and ginger ale. Dallas, she instructed to make up a bed for River on the couch. I crept to the edge of my brother’s bed, each new scream threatening to send me crawling out of my skin.
Shifters could get sick, but it was rare, almost unheard of. Because of our enhanced ability to heal, we typically lived at least two human lifespans, sometimes more. I’d never caught a cold, had never even been to the doctor. As far as I knew, neither had any of the Caldwells.
“Ethan.”
I froze, hands balling into fists. The Ben who sometimes took us to the Dairy Queen after supper for ice cream was okay. So was the one who asked if I wanted to throw the football on the weekends with Brody and Dallas, even though we all knew that would only end up with me tossing the ball off into the grass. And the Ben who took me aside and said he was real proud when I finally brought my science grade up was all right, too, even if the question made my stomach hurt for days.
But it was this voice that always made the hair at the back of my neck tingle, his sheriff’s voice infused with Alpha power. This voice, that let me know I was about to get my least favorite version of Ben.
Forcing myself away from August’s bed, I walked stiffly out into the hall. Brody, West and Dallas were already lined up against the wall, a red-faced River plastered to West’s side.
“I want a straight answer.”
“Yessir,” they chorused, even Dallas looking somber as August continued to scream.
At the sound, my throat constricted until I could barely take in air.
“We have to figure out what happened to your brother,” Ben said. “Maybe he was playing and fell, or someone got to horsing around too rough.”
Wolf clawing to the surface, I bared my teeth at the others. West rubbed his eyes, still half-asleep. Brody frowned in obvious confusion. And when River started to whimper, Dallas stooped to pick him up. And that was when I noticed Ben’s eyes were locked on me, and it hit me who his question had been intended for all along.
Fury exploded inside me, hot as the sun. Beside me, Dallas flinched. I didn’t care, my rage a cold, black thing, shattering the walls I’d spent a year so carefully constructing.
“Need to calm down, son.”
Ben’s power pressed down on my shoulders, cold and stifling as a lead blanket. Swaying in place, I gritted my teeth.
“I’m not your son. And I would never hurt my brother.”
For a beat, no one breathed. Then, to my shock, Brody stepped forward.
“That’s the truth, sir.”
I blinked. Ben fired a sharp look at Brody, who quickly backed down. But before I could react, Dallas cleared his throat.
“We were all in the room when August started hollering. Ethan got in there the fastest ‘cause,” Dally shrugged, “well, it’s August, but there was light coming in the window. I saw him jump off the top bunk.”
“Ethan,” my brother whimpered.
I managed a staggering step towards August’s room, legs encased in concrete. Ben’s power squeezed harder, driving the air from my lungs. Gasping, I fell to my knees. Ben pointed to the corner.
“Go take a time out until you can get your wolf under control.”
He released me, and I collapsed in a twitching, boneless heap. The others leaped away like I had fleas. Over the next twenty minutes, I fought to regain control one finger and toe at a time, listening with my cheek pressed to the carpet while the local vet was called. My brother was given grape Tylenol, which he promptly threw up.
“He needs to go to the emergency room,” Sofia said in a low voice.
Ben paced, worn work boots crossing in and out of my field of vision. “And if they want to draw blood? Spinal fluid?”
“You know as well as I do nothing will show up in his spinal fluid, and it’s the middle of the month. His viral levels will be undetectable.”
“We think. If you’re wrong, and someone starts asking questions—”
“Then I’ll deal with them,” Sofia snapped. “Have you forgotten what I am?”
There was a long pause. “And if that doesn’t work? You realize we could be bringing down—"
“You think I’m afraid of my brother?” Sofia’s voice went so cold that for a second, I stopped breathing. “I don’t follow his orders, and I sure as hell don’t follow yours. I’m taking my son to the doctor. Try and stop me.”
She stalked past Ben, and in that moment, I could not have loved Sofia more, knew that in the morning when my social worker arrived and my trash bag and I were gone, she would love August as fiercely as if he were her own blood. A traitorous tear dribbled down my cheek. Pushing drunkenly upright, I swiped it away.
Ben scrubbed a hand over his face and called Brody over. “We’ll stop and send Calgary home on the way into town. I expect you to handle things here until we get back.”
“Yessir.” Brody’s bare toes dug into the carpet.
I stabbed my fingernails into my palms until I smelled blood. “I want to go with August.”
No one responded. I might as well have been invisible.
Over Brody’s shoulder, I caught a glimpse of my brother’s auburn hair as Sofia bundled him off to Ben’s truck.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Ben, please!”
Maybe he heard the desperation in my voice, because at the last minute, he turned. Chest heaving, I clawed dark red furrows into my arms, trying to calm down so he would take me along. Kneeling, Ben started to put a hand on my shoulder. I lurched back so fast I hit the wall. He dropped his arm.
“Need you to stay here with your brothers.”
Panic flared. “August is my brot
her.”
Ben continued, “They don’t let kids into the ER. You’d just be stuck out in the waiting room—”
“I don’t care.”
“—and I can’t be in two places at once if something happens and you lose your cool.”
“I won’t. I can control it this time, I swear.”
But Ben was already pulling his keys from his pocket. “We’ll call from the hospital as soon as we know something.”
I shrank back into the wall, the black, desperate rage from before clawing up through my chest. The front door slammed. Ben’s truck pulled out of the drive, the sound of the tires spinning on the gravel sending my wolf into a frenzy, a sense of panic I hadn’t felt since the last time the social workers tried to separate me from August three years before screaming between my ears, blocking out everything else.
As if they could read what I was thinking, Brody and Dallas edged between me and the door.
West jumped in, having become a master in the past year at talking me and Dallas out of murdering each other. “August will be fine. You heard Mom. Let’s pull out the Wii and see if there’s any ice cream.”
I used their moment of distraction to bolt back into August and River’s room. The three of them shouted in surprise. They were still yelling for me as I launched myself towards the window, Brody’s fingers nearly closing around my collar as I exploded as a soot-black wolf headfirst through the glass.
7
Ethan
THIRTY MINUTES LATER we were parked outside the Walmart across from the after-hours vet clinic where Ellie worked weekend shifts.
“You know this would be easier if you sat in your seat.”
Glowering across the empty parking lot like she was about to bust through the window of her death-trap Volvo (because of course we had to take her car) and eat the stray moths flying circles around the halogen lamps, the small black wolf growled low in her throat. Because it had taken all of two seconds after receiving that text threatening her sister for her to leap out of bed, grab the sharpest steak knife out of my drawer and charge for the door. She still couldn’t handle direct moonlight. And hell if she cared. Which was how I came to be doing surveillance at 1 a.m. with a hundred-pound werewolf standing in my lap.
The door to the clinic opened. Hayden lunged across the front seat and pressed her nose to the windshield.
“Yeah, that’s my dick.”
Beowulf oh-so-delicately shifted her paws so she was crushing my liver instead. Because, helpful. Together we watched as a teenage girl skulked out to her car holding a cat carrier.
“You know Ellie’s not alone in there, right? The vet’s one of us. She’s up to speed on the situation.”
A shadow passed over the hood of the car. Nearly taking herself out trying to clear the steering wheel (again, we should have taken my truck), Hayden vaulted to the passenger door and began gnawing at the handle.
“Uh, yeah, killer, that was a grackle.” Double-checking that the locks were engaged, I pulled out my phone to see if Brody had texted back. “Hangry much?”
She shot me the mother of all dirty looks and hunched into the passenger seat to continue surveilling the empty parking lot for enemy birds.
Reaching down into the bag on the floorboard, I unwrapped a double bacon cheeseburger. Hayden flattened her ears when I set it on the dash in front of her, clearly still pissed I wasn’t taking the 007 thing more seriously. But as soon as she thought I wasn’t looking, big hulking bites began disappearing from the edges of the burger.
Better it than my face.
The door to the clinic swung open. Caught with a rogue tomato slice dangling from her fangs, Hayden whined.
“Yeah, I see her.”
Dressed in blue scrubs featuring cats wearing eyeglasses (because everyone in this family seemed to have a knack for making themselves into wolf-bait), Ellie headed for her car. Hayden whined again, an image of a wolf leaping out from the shadows to eat her sister forcing its way into my mind.
“Yeah, Lassie, I get the picture.” I pulled out my phone, about to text the clinic when Ellie slowed. Frowned down at her phone.
“See? She’s going back in.”
Which of course, was exactly the moment Mini-Hays looked up. Had we been in my truck, which looked about like every other beat-up, muddy Ford in Lindley County, no doubt she would have kept on walking. But because Beowulf insisted we take Death-Trap, a twenty-year-old Volvo that her Aunt Piper had gotten custom-painted Glitter-Smurf blue as a surprise learner’s permit present, I was now sitting outside the Walmart in the dead of night with Ellie squinting over at me like I was a total creeper, with a werewolf she couldn’t know about hyperventilating next to me in the passenger seat with total guilty tomato breath.
“Okay, not good on so many levels.” Cranking the ignition, I peeled out of the parking lot without even bothering to turn on the lights.
Hayden yelped, scrambling to the back window to see. A tail smacked me in the face.
“Um, ow? Driving.”
She whined.
“You know as well as I do she can’t see you. What did you think we were going to do, take you in there to get your nails clipped and a flea dip? Maybe you could have accidentally eaten all the cats in the waiting room while you were there?”
She growled.
“Yeah. That was a rhetorical question.”
My phone buzzed. I reached down to silence it, only to realize. Crap. It wasn’t my phone at all.
Pulling over to the side of the road, I grabbed Hayden’s phone out of the console. Beowulf helped by trying to stand on my face.
CadburyFunny: Um, is everything okay? I swear I just saw Ethan Caldwell outside the vet clinic. In Axel. With this huge black dog.
Shit. I started typing.
Me: OMG. was going to surprise you tomorrow. adopted a dog. Violet. sooo cute
Me: Dog emoji. Party popper emoji. Clapping hands emoji. Heart-eyes emoji.
I hit send. Reading over my shoulder, Hayden whuffed.
“Too much?”
She gave me total werewolf WTF face and turned back to the screen.
“You wanna give texting a try with those pointy little claws, I can pass this bad boy back there.”
Another growl. Yeah. I was totally sleeping on the couch tonight.
CadburyFunny: And he’s outside the vet clinic because?
Me: Violet got into the Oreos. She gets hangry. Made Ethan take her in. He just texted and said he’s on his way home. Thinks she’s okay… call you tomorrow…
* * *
Just before sunrise, I slipped out onto the balcony and texted Cal.
Me: You awake?
Cal: Hey. Just got in.
A beat later, my phone rang.
“Was fixing to take some meat over to the house, hang out with Dallas for a bit.” Cal loved to hunt, and with Central Texas’ growing feral hog population, kept us all in sausage and pork loin. There was a pause. “You okay?”
Six in the morning, and there was no getting the shrink out of my brother. I filled him in on last night, Hayden discovering my former dependence on silver, and the texts.
“So where did you leave things?”
“I don’t know. Considering the history with her dad, I wouldn’t blame her for being freaked.”
The line fell silent. “What are you going to do?”
I ran a finger under the bottom edge of my cuff. “Maybe this was a mistake from the start.”
A beat passed, and then—
“Dad’s only human,” Cal said softly. “He can make the wrong call.”
I cleared my throat. “You remember what happened—”
“’Course. And I gotta tell you, E. A lot of people could have handled that day better. Starting with me. Probably ten years too late to say this, but I’m sorry.”
A knot formed in my throat. I stared down at the cuff locked around my wrist. “It was my fault.”
“No. It wasn’t. You get that, right?”
; I leaned my forehead against the railing. In addition to his day job at a residential psychiatric facility, Cal moonlighted providing mental health services for rehabilitated Ferals.
“You know I’ll support you either way,” my brother said when it was clear I wasn’t going to go on. “And, E? You’re going to shrug this off the moment I say it, which is why I’m going to keep repeating it until one day it gets through. You’re not bad for Hayden. You’re not dangerous. There’s nothing in you that’s broken. And if Dad ever said or did anything to imply otherwise, he was out of line.”
I gripped the railing. “I gotta go.”
Hayden sat up as soon as the bed dipped, the strap of her tank slipping off her thin shoulder. Dark smudges shadowed her eyes, her hands jerking involuntarily, a sure sign she’d slept every bit as horribly after we’d crashed as I had. I scooted closer and slid a hand to her cheek, thumb grazing the faint constellation of freckles scattered across her cheekbones. She blinked up at me, eyelashes dark as soot against her pale skin.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She looked down, picking at her nails. “Hey.”
“Ellie’s okay. August is with her.”
She chewed her lip. Nodded. Taking my fingers in hers, she turned my hand over, her callouses from years of guitar practice rough against my palm.
Hayden drew my wrist to her lips and kissed my claiming mark. I closed my eyes, feeling the rush of relief as our pulses synched, the heady warmth from the night before when we’d made love flooding through me in a rush. With each passing day, the bond between us grew more intense, more… intimate. And harder to imagine severing, if it ever came down to that. I caught myself staring in the mornings when we were trying to work, couldn’t keep myself from watching the way her hair spilled out over her cheeks when she fell asleep on my couch at night. Hayden Crowe was like a drug. And I didn’t know if I ever wanted to get clean.
When I looked up, she was brushing a finger under her lashes. Leaning in, I pressed a kiss to her throat. She curled her arms around my neck, and more than anything in the world, I wished we could stay right here, like this, together, soft and sleepy. Safe.