Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "Haven't you ever flown before?" Debi asked.

  "Sure I have, but traveling is so much fun, don't you think?"

  It got markedly less fun for Debi when Nia insisted on grilling her about her breakup with Fletcher. In spite of Debi's attempts to deflect Nia's questions and her refusal to talk about what had actually happened between them, this didn't stop Nia from having opinions about it.

  "I don't know what he did, and I will happily slap him with a dead trout on your behalf over whatever it was, but maybe he's having regrets about it right now," Nia said. "You'll never know unless you talk to him."

  "I don't want to talk to him ever again. I hope he steps on a million Legos."

  By the time they got to the Casper airport, she was already very tired of Nia's bouncy enthusiasm. Nia wanted to stop and eat, but Debi insisted on heading straight out of town; they compromised on picking up fast food once they got their rental car. Debi made herself nibble a few fries to stop Nia from noticing how nervous she really was.

  Lightly forested land in the foothills of the mountains gave way to dust-colored plains. Debi remembered this bleak country only vaguely from her earlier trip with Jack Ross, though they must have driven through even more of it. But she hadn't been feeling much of anything then, or thinking about much of anything. She'd been trying her hardest not to.

  Those months were a blur now. She remembered little except isolated events and, above all, the constant struggle to keep her head above water and not allow the disaster that had swallowed her family to pull her under along with them.

  "Have you been here before?" Debi asked to distract herself from her gloomy thoughts. She was driving, while Nia juggled two open burger cartons on her knees and passed over fries as asked. "To the shifter prison, I mean."

  Nia shook her head. "I've known about it since I've worked for the SCB, of course. But it's not something I've ever had to deal with personally."

  "Lucky you. Travel is so mind-broadening," Debi said sarcastically.

  She almost drove past the prison. There were no signs for it, and it didn't show up as a point of interest on her phone's GPS, but Nia had directions and pointed her to a nondescript road turning off the highway. Although she still didn't have clear memories of her earlier trip with Jack, something in Debi's hindbrain recognized the area, and her stomach tightened into a clenched ball of tension as a distant complex of rambling structures appeared on the bone-bleak horizon.

  Oh yes, she remembered this place, all right. Despite the vagueness of everything else, one visit had been enough to sear every detail of this part of the trip into her brain. Before her siblings were arrested, she hadn't even known this place existed, but now she couldn't forget it: the secret shifter prison known only as the Ranch.

  Aside from sitting in the absolute middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but scrubby brush and tawny, rolling hills, it looked like any high-security prison Debi had seen on TV. There was a wall around it, topped with barbed wire and punctuated with guard towers. Behind the wall, the blocky shapes of concrete buildings were visible. She parked in a gravel lot among a handful of other cars, under a huge sign reading VEHICLES SUBJECT TO SEARCH. Debi wasn't sure whether to be surprised that other visitors drove all the way out to this lonely place, or saddened on the prisoners' behalf that there were so few of them.

  As they left the car behind, Nia gazed at the prison wall and gate with wide eyes. "Your tax dollars at work," Debi murmured, clenching her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. Remembering the temporary confiscation of personal items at her last visit, she'd left her purse in the car, which didn't give her anything to do with her hands.

  "But what else can we do?" Nia asked plaintively as the shadow of the wall fell across them. "We can't put them in a regular prison. It's only the hard cases who go here, the ones we can't rehabilitate."

  "So that's what I am, a rehabilitation project?"

  "You know it started out that way—" Nia began, and broke off, looking distressed, as a guard buzzed the door open and waved them in.

  Debi's feet felt like they'd grown roots into the ground. The open doorway might as well have been a million miles away.

  "It's okay," Nia murmured, squeezing Debi's arm with shockingly warm fingers. Debi hadn't realized until that moment that she'd started trembling. Her chest was so tight she had to struggle to breathe.

  I'm not going to pass out. That would be ridiculous. I'm a Fallon. I will not be defeated by a stupid panic attack.

  But she didn't want to admit, even to herself, how comforting it was to have Nia's small warm presence beside her as she walked into the prison.

  Two grim, uniformed guards—one male, one female—examined Nia's SCB ID and gave them paperwork to fill out, including forms consenting to be recorded and searched "as necessary." Debi's anklet was checked and a notation entered in the guards' paperwork. They were both patted down and passed through an airport-like metal detector. The handful of personal items they had with them (Nia's phone and wallet, their car keys) were confiscated and bagged to be returned upon their departure.

  "Did you bring any items for the prisoners?" the female guard asked.

  Debi shook her head, feeling gut-punched. She should have thought of bringing a care package. A nicer person (Nia, say) wouldn't have forgotten. But it was too late; the guard was swiping an ID badge to let them into the inner part of the prison. The door was reinforced steel that looked like it could stop a rhinoceros—and for all she knew, maybe it had.

  At the heavy thud of the door falling shut behind them, Debi had to close her eyes for a moment, telling herself that she wasn't a prisoner. She had an SCB escort with her. She could walk out anytime she wanted.

  Unlike her brother and sister.

  As in her first visit, a guard walked them down the hall into a waiting area. It was institutional-looking but not otherwise unpleasant, with a handful of metal-and-plastic chairs in two rows that made her think of an airport waiting area. No one had provided any magazines to read, and without their phones or other items, all they could do was sit. There was only one other visitor in the room, a middle-aged woman with what Debi at first took to be a cat curled up in her lap, then realized was a fox. Either way, it was a shifted fox, and the woman was a shifter as well. So far, every person she'd seen here had been.

  "This place is so ..." Nia trailed off, rubbing her arms as if she was cold. "I know it's necessary. The people here are ... they're killers. But it doesn't feel right to just stick them out in the middle of nowhere and ... leave them here."

  Debi let out a sigh and clasped her hands between her knees. "As much as I hate to defend the SCB, you were right earlier. You really don't have a choice. I can't imagine trying to keep a shifter in a normal prison; smaller ones would go right out between the bars, and something like a bear or a buffalo—" Or a lion. "... well, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to picture how that would go." She looked up at the institutional beige walls. "Miserable place to work, though. Do you think the guards live here?"

  Nia nodded. "There's a dormitory on site. A few of them who don't mind the commute, and want to have their families nearby, live in small towns in the area." At Debi's raised eyebrows: "Hey, I read up on it on the plane, when you got tired of me talking. Yes, I know you get tired of it. I can be a real chatterbox."

  "You're ..." Debi trailed off; she felt as if she should come up with something nice to say, but Nia was a chatterbox. It could be very draining. "It's just how you are," she tried, feeling her way through the unfamiliar territory of giving someone a compliment.

  Nia gave a tiny snort and covered her mouth with her hand.

  "I'm glad you find me entertaining." Debi tried to keep her tone dry, but reluctant amusement crept in anyway.

  "It's just how you are," Nia squeaked around her hand, struggling with giggles that were probably half hysterical—on some level, Debi thought, she was as nervous here as Debi herself. But the laughter was infectious. With her own compos
ure on the edge of cracking, she was still struggling not to laugh when a guard came to show them to the visiting room.

  Nia didn't get up. "I'll just wait here," she said, her face shifting with its usual mercurial speed from mirth to solemnity. In someone else, it would have looked fake, but Debi had known her long enough to know that it wasn't.

  Debi nodded her appreciation, not trusting her voice, and followed the guard.

  She remembered the visiting room. Small. Stuffy. Concrete floor, concrete walls. Rory and Mara were both waiting, standing near the only furniture in the room: a heavy metal table bolted to the floor, with four chairs, two on each side, also bolted down.

  The last time she was here, her siblings had been handcuffed to the table, but this time they were unshackled. However, neither of them offered her an embrace or even a handshake.

  The guard closed the door and left them alone.

  Incarceration hadn't changed them a whole lot. Though they were both wearing dull orange prison fatigues, they were still tall, blond, and gorgeous. Mara was wearing lipstick and though her hair wasn't styled as impeccably as usual, she'd at least managed to brush it out, allowing it to fall in its natural loose waves over her shoulders.

  The long hair almost covered up something neither of them had worn the last time Debi had been here. "What are those?" she asked before she could stop herself, touching her own bare neck just above the collarbone, where the black band rested against Rory and Mara's throats.

  "She doesn't come to see us for eight months and those are the first words out of her mouth," Rory said, his tone icy.

  "What do you think they are?" Mara shook back her hair and raised her chin. The collar was similar to Debi's anklet, made of rugged dark plastic and locked around Mara's neck. "New prisoner-control measure. They started phasing them into the prison population in the last few months. On the bright side, no more chains when they're moving us big-predator shifters around. On the down side, they know where we are every minute of the day."

  "I know what that's like," Debi said quietly. She pulled up her pants leg to show them the anklet.

  Rory snorted. "Oh no, your ankle. You poor baby. Now imagine having one of those around your neck."

  "And imagine knowing every minute," Mara said, her face twisting in rage, "that those guards hold the controls for it, and all they have to do is push the button to take you down."

  "It's not going to—to—" Horror froze her throat. "Explode?"

  Mara burst out in a harsh laugh. "The look on your face! Oh, baby sister."

  "It injects tranquilizers." Rory spoke up with a glance at his sister. "I've seen it in action on a grizzly shifter who tried to stab another prisoner. One minute he's going after her in the lunch line, the next he went down like a sack of potatoes someone threw off a truck. Next day he was back in the prison yard looking like he had the world's worst hangover."

  "From what they've told us, it'll do it automatically if we cross the fence," Mara said, her jaw clenching. "And of course we can't shift with these on. It's not a problem for the smaller shifters, those damn little prey animals, but for bigger ones like us ..."

  "You'd strangle," Rory finished for her.

  "Or pop your head clean off." Mara made a flicking motion with her thumb.

  Debi had entertained enough unpleasant fantasies about her anklet to bring a rush of nightmarish mental images. She felt another surge of faintness, her entire body breaking out in a cold sweat, and grimly fought it down. Maybe she should have eaten more than a few french fries in the car. She couldn't pass out in front of her siblings; they'd never respect her again.

  Like they respected her now?

  She had been trying not to think of Fletcher, but a sudden, powerful wave of loss swept over her. She missed him in this moment more than she'd ever thought possible. Fletcher had liked her, and oh, she wanted him here with her now—

  Except he didn't like all of her, did he? Any more than Mara and Rory did.

  But Nia was out in the waiting room. Nia had come here to support her. Nia wouldn't leave without her.

  "So why are you here, little sister?" Mara asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

  "Because we're family and I missed you."

  "Didn't miss us for the last eight months, then?" Rory asked nastily. "Here to rub it in our faces that you're free and we're not? Enjoying the fruits of your traitor's victory?"

  "I'm not free, remember?" She stuck out the leg with the anklet. "They're monitoring me too. I have to meet every week with a caseworker, and I can't leave town—"

  "While we're stuck in a prison at the end of the earth!" A hint of Rory's lion's growl vibrated under his words. "You turned on us to save your own hide, and now you get to be out there in the world, eating out in nice restaurants, flirting with your boy toys, having a life. Whereas the rest of us—"

  "Are here because you murdered people!"

  The words came out in a snarl. Debi could sense the leonine anger giving her words extra emphasis, the lioness uncoiling inside her. She closed her hands into fists, half expecting to feel claws pressing into her palms.

  Pure shock unfolded across Rory and Mara's faces. Debi, a younger and bottom-ranking member of the pride, had never talked back to them before. She never would have dared.

  "The SCB didn't lock you away for fun." Every word was borne on a lioness's growl. "You took people out in the woods and you hunted them for fun. It may have been Roger's idea, but every last one of us has blood on his or her claws. I—I didn't like it, I stayed home after that one time in the beginning, but I'm still not blameless. None of us are."

  She'd never said it out loud. Never really admitted it. The words were meant for herself as much as for them.

  I'm not a victim. The SCB hasn't been tormenting me because they're bullies. They're giving me a second chance, just like Nia said, and the only reason they're doing it is because I wasn't out there on Roger's private island with the rest of my pride, chasing down other shifters and reveling in the glory of the hunt. When push came to shove, I helped them stop it, and for that, and only for that, they're willing to let me try to redeem myself. But all those people are still dead. Nothing I do can ever bring them back.

  Looking at her brother and sister, at the rage in their eyes, she could feel a gulf opening up between her and them that could never be bridged. It had nothing to do with her testimony against them that had put them away, nothing to do with their bitterness and resentment of her.

  Because she could see, looking at them, that they didn't understand. They knew why they'd been locked up, but still, after all of this, they didn't think they'd done anything wrong. They still believed that smaller, weaker shifters were their rightful prey to hunt.

  Shifters like Nia. Shifters like Fletcher's daughter.

  No, she wasn't like them. Maybe if the SCB hadn't intervened, she would have eventually become like them. Maybe she would have grown so used to swallowing down every twinge of conscience that eventually she wouldn't feel it anymore. She'd already been well on that road when the SCB had shown up at Lion's Share Software, arrested her, and forced her to tell them about the family's private island by showing her photos of the victims.

  Something in her had cracked that day, and she'd spent the next year trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, trying to glue the broken places back together, only to have more cracks spring up along all the faultlines in her soul.

  She realized that she had begun to pick at one of her buttons, and forced her hand down to her side.

  "You pathetic child." Mara's eyes glinted gold. "They've really done a number on you, haven't they? No wonder you haven't come to see us. You've been convincing yourself that you can live among humans and prey animals, that you can be one of them—"

  "I am one of them." She blinked her eyes hard. She wouldn't cry in front of them. She wouldn't. "We're not different. Roger always told us that we were. He always tried to convince us that hunting other shifters was
the natural order of things. But that's wrong, it's always going to be wrong, and if that's what being part of this pride means, then—then I'll go make my own way in the world without it."

  "You foolish girl. It doesn't work like that." Mara lunged forward. Her hand closed on Debi's arm, the fingers pressing hard enough to bruise. From mere inches away, Mara snarled into Debi's face, "Without the pride, you're nothing!"

  "Then I'll be nothing. I'd rather be nothing," Debi told her, refusing to look away from the furious, gold-glinting eyes, "than be related to you."

  She thought for a moment that Mara was going to shift, collar or no collar. The air felt heavy with the oncoming-thunderstorm intensity of Mara's fury.

  The door opened with a heavy clunk. "You all settle down in here or we're clearing this room," the guard snapped.

  Mara released Debi's arm as if dropping a piece of trash. "We're done. I don't think there's anything left to say, do you?"

  "No," Debi said, hanging onto her shredded self-control with every fiber of her being. "I think we're done."

  She walked steadily back to the waiting room with the guard. Nia jumped up when Debi came in sight, opened her mouth, and then, at the sight of Debi's face, closed it again.

  They were escorted out, given their possessions back, and walked back to their car in the heat and dust of late afternoon.

  "So, I think I'd better drive," Nia said quietly after Debi made two attempts to unlock the door and fumbled both times.

  Debi took the passenger seat. They drove in silence down the long empty road leading away from the prison until Debi said suddenly, "Stop the car. I think I'm going to—"

  Nia, startled, wrenched the wheel and pulled over. Debi opened her door, but the nausea passed, leaving her wrung out and shivering. She undid her seat belt and leaned her head against the back of her seat.

  "Hey, so ..." Nia began uncertainly. "You look really white and I know you didn't eat much earlier, so I think probably you should at least nibble on something if you can, okay? I kinda ate half your burger earlier, and I don't think anything that's been sitting all day in a hot car should be eaten anyway, but I have a granola bar in my bag, if you want it. Or, um, a bottle of water?"