“A link?” I sputtered, half laughing. “Right. What kind of link? A genetic link?”
“Jared.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Oye. Yes, a genetic link. Raven let him research the pack so long as he was closely monitored and didn’t tell his government. He studied everything, discovering that our genes, the ones that trigger our change between man and wolf, are compatible with humans. The old werewolf tales had part of it right—a werewolf can create another werewolf, but it takes more than a bite.”
I had turned the hot water knob on, but my skin felt cold again. Aspen, I thought, remembering his story about being born human and becoming a werewolf; and Ilume’s story about Lenny the half-blood.
“Let me guess: blood transfusions?” It was the only half-logical thing I could think of.
She nodded. “A series of compatible blood transfusions.”
“And you know this works because?”
“I’ve seen it. A boy from a nearby town came into the woods. Typical human story: stepdad was abusive, beat his mother. The kid shot the man and took off, hoping to die among the trees instead of behind iron bars. Nylref found him, and the kid volunteered to be a test subject. It all seemed good. He had no future among humans anyway. We’d agreed to adopt him into our pack . . . only one problem.”
I was dying to ask who this person was, but instead I went along. “What problem?”
“The only compatible blood samples he had for the kid were loose-spills.”
“What’s a loose-spill?”
Cheetah shifted on the floor. “Well,” she said, uneasy. “The Rooks and us, we’ve had some bloody fights one-on-one. Nylref tended to visit battle scenes afterward, collect the blood that has been spilt from werewolves not of our pack. We call them loose-spills. Maybe you don’t know this, but what you look like in the werewolf world defines what pack you will belong in. There are subfamilies in the werewolf gene pool, just like there are with birds, bears, cats, et cetera. When Nylref did the transfusion on the boy, he didn’t come out to look like a Jackal.”
“He came out to look like a Rook.” Screw it, I didn’t even have to ask—I knew this had to be Aspen. He’d told the same story, and I’d picked up on the kid’s reclusive aura day one.
Cheetah’s eyebrows formed a line. “How do you know that?”
“He was my part-time roommate while I was with the Rooks.” I shrugged. “He mentioned his being born human. I thought he was full of—”
“Whoa, whoa, back up.” She held her hands up, shaking her head. “You actually stayed with the Rooks? In the same house as Rex?”
“I guess I’ll start from the beginning.”
Maybe it was because she’d spilled so much info to me or because she’d saved my life tonight, but I decided it was safe to tell her everything from the day I’d chased Ilume in the alley, to how I’d made the mistake of following Rex, to the traps he set along the boundary lines. Cheetah listened intently and never interrupted.
“I don’t know how many there are,” I finished up, talking about the traps. “My guess is most of the boundary lines are covered. They’re hard to spot, too. That’s how Rex caught me—I walked right into one.”
“He’s such a wuss,” Cheetah snarled. Her cheeks had gone red out of frustration. “Traps? Seriously, traps? I can’t believe it!”
“Are you guys really planning an attack on the Rooks? I mean, they only do dumb stuff because Rex threatens them.”
During my time with them, when Rex wasn’t present, the pack had shown their true colors to me. It was like watching flowers open up and everybody come to life. They proved to function as one big, happy family, and I’d come to like them. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.
Cheetah took a deep breath, running her hands up and down her legs. As her temper cooled, she said, “Raven is my uncle, although I’m not sure what he’s up to. We don’t want a war, but it’s becoming more likely. Rex’s family has continually stolen land from us over the last fifty years. We’re getting shoved out into dangerous territory where nightlings and other abnormals roam. We call it the Wildlands, the area just before Mab’s territory. We’ve tried to handle the situation but Rex isn’t a good listener.”
“Psh. You got that right.”
The last person I would ever take my problems to was Rex. I’d get better feedback from a Magic Eight-Ball.
“Yeah.”
She stood up, turned the water off. I sat there in my soaking clothes, all my nerves tingling as they came back to life. Most of my cuts had stopped bleeding.
“Sit still. I’m going to go get you a towel and some clean clothes.”
“Then what?” I asked.
She smiled. “Then we fix your foot. After that, we’ll see what Raven wants to do with you.”
I tried to take comfort in the fact that she said fix your foot before deciding to take me to Raven. If they planned to kill me, wouldn’t it be easier to just leave me broken? “Hey, Cheetah?” I caught her attention just before she went out the door. “What did Bear mean on the field? He sounded like I had a connection to Nylref or something.”
Cheetah blinked at me. “Well. Rich Nylref was a pen name, sort of. Should enemies find him he didn’t want them to trace his real name back to his family. Only when he and Raven became close friends did we discover his real name.”
“What was his real name?”
She frowned. It was a long moment before she answered. “Nick. Nick Ferlyn.”
Chapter Thirty—Ilume
Pointless. Everything was pointless.
I lay in a curled heap under my sheets. The curtains were drawn, blocking out the sun. My room was dark as a trapper’s tunnel, my thoughts even darker.
He was gone. Happiness was a bird out the window, flying far away, out of reach.
I sniffled, unable to breathe. My nose was stuffed. The tear lines looked permanent. My pillow was a sponge that’d hit full capacity. After twenty-four hours, how was there still moisture left in my eyes?
Someone knocked on the door. “Ilume?” It was Mom. She’d tried a couple times yesterday then gave up when the door stayed locked. The rest of the pack thought I was sick, but she knew otherwise. She didn’t come to bug me when I had the flu or a cold, and here she was, back again this morning, her third time checking on me.
“Ilume, please let me in. Just for a couple minutes,” she begged.
I stared at the door. Her shadow moved beneath it. I imagined her shifting her feet in the hall. She did this when she was nervous. Maybe it was the panic in her tone this time, or my need for a distraction, but somehow I found the strength to get up.
As she stood in the doorway, Mom’s eyes grew huge. “Oh, Lume,” she whispered, and her voice said it all. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to open the door. She would probably tote me off to the care center.
When she reached toward me, I backed away. A day of no eating had taken its toll, but I hadn’t been hungry. I had no energy, and my knees shook.
“Ilume.” Mom’s voice was harsher as she closed the door. She followed me to the bed, sitting on the other side. I was surprised she didn’t go straight for the curtains, rip them back and ask if I’d gone nightling.
I slumped back into my nest, not looking at her. I didn’t want to see the worry in her eyes, didn’t want to tell her there was nothing she could do. No amount of food, water, or comfort could stop the depression from taking me. She sighed, stroking my hair. It wasn’t long before she started making sniffling sounds, too. I looked up.
Mom was crying. She never cried. Not since Leslie decided to go with the rebels, with Thagen. “Mom,” I whispered in shock, not sure what to say.
She shook her head, swiping her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry my daughters had to be
born into all these shitty politics. If I would’ve known what the packs were going to put us through, I’d have, I don’t know. I’d have done something.”
“Like what?” Oh, please. Mom needed the pack. They were who got us through Dad’s death, who took care of her when she couldn’t take care of herself. She wouldn’t leave the woods. This was family. This was home.
She didn’t answer. She just stroked my greasy curls, staring at the wall where my dresser once was. “You can’t stay up here forever, you know,” she said so quiet I barely heard her. “You need to come down and eat something, or at least get some water—”
“I’m not coming down. I don’t need anything.”
“Ilume, you’re going to waste away up here!”
“Then let me waste away.” More tears. I turned over so she couldn’t see, but my voice was wobbly. “All that’s left for me is a mate I don’t want and a pack I don’t have the energy to run anymore. I don’t want to be here, Mom. I want to be . . . I want to be with him.”
Mom bundled me in her arms, rocking me back and forth. Years of fear, stress, and hurt poured out of me like a waterfall. I’d tried so hard to keep it all in, keep a straight face, and walk a straight walk with my head held high. No tears. No fear.
No fear . . .
I hated her. I hated that girl I’d been before Jared, the one who let men who didn’t love her control her, the one who wouldn’t accept help and acted like she never needed anyone but herself, the selfish girl who let Jared stay, who kicked him out of her room and pretended she didn’t care that he was mad at her, hurt.
That was the girl who got me here.
“Listen to me,” Mom whispered some minutes later, after my sobs had toned down to whimpers. “I want you to leave this place.”
“What are you talking about?” I mumbled.
She swallowed. “We’re going to leave. You and me.”
“What? Mom, no! You can’t leave the care center. They need you—”
“Right now you need me more. If I had seen that sooner, a lot of crap could’ve been avoided.”
She slid out from under me, leaving me to lie in my wet pillows. The muscles in her face were ridgid as she stood up, glancing toward the door. “I’ll get you a duffel bag and then see if I can’t come up with a guard or two. There must be a few who are as sick of Rex as we are.”
I sat up in bed. “You mean it, don’t you?”
Leaving meant free of Rex, forever. We would have to enter the human world or find another woodland to claim. Neither would be easy changes.
She hit me with a look, the kind she got when she was saving a dying hunter. “Yes. Start packing before Rex gets back. Pick only the most important things and don’t let anyone know what we’re doing.”
Chapter Thirty-one—Jared
The musty smell of the study didn’t bother me, nor did the sight of my leg, bandaged and strapped to a piece of wood. I stared at the picture in my hands, numb all over again.
It was my mom, young, short-haired, skinny but not as skinny as she is now. Leaning against the porch rail, she held baby Jess in one arm while her other was around the man in the baseball tee. I was at his side, smiling, front teeth missing. Our similarities were numerous—the smooth, dark hair; the sharp chin; the cool eyes.
Nick Ferlyn, a werewolf specialist . . . I never saw it.
I set the picture on the desk, beside the cardboard box Cheetah had brought from Raven. If I held it much longer, I’d destroy it. He left us for this. Who in their right mind takes off, leaves their family behind to study wild, paranormal beings? Dad never even showed a sign of liking werewolves, of having any desire to study them. I knew that my dad had walked out on us, that he wasn’t coming back, but I’d always imagined he was doing something to protect us. Something important for the government. Now I knew the truth.
He left us for a stupid reason, which meant he couldn’t have possibly cared.
I pulled on my hair until I had a headache. I hate him. I was just about to knock the box off the desk, send all of dad’s notes and papers and memories to the floor, when the door opened.
A middle-aged man came in. Raven. He didn’t frighten me, although I was so pissed right then that nothing frightened me (I could’ve taken on a Cyclops and been fearless). If Arasni, the solitary jackal who had saved Ilume and me, was younger with hair on his head, he and Raven would’ve looked similar; although Raven wore jeans and a suede jacket versus a wolf fur, and his beard wasn’t all knotted.
“Don’t look so aggressive, young one,” he said, coming forward. Easing into a chair by the desk, he glanced at the box. He had this look on his face like he knew me, like we were old friends.
I didn’t feel friendly. “I will if I want to,” I said.
A smarter person might’ve kept their mouth shut, not risked offending him. I kept curling and uncurling my fists. It was all I could do to stay in my seat, to not destroy the box or tear the books off the walls.
Raven nodded his head like he understood. “Before you decide to shun your father, Jared, I think you should know that he loved you very much. He spoke of you and your family every day—”
“If he loved us he would’ve come back,” I interrupted. “If he actually gave a damn, he wouldn’t have stayed out here and let us suffer—”
“He was going to come home,” Raven interrupted firmly. “He was set to return this fall, take his research back to Loralin instead of to the government. You were going to see him again.”
The fire in me died down. “He was . . . coming home?”
He’d been gone for years. What if Raven was just saying this? He could easily be lying to me.
Raven shifted, slouching in his chair. His veiny hands folded on his belly. “Your father stayed much longer than intended. One, because he discovered humans and werewolves are species not far apart; and two, he was being closely watched, which made escape difficult.”
“Watched?” Again, I was suspicious. Cheetah hadn’t mentioned this.
“Because of his close association with the Jackals, and his massive amounts of research,”—Raven tapped the box—“your father was a wanted man by many abnormals. We knew he wasn’t a threat, but others didn’t.”
“Others, as in?”
“Well.” He paused, thinking. This annoyed me because if he needed to choose his words carefully, it must be bad news. “Let’s just say I find it interesting that you are feuding with Rex, when your father feuded with his father.”
“Dad feuded with the Rooks?”
If I wasn’t busy fuming, I might’ve thought about how ironic it was that I ended up in Canada, in the same neck of the woods as my dad. Maybe my instinct to chase werewolves was genetic.
“Only with one,” Raven answered. “The previous pack alpha, Dragon. He and Rex, let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Dragon had a tighter hold on the wolves than his son. He sent his hunters looking for your father once he realized what he knew. It didn’t end pretty, but it ended for both of them the same day, same fight in the woods.”
I made a huffing noise. So he died for this, too. I could feel the tears coming, making it hard to breathe. That’s when I knew it was time to end this conversation. “Ironic . . .”
The study became so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop. Raven watched me as I fought for control over my emotions. The Jackal’s eyes, like big black beads, glinted in the lamplight.
“What?” I snapped, not wanting to be stared at anymore.
“I ran into my half-brother yesterday,” Raven said. I made a face, wondering where the heck this subject came from. “The way he described you made me think of Nick. When he told me your name, I knew you had to be related. Where I come from, I don’t know if ironic is quite the word I’d use for the fact you’re sitting in the v
ery chair your father sat in barely a year ago.”
“And who’s your brother?” It couldn’t have been someone from the Rooks, but who else out here knew my name? Who would pass it on to the alpha of the Jackals before Cheetah?
Raven smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Arasni and I don’t talk much, since I took his place as Alpha, but every now and again he’ll find me in the woods.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re the wolf who stole leadership from him? You stole from your own brother?”
“Half-brother—his mother is not mine. And let’s not talk about it,” Raven warned, returning to the subject and telling me about Arasni’s dream, one that concerned the werewolves. “He wouldn’t go into detail. All he said was that if I was smart, I would be thoughtful of strangers on our land, and that someone and something of Nick’s would be useful to the feud between packs.”
“That’s interesting.”
Clearly I was the someone of Nick’s, but why would Arasni tell Raven I was useful? Suddenly I wondered what the old magic wolf had hid from me. Had he known I was Nick Ferlyn’s son? He must’ve. This pissed me off, too. Maybe Arasni’s “neutral” status wasn’t so much so after all.
Raven left his chair, going to one of the bookshelves. In the middle of the shelving was a glass case. Three clear tubes were concealed behind it, all filled with red liquid.
“Arasni also mentioned your deep feelings for Ilume, the Rooks’ alpha female,” he said. “I don’t want a war with the Rooks, which I’m sure Cheetah has told you. The problem is that Rex won’t negotiate with anyone. War is inevitable unless someone changes the flow.”
Pulling a key from his pocket, he unlocked the case. Retrieving one of the tubes, he looked back at me.
I straightened up in my chair. “What’s that?”
Raven turned the tube over in his hands. The liquid sloshed inside.
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