“There’s that faith in me again.” A lazy smile curved his lips. “Do you trust anything about me outside of the kitchen?”
I didn’t dignify him with a response.
“I don’t have all night.” The alpha circled me and sat on the topmost step of the nearest cabin. “This won’t last long. Let’s get it over with so we can all go home.”
Having him at my back made my spine tingle, but Graeson flanked me, and I forgot about the alpha to focus on the bristling wolf in front of me. Here I was trusting him and without a kitchen in sight.
I flexed my hands, razor nails clacking, and that was all the invitation the she-wolf required. She darted in lightning quick and snapped at my calf. I swiped at her, but she danced out of reach. She repeated the move, and I missed again. The third time ended with thick laughter from the spectator behind me.
“Stop playing, Becca,” he chastised, sounding not at all peeved by her advantage.
The truth hit me like a two-by-four to the forehead. Becca was wearing me out. Either she knew I couldn’t hold on to the magic for long periods of time, which Bessemer could have skimmed from Graeson, or it was an instinctive warg defense to even the playing field for smaller predators like herself.
Confident in her speed, she charged me, teeth snapping. This time I was ready. I braced my feet apart and swung my arm outward like a baseball bat, connecting with her jaw and startling a yelp from her. She walked off, shaking her head to regroup.
Mentally, I was doing the same. “What do I have to do to win?”
“Knock her out,” Graeson answered a beat later. “When she stops getting up, it’s over.”
Becca wasn’t as spry or as ruthless as Aisha had been. She circled me once, searching for vulnerabilities, before a low growl from Bessemer told her to quit stalling and get on with it. Bunching her hindquarters, she leapt for my throat. I flung up one arm at neck height to block her jaws from clamping down on my vital parts and threw my shoulder behind a punch that sent her flying. She hit the dirt on her back and lay there a moment, breaths coming fast and heavy, eyes shut. For a second I thought she might not get back up, and I relaxed my stance.
“Is it over?” I sent the question to Graeson.
Cheek mashed to the ground, Becca cut her gaze toward me as if she’d heard me. She blinked once, twice, then panted through the effort of forcing her legs under her.
“How much longer can you hold your shift?” was his answer.
“I don’t know.” I was fine now, but soon my limits would be stretched. “She looks ready to drop.”
Movement caught my eye. Becca on the prowl.
“This isn’t right.” I sent to Graeson. “I shouldn’t have to hurt her to end this.”
“No. It’s not, but she won’t hold back. You can’t either. Not if you want to win.” His fists strained at his sides. “Finish this before it goes too far.”
A leaden weight settled in my gut. We’d passed too far when she drew first blood. Becca didn’t deserve what I was about to do to her, but she could heal in a day what took me a week to mend. I couldn’t let her wear me down until I made a deadly mistake. The fight was on. Unlike Graeson’s Imogen proposal, this match wasn’t rigged. No. That wasn’t true. This late-night brawl had Bessemer’s name written all over it.
Becca’s next attack was the least graceful yet, and I steeled my heart against what I had to do. Her small stature and the boost of having beta blood fueling my magic allowed me to withstand the impact of her furry body slamming into my chest hard enough to empty my lungs. Muscles quivering from the strain, I clutched her ruff and held her out at arm’s length while I severed her Achilles tendons, one after the other, with the tapered edge of my claw.
Frantically kicking her legs, she transformed her agony into a heartbreaking howl that raised bile up my throat.
I set her on the ground as gently as I could with my muscles screaming and magic ebbing then backed away in case she caught a second wind. Breaths regulating, I spread my hands so Bessemer saw the crimson slicking them. “Are you satisfied?”
“Are you implying that I enjoy seeing a female of my pack reduced to this?” He gestured toward Becca’s shaking form. “I don’t.” He stood with fluid grace. “Her blood is on your hands, not mine.”
A touch from Graeson anchored me enough to notice our tiff had attracted an audience. Most were female, sizing up the competition, I guessed. My gaze collided with his, and I wondered how I would survive the selection if new challengers tapped my shoulder at every turn. Were there rules? One fight each night? Two? Three?
I might have asked if the pack bond were more solid, but it was faltering. I sensed him, but I didn’t hear him, and I didn’t want to risk pushing out thoughts Bessemer might overhear.
The rough pad of his thumb stroked over my pulse, calming me. “Come on.” He didn’t shy away from taking my hand in his, despite the fur and the blood. “I’ll walk you home.”
Nodding, I held on tight and hardened my gaze to a killing edge before raking it across the crowd.
Respect brightened several faces. Calculation sharpened others.
I had to wonder what weaknesses I had exposed and who would be the first to exploit them.
Graeson opened the door of my trailer and led me inside like a gentleman, but I think he was more concerned about my claws shredding the metal than politeness. Adrenaline kept me furry to the elbows, and I couldn’t shake off my nerves enough to trigger a change.
He eased me into the booth, and his gaze swung wide. “The wards will help drain the magic so you can shift back, right?”
“It will.” I hissed out a sharp breath. “I’ll give it another minute to fade, but if it doesn’t…”
I would have to reset, and we both knew my reset was broken. No, that wasn’t right. I could shift into Lori. Maybe it wasn’t busted so much as it broke me a little every time I used it.
The soothing energies of the dampening wards embedded in the walls of the trailer began nibbling on the residual magic floating in my system, and I relaxed as best I could. I pressed a hand to my side, and it came away smeared with blood from where Becca had sucker-punched me. With her claws.
“We need to get you patched up.” He went to the sink, grabbed a cloth and dampened it. “Do you want me to get Aunt Dot or Isaac?”
“No.” Gingerly, I pulled the fabric away from the clotting wound. “It hurts too much for me to think of a good excuse as to why dinner with my ‘boyfriend’ ended with his family taking chunks out of my hide.”
“Okay. Then we handle it ourselves.” He strode toward the bathroom, which he must have scouted in wolf form, and called back to me, “Take off your shirt.”
Dumbstruck, I sat there staining my furniture and gawping up at him. “What?”
“Your shirt. It’s ruined. Take it off.” He spread his supplies on the table in front of me. “I’ll clean you up and get you a new one.”
The ridiculous urge to cross my arms over my chest made my voice snap. “Casual nudity is part of your culture, not mine.”
He eyed my breasts appreciatively. “Are you wearing a bra?”
“I don’t see why that’s any of your— Hey.” I popped his hand when he shoved the neck of my shirt aside in search of straps. “Stop that.”
“Ellis, either take off the shirt and let me clean you, or I’m going to wake up Aunt Dot.” He drummed his fingers on the bench behind me. “It’s just a shirt. There’s still a bra on under there. You’ve still got pants on. You won’t be naked. You’ll be halfway to a bikini.”
“I’ve never worn a bikini,” I grumbled, hooking my thumbs in the hem of the shirt and peeling it over my head.
“No.” Apology tightened his expression. “I don’t suppose you have.”
I gritted my teeth to stop the rush of blood in my temples from transforming to the crash of waves. A ribbon of girlish laughter echoed through my thoughts before I clamped down on the memories. I didn’t want to lose it in front of Graeson. I preferred
confronting the specter of my sister alone.
“Here.” I offered him the ruined T-shirt. “You can toss it in the trash can under the sink.”
He did, then brought the damp cloth and knelt in front of me. I sat sideways on the seat, with one arm braced on the table and the other on its back. My feet were planted on the linoleum, knees tight together until he nudged them apart with a firm hand. Cupping my shoulder, he twisted me just enough to invigorate the burn.
“The cuts aren’t deep.” He gave each mark his full attention. “There’s more blood than wound, honestly.” He applied the warm cloth, and for a second the wet heat felt divine. “How fast do Gemini heal?”
I winced as he shifted the nubby fabric. “Slightly faster than humans.”
“Does whatever ability you’ve absorbed at the time augment that at all?”
“It’s possible.” I considered the question. “We don’t have absolute control over what qualities we skim from the blood of our donors. Usually it’s their most striking feature or their most dangerous asset, since it’s a defense mechanism for us. Even though we tend to absorb only one or two facets of a donor’s gift, extras crop up from time to time.”
“Extras?”
“Once, when I was a kid, before…” I pressed my lips together. “Isaac and his brother, Theo, hitched a ride with one of Aunt Dot’s renters into town. I caught them at the edge of the park and begged to go. They hated when I tagged along, so I should have been suspicious when they welcomed me into the car.”
Graeson moved his hand a fraction, and I sucked in air between my teeth.
“Once we got to town, they dared me to borrow magic from the guy. I was five, and I didn’t know what he was when I took his blood.” But those two had known exactly what was about to happen. “It made me faster, my senses keener, and…” I put it out there. “I sprouted this muscular bald tail—like a possum’s—as long as my arm. It popped out inside my jeans and hurt so badly being cramped up in there I stripped right on the street. I was so freaked out by it that I couldn’t shift back. Then they started to panic, because they knew they were going to get in big trouble, so they ditched me. I had to walk home in my panties, because the elastic allowed me to tuck the waistband under the base of the tail.”
It had been the first of many such walks of shame.
The corners of Graeson’s eyes creased, and I knew he wanted to laugh. I guess in hindsight it was kind of… No. It still wasn’t funny to me.
“I’m no doctor, but here’s my two cents.” He grabbed a tube of antibiotic ointment, squirted a generous amount on his fingertips and smoothed it gently over the scratches. “It’s safe to say you absorbed some of my healing ability. You’re healing almost as fast as I do. You should be as good as new by morning at this rate.”
I risked a glance, expecting gaping flesh despite his diagnosis, but he was right. A pissed-off house cat could do the amount of damage I saw. “That’s amazing.” I flexed my still furry hands. “This—not so much.”
“Do you need to reset?” He kept it casual as he finished up and wiped his hands clean. “Is that something you want to do alone? Or would you like me to stay?”
At first I didn’t know how to answer. He knew better than most why using my reset gutted me. Shifting to my other form jarred me back into Lori’s skin, ripping open a different kind of wound as I went.
I surprised myself by saying, “I wouldn’t say no to company.” I fisted my hands in my lap. “I just… Could you give me a few minutes? Alone?”
“I’ll wait on the steps.” He cocked his head, listening. “Dell’s worried about you. She’s on her way over. I’ll head her off and explain things unless…” His thumb smoothed a crease in my jeans. “Do you want me to go? She could hang out with you.”
“No.” I winced at the volume of my voice. “Dell is great, but I don’t want to see her tonight.” I would have set a hand on his shoulder if both mine weren’t still half-changed. I need you, was what I meant to say. What came out was, “Please, don’t go.”
“Okay. I’ll give her an update and send her home.” He gave my upper thighs a reassuring squeeze. “Call if you need me.”
I ducked my head in a halfhearted nod and listened as he exited the trailer and shut the door behind him. The knob barely had time to click before I heard muffled voices pitched low in an earnest discussion.
Gripping the medical supplies in an awkward hold, I shuffled toward the bathroom and put things back in their place. There was no room for clutter, and I didn’t want a mess to clean up later. Figuring this was as good a place as any, I nudged the door closed to give me room, lowered the lid on the toilet and sat.
With a moment to myself, I studied the fur covering my arms. The coloration mystified me. Gemini mimic that which already exists—we don’t alter it beyond the changes required to adapt a borrowed talent to our bodies. There was no reason why I didn’t share Graeson’s sterling silver pelt down to the hair.
Isaac might know, and if he didn’t, Aunt Dot would.
“Enough procrastinating,” I chided myself, the faint echo a lonely contrast to the conversation happening outside.
Cupping my elbows with my palms, I hugged myself and cracked open the lid on my memories. The deeper they cut, the better. The more agonizing the recollection, the less physical pain the change wrought from me. But instead of the beach of my nightmares, I found myself remembering those summer trips to the Great Smoky Mountains, comparing those forests and mountains to these.
A ripple of magic slipped over my skin, and I submersed myself deeper in the past.
One of Lori’s favorite places had been a tiered waterfall hidden from the trails. The hike had left our short legs burning, and we whined every step of the way. Dad was ready to turn back, but Mom spun the endless trek into a game to see which of us could collect the most oak leaves. Each had to be fallen—no picking them off the limbs—and there could be no tears or holes or spotting. Soon we carried armfuls of leaves we flung at each other as we ran. By the time we stumbled upon the falls, we were all smiles.
I’ll never forget how it resembled the most perfect layered cake, the frothy falls white like icing as the water flowed down the ever-widening expanse of rocks before crashing into an otherwise-calm basin.
I’ll also never forget how Lori took one step, slipped on a moss-covered stone and fell on her butt into the ice-cold water. Or how she’d climbed out, shook off and shoved me in face-first to get even with me for mocking her.
The undercurrent of laughter shook my shoulders, and I smiled as warm magic twisted around me. The stirrings of the change contracted my stomach, tensed my muscles, and that flicker of amusement vanished with the first hard cramp. I gasped through clenched teeth, locked my elbows and held tight. Being compressed into the body of an eight-year-old made me painfully aware of every inch taller and wider I’d grown since Lori passed. My essence, tamped down into that tiny container, stretched me taut until my new skin threatened to burst.
The roller coaster of agony lasted forever, and when I could breathe again, I sensed Graeson standing outside the bathroom door.
I stretched out my arms. They were chubby with baby fat that Lori never shed. The platinum fur was gone. The razor edges of my claws had dulled and shrunk into plump fingers with chipped purple nail polish adorning the tips. The jeans and boots I’d worn earlier had vanished, replaced by a nightgown sprinkled with fat moons and grinning stars that brushed my bare ankles.
A sink basin sat next to my elbow, the compact shower stall beside that. If I had guts enough, I could stand in front of that counter, stare into that mirror and see Lori’s face reflected as mine. But her smiles and mannerisms were her own. There was no copying those. All I accomplished by studying her was refreshing the mental pictures I kept that would never fade so long as I had a means of punishing myself by wearing her skin.
“I told you to wait outside.” Soft and breathless, chest wound too tight, I sounded like a kid panting through
a hundred jumping jacks challenge. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Had he not been there, I realized, I would have looked into that mirror. I would have gripped the metaphorical knife lodged in my heart with both hands and twisted until I couldn’t stand and collapsed on the floor.
“You were screaming.” His muffled voice held an edge.
Had I cried out? I couldn’t remember. So much of the change was mental, it was hard keeping up with the physical.
“I shook off the wolf.” I studied my nubby toes and wiggled them. “I need to shift back. Just give me a minute.”
The shadow under the door didn’t budge, but he didn’t try the handle either. With Graeson, who had problems with hearing no and tended to do what he wanted, it was a small victory.
The change took longer than a minute, but Camille unfurled from Lori’s shell in record time, and again I wondered if that wasn’t due to the knowledge that Graeson was there, waiting, a whisper away if I needed him.
Back in my own body, I was still covered with blood. I showered before exiting the bathroom wearing pajama pants and a matching tank top. I found a large silver wolf curled up in my bed and realized he must have gone outside to shift while I was washing the blood of his pack mate down the drain. His change relieved pressure I hadn’t realized was coiling ever tighter in my gut as I pondered our sleeping arrangements. When I hesitated in the doorway, the wolf whined low in his throat, rested his head on his paws and gave me liquescent puppy eyes that should have looked absurd on a warg his size.
“You expect me to sleep with you?” He took up half the bed, and I wasn’t even in it yet. I’d never had a pet, never slept with an animal, and he was getting fur all over everything. Was it too late to ask for the man back? “You aren’t serious.”
His tail thumped once.
I huffed as I pulled back the covers, flipping the light off as I went. I crawled into bed and grumbled as I settled in on the sliver of mattress he’d left for me. I lay there—stiff and not really comfortable at all as I wondered if wargs got ticks or fleas and if that’s why my skin suddenly itched—and had about decided to sleep on the floor when he rested his large head over my stomach, pinning me to the bed under its weight. He released a gusty sigh, licked his lips and didn’t move again.
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