Blood Bond

by Heather Hildenbrand

  The sound of it echoed through the trees.

  The wolf writhed only a moment more.

  I pulled the branch free and straightened, ready to move toward Derek in case he needed my help. His prey sat at his feet, unmoving.

  “Not bad, Godfrey,” he said.

  I shrugged, trying to pretend I wasn’t affected by his praise.

  A snarl sounded from behind us, where we’d left the rest of the group. Derek jumped up and took off at a run.

  The sight of his furry form springing through the underbrush stirred something within. From here, I could see flashes of fur, gnashing teeth, action. Heat and adrenaline coursed through me. I doubled over, my vision blurring again.

  “Tara?” I looked up at the sound of Wes’s voice. He’d broken away from the fighting and stood only a few yards away, his head cocked to one side. I met his eyes and then quickly looked away. I had no doubt what he’d see. He could probably smell it on me. I could smell it on me. “It’s happening, isn’t it?” he said in a low voice.

  “I’ve got it,” I said between gasps. Even with the lack of oxygen, it was all I could do to keep from dropping my branch and rushing forward into the fray.

  “Tara, listen to me, deep breaths. You can do this.” He came closer. “Are your fingers tingling?”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Shit.” He began pacing. Every few seconds he’d throw a glance back toward the others and let out a whine.

  “Go,” I said. “Help fight.”

  “I’m not leaving until I know you’re not going to shift.”

  “I’m holding it back,” I insisted.

  “Like hell. Listen to me, deep breaths in and out. You’ve got to concentrate on something else. Something that doesn’t raise your heart rate.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, just find something.”

  I thought of Wes and pictured his human face. The way he’d looked earlier, smiling, sweet, bare-chested … but that only reminded me of the kissing we’d done and how much I hadn’t wanted to stop and while I didn’t want to kill anything, I wasn’t relaxed, either.

  “Argh. Not that,” Wes said, obviously reading the image in my mind. “Something else.”

  I searched for something else to grab onto. George: too much worry and stress. My mother: stress. Alex: worry. Stress.

  “Something else,” Wes growled impatiently.

  An image of Angela surfaced, calm and collected, always-an-answer-for-everything Angela. One of two best friends I’d been able to count on for support through anything, until the day I’d learned what I was. I thought of her patience in dealing with Sam and all of her dating escapades. Of the way she handled teachers, fellow students, all of her clubs, everything really. Her calm grace that seemed unshakable even under overwhelming stresses. I did my best to channel that.

  Slowly, very slowly, my breathing evened out.

  Wes shifted his weight. I ignored his impatience and concentrated on breathing, on Angela.

  The fighting continued. The grunts and growls were closer together now. And louder. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t have a good feeling. The hybrids weren’t going to get tired, but we would.

  I paced back and forth, impatient to feel whole again. At the edge of the brush, a pair of boots stuck out. I rounded the bushes and stared down at the body of a man. A thick branch stuck out from his ribs. His eyes were open and staring at the canopy of leaves above. His jaw hung loose and crooked, like it had been broken, and blood leaked from his ears, which were still covered in downy fur.

  “Tara?” Wes’s body went rigid as he stared down at the body. “Oh.”

  “I’ve seen him before,” I said. My voice sounded small and foreign in my ears. “At school, I think. Wonder why he shifted back and not the others?”

  Wes didn’t answer.

  “I’m fine now. You should go help,” I said, looking away from the bloody wound on the man’s chest. Seeing him this way—as a person—shook me in a different way. Suddenly, the threat of my wolf was gone, and I felt very human.

  “Are you sure?” Wes asked.

  A piercing wail split the air, somewhere between wolf and human. It cut off and there was silence. It lasted only a moment before the next shout.

  “Wes!” Derek’s yell sent us both running back to the others.

  Cambria stood closest. She met my eyes with a fatigued stare. She had blood on her branch and hands. I could tell by the look and smell it wasn’t her own. I clutched the branch in my hand, searching frantically for an enemy to attack or for the source of that last scream.

  “What is it?” Wes demanded.

  “Did we get them all?” I asked.

  Derek turned to us and very deliberately stepped aside, giving a clear view of Cord. She was bent over something—and she was crying. Other than Derek and Wes, no other wolf was standing.

  I took a step forward, my thoughts still jumbled from almost shifting. Seeing Cord cry threw me off even more. At the sight of the familiar vanilla-cream coat I froze. A lump formed in my chest and expanded until my voice came out a croak. “No.”

  Wes rushed forward, stooping his neck and poking Bailey with his nose. Bailey didn’t respond. Wes poked him again and Bailey’s head rolled sideways revealing a dark stain coating his throat.

  “No, no, no!” I repeated. Tears stung my eyes. I took a step back.

  Cord’s sobs grew louder as Wes continued to nudge Bailey and call his name. His efforts were futile. The gaping hole exposing his throat was evidence of that. Still, Wes didn’t stop. A hand closed over my shoulder and I swung out with my branch. Cambria caught it in her hand before it could connect with her cheek.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she whispered. Her expression was pained. “Is he …?”

  No one answered her. None of us wanted to say the words out loud.

  I blinked the tears back, refusing to let them fall. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cambria when no one else spoke. “I didn’t see it. I only saw him fall. Cord tried to help him, but she had three on her.”

  Cord didn’t look up, but I saw her shoulders stiffen. She’d blame herself. Even as I formed the thought, guilt edged its way in, weighing me down. If I hadn’t left the group …

  “We need to get him back to the house.” Derek’s voice carried across the space, calling me back. “Maybe Fee can do something.”

  Wes regarded Derek with sad eyes. I waited for him to argue, to tell Derek there was no point. “All right,” he said instead.

  “I’ll carry him,” Cord said quickly, sobs coating her voice.

  No one had a chance to argue before she’d reached out and scooped Bailey up in her arms. His body was bunched in her hands, his fur sticking up in some places and matted with blood in others. His head hung limp from her arm. He must’ve been heavy, but she looked determined.

  “Let’s go,” she said, already running for home.

  Halfway home, Bailey shifted.

  One minute he was a vanilla-cream Werewolf and the next he was a lean and gangly fifteen year-old boy. Cord let out a choking sob and her steps faltered while she fumbled and readjusted him. He seemed all limbs the way he hung over each of her arms. Thankfully, I couldn’t see his wounds from where I ran behind Cord. But the fact that he’d shifted pretty much said what we all feared.

  Still, Cord didn’t stop running.

  Every so often Wes glanced over at Derek or Cord—mostly Cord—and I suspected he was reading their thoughts. Mine were probably too disconnected for him to get much. I wasn’t a mess like Cord—yet. I’d cry eventually. When the guilt that pressed at the edges of my mind finally came crashing through the shock of what had happened. For now, it held back, like a dam—a cracking, caving dam. Wes’ gaze flickered to me. I didn’t meet his eyes. Two words played on repeat in my mind: not Bailey.

  When we reached the edge of the woods, Grandma and Fee appeared. Fee had shifted into her Werewo
lf form, but her eyes had the same panicked look to them as Grandma’s.

  “Vera had a vision, something bloody and dark. What happened?” Grandma demanded. She held a metal-tipped stake in each hand. Two more stuck out of the tops of her boots. “Is everyone all right?”

  No one answered. Fee caught sight of Bailey and rushed forward. “No!”

  Cord lowered Bailey to the ground in front of her. Fresh tears streamed down Cord’s cheeks. “I think it’s too late,” she whispered.

  Grandma’s gaze swiveled from them to Wes. “What happened?” she demanded again.

  “Hybrids,” he said. “Lots of them. We managed to take them down, but one of them got hold of Bailey.” He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, met her stare. “One of them shifted back. Tara recognized him from school. A Hunter.”

  “Where?” Grandma was all business, her jaw set in a way I hadn’t seen since the night of the warehouse fight with Leo.

  “A quarter of a mile straight back,” Wes said.

  Grandma looked past us, into the trees. “I’m going to have to call CHAS. They’ll want to come out and have a look.”

  Cord’s head snapped up. “CHAS?” she spat. “It’s none of their business. It happened on our land, our territory. We don’t need them.”

  “CHAS will notify that poor man’s family.” Grandma said, ignoring Cord’s disgust. “Some of those creatures used to be one of us. That deserves to be recognized, at least in death. Besides,” she said, her voice softening, “CHAS will do the dirty work and dispose of them so we don’t have to. Hopefully, a few more will have changed back so we can figure out who they are. Or were.”

  “Well, they’re not touching Bailey,” Cord snapped.

  “Of course not,” Fee agreed quietly.

  Grandma looked at Derek. “I could use some help. You up for it?”

  “But Bailey …” he began.

  “Bailey’s gone,” Fee said. She stepped back from where she’d been sniffing and examining Bailey’s body. Now she watched the three of them—Cord, Derek, and Wes—with a sad sort of gentleness that made me want to step forward as the villain, just to give them someone to punish.

  It’s my fault. Take your vengeance here.

  Wes’s gaze swung up to mine.

  A giant tear rolled from the corner of Derek’s fur-framed eye. “I’ll go with you,” he told Grandma, his voice gravelly, sad.

  She nodded. “Let’s get going, then. Before we lose any more light. This is going to take a while.” She walked over to me. “You all right?” I nodded, trying not to picture Grandma dragging bodies through the woods, a trail of blood and fur in her wake. “Good, then I’ll see you back at the house when I’m done.”

  As soon as she moved away, Wes was there. “Can you get back to the house on your own? I’m going to help them.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.

  His eyes narrowed. “If you need me to come with you, I will.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I need to check on George, anyway.”

  He didn’t look entirely convinced. I sent him a mental Go on, I’ll be fine, and he turned to follow Grandma and Derek.

  “When Jack gets home, I’ll send him out,” Fee called to him.

  He turned back and cocked his head at Fee. Their eyes locked. Some sort of message passed. Wes’s eyes widened and then he called out a hurried “thanks” before bounding out of sight.

  Cord reached down and scooped Bailey back into her arms. Her bottom lip shook with the effort to stave off tears and the sight of it pierced me. The wetness I’d been holding spilled over onto my cheeks.

  “Come on, girls,” Fee said. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Six

  Dragging the bodies back to Fee’s took three hours. Most of the wolves never shifted back. Grandma said it was to be expected—a sign their humanity had indeed been lost. In the end, only the familiar-looking security guard and a man I’d never seen before—his face unrecognizable for the blood covering it—shifted back to their human form. CHAS was called. Vera spoke to them first, then Grandma, both in hushed, businesslike tones.

  Cord took Bailey upstairs and laid him out in one of the guest rooms. Fee threw clothes on and then went to help set him out for a proper goodbye. I stayed behind, not wanting to intrude on something so private.

  I left Cambria with Grandma and Vera and peeked in on George. His eyes were closed and his breathing even like the last time I’d checked. I started to back out of the room but my hand slipped on the knob and the door creaked.

  George’s eyes opened and he smiled tiredly. “Leaving so soon?”

  “I thought you were sleeping.” I sat on the edge of the bed, studying his face.

  “You weren’t going to sit at my bedside and watch me sleep?”

  My mouth curved despite the grief coating my insides. It was nice to pretend for a moment. “I’m not that stalkerish. That’s your style.”

  “Oh, so now I’m a stalker?”

  My smile dimmed. I took his hand. “No. You’re always there. I like that about you.”

  Instantly, his teasing expression vanished. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I debated whether to tell him. He didn’t need the added stress, and it would only make him worry about what he was becoming.

  “I can handle it,” he said. “Don’t keep secrets from me.”

  That got me. I hated the secrets. I couldn’t do the same to him. I sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out. “We were in the woods, walking home from the lake, and a pack of hybrids found us.” I paused, taking my time with choosing the words. Saying it out loud for the first time made it real. I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t ignore it or pretend. “They attacked and a—a hybrid got too close to Bailey. It bit him and tore …”

  “How bad is it?”

  I shook my head and stared at a loose thread on the blanket. “He’s dead,” I whispered.

  “God, Tay. I’m sorry. Are you all right? Were you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, I just—it’s my fault, and I feel horrible about it.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

  For some reason, that did it. The tears I’d been holding in broke loose and streamed down my cheeks. When I spoke again, my voice cracked and came out on a sob. “You don’t understand. I got distracted and then Wes came over to help me and if we hadn’t been there, if we’d been with the others, I know we could’ve stopped it.”

  He pushed himself into sitting and took my hands in his. He stared at me, probably trying to get me to look at him, but I couldn’t. “You can’t do this to yourself, Tay. None of this is your fault. They’re the ones who attacked. Those wolves are the ones to blame, not you.”

  “I know that in my head, but my heart isn’t getting the message. All I can think about is that I let myself get distracted.”

  “Talk it out with me. Why’d you get distracted?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I whispered. “I can’t tell anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  I tried to put it into words. That the shame and disgust my own kind already had for me was nothing compared to how they’d treat me if they knew what I was becoming. “Because it makes me a freak.”

  “Uh, hello? Do you know who you’re talking to here?” He squeezed my hand. “If there’s anyone you can tell, it’s me.”

  Slowly, I lifted my eyes to his face. His expression was open and earnest. The urge to say it aloud came over me, and I couldn’t hold it in. I didn’t want to. “I’m turning into a wolf.”

  As I’d expected, shock crossed his face. He blinked and I could see him digesting what I’d said, turning it over in his mind, fitting it with what he knew of this world. Then his expression smoothed out, and he smiled faintly. “So, we’re twins.” And just like that, he moved on.

  Through the sadness and loss, I smiled back.

  Wes and Derek were still out when I came back downstairs. Cambria was on the couch, watching some survivor show
on TV. She muted the sound and shifted toward me. “How’s George?”

  I twisted my fingers together. “He’s looking a little better.”

  She gave a small smile. “That’s good, right?”

  “Not really. It means the stuff Fee gave him is wearing off. He’s getting stronger as he gets closer to changing.”

  “Oh.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to still my fidgety hands. How long did we have before he changed? A day? A week? What would happen when he did?

  I needed a plan. A solution.

  After today’s attack, everyone would be focused on the hybrids, not to mention Bailey. Just thinking his name brought a painful image of light hair and a sunny smile. I clenched my fingers together and shook it away as the face morphed from Bailey to George. My grief was twisted by thoughts of George, and how if I didn’t figure something out soon, I would lose him just as we’d lost Bailey.

  George.

  The one who’d known exactly what to say to ease my guilty conscience and cheer me up in the face of losing someone I cared about, someone too young to be lost in the first place.

  Footsteps clunked against the hardwood and Grandma appeared. She sank down onto one of the chairs on the other side of the room and leaned her head back against it. “Gordon will be here tomorrow with a team,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Gordon Steppe, the director of CHAS,” she said.

  “The director is coming here?” Cambria asked, brows raised.

  Grandma nodded and leveled her gaze on us. “CHAS still hasn’t been able to locate the hybrids since the initial attack when Miles loosed them. He wants to get a look at them for himself.”

  “We didn’t locate them. They came to us,” I pointed out.

  “Either way, Vera’s given him full access to the premises. I think she’s hoping to partner with them on this.”

  “Partner how? All CHAS wants is to exterminate them,” Cambria said.

  “I think she’s hoping to change their minds. I don’t know. She’s frustrated at her lack of mobility. And her gift isn’t letting her see any of them, no matter how hard she tries.”