by SM Reine
“Ashley will find him, I’m sure,” Sophie said. “You’ll have an opportunity to know him.”
Lincoln shrugged. It wasn’t a casual gesture, but one of pain, as if trying to shake off an old wound. Even now his square features showed little emotion. Only his eyes betrayed the troubled seas of his mind. “When I asked about John Junior today, my father threw me out of his room. I don’t know if I’ll catch him awake again. He had to know that.”
Sophie slid off the fence. She wrapped her arms around Lincoln, pressed her cheek to his chest, and squeezed tight.
He was immobile except for the steady thump of his grieving heart.
“I just saw him today and I still miss him,” Lincoln said.
“I’m sorry,” Sophie said. “I know how much it hurts to miss the ones we love.”
“Why don’t you go looking for your guardians?”
Sophie lifted her head to look at him tearfully. “Me? Look for them? They’ve told me to never do such a thing. They would have to be in great danger to be kept from my side, and I only risk myself by searching for them.”
“But what if they need to be saved?”
“That’s not for me to do,” Sophie said. “I’m the one who is protected. Furthermore, you wouldn’t be able to guard me on such a lengthy search; you have your own needs, such as seeking out the Godslayer and information about Remnants.”
Lincoln took her by the shoulders. “You don’t need me to come along with you. Don’t you get it, shortcake? You don’t need me or anyone else. You take care of yourself just fine.”
Sophie hugged him once more, briefly. “Tristan was right.”
“About what?”
“He told me that even the worst people can be very likable, at times.”
“Racist, now a bad person,” he said. “So close yet so far. I almost thought you were gonna be nice to me.”
“I’ll keep calling bigots out for what they are.” Sophie patted his cheek. “It wouldn’t be kind of me to allow you to be terrible unchecked. It would be enabling. And enabling is a disrespect that I shall not perform upon you.”
“You’re selfless, Sophie Keyes. Just a regular saint.” He laughed and shook his head and stepped away. “I’m gonna go watch the pack transform from the town square—you wanna come?”
“I already told Summer I would watch with her, from the top of the waterfall,” Sophie said. “Have a good night, Mr. Marshall.”
“You too, shortcake.”
She watched his retreating figure against the lantern light. Lincoln was bouncier than she’d ever seen him. Going to his hometown had awakened parts of Lincoln of which Sophie had been heretofore unaware, yet the pack changed him even more. This was his element—the investigation, the struggle, perhaps even the werewolves.
For the first time, Sophie thought she might have been able to imagine a different Lincoln from a different life. And she didn’t feel as much like crying anymore.
Chapter 28
Abel Wilder met the rest of his pack after dinner, when they were gathering in the common area. They used to make a big deal out of dinners before full moons. Huge parties, sometimes. Because they’d all known that they could die on any given moon.
It was dangerous to shapeshift. The process was excruciating: bones breaking, extending, and reassembling; losing hair in some places while gaining fur in others; gushing out all sorts of bodily fluids that could only be replaced by hunting things shifters couldn’t legally hunt. Yet the physical transformation had never been the most dangerous part.
No, the most dangerous part had always been hunters.
Hunters like Abel.
Sometimes he still walked among his pack and thought about how he’d kill them if the time came. He’d been raised with guns in his hands, casting silver bullets in motel bathtubs when most kids were still splashing with rubber ducks. Now his Alpha teeth could inflict wounds as deadly as silver. He didn’t need guns.
His prey were also no longer shifters.
“There are humans in the forest tonight,” Trevin said when Abel joined them. “Men with flashlights and guns.”
“Silver bullets?” Abel asked.
“Nope. They’ve got police gear but nothing crazy.”
Then they weren’t hunting the pack. Not seriously. But they’d have to be careful anyway. The common area was flooded with bodies, more than they’d had on any moon before. Enough that Abel inhaled the cocktail of human scents and wondered how the hell Rylie would control all of them. He wasn’t sure that she could.
It would only take one shifter losing control for the mundanes to have ammunition worse than silver. They had no evidence to back their claims that shifters were murderers yet, but if one packmate even scratched a mundane, they’d have every death for miles blamed on them.
“Stick to the perimeters tonight,” Abel said. “If anyone looks like they might go out of bounds, take ‘em down. Pass the word to Crystal and the guys.”
“On it,” Trevin said.
He loped away with long, easy strides, seeking out the most loyal pack members for the night’s patrol.
Rylie was sitting on a low stage at the end of the common area, nursing Benjamin one last time before the transformations began. The dimming twilight made her bared shoulder glow, the veins like pale blue spiderwebs radiating from areola to collarbone. Benjamin was tiny in comparison, even against Rylie’s small form.
The scent of them was stronger than any other. He drank in his baby’s sweat, the fresh milk, Rylie’s hair. He could smell that the baby had pooped less than an hour ago, even though Aunt Gwyn had used those perfumed wipes on his ass. Shifter noses meant no secrets. Luckily, it also meant a shifter brain, and wolves thought all smells were interesting rather than repulsive.
His mate tipped her cheek toward him when he huffed her scent, rubbing her jaw against him instinctively. Smooth flesh against scarred ridges. Rylie never hesitated to touch his scars.
Now that he looked closer, Abel saw that Benjamin wasn’t even nursing anymore. He’d passed out with the breast in his mouth.
“Hello,” Rylie said, smiling at him. Her eyes were both soft and bright. Surrounded by thousands, he felt like he was alone with her. “Where have you been? I missed you at dinner.”
Abel had been with Pedregon, the Alpha stag shifter from Barcelona. They had been talking about the Spanish government, the European Union’s passivity, and what the shifters might have to do in order to survive over there. Pedregon was talking a full-blown revolution. The kind of thing that spilled a lot of blood. He’d need willing bodies for the cause, and now that Abel was looking at how many bodies were occupying his pack, he thought it wasn’t too bad an idea.
All things that Abel hadn’t been worrying Rylie about. She shouldn’t have to worry about anything except the milk-drunk infant lolling against her chest with a bead of moisture at the corner of his little brown lips.
“Just doing pack stuff,” Abel said. “Didn’t Summer go to dinner with you?”
“She was roofing with Nash. Or so she claimed.” Rylie laughed at Abel’s grimace.
Summer and Nash had always been a lot friskier than Abel liked, and becoming newlyweds had only made it worse. Again: there were no secrets with shifter noses. Abel didn’t want to know what his daughter got up to with her angel husband.
“Roofing,” he said. “Right. Sorry you had dinner alone.”
“I didn’t say I was alone. I sat with Lincoln for a while.” She shifted Benjamin, pulling up the strap of her dress to cover her chest. “You didn’t tell me that Lincoln is looking for Elise.”
There were a lot of things Abel hadn’t been telling her. “Didn’t seem important.”
“He broke into the office to find her phone number.”
“He did what?” Abel surged with anger, and even Rylie’s hand spread over his chest could do little to relax him. “I helped him out. Backed off the cops when he told me to back off. And that’s how he thanks me? By breaking in where h
e’s not wanted?”
“He loves her, Abel,” Rylie said.
For an instant, Abel thought that Rylie had to mean Sophie Keyes. It was easy to imagine people falling all over themselves for a woman like that. But Rylie meant Elise Kavanagh: the Godslayer and baddest bitch that Abel had ever had the privilege of fighting beside. There weren’t a lot of people that Abel would have followed onto the front lines of battle in Hell, but Elise was one of them.
Admiring someone’s amazing ability to kill was almost the opposite of falling in love with them. A good general didn’t make a good mate.
“The guy’s an idiot,” Abel said.
“You did a lot worse than break into offices to find me a few times.” Rylie pressed herself against him with a little smile. That little smile. The one that she used to get when they were alone together in the cabin after a long day with the pack, when she’d been worn out and wanting some love.
Abel was fine with this train of thought, if that’s where it was heading. “I’d do even crazier things to keep you,” he said, running his hands over her glowing shoulders. His woman. His mate. He dipped his head to taste her lips—
And Benjamin cried out between them.
Rylie pulled back, bowing her head over the baby. “He can’t be hungry again. Can he? I’ve been feeding him non-stop for hours.”
“He’s got his daddy’s appetite,” Abel said. “What are we doing about Marshall?”
“Nothing. I made it clear we can’t help him with Elise. Honestly, if he did find her, he’d be glad we tried to stop him.” She fumbled for her dress, bringing Benjamin to her breast again. It was infuriating how she’d become so ripe after birthing their second child, yet also so distant. She was more beautiful than ever but shirked away every time Abel tried to touch her.
This was how Abel had first gotten to know her body: right after the birth of their first twins, when her belly was just a little softer, her hips wider, her breasts full with milk.
But they hadn’t cared for the twins as babies. Rylie and Abel had all the time in the world to enjoy the breasts that she now exposed only to feed her son. Now she was just…gone. Mentally as much as physically. Caught in a little bubble of mother and baby.
It was insane to be jealous of a damn baby.
Aunt Gwyn had wandered out of the woods, already wearing the sling that she’d use to soothe the baby while his mother handled the pack. Her presence drew Rylie further away from Abel. He watched her go and felt like he was losing a piece of himself.
“Alpha,” called Pedregon, jogging down the hill. He bounced from foot to foot and barely seemed to touch the earth. The crowd parted to allow him to pass, sensitive to the pheromones expressed by an Alpha.
“What?” Abel asked, turning with a snarl. “I told you, I was done.” He’d given Pedregon some tips about securing their territory in Barcelona, but when the Alpha had begun pushing for more details, Abel had walked away.
The shifter lowered his eyes to the ground. Acknowledging Abel’s dominance. “I was only coming to ask your permission to run with the pack tonight. It’s my full moon too.”
They’d been on something resembling friendly terms all day, but even the obeisance rankled now. “I don’t have two fucks to rub together over what you do.”
“Good,” Pedregon said. “You’re embracing your anger. It gives you the strength to control.”
Rylie was murmuring to Aunt Gwyn with the baby between them, the witch lights shining through her dress to silhouette the soft curves of her body. “She doesn’t get angry,” Abel said.
“It’s different for women. She is strongest when she yields to her man, after all.” Pedregon clapped Abel on the back, and the stag shifter beamed at the werewolf. “I’m all the more impressed as I see how you’re holding things in control here. You’re an Alpha unlike any I’ve met, abroad or at home.”
“Flattery’s not gonna get me running over to Spain with you.” Abel shrugged the other Alpha’s hand off of him.
“I’m honest, not flattering.”
“You literally told me that you wanna change my mind about helping you today, while we were looking at a map of shifter hideouts in Barcelona.”
Pedregon’s laugh was as quiet as his voice, and without humor. “Your family is safe here. Mine is not safe in Barcelona. Your baby gets milk from his mother, while shifter families in my home are torn from each other.” He swept a hand over the shifters gathering through the valley. Thousands of them, now. “I have another suggestion. Instead of giving me dozens, why don’t you come with ten of your best?”
“Ten of us to do what? Take some of the silver bullets that your government shoots at you?”
“Train my men to bite the hands that fire,” Pedregon said. “Help us rip them to pieces alongside my herd. Use your strength to protect those who are weak. We all change under this moon together, and we may not be one pack, but we are family.”
Adán painted a bloody image. If he’d gotten to Abel a couple of years earlier, it might have been appealing. Abel had been raised a werewolf hunter, after all. He knew the joy of the kill.
But then he’d followed Elise Kavanagh into Hell, and he’d seen what war was really like. Abel had enjoyed killing demons. Yet Pedregon wasn’t asking him to kill demons. The only deaths would be human men and pack.
“Rylie needs me here,” Abel said.
“She needs your protection.” Pedregon clenched his hand into a fist. “If this can happen to my people in Spain, it can happen anywhere. You’ll protect them by setting an example. Show the world that shifters can’t be exterminated like vermin.”
Rylie was handing the baby to Gwyn now. Milk still glistened on the rim of Rylie’s nipple, a circle as dark in the center of her pale flesh as the new moon. She looked sad to turn the baby over. She always acted listless without Benjamin in her arms. That was why she would choose not to transform that night; instead of running with the pack, she would curl up with the baby in bed, windows shut, air close and quiet.
Abel would run with the pack. He would fly through tree-lined night, plunging deep into valleys where hidden streams fed ponds filled by fat fish, and then climb to the highest peaks where his breath turned to mist. He would be accompanied by other wolves, large felines, the eagles above.
He wouldn’t be with his mate.
Who knew when Rylie would run with Abel again? She barely kissed him anymore.
“You can stay, but you’re not this pack’s Alpha. Get with the other shifters down there,” Abel said. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “I’ll think about Barcelona.”
“Thank you,” Pedregon said.
The stag shifter vanished amid the others, milling around as if waiting for a rock star to come out and perform. Waiting for Rylie.
They’d know Abel as the rock star if he protected the shifters in Barcelona.
“You’re not thinking about leaving the pack, are you?” asked Lincoln. He was standing on the back corner of the stage, where metal cases of sound equipment were stacked. He looked like law enforcement even without a uniform. It was the “I’m responding to reports of a disturbance” posture, judgment already in the disapproving slant of his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Abel asked.
“Rylie invited me to watch. Since I’m not a shifter, I figured I’d be safer up here. I didn’t mean to listen in on your conversation. Apologies for that.” Lincoln rubbed a hand over the yellow stubble on his jaw. “You’re not thinking about going to Barcelona, though. Are you?”
“What if I am?” Abel snarled.
“There’s no greater sacrifice than that of servicemen,” Lincoln said. “Leaving your family to protect your people—your nation—is the most noble thing anyone can do. I just can’t help but wonder if this other guy is your people.”
“The cops in Grove County sure aren’t,” Abel said. “Nobody outside this valley’s ‘our people.’”
“I’m not talking about Grove County. I’m
talking about your kids.” The smell blasting off of Lincoln was one of grief. “Whatever Pedregon’s telling you to do, it’s only in his best interests. But he’s not the guy you should be worrying about.”
“Stop talking, human.” Abel bared his teeth. His gums were itching with the onset of moonrise, and his mouth tasted of blood.
It was pain that flashed over Lincoln’s features, rather than fear. “Do you care more about foreign shifters than being with your son?”
The baby that Aunt Gwyn was sliding into her sling and taking back to the cabin, patting his back as she murmured comforting words into his hair. He was fussing at being taken from Rylie.
“You don’t know my family,” Abel said.
“I reckon I don’t,” Lincoln said. “Just…think on it. I’ve got no stake in whatever you choose to do. Pedregon does.”
Rylie leaped easily up to the stage again, light on her bare feet. Her hair flowed freely behind her as she stepped toward the edge to be with Abel. “The whole pack’s here,” she said. “Are you ready?”
It didn’t matter if Abel was ready. The moon was ready. Sunlight had faded to a sliver of gold on the horizon, yielding to a blue shine peering over the trees. Once upon a time, it hadn’t worked like that—the moon and sun trading at sunset. Genesis had changed more than just the size of their pack.
“You gonna break into any locked buildings tonight while we’re out?” Abel asked Lincoln. “Because I gave the guards who’re staying behind permission to eat you if you do.”
Rylie swatted Abel. “Stop it. Lincoln and I have an understanding.”
“We do?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes,” she said, not cruelly, but firmly.
“We do,” Lincoln agreed.
She faced the pack, stirring with quiet unease. There had barely been a handful of moons since Genesis. This was still a new experience for the majority of them. Painful or not, they feared it: the disconcerting change in form and the loss of control to an animal mind.
Elsewhere in the nation, they’d be wrangling shifters into community centers and stadiums to separate them from mundane society. Rylie would have to reach out to them too. She may have been doing it already. Her eyes were even more distant, like her mind was soaring off into space.