by Sarah Piper
“Anyway,” I said, “he had some help from a high-ranking shifter friend a few jurisdictions over, and they made all the arrangements. He and my sister staged a big public blow-up, and he officially disowned her, basically banishing her from the town. A few days later, we got them set up with new IDs in a small mountain town about an hour-and-a-half from where we lived. Other than my father and his friend, I was the only other person who knew the location. Even my mother couldn’t know—that’d been her choice. She was too worried she’d break down and go visit them, blowing their cover.”
Gray shook her head, her silky hair brushing against my skin. “That must’ve been the hardest thing for her to do. Especially after all the ups and downs she’d had with Elena, and finally getting close again, only to have to let her go…”
“Oh, she was miserable,” I said. “My father, too. Our family was torn apart, and there was nothing we could do about it—not if we wanted to keep them safe from the threats and attacks. My sister didn’t even dare send us letters or pictures—we were all so worried they’d be traced back. My mother started drinking. My father buried himself in his work, taking overnight shifts and walking beats he’d long since graduated from, just to avoid the emptiness at home.”
“What about you?” she asked.
What about me.
It was a loaded question, the answer weighted with so much guilt and pain I felt it now, eating away at my insides, flaring up all over again. For this was the root of it. The domino that fell and knocked down all the others.
My hand began to sting, and I realized Gray was gripping it so tightly, her fingernails were making half-moon indentations in my skin. Gently, I extracted myself from her grip, wrapping her hands in mine instead. It seemed we were both waiting for the other shoe in this painful story to drop. The difference was, I knew what was coming.
And I needed to anchor myself to her. To hold on for all I was worth as the memories came at me full force, the fiercest, most brutal waves that hit me full-on and pummeled me against the shore.
I could still feel the old resentments, the shamefully hot burning in my gut when I thought about what Elena’s choices had meant for our family. I loved her, I loved Maya, and even Jonah was starting to grow on me. But because she’d broken the rules, she’d broken our family, too. I lost my sister, but I also lost my parents. She’d cost me my sense of home and place and belonging. She’d cost me my friendships and dignity and standing in our pack. She’d cost me everything. That’s how it’d felt.
So when my friends—the guys who’d looked after me when Franco went crazy on me—started showing up again, I welcomed it. We were all a little older at that point, a bunch of wild-eyed wolves looking for trouble. I’d started drinking with them, staying out all night, looking for girls, generally disturbing the peace. There was always some party to go to, always some ruckus to cause.
Stupid boys.
Telling Gray about it now, I could see all the signs. All the fucking clues. But back then, I wasn’t much different from my sister with her friends—no one could’ve convinced me that any of it had been a bad idea.
“One night,” I went on, “the guys took me out to this expensive new club in downtown Buenos Aires, insisting they pay for everything, that they wanted to show me a good time since I’d been so down about my father disowning my sister. I drank a lot that night—more than I ever had—and we were all just letting off steam. I started opening up a little more about my fucked-up situation at home, and next thing I know, I’m telling them about the threats and how my sister wasn’t really disowned, just relocated for her protection.”
I felt the shift in Gray’s body immediately, her muscles tensing, her heartbeat kicking up. Even she could read the writing on the wall—the message it cost me absolutely everything to finally translate.
And by the time I had, it’d been far too late.
She pressed a kiss to my shoulder, warm and comforting. It was like she could sense me slipping under the waves and wanted to pull me back up again before I drown.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m right here.”
I gripped her hands tighter, and squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to watch the scene unfolding like a movie. It would be—I promised myself right there, right in her arms as the storm raged on outside our window and inside my heart—the very last time I watched that movie. The very last time I forced myself to relive it.
“They listened attentively,” I said, “asking for more details, their eyes full of fake concern. They said how sorry they were—that they’d had no idea I was dealing with all this shit at home. They reminded me how they’d had my back with Franco’s crew, and how I was like family to them. How that automatically made my parents and sister their family, too. How they wanted to help me protect her. A few more drinks, and I believed them. I’d felt like I’d been carrying that burden on my own for so long, it was a relief to get help. A relief to know that this big, strong, ragtag pack could fight for us. That they could put an end to the threats and bring my sister and her family home where they belonged.”
Silent tears leaked from my eyes again, but I didn’t bother to wipe them away. Like the ghosts, like the movies, they needed an outlet, too. And through it all, Gray just held me, kissed me, touched me, let me know without words that she wasn’t going anywhere. Wasn’t judging.
“By the time we left the club,” I said, “the boozy feelings had faded, but the sense of relief had only intensified. I felt damn near euphoric. I couldn’t wait to go home and talk to my parents—see what we could do to bring these guys into the fold, strengthen my father’s position as alpha, and put our family back together.
“They drove me back to the house, but as soon as we turned down my road, I knew something was wrong. Then we saw the firetrucks at the top of the driveway, and a blaze of orange that lit up the sky.” I reached for the bottled water on the bedside table, taking a long swig. The long-remembered taste of acrid smoke and the scent of burning animal flesh curdled in my mouth.
“The guys stayed by my side that whole night,” I continued, “waiting for the fire chief to come out of the ashes and tell me the answer to the only question I cared about—whether my parents were inside. But I knew before he’d even spoken the words. The house and outbuildings had been torched. The remaining animals had all burned alive. And my parents… my parents died in their bedroom closet, huddled together until the very end.”
By now, Gray’s tears were flowing, too, running like a tiny river down the side of my chest. My need to comfort her overwhelmed my own pain, and I stroked her cheek with my thumb, pressing a kiss into the top of her head. I would never be able to express how much this meant to me—that she’d been willing to listen, to feel this pain, to help me carry it.
“I knew I had to get to my sister. That she and her family would be next, if they hadn’t already been found and targeted. The guys drove me there as fast as they could, breaking just about every traffic law on the way. I never once hesitated to tell them the address.”
I took another slug of water and a deep breath, forcing myself to unclench the muscles that’d tightened like piano strings. This was it. The worst part. The last and most treacherous and most deeply buried memories, the ghosts with the sharpest teeth and claws, the ones who’d fight me every step of the way as I tried to finally release them.
“It was my fault, querida,” I said, my words like broken glass in my throat. Each one cut deep, cost me something, but I couldn’t stop. Not until every last one was out. “All those years with the rumors about the rival pack, it was them. My so-called friends. They were in league with Franco’s family the whole time, and they’d been working me for years, slowly laying the trap. I took the bait, because they made me believe—no, scratch that. I let them make me believe—that they could help me. But when we finally got to Elena’s home, the second we got out of the car, I knew. I just knew, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“Two othe
r cars pulled in immediately behind us, full of shifters I’d never seen before—bigger, angrier, their eyes wild with bloodlust. To them, it’d been a hunt years in the making, and they’d finally cornered their prey. I knew it that instant that these monsters were responsible for the fire at my parents’ home, and now they’d come for my sister’s family, too.
“I ran inside and woke up Elena and Jonah, trying to get them out, but we were the little field mice now. The monsters loped into the house like they hadn’t a care in the world, a dozen guys against the three of us. Elena and I didn’t even have time to shift—it all happened so fast. It was… It was a slaughter, Gray. The pleasure they took…”
The scene flashed behind my eyes once again. The sound of Elena’s desperate screams as they’d ripped Maya from her arms. The way Jonah had dropped to his knees and begged, tears streaming down his face. The blood splatter arcing across the bedroom wall as they’d cut his throat. The soft, muted cries as the biggest of the pack had smothered Maya against his chest, pressing all the air from her tiny lungs and discarding her on the bed like a rag doll. They beat the shit out of me and Elena both, leaving us for dead. Lying on the bedroom floor, barely conscious, we watched their filthy boots stomp out of the house, the sounds of their laughter and whoops of victory like another round of blows to the head.
“Then I smelled the gasoline. Saw their silhouettes outside the window, flickering behind the orange flames that rose up suddenly from the base of the house. Their laughter went on and on… I swear it was still ricocheting around my skull even after I heard all their cars peel out.”
The only reason we’d survived that night was thanks to the kindness of an elderly neighbor, who’d risked his own life to drag us out of the fire mere moments before the house crumbled.
“Elena and I woke up two days later, side-by-side in the local hospital, both of us in utter shock. Part of me feared the pack would be back to finish the job, but then I realized they’d left us alive on purpose. They let us go, because they knew we’d never pose a threat again. They’d defeated our family, killed our alpha. Elena and I were broken wolves without a pack—like some pathetic cautionary tale that would go down in the history books as a lesson to anyone that might try to challenge their dominance in the future.
“The moment we were released from the hospital, we went into survival mode, fueled entirely on shock and adrenaline. We had some money—some accounts my parents had set up when we were kids—and we used it all to pay off the right people, get passports and all the papers and tickets we needed to get to the states and disappear. From Los Angeles, we made our way north, seeing the forests and mountain ranges that reminded us of home. We found work and a cheap house to rent in a small seaside town called Raven’s Cape, and for a little while, we lived in relative peace, haunted only by our own demons and the nightmares we never spoke of out loud.”
“Raven’s Cape,” Gray whispered, lifting her head and glancing around the room. “This was your house?”
“No,” I said with a faint smile, smoothing the hair from her forehead. The side of her face where she’d been resting against my chest was pink, her eyes still glassy with tears. “Elena has significantly upgraded since we lived together. The house we’d rented before isn’t even there anymore—it was probably condemned and put out of its misery.”
Gray settled back against my chest again, and for a while we just lay together in silence, the snow still swirling outside, the sounds of the household drifting in along with the mouthwatering scents of Elena’s cooking: ground beef and onions frying, parsley and garlic being chopped up for the chimichurri. My stomach rumbled, and Gray let out a soft laugh, trailing her fingertips back and forth across my abdomen.
“It was a mistake, Emilio,” she said softly. “A terrible mistake. You didn’t intend for anyone to get killed. You thought they’d help keep your family safe.”
I appreciated the sentiment, even though I suspected she knew her words would offer little comfort. When you’d carried a matched set of luggage stuffed to the gills with guilt, self-blame, and regret for two decades, it wasn’t a simple matter of dropping the bags on the curb and moving on just because someone said you could.
“Of course I didn’t intend for anyone to die, querida, but that doesn’t change the outcome. What does intention matter in a situation like that? If a drunk driver kills someone you love, and later says they didn’t mean it, does that change how you feel? Does it ease your pain or change the fact that you’ve lost someone forever? Does it bring them back?”
“But a drunk driver… You could argue that’s negligence.”
“You could argue that what I did was negligence, too. A drunk driver is blinded by alcohol and overconfidence, and they make a shit decision in a moment. I was blinded by a lot of things back then, too. Anger. Resentment. A fierce need to prove myself to a pack where I’d never be alpha. And a deep, endless ache for the family that I’d once had. If I’d been thinking clearly, if I’d kept my promises to protect my sister’s secrets, perhaps…” I trailed off. Those thoughts, too, were part of the haunted house of horrors in my mind. And as such, they needed to be brought out into the light, and released, along with all the rest.
“Elena and I stuck together in America out of necessity, and Elena was still so fragile. Shock, mostly. I knew I couldn’t leave her, even though I was terrified of the day she started asking questions.
“It took six months, but then it happened. The grief… It was like walking through mud. When it finally started to recede, just a little bit, her mind cleared up. The story wasn’t adding up. She began asking more questions—hard ones. Ones with complicated answers I didn’t want to give her. I dodged, redirected, distracted her, tried to convince her it was unhealthy and we had to let it go, had to board up that part of our lives and keep focused on the future. What a load of bullshit that was.”
“How did she finally find out?” Gray asked.
“I’d gone out to pick up a pizza, and when I came back inside, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a half-spent bottle of pineapple vodka and that faraway look in her eyes she’d often get, her hands in her lap. I held up the pizza box and made a joke about how we could’ve just gotten pineapples on the pizza instead of having to drink them. She laughed, but there was something wrong with it. It was totally foreign, like it belonged to another person. A chill went down my spine. Then her smile died, and she lifted her hands and pointed a gun at my chest.”
Gray gasped.
“‘It was you,’ Elena whispered. All the blood drained out of me, and I knew she’d finally figured out the truth. Enough of it, anyway. Enough to know who’d led the wolves to her door. And my God, querida, I’d never seen such despondence. It was like the last thread holding her together just snapped.
“‘I’ve got two silver bullets in here,’ she said. ‘One for you, one for me. That’s how it has to be, Meelo.’ I didn’t even try to argue with her. She was going to kill us both. I was certain of it. And the worst part of it was, I wanted her to. I saw the emptiness in her eyes, and in that moment, I really believed death would be the better option for both of us.”
A shiver raced through Gray’s body, and she reached for the sheet and pulled it up to our shoulders. “What changed her mind?”
“You know how you say there’s no coincidence?” I said.
“Yeah, that’s a lesson I’ve been forced to learn over and over.”
“Okay. So here’s where shit gets really insane.”
“You mean it gets worse?”
“Not at all. It gets better.” At this, a smile slid over my face. She was going to like this part of the story—a little levity, a slightly-happier-than expected ending. “That was the night I met our boy, Ronan.”
Twenty
GRAY
“What?” I bolted upright in the bed, sure I’d misunderstood him. “Ronan just happened to show up on your doorstep at the exact moment you and your sister were about to die?”
&nbs
p; “As crossroads demons are known to do, I guess,” he said. “See, Elena had told me she was going to kill me, and then she was going to kill herself. It was going to happen, the forces already set in motion. I saw it play out like a movie, and I knew there’d be no talking her out of it—not even if I’d wanted to. My sister has always been stubborn—you might have picked up on that.”
I let out a soft laugh. I had picked up on it. It was one of the things I really, really liked about her.
“Anyway,” he said, “she flipped off the safety, steadied her aim. And I nodded and told her I was sorry, and that I loved her, and I understood why she had to do this. Then I closed my eyes, waiting for the bite of that bullet. Praying it would be quick, but knowing it wouldn’t. Silver poisoning is… unpleasant.”
I shuddered again, remembering his tortured body in the warehouse, the way the silver had eaten through his flesh and bones, slowly killing him. A hundred years could pass, and I’d never forget that sight. The fear. I only hoped that he hadn’t remembered it. That he’d passed out long before the full gruesomeness of his predicament had set in.
“But instead of the pop of a gun,” he continued, “I heard Elena gasp. I opened my eyes to see her staring at a point just past my shoulder, her mouth hanging open in shock. So I turn around, and there’s this brooding, black-eyed demon leaning back against our kitchen counter, cracking a beer and tossing the bottle cap into the sink. ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ he said, taking a swig. ‘Just here for the show. Continue, please.’”
Emilio’s soft smile turned into a full-on laugh, and the sound of it unleashed the floodgates. It was like a needle popping a balloon that just kept expanding and expanding, and now I laughed, too. The things he’d shared with me had been so dark, so tragic, I marveled at the fact that we still remembered how to laugh—that we could do it so soon after talking about everything else. But I cherished that laughter, too. It felt like my wolf and I had been lost in a dark, dangerous forest together, so certain we’d never find our way back to the light. And now here we were. Laughing.