Taint of Shadow

by Cassandra Moore

  No more fair than it had been to take hers. Paul Kiplinger and Regina had upended her life, forced her down a dark path she never wanted to follow. Yet how would she have felt if they’d taken Noah instead? When Noah would have begged her to leave, would she have given up her need to help him just because it would keep her safe?

  If safety came at the high cost of life without her mate, she would never have paid the price. She had to offer him the right to do the same.

  “No. It’s not fair. Noah knows what he’s getting into.” She spoke so Peter could hear her thoughts as much as she spoke them to admit them out loud. To bestow reality upon them so she couldn’t take them back. “And... And I need him.”

  “As much as he needs you.” Peter squeezed her hard, once, then let her go. “There was one more question I wanted to ask you. I know you don’t have family here anymore, or family to invite to your wedding tonight.”

  Kayla nodded. “I don’t speak to my parents anymore. The pack has been my family since I came back. The pack, and Moira, and she’s— She couldn’t come.”

  After a month, Moira had recovered enough that Vincenzo Pirelli had confidence she wouldn’t die. Enough for visitors, too, though only for brief chats. And he still couldn’t say if the latent lycanthropy in the shadow wolf’s infection would overcome their efforts to keep it at bay. Moira, one of the city’s greatest witches, might lose her ability to do magic. If she didn’t, the lingering darkness no one knew how to cleanse might forever change what magic she could work. No one knew what would happen.

  It would take another month at least before she could consider a trip out of Pirelli’s estates. Leaving tonight, on the full moon, to join a pack of werewolves was out of the question for a woman tainted by the shadow who fought to keep a beast at bay.

  Peter offered Kayla a hesitant smile. “I understand. You know I feel that I failed you last year. With Regina, and Kiplinger, and everything else. A few of us feel that way, like Cameron and Dani, but I can only speak for myself. That night, you should have been safe on this mountain. You weren’t. Tonight, I hope you’ll give me the chance to do better by standing with you as your family while you get married.”

  The request caught her by surprise. “That’s really sweet of you, Peter. Won’t you be performing the ceremony?”

  He shook his head. “No. That job is for the alpha. When the alpha is the one getting married, a former alpha often steps in, but I’ve excused myself from that. Noah took the position from me too recently. I don’t want to give the wrong impression of who really leads.”

  She didn’t miss the strata of sorrow, regret, and pain in his voice. Not so many weeks ago, he’d lost a lover who must have left him with a complicated cocktail of relief and sadness in her wake. On the same night, he’d lost leadership of a pack he’d watched over for more than a decade. Performing the wedding in the capacity of alpha had too many difficult connotations.

  Yet he carried enough dignity and bravery within his spirit to offer himself as family to the woman his lover had betrayed, even when that woman had also left his lover dead on the ground. Peter had an unstoppable integrity that Kayla hoped she could one day match. It can’t be easy for him to reach out like this. If he can try to go forward and make things right, then I can’t do any less.

  Regina had cost them both dearly, yet maybe she had left them common ground in which to grow a new relationship. Peter had always been Noah’s mentor. Now, Kayla sensed, Peter was her friend, and family, and compatriot in loss.

  She touched his arm. “I’d love it if you stood up with me. Thanks, Peter.”

  Tears glittered in his eyes but didn’t spill over. “Don’t thank me yet. Me standing with you means Cameron has to perform the ceremony.”

  “Oh, no!”

  Under the moon, she laughed, and after a moment, he did, too. Then together, they walked back toward where the pack waited.

  “I wish I had better news for you, Noah, but I haven’t uncovered the first thing about Paul Kiplinger’s whereabouts.”

  Sonja Carter sounded as frustrated as Noah felt. The brunette and her big German Shepherd, Charlie, walked beside Noah as they ambled along the same path Kayla had walked with Regina a year ago. He’d come out here less to taunt fate than defy it. From what Sonja said, fate had ignored the challenge.

  “I thought for sure you’d have something by now,” he said. “It’s odd he’d just up and disappear.”

  “Odd, and yet, there it is,” Sonja said. “Or in this case, there it isn’t. Not a single one of my contacts has heard from the man since the ritual that night. I’ve heard of a few things I suspect were his influence, but nothing more than that. He’s just gone.”

  Noah frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Before Kayla disappeared, Kiplinger was ass deep in a plan to make enchanted blood so he could take over the city. Then? He kidnapped seven werewolves, dragged out some weird artifacts, and had a huge ritual in our territory. He spent a year training the shadow wolves to do his bidding. Then he vanishes?”

  “If you want my guess, that ritual didn’t go as planned.” She kicked a rock with the inner edge of her foot and watched it skitter into the gloom in front of them. “From what Kayla has said, that ritual was meant to give Kiplinger full control over the shadow wolves. We know it didn’t entirely work, because he had to spend that year conditioning them.”

  “And that didn’t even work, because Kayla escaped to come back here.” Noah couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice. Even a magic ritual hadn’t brought Kayla under their control. She’d kept her own mind through the worst of situations.

  Sonja touched the tip of her nose. “Exactly. Know what else I noticed? No one stepped in to stop Kayla from killing Regina. Sure, Kiplinger had dispatched those shadow wolves to bring her back, but if he’d had any control of her at all? He could have just reached out with that magic and prevented Regina’s death. He didn’t. Take from that what you will.”

  Noah pondered that as they walked toward the copse of trees Kayla had described. Everyone who’d ambushed her there had died except Paul Kiplinger. Noah had seen every death himself, all but the one he wanted most. The one who’d gotten away without so much as a shed wolf hair on his designer shirt. “I’d like to think it means he’s beaten.”

  “I’d like to think I’ll win a million dollars in a lottery I never enter, too.”

  “Yeah.” Noah sighed. “Mostly, I wish we knew more about any of this. The local witches weren’t able to get more information from the ritual site. The biters had turned it over too well. No one can say how the ritual worked.”

  “Not even your former friend?”

  “Not enough. They didn’t let him in on the details. Just the broader strokes. Even then, he said they lied to him about plenty of what happened.” Noah’s jaw clenched around the words.

  Thoughts of Todd left an uncomfortable residue behind, slick with anger and oily with guilt. As outraged and betrayed as Noah felt at what Todd had done, a tiny, lonely voice in the back of Noah’s mind still whispered that it wished the best friend he’d known since before high school would be there to see the wedding. A hole gaped in the pack where the Todd of years ago would have stood, and watched, and smiled for his friend’s happiness.

  Noah missed his friend with a keen ache. Mourning the loss of a man who’d been like his brother would take time.

  Sonja let it drop. “That doesn’t help us much, then. I’ve gotten in touch with contacts throughout the area. Wolves, vampires, energy slingers, whatever I could dig up. I’m trying to follow up with that comment Regina made about Kiplinger ‘going back where it all started’, but what does that even mean? What was ‘it’ and where did ‘it’ start? We’re having to rethink everything we believed we knew about him.”

  “I thought it might mean where he’d become a vampire.” They reached the edge of the stand of trees. Noah sniffed at the air, uncertain if he hoped he would scent Kiplinger out here or not. It would mean an end to the ordeal
. Peace for his city, peace for his mate, catharsis for him.

  Trees. Soil. A squirrel who’d run through in the last several hours. Nothing more.

  “Disappointed that Kiplinger doesn’t think tonight is as important as you do?” Sonja asked.

  Irritation and sheepishness warred in him. Sheepishness won. “Was I that obvious?”

  “Just a little. People have been over this scene already. You can’t hope to find anything new. There’s only one reason you’d come out here.” She looked toward the copse of trees, lips pursed. “I know Kayla’s getting a little fatherly advice from Peter right now. I’m not very paternal, but someone ought to ask you this. Are you sure you want to go through with the wedding?”

  He threw a sharp glance at her. “You don’t think I should?”

  One eyebrow went up. “Did I say that? Put your hackles back down. Like I said, someone has to ask. Kayla comes with risks. Maybe they’re risks you want to take. That’s your choice. But it’d be easy to carry forward on momentum. You found her again, you want to pick up where you left off...”

  As much as he didn’t want to admit it, she had a point. He’d spent a year obsessed with Kayla’s return. Now, hot on the heels of her bloody and violent return, and his own ascension to alpha, they’d agreed to a wedding in front of the pack. No one would need to stretch their imagination to wonder if the couple had delusions of continuing what they’d already begun.

  “No,” he said. “No. We’re both different people after all we’ve lived through. I don’t get the idea the future is going to be easy. We’d rather face it together.”

  “Romantic sentiments with very practical consequences, and I’m not much of a romantic.” Sonja chuckled. “I don’t disagree with you. You two are smart enough to have given this some thought. But this? This is a big deal. She’s different now, and in ways we don’t understand. Depending on the acceptance of local supernatural population and the neighboring packs, tying yourself to Kayla could lose you everything.”

  “No marriage is perfect. I don’t expect sunshine and roses every day.”

  “Common marital problems don’t include a wife who might discover an unknown magical trigger and infect you with an incurable strain of corruption.”

  “Anyone who marries a werewolf knows they could lose control of their wolf and hurt someone. Even me.” He shook his head. “In the year Kayla was gone, I learned how much she meant to me. Life without her would already be losing everything.”

  “Then I’ve done my duty. I wish you both a long and happy life together, free of Kiplinger’s bullshit.” Sonja held out a hand to shake. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure you get that last bit.”

  He took the offered hand. “Thanks, Carter. For that promise, and for the talk. You know, tonight would be a great night for you to join the pack.”

  She snorted a laugh. “That was smooth, Noah. Really smooth. I appreciate the offer, but I’m not much of a joiner.”

  “You know you’d be welcome.”

  “I do. But you’ve heard all my reasons before, and they haven’t changed. Though this does bring up a point I need to address. Peter allowed me to stay and operate as a lone wolf in his territory. You’re the alpha now. Are you going to revoke that permission?” Her head canted as she waited for his response.

  Her desire to stay a lone wolf had started more than one heated discussion among the pack. Back in what felt like a forever ago, he’d opposed Peter’s allowance for her desire to stay a free agent, just like Noah had opposed many other decisions Peter made. Since the alpha challenge, Noah had come upon the uncomfortable realization that Peter had been right about a great many choices.

  I never knew how easy it was for dissent, and for dissenters, to hide behind lies. Or how the black-and-white choices I could see from outside the leadership weren’t the right ones for someone who had all the information. I’m not afraid to fight, but I’m afraid to ask my pack to fight and die wrongly. Tactics and fighting were never my forte, but they’re going to call on me to make those choices anyway. By the moon, I never realized just how little I truly knew. Now I have to learn very fast because my people need me.

  “No,” Noah said slowly. “You can stay. I’m not sure I like the idea of lone wolves, but you’ve never worked against us. Your help has been valuable. And Charlie is adorable. You’re both welcome to remain in Tacoma.”

  From where he sniffed at the bole of a tree, Charlie picked up his head. His big, radar-dish ears lifted as he caught his name.

  Noah laughed. “Yes. That’s you. You’re a good boy.”

  The dog wagged his tail hard and smiled a big, happy smile.

  Sonja chuckled. “Thanks, Noah. I respect your leadership. Though no one’s going to respect you if you’re late to your own wedding. We ought to head back.”

  Before he turned away, however, he stopped to listen to the night once more. The full moon had climbed over the eastern edge of Mount Rainier’s slopes to illuminate the ground below. Far-off calls of night birds rose into the shroud of evening, as did the distant sounds of the pack’s greeting calls and laughter. No rituals. No screams. No panicked howls in search of a mate.

  “Stop looking for trouble,” Sonja said from behind him.

  He turned around. “Yeah. It will find me soon enough.”

  But not tonight. He jerked his head for his companion to follow, then made the walk Kayla hadn’t from the copse back to the pack.

  “Boss, she isn’t staying, is she?”

  Kayla could hear Cameron’s plaintive question as she and Peter walked back to the pack. She chuckled under her breath. “Five bucks says he’s taking about Sonja Carter,” she murmured.

  Peter snorted. “No bet. He only uses that tone when it’s about Sonja.”

  Sure enough, the lone wolf’s voice barked a laugh. “No, Roswell, I’m not here to be your plus one. Though it doesn’t look like anyone else is, either.”

  “I don’t need a plus one.”

  “I figured it was either that, or you were struggling with basic addition.”

  Kayla and Peter stepped into view before Cameron could retort. She could see he wanted to. The big man’s eyes had narrowed, and he’d just taken a breath when Kayla held up her hand. “It’s okay, Cameron. I’m here to save you from the bad woman. Thanks for all your help, Sonja. Can you get somewhere safe before the moon peaks? I’m sure you could hang around with us tonight if not.”

  Noah spoke up. “You came here to talk to me. I’d be pretty shitty to tell you to drive if you were going to be on the road when the change hit. Wolfing out while driving is more distracting than sending texts. Even Cam would rather you stayed in that case.”

  Cameron scowled but said nothing.

  Sonja laughed as she dug her keys out of her pocket. “Thanks, you two, but there’s plenty of mountain. I’ll drive up a couple stops and go get hairy by myself. I’d hate to scandalize Cameron with my loose wolf ways.”

  Kayla stepped over so she could pat the enforcer’s arm. “He could probably use a good scandal. Have a good night, Sonja.”

  “You too, Kayla. And congratulations on your wedding. Come on, Charlie, let’s hit the road.” Sonja patted her leg once.

  Her dog fell in behind her as she trotted off toward her car. As she disappeared into the shadows, Noah nudged Cameron with a shoulder. “You two fight like old married people.”

  Cameron cast a glance sideways. “Don’t you start, too. You know, you’re the alpha now. You could tell her to join up or ship out.”

  “Why? You want her to be part of the pack where you can spend more time with her?”

  “Boss, I say this in all respect and friendship: fuck you sideways.”

  That startled a laugh out of Noah. “She asked me tonight if she could stay in Tacoma without joining the pack. I said she could. You’re out of luck, Cam. Maybe you should make friends.”

  “Maybe you should keep all these ‘good ideas’ of yours behind your teeth where I don’t have t
o hear them. You here to get married or what?”

  Kayla and Noah exchanged amused looks. “We’re here to get married,” Kayla said. “And you’re going to have to do it for us. Because you’re obviously a romantic.”

  Cameron stared at them. “Wait, what?”

  “Peter won’t do it. I asked him a bit ago. And Noah can’t, since he’s one of the people in the wedding. That leaves you, since the enforcer is technically second-in-command.”

  A rustle of snickers ran through the gathered pack.

  Cameron looked skyward, toward the moon with her amused face. “Are you hearing this? Fine. I’ll marry you two. Not like I’ve never seen it done before. Only way I’m going to be in a wedding anyway. Plus one is the last thing I need.”

  More laughter as the pack formed up a loose circle around them. Kayla hadn’t realized that she and Noah and Cameron had positioned themselves in a convenient group for the others to simply close in around until the rest of the pack took their places. A nervous thread of tension wrapped around her gut to squeeze. Her associations with people surrounding her didn’t come with good memories.

  Then Peter stepped out of the crowd to put a hand on Kayla’s shoulder, and Noah took her hands with a firm squeeze. No vampires here tonight, no turncoats who wore the faces of friends. A year later, with heavier hearts but truer friends, they had arrived at their moment together beneath the full moon.

  The argent sphere shone down upon them, bright and vibrant with energies that prickled over Kayla’s senses. Another night, restlessness to shift her skin and run would have her on edge. Tonight, the energy buoyed her awareness until she could see every line at the corners of Noah’s eyes as he gazed at her, hear every soft breath he took. The rest of the pack fell away from her view until only Noah remained.

  She heard Cameron’s voice, strong and firm and confident, as the enforcer began to speak. “Mates are blessed by the moon. Much as the pack is recognized as one voice when it howls under the sky, mates are recognized as one heart and one soul.”