Rivals and Retribution

  Gareth rested his head on the table, and I stared at Cat, my jaw hanging open.

  Marlaena

  He found me in the motel’s lobby, sucking icing off an inside-out plastic bag that five minutes earlier had held a cheese-filled Danish. I raised an eyebrow at him and then turned back to the plastic bag, ignoring the simple humans finishing up their breakfasts.

  Except for the one female who kept staring at me. I made a face at her, and she busied herself arranging her napkin on her lap.

  “We’ll be okay,” he said, moving past me to get an orange. He peeled it with deft fingers, leaning against the counter beside me and watching me as I crumbled up the Baggie.

  “We’re always okay,” I said, keeping my voice low and looking pointedly at the pups who wandered around the space, chatting, eating, and playing.

  He nodded. “Outside?”

  I shrugged. “Fine.” I snatched a bagel off the counter and tucked an apple into my jacket pocket for later. With the wolf’s metabolism burning through me, later would be in half an hour.

  We stopped just under the edge of the motel’s roof, looking for all the world like we were propping up one of its columns with our backs.

  “Where’d you go?” I asked in my best I really don’t care, but it’s only polite to ask tone of voice.

  “To make a deal. Find us some help.”

  My stomach churned. “Gabe did the same thing not so long ago, you know? And look where that landed all of us.”

  “The quality of help I went in search of is much better. And the results—much better.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and peered out at him from beneath my eyelashes. “Oh, really? And just who did you broker your deal with, Gareth Wycliff Samuelson?”

  He winced at the mention of his middle name.

  He didn’t know mine, but I’d made it a point to learn the middle names of all my pack members. There was something primitively powerful about invoking someone’s full and complete name like their mother might do during a scolding.

  “The Rusakovas.”

  The brief flood of power I’d felt fell away. “No.”

  “Yes,” he assured me. “They were quite reasonable.”

  “It’s impossible.” I stepped away from him, shaking my head the whole time, my bangs falling into my eyes. “After what we did to them…”

  “People can forgive other people,” he said, stepping forward to put his hands on my upper arms.

  “Not this fast,” I whispered, trying to squelch the fear rising in my voice. “What if it’s—”

  “Stop. Stop it. It’s not a trap. And I haven’t bargained away anything. They’re giving us this as an opportunity. To help the pups.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Try. Pack the pups and let’s get ready to go. We’ll stay with them and get Noah and Terra back.”

  “What did you manage to say to help convince them?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think it was really me at all. I think it was Cat.”

  Alexi

  I could not believe Cat. I waited five very respectful minutes after Gareth had left our house before I spoke my mind. “What the hell was that about? Telling him their pack could stay here? With us?”

  Cat shrugged and smiled sweetly at me. “I am doing as Fate proscribes.”

  “Fate?” I smacked my hand on the table. “You are determining our future based on a few tea leaves scattered around the bottom of someone’s cup?”

  “The tea leaves never lie.” She shrugged again, motioned to Amy, and started from the room.

  Amy shrugged and turned to follow, but Cat looked over her shoulder at me, adding, “The tea leaves told us about Jessie.”

  “Ah, yes. Jessie. What do you suppose she’ll think of housing the girl who may have tried to kill her?”

  Cat froze an instant, Amy nearly bumping into her back. “She will realize what you have so often told us—Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  Jessie

  “I think I should be there for this,” I said into my cell phone. I had gotten past the She did what? and He agreed to that? stage of the conversation pretty quickly. Mentally I lingered on the You let them do this because…? But I didn’t give it the voice it probably deserved.

  Pietr’s voice was grim. “Da, you should be here. It will help make sure she sees that you are firmly a part of the family.”

  I glanced out the window. Dad was already gone to work. “Can Max—”

  “Give you a ride? Da. I’ll send him. Max—”

  “I need to get my license,” I complained.

  “What good would it do you with having only one vehicle in your family?”

  “Good point. But I don’t know … Don’t you think at our age we should have our licenses? I mean, I don’t want to be nineteen and just getting my license then. That screams slacker to me.”

  “Max is on his way.”

  “With Amy?”

  “Of course with Amy.”

  “I guess that’s the only way those two travel.”

  “They’re good for each other.” He was quiet a moment, and I wondered if I needed to come up with something to say. He cleared his throat, though, saying, “Do you think I am good for you?”

  “Good for me?”

  “You’ve been in danger often since knowing me,” he pointed out.

  “I would have been in even more danger if Derek had gotten control of me,” I said.

  He was quiet again. “About that … Alexi…”

  “What has Alexi said?” I asked, my throat tightening. I hadn’t given Alexi permission to tell Pietr anything regarding what Derek had possibly shoved into my mind during his violent death. Or what seemed to be seeping into my consciousness from the residue Derek had implanted there.…

  “He is worried about you.”

  “Is that all he said?”

  “Da. That is all he said.” A long pause followed. “Should I be worried about you?”

  “No,” I whispered. “You saved me, remember? There’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine. Great.”

  “Which is it? Fine or great?”

  “Both. I’m so good, it’s both. Look, I need to grab my stuff before Max gets here. And tell Annabelle Lee where I’m going. And for how long…”

  “Da. Good idea.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Pietr,” I repeated, noting the way his tone had changed.

  “Fine. I will not worry.”

  “Great. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I hung up and grabbed my coat, gloves, and scarf and shoved my feet into my boots. I needed to be prepared. What did you say when your enemy—your all-but-mortal enemy—was moving in with your boyfriend and his family? What did you do when someone was quite obviously moving in on your turf? I paused, realizing how possessive I sounded. It wasn’t like Pietr was my property. Pietr was …

  … my everything. He was who I was willing to lie for, kill and die for. I was terrified of losing that connection.

  Lost in my thoughts, I only jumped back into action when I noticed Max starting cautiously up the long driveway. “Anna!” I shouted.

  She grunted back, surely reading.

  “Going with Max and Amy to Pietr’s. Be back for dinner. I think,” I added. I pushed through the door and heard it click shut behind me as I bounded off the porch and down the stairs, making a beeline for the car, my thoughts still on the potential battle ahead.

  I needed to make sure the Marlaena situation was under control, figure out what power I could wield in this messy situation.…

  My knees gave way beneath me, my legs failing, and I fell face-first into the snow.

  Mommy’s voice reached out to me from across the cold and the emptiness, tossing us into familiar territory once again.

  I steadied myself in Derek’s nonexistent form, glancing down at our shared body. We were older still—fifteen? Sixteen? I couldn’t be certain. But from the way
we strutted down the hallway of Wanda’s mind, I knew we had developed our skills.

  And our confidence.

  We opened a door.

  Wanda’s park sprawled out before us, her statues rearranged on the other side of the fountain, the gold man toppled and overgrown with vines that choked it.

  Things had gone badly between them.

  We skirted the statues and the sky darkened, thunder rolling in the sky above. “I need to hurry. Her defenses have improved since last time.”

  “Don’t worry—just plant the seed and get out.”

  We dug into our pocket and withdrew a seed the size of a peach pit. Across its surface a word shimmered. Distrust. We rolled it over in our palm as we knelt in the soft grass, our fingers digging into the moist and fertile dirt of Wanda’s subconscious. And as we dropped it into the hole and sealed it back up, I noticed the word Betray glisten across its other side.

  We stood, stepped back, and then spread our dirty fingers wide, our hands stretched out above the place where the seed rested.

  “Concentrate,” Mommy urged.

  The ground trembled beneath our feet and we nearly lost our balance as up through the ground a tree sprouted, dark and twisted, gnarled and thorny and covered with leaves that each bore a single word. Hate. Worry. Fear. They lined the branches and writhed in the growing wind.

  “Now get out,” Mommy urged. “The seed is planted and it’s taken root. Get out.”

  We laughed.

  And we ran as fast as we could as part of Wanda’s world began to fall down around us.

  “I’ve got her.” Someone shook my shoulders. “Jessie. Jessie! Wake up or … snap out of it…” Someone patted my cheek, and I opened my eyes against the glare of sunlight bouncing off snow and ice.

  My head throbbed. “Oh. God.” I squinted up. Someone stood in the sun’s direct path to block it and throw me in merciful shadow. Amy.

  “What the hell was that all about?” she demanded.

  I grunted. “Did I just make with the drama?”

  “Hell, yes.” She stomped. “We’re driving up here and all of a sudden you flop to the ground like a rag doll. What was that all about?”

  I swallowed. “Can we not talk about it right now?” I asked, sliding my gaze to Max as he rose and set me on my feet.

  She looked at him, too, and the color that usually filled her face drained away leaving nothing but a scattering of freckles and the barest hint of windburn. “Fine,” she whispered. “We’ll talk later.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “Let’s just get going, okay? I think I’d better have a chat with Alexi.”

  Max’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded, his hand hot on the small of my back as he guided me to the car and watched with particular interest as I buckled my seat belt. “Is there something I should know?” he finally asked as he started the car up and adjusted the mirrors to begin backing down my driveway.

  “No,” I insisted. Too quickly.

  He nodded. “I thought so.” He rolled his lips together in thought. “I can handle keeping a secret. I used to keep a pretty big one just to seem normal—just to survive.”

  “I know. It’s nothing,” I assured him. “Maybe it’s a secret that would do more damage if it gets out and won’t be a problem at all if it doesn’t.”

  “Looks like it’s a problem already whether you talk about it or not,” Max stated.

  “Don’t you have any secrets now?”

  He refocused his gaze. “Fine. I’ll leave it alone,” he assured me.

  But the way he said it, the way he reacted, made me wonder just what secret he was keeping from me, and something twisted in my gut at the thought.

  * * *

  “Are you certain you’ll be able to handle this?” Max asked grimly as we pulled into their driveway. The Queen Anne was stark against the gray sky.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, pulling my coat tightly around me and adjusting my scarf and hat. “It was nothing.”

  “Right,” he responded dryly. “Collapsing onto the ground all of a sudden is absolutely normal.” Max was thinking. Hard.

  “No, Max,” I said firmly. “No. Absolutely not. I know what you’re thinking, and no. You may not tell Pietr what happened.”

  He grunted.

  “Promise me, Max.” But my heart sped up. What if a promise didn’t mean as much to Max as it did to Pietr? To Pietr, a promise was the ultimate oath. He’d rather die than break a promise. But Max … “Promise me.”

  He waved a hand in my direction, and it did nothing to slow the pace of my heart. “Fine. I promise. I won’t tell Pietr what happened.”

  I examined his words in my head. It seemed like a solid promise. “Thank you,” I said with a sigh. “Okay, here we go,” I said, opening my door and letting winter tug at me.

  Together we headed into the house. Pietr, Cat, and Alexi were there, standing in the foyer. Pietr grabbed me immediately and pulled me into his arms, pressing me snug to his body and pushing his nose to the edge of my ear where my hair was escaping from beneath my knit hat. “Allo,” he said, his breath hot and fierce in my ear.

  My legs trembled and I locked my knees in defense against my body’s immediate betrayal. “Hello, Pietr,” I whispered back, stretching up to get my lips closer to his ear.

  Max cleared his throat. “Still in the foyer,” he pointed out.

  I slipped away from Pietr’s grasp, blushing.

  Pietr glanced at Max, one eyebrow rising in challenge. “We can correct the oversight of our location,” he mentioned, glancing from me to the top of the stairs behind him. Toward his room.

  Amy snickered.

  I peeled off my hat, coat, and scarf and shook my head. “Quit it, you two,” I said, handing my things to Pietr to hang for me. “We have things to get ready for.”

  “Guests,” Alexi said.

  “And we’re putting them—”

  “Downstairs,” Cat responded. “It will be easy.”

  “Easy. Right. That’s exactly what I was hoping for when I headed here this morning—making things easy on an incoming wolf pack,” I muttered.

  Pietr grabbed my hand and tugged me back toward him. “Come with me,” he said, “while we still have time in a not so very crowded house.”

  I nodded and let him draw me up the stairs and to the quiet solitude of his room.

  The door clicked shut behind us and we tumbled onto the bed together, a knot of arms and legs, kissing each other eagerly.

  “I missed you,” I admitted, panting as his lips grazed my neck.

  “I didn’t go anywhere,” he whispered back, rolling me beneath him. His hair fell into my face, and I giggled and brushed it back only to watch it fall forward again.

  “You did,” I argued. “It was like this part of you…” I brushed a finger along the heated power of his lips, “was gone. Tucked away.”

  “I was not myself?” he asked, kissing along my jawline.

  “You…” But I couldn’t agree because of what that meant. If Pietr wasn’t himself when he was cured, would he ever take a cure again? “You were still you, just dialed back a bit,” I whispered. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Pocelujte menyah. Kiss me, Pietr.”

  He rested his hips on mine, pinning my legs beneath him and kissing me with a heat I’d thought we’d both forgotten. Pietr had his passion back, and Alexi was working with Wondermann—maybe a real cure could still be created. Maybe we could have it all.

  We were still in love as much as ever.

  His lips on mine, our breath mixing, I was invincible.

  He rolled away from the wanderings of my eager hands and propped himself up on an elbow, looking at me.

  “We should take it easy, shouldn’t we?” I asked, scrunching up my nose.

  “Da,” he answered. “I am not—prepared,” he said with a shrug, and I knew he meant he didn’t have protection. “And we cannot afford any accidents.”

  “Yeah. I can’t risk getting pregnant,” I agreed. “Dad would
eventually realize we’ve had sex.”

  Pietr chuckled, the noise rising from deep in his stomach, tumbling past the place his growling accent lived and making everything inside of me quiver.

  “Besides,” I said, trying to steady my breathing, “I’m so not ready for kids. Not yet.”

  “Not ever,” he said firmly.

  “Really?” I straightened and pulled myself up to sit there, looking down at him, realizing in my furthest daydreams, those ones that stretched out a decade ahead of us, I’d imagined us married with kids. I hadn’t spent much time on those fantasies, especially when it seemed my most important fantasy would be that both of us lived that long. But they’d seemed right. Normal. My parents were married. They’d had two kids and a very happy life together. Until the car crash killed Mom.

  “No children. Ever?” I clarified.

  “Nyet. No children. Ever,” he confirmed. “Think about it, Jess. If you had a disease—something you knew would kill or cripple someone—would you pass it on?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.”

  “My life span is incredibly short. What sort of parent would I be to force that—and these changes—on my offspring? What sort of parent would I be knowing I created a child and would leave it early? Abandon it?”

  “But, Pietr, our children would be a mix of our blood—our DNA. They would have a very good chance at a longer life span,” I insisted. “And our children—our hypothetical children—” I stressed, “would not be abandoned. They would still have me.”

  “I would never burden you with a child of my kind.”

  “A child of your kind … What exactly does that mean? Beautiful, intelligent, caring? Oh, yeah. What a burden that would be.”

  “An oborot. An abomination.”

  “Holy crap, Pietr. Quit it. You aren’t a monster. You’re a man—a good one. Yes, you’ve made mistakes and have some weird genes, but every so often in my dad’s family line there’s a kid with mismatched eyes, and on Mom’s side there’s an albino great-aunt. So you bring werewolves into the mix.” I climbed off the bed, frustrated. “Stop torturing yourself,” I snapped. “There are plenty of people standing in line ready to torture you instead.”