Rivals and Retribution

  About five feet below me and to my left I heard Marlaena whimper, clinging awkwardly to something that was protruding from the stubborn snow still clinging to the cliff side.

  I crawled up far enough to take the weight off my left hand and shoulder and, looping my right arm through another sturdy-looking tangle of roots, I pulled my left free with a sob. “Not good,” I whispered, every tendon burning and every bone and joint loose and springy as old rubber bands. “But alive,” I realized with awe and a sudden burst of joy as I looked up the steep cliff face and saw just how far I’d fallen.

  With a swallow, I looked down, past Marlaena’s struggling form, and assessed my options.

  The bottom was actually closer than the top. Maybe, if I could control my descent, gravity would do most of the work for me instead of having to fight it in a struggle to climb back to the top.

  My stomach churned. My head felt murky and thick. I wondered what was happening far above me. Marlaena had hesitated, changed her mind, and Dmitri had taken a shot at me instead? Shit. How were Max and Pietr? And Gareth. I even worried on Gareth’s behalf. He was the most reasonable member of Marlaena’s pack.

  Of course, I probably would’ve given credit to any member of Marlaena’s pack who tried to save me. Maybe my forgiveness was too sweeping.

  But Pietr … Where was Pietr? I craned my neck, looking back up, and screamed when I saw the answer hurtling toward me, large and dark and powerful with eyes like hellfire. Wolf. He skidded and clawed and fought the ravine’s pull the whole way down the slope.

  He came straight for me with nothing but my battered face and his seething rage reflected in glowing oborot eyes.

  We connected, a poof of air slamming out of our bodies and shaking the tree’s roots so hard the entire thing rattled and Marlaena flew free as I also lost my grip. Pietr’s front legs morphed into something more human, sleek and furred but ending in hands, and he grabbed me and pulled me firmly against his chest and stomach.

  He tucked and rolled, letting gravity take control but shielding me with his body—a canine roll cage—the whole way down. Above us I dimly heard the sound of something else tearing down the cliff face and for a heartbeat my gaze caught the image of a midnight-colored wolf charging headlong down the slope, paying no mind to his own body’s harm—only one goal in sight: Marlaena.

  Gareth.

  Pietr and I came to a jolting stop—as if every part of our impromptu journey downhill hadn’t been jolting—and I breathed deep, my lungs shaken and rattling, my teeth aching in my jaw and my mind full of one word: OW. My fingers twined in the dark hair of his wolf’s pelt (never had I imagined a hairy back to be so appealing), and snuggling against his thickly furred chest, I did a quick mental accounting.

  I was still alive.

  Pietr was still alive.

  Pietr was a wolf again. But more important than back hair or battered faces, Pietr was still alive.

  Max…?

  I whimpered, straining to look up the way we’d come.

  Pietr shivered against me and his form wavered, trembling like a mirage around its very edges as he fell back into his human form. Reaching up, I stroked my fingers down the side of his cheek, faint stubble rasping against my fingertips just long enough to wake sensation in them. “You’re going to freeze out here like that…” I winced; even unzipping my coat to open it and pull Pietr into it with me made tears well up in my eyes.

  “Stop,” he whispered, grabbing my zipper with one hand. “You need it more than I do now. I’ll be fine. We just need to hurry back.…”

  I adjusted my grip on him, my fingers twisting into his hair and pulling his mouth down to cover mine. I pressed myself against him and it only took one heartbeat before he reciprocated, and all the intensity and the heat and the hunger—everything I had hoped for and missed so desperately—came back to him on that slippery slope.

  I wanted to scream. Not because of the pain that worked like a cheese grater across every bone in my body, but because Pietr—my Pietr—was back.

  He pulled away from me, his lower lip still between my teeth, his brilliant blue eyes sparking with red like someone had set off flares in their wild ocean depths.

  He blinked. And shuddered.

  I released his lip and tried to come back to my senses. “My Pietr,” I whispered.

  He rumbled out a purr. “We need to get up top.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, choking back my hesitancy. “I hope Max…”

  He nodded and readjusted our position with a grunt. “Max’ll be fine. And do not worry about us. I am here,” he assured me. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Better than fine,” I insisted, pressing my face into the crook of his neck, my nose tickled by the short hair near his ears.

  The groan to our left pulled our attention that direction and we looked as one.

  Marlaena lay on her side, her hair a long, stringy mess of red, her eyes shut, her face splotchy and red with scrapes and scratches already healing. Even the slice I’d given her across her cheek had pinched together and started to smooth.

  Gareth, still wolf, was looking very, very worried; nudging his alpha with his snout he whined for her attention … whined for her to regain consciousness. It was the most affection I’d seen him give her.

  He shimmered and became human again, tugging her limp body into his lap and cradling her head in the bend of his arm as he made soft noises at her. Gentle noises. “Come on, Princess,” he whispered. He had to be the only guy bold enough to call someone like Marlaena princess. “You’re too hardheaded to let a little tumble end it all.… Come back, ’laena. Come back to me.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m not ready to learn that lesson you want so bad to teach me: that you can’t save everyone,” he confessed. “Not yet—not with you. Let me save you, ’laena. Come back.”

  “We should help him,” Pietr murmured, his lips brushing a curl by my ear.

  “Helping him means helping her,” I reminded him. “And at the moment I’m pretty firmly opposed to that course of action.” My fingers grazed his forehead, trying to erase the crease that marred his beautiful brow. I brushed his bangs back and pressed a kiss to his temple. “Let’s go—get topside and find Max. And…”

  “And Cat and Alexi,” he muttered. But he was studying the two of them with an intensity that rivaled the one he’d only recently found for his schoolwork.

  “Pietr,” I whispered, my palm sliding down to flatten against his chest, “we need to go.…”

  His heart was racing.

  Gareth shook her gently, saying, “Don’t you dare try to convince me that—”

  Marlaena’s eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes slowly opened, fixing on Pietr’s face. “You can’t save everyone,” she whispered.

  Something in Pietr tightened beneath my touch, and his heartbeat vaulted to an even faster speed.

  Marlaena’s expression shifted, her eyes going wide with shock, something sparkling in their depths. Fear. Absolute terror turned her florid face pale as milk.

  What had her so scared? Being alive? Or what she had nearly done? Or…?

  “Pietr. You’re trembling. You must be cold,” I whispered. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. And find everyone. And everyone’s clothing. Let’s go home.” I petted his chest. But he wasn’t looking at me. “Pietr?”

  “Da,” he said finally, shaking his head as if to pull himself out of a daze. “Da, we should go.”

  “Pietr,” Marlaena called as we rose and began searching for the best route to get back up to the top. He froze rabbit-still hearing his name on her lips. “Pietr,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry.…”

  Pietr grabbed my hand, yanking me tight to his side. He dragged me after him, fiercely ignoring her voice as it rose and strained to get his attention. To apologize. But all the time I was thinking she didn’t mean she was sorry about me, but about something else.…

  Something as new as the thing that sparked in her eyes when they met his.

  And that s
omething worried me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marlaena

  I pulled myself off Gareth’s lap, my stomach twisting into knots as my eyes followed Pietr Rusakova and his girlfriend away from the spots we’d all landed.

  They picked their way back up the mountain’s dangerous side, Pietr occasionally casting glances over his shoulder in our direction. In my direction? Did he feel the same sudden, strange and sickening pull I did? The sweeping sense of disorientation?

  I stood a moment before doubling over to catch my breath, my hands on my knees, my head low. Gareth was beside me in a moment, his hand hot from the change and pressed into my back, the very definition of comfort.

  I winced, twisting away.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice thick.

  “It’s the fall,” I said. I held my head, hoping I was right. “Just the fall. It made me queasy.”

  His fingers roamed across my skull, tentatively feeling for bumps and fractures.

  “I’ll be fine,” I promised. “I just need a little time.” I always needed time. “I’ll walk it off.”

  I straightened and looked at Gareth. He swayed in my sight. Or maybe I swayed.

  He reached out to steady me, but I stumbled back, my ankle twisting and collapsing beneath me, so I flopped against the mountain’s side. He nodded, accepting my words but not believing them. “Fine. If you say so.”

  “I say so.” I regained my footing, placing a hand against the slope and pushing away from its surface. I peered up the gouged path we’d made coming down. “Too bad we can’t just fall back up,” I mused. “And too bad you—”

  “Need to get pants. You remember that book you got recently? What was it … Eclipse or something like that?”

  “Yeahhh?”

  “The werewolves in that tied their clothing around their legs when they shifted so they didn’t wind up naked at an inopportune moment. Like this one,” he added, catching snow in his hand. “No one wants to get caught out in the cold.”

  “How did those werewolves…?”

  “Beats me. I don’t think they could morph a hand once they were furred to actually tie the stuff on, but…” He shrugged. “It’s fiction, after all. An author shouldn’t be expected to think of everything. It’s like spoon-feeding readers. Readers aren’t idiots. Well, not most of them.” He shrugged and peered past me, his lips curling as his eyes roamed. “Besides, a couple loose ends in a story aren’t necessarily bad. They make you wonder. If you’re bright enough to find them,” he concluded. “And bright enough to wonder.”

  “So.”

  “I can be better prepared, all thanks to a novel about fictitious werewolves.”

  “Unlike the many novels about factual werewolves.”

  “You said it, not me. Things blend all the time in literature.” He followed my gaze up the mountain. “I think Pietr and Jessie probably had the right idea. I think they found the right way up.”

  I rolled my eyes, wanting a different path even more now. “There,” I said, pointing. “We can go that way.”

  He squinted, following the line my finger made. “Okay,” he agreed hesitantly. “We can do that. If you want. But I really think their path was better.…”

  I pretended not to listen. He changed, and the beautiful wolf followed me as we headed up the path I’d chosen for us.

  The path less traveled.

  By a lot.

  Jessie

  Stunned from the fall, from seeing Pietr make his change, I made an awkward mountain climber. Knowing it was all over and done with, that the cure was broken like some second-rate magician’s spell and now Pietr would die, had stunned me more than any tumble down a ravine could.

  At the mountain’s top we paused to catch our breath. Pietr found his clothes partway down the hill near Max’s shivering form. I froze at the sight of Max, covered in so much red I gulped, imagining a bucket of paint had been dumped on him, trying to lock out the image of Max, a beautiful disaster painted in blood, I said, “Are you…”

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured me. “You shoulda seen the other guy.” His mouth quirked up in an uneven smile, his gaze falling to the nearby snow.

  I turned to follow his look, but he reached up, catching my face. Gently he turned my head back to face him.

  “On second thought, you shouldn’t see the other guy.” He let me go and stood, stretching and wincing.

  My cheek chilled where he’d touched it, and I reached up with a shaking finger to find it damp with blood.

  “Where are Alexi and Cat?” I asked, catching Max’s shiver at the realization there was a lump leaking red into the little snowbank it seemed to create.

  “Clean-up duty,” he said.

  I swallowed. Pietr’s hands rested on my shoulders and he pulled me against him so my shoulder blades were tight to his chest, the curve of my backbone nestled against the muscles of his tight stomach.

  “What did you do, Max?” Pietr asked, his voice tremendously level and calm for someone whose heart felt like it would break through his chest and lodge in mine.

  He shrugged. “I only continued what she started.” He looked at me. “Just proving we aren’t starfish.”

  I gulped. “Gabe?”

  Max shrugged again. “He’s a little less than he was. He came after me when I was down. I don’t respect that,” he grumbled. “Let’s just say he’s not quite so handy now.”

  “Eww,” I said.

  Cat returned with a few branches, and Alexi soon followed.

  “And why are we not worried about Dmitri?” I wondered aloud, glancing around at the darkening forest that flanked us.

  “Pietr’s oborot again,” Alexi stated as if I needed reminding. “Dmitri doesn’t have the resources to come after him without additional help. That is why he arranged for Marlaena and Gabriel to be here. He expected more help taking Pietr after he’d changed.”

  “But he didn’t anticipate Gareth’s interference.”

  “Or Marlaena’s feelings toward Gareth,” Cat concluded.

  “And that’s the real reason why we’re setting fire to Gabriel’s hand out in the open and not worried about Dmitri raining bullets down on us?” I glanced around, squinting into the trees in the distance, nervous despite their obvious confidence.

  “Oh. And I did knock Dmitri out,” Cat added matter-of-factly.

  “Oh.” That was better.

  “Of a tree,” she continued.

  “Ohhh,” I said, my eyes widening.

  “Onto his head,” she concluded.

  “Ah.”

  “That’s close to the sound he made,” she said with a nod. “That with a dash more pirate to it: Ahhhrrgh.”

  “Is he—”

  “Dead? Nyet.”

  “But he’ll feel like he drank more than one bottle of rotgut vodka when he wakes up,” Max said. He shrugged and cupped a handful of snow against his chest and scrubbed at the blood clinging stubbornly there. “I do not know why you did not finish the job,” Max muttered as Alexi coaxed the fire to life.

  “Go after him while he was down?” Cat asked. “You do not respect that,” she concluded with a smirk.

  He sighed and leaned over to nudge the hand free of the little snowbank. He threw it onto the fire.

  I stared as it sizzled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, covering my nose and mouth with my hands. “I can’t stand that smell. Can we go?”

  “Da,” Max said, standing up and brushing his hands off on his jeans. “Good idea.”

  The others nodded.

  It was only Pietr who disagreed. “You go on ahead. I’ll stay and watch the fire finish up. I don’t want to leave it going.”

  I pulled out of his arms and looked up at him. The fire was small and far from anything else that might catch. The snow around it made me believe it wouldn’t be able to spread beyond the sparse branches they’d fed it with.

  But Pietr wanted to stay longer.

  “Okay,” I said, my eyes on P
ietr’s face. I glanced at the others, saying, “We’ll meet you guys at the car.”

  “Jess,” he said. “You’ll freeze if you stay out here much longer. Go on. I’ll catch up. Soon,” he said.

  I hesitated.

  “I promise,” he said.

  I still hesitated a heartbeat, and it was completely telltale.

  He looked away and I reached out to take his hand, wrapping my fingers around it.

  “I’ll see you at the car in a few minutes,” I said.

  “Da.”

  We left him to the fire and whatever thoughts were running around in his head. I followed the others, staggering along and trying to edge out my own dark thoughts. Something weird was going on between Pietr and Marlaena and Derek’s creepy memories were growing less and less alien.

  And that they had pushed through me at just the right time.

  Again.

  Marlaena

  Gabe was bleeding all over the inside of the car and I didn’t care. Dmitri and his mini-arsenal was AWOL and I didn’t care. Gareth was trying to be gentle and soothing (although I guessed he seethed beneath his calm exterior), touching me with gentle hands every chance he got.

  And I didn’t care.

  Something inside of me had shut down.

  And something else was struggling to take its place.

  The only thing I cared about was where Pietr Rusakova had gone, who he had gone with and why. I couldn’t get him out of my head. His scent lingered just beyond the tip of my nose, making me want to breathe deeper. My fingertips, numb, felt strange and foreign as if they’d only regain sensation by touching him.

  Gareth reached around and buckled my seat belt for me. “Hello?” he tried.

  I blinked. “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded curtly, stroking a hand down my shoulder and arm to my hand. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking into the backseat at Gabriel. “You need to apply more direct pressure,” he warned as he backed the car out. “We’re all lucky to be alive. You both should be dead—at the hands of the Rusakovas. You’re lucky they showed mercy.”