Altered

  “So you really did save the day,” I muttered.

  “You don’t sound happy about that,” she said and looked up with a smile.

  “I’m not,” I barked.

  “Me either,” Clara butted in. I rolled my eyes as Clara moved in the sand in front of her. “What were you doing?”

  “I had to, Clara—”

  “Not you,” she said and cut me with her eyes. “You.”

  I scoffed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Clara,” Fay scolded. “He saved my life. Again.”

  “I know,” she said in exasperation. Eli put his arms around her because it was obvious she was about to lose it. “I thought you were leaving. I thought you were going to leave this whole time, and you didn’t. You stayed here and took all the crap I threw at you. You…jumped in the river to save my sister when that devourer had a goblin’s tooth and could have killed you. I want to know why.”

  I sighed, hating all this touchy, feely crap. “I thought it was obvious.”

  “No offense, Enoch, but you told me once that you hated humans and their only purpose was for your food source,” Clara said softly. I took it as a good thing that Fay didn’t flinch at least.

  Before I could defend myself, Fay spoke. “I know all about it. He told me he hated humans. He’s told me everything.”

  She squinted. “Then how can you—”

  “Love changes things,” I interrupted. Everyone stayed quiet after that. “From the minute I saw you,” I told her, no longer speaking to Clara. I let everything go as I turned her on my lap to face me. I looked into her green eyes and mourned for those blues I’d never see again as I let my thumb love on the skin of her jaw. “I knew you were going to be different. That’s why I fought it so hard. I knew you were going to wreck me. And I hated you for it.” She smiled. I knew she would. Clara looked between us and shook her head, so not getting it, but my Fay got it and that’s all that mattered. “I hated you and wanted you so badly all in the same breath.” She gripped my wet shirt in her fingers. “I was already changing before I met you, for better or worse, but you were the final nail in the coffin. You destroyed the man I used to be,” I took her face in my hands, “and I’m falling for you more and more for it.”

  Clara made a noise in her throat.

  Eli wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “CB,” he whispered, “Why are you being so hard about this?”

  “Because if he’s going to be in this family then he needs to be in it for good! I don’t want to worry about him taking off or getting pissed off for no reason and leaving Fay. Or us,” she said and promptly burst into tears. Fay and I looked on confused as Eli tried, futilely, to console her.

  “What’s it to you, Clara?” I said carefully. “You hate me anyway.”

  She sniffed and looked up at us. “I’m…pregnant, Uncle Enoch.” She swung her gaze to Eli. “I’m pregnant. I’m sorry.”

  His mouth was slightly open in shock, but I had to give it to him. He swung back into action quickly, though he looked like he could keel over. “You are? How far?”

  She dropped her chin. “At least seven weeks.”

  “Clara,” he scolded, a growl tacked on.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed and covered her face. “I know that the Horde is onto us so heavy and…” she looked up, her face covered with tears, “and I’m carrying the one thing they despise most. The thing they are trying their hardest to stop.” She looked at me. “The one thing you despise. At least…that’s what I thought. I was afraid to say anything, especially with Enoch here. I didn’t know if this thing with Fay was all an act or not. I couldn’t risk it.”

  I felt true guilt for the second time in my life as I watched my brother hold his scared-out-of-her-mind wife and knew that the reason she’d been so protective and seemingly over the top wasn’t just because she was a sister protecting her sister—though it was that—was she was a mother protecting her child. And she had good reason.

  Once the Horde found out that Eli Thames was having a child with his human bride, the bidding wars would start for the reward to whoever brought them down. I shook my head.

  That troll hadn’t realized how right he had been.

  This war really was just beginning.

  Eli held her close and lifted her chin. He smiled. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare make this something bad. We’re going to have a baby, Clara.” He kissed her and wiped her cheek. “Remember, on the boat to Arequipa, you told me you wanted kids and a white fence?” She gave him a half smile. “Well, this is half come true.”

  She laughed reluctantly. He wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted them from the ground to hug her tight, but I saw it. Behind her back where she couldn’t see, he was afraid. He gripped her back tight and looked like a man who was about to lose the one thing he wanted in the world. He was a human now. He couldn’t protect her, and as much as he may have hated that fact, it was the truth.

  I don’t know why he looked at me then, but he did. I nodded, letting him know that I wasn’t going anywhere. They had to know that by now, right? I basically professed my love for Fay in front of everyone. Well, not everyone.

  I looked around and saw Aries and Franz and the rest of the men piling the bodies up.

  “Are you okay? Did the smoke, fog, whatever hurt you?”

  I looked back to find Eli kissing Clara, making it impossible for her to answer.

  I looked away from them and took Fay’s chin in my fingers, pulling her to look at me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Now.”

  “What happened?”

  She sighed and pushed her wet hair back. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay? Right now I just want to be here.” She laid her head in the crook of my neck and settled against my chest. She was shaking and I wrapped my arms around her small frame, tucking her in closer for to my warmth, but also for my primal need to have her close.

  “You almost died,” I growled, all my anger coming back. I knew the blue veins were showing in my arms and neck, but I couldn’t stop. “You lay there and I thought you were going to die, just like that. Human life is so fragile and I hate that you can be taken from me so easily.” Her fingers ran across the blue veins on my arm and hand lightly. “But if you hadn’t been human, I wouldn’t have fallen for you.”

  She smiled in her peripheral. “You didn’t date witches and pixies?”

  “No,” I groaned and tugged her closer. “I didn’t date witches and pixies. I was only ever with…humans. I was never even with devourers. That doesn’t even make sense.” I laughed once.

  She turned her head, letting me see her eyes as she searched my face. She touched my neck and jaw. “These will heal, won’t they?” she asked of the scratches I got from the devourer in the river.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I always heal.”

  She bit into the side of her lip and my gut went crazy. She draped one arm around my neck and rested her face back into my neck. Eli and Clara were still preoccupied with each in whispers and if I saw him grab her stomach one more time… I rolled my eyes and smiled. My brother, the father. It suited him.

  I realized that I hadn’t ever moved on to any other species because I had been waiting for Fay. She had been meant for me all along. If there was one person out there for one other person, she was mine. I had become a complete sap, the thing I hated, the person I resented and made fun of, that was me. I grinned and shook my head.

  And I was going to be an uncle.

  And that thought actually didn’t make me want to vomit.

  I kissed Fay’s forehead and thought she might be asleep, and I wouldn’t blame her a bit after the day she had, but I still had to say it. “You’re mine now, princess.”

  “And you’re mine,” she answered and I felt her smile against my neck. I felt something a little warm around my heart, but I just pulled her chin up and lowered my mouth to hers. I exhaled against her skin, claiming her. She licked her lips as I pulled back. She was mine, my
mate, my whatever you wanted to call it.

  I looked around at the camp and knew exactly that we had to do. I pulled the detonator from her lap and we looked at it. She realized it, too, and sighed roughly as she nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Everybody okay?” Franz yelled as they finally made their way over. A large pile of bodies burned near the river. The boat was gone, too. I assumed he sank it.

  I stood with Fay in my arms and let her feet touch the ground. Franz and Aries were looking at her like she hung the frigging moon. I groaned a little, but it sounded like a growl more than anything, and Aries laughed. Franz rolled his eyes at me and grinned at Fay. “You did good, girl.”

  “I just did—”

  “You just saved everyone’s lives,” Soria’s said and scoffed while she cried and wiped her eyes. “That’s all.”

  “We need to get our belongings together,” Franz told everyone.

  I nodded and lifted the device. “We need the rest of the Horde to think they succeeded.”

  Franz nodded and looked at Fay. “You know how to use that thing?”

  “They put devices in all the houses to explode,” she explained. “So when you press this button, it’ll detonate the explosives.”

  “It’s that easy?” I asked and shook my head. “Press a button and everything blows up? Humans make things way too simple. But…it just can’t be that easy, can it?”

  “Sometimes,” she leaned in and whispered, “we accept that it’s just that easy.”

  ___________

  I laced my fingers with hers as we stood on the bank of the river, having done a head count and made sure everyone was accounted for several times before the button was pressed. Then the safety cap was removed, Franz pressed the button, and we all watched as the camp they’d lived in for months was demolished, leveled to nothing but fire and smoke.

  Not many of them got sappy about it. They were nomads, travelers, gypsies, so they knew that a move was always on the horizon. What surprised me most was how we were going to get to Colorado. I had wondered what happened to the car I stole since we arrived, but hadn’t wondered enough to actually ask, but as we all trekked through the woods, the long way around the river to the other side, I saw how they were going to get us there.

  And I saw the stolen car they had stolen from me.

  I smirked at Franz as he passed me with a little devious smile.

  They had a few vans and trucks, there was even two old yellow school buses.

  Franz shrugged. “You leave them by the side of the road unattended, it’s fair game.”

  “A school bus is fair game?” I laughed. “I find it hard to believe you weaseled two buses away without anyone noticing.”

  “I bought them,” Eli said as he passed and shook his head.

  “Don’t take my fun, Thames,” Franz grumbled.

  I laughed and hoisted Fay into my arms, blurring her to the car we had stolen. “Dibs,” I whispered into her hair.

  She tried to grin, but it was tired. I could tell she was so tired. Dying on a beach and being brought back to life would do that to anyone. I held her face and kissed her once before I put her on the seat and called Eli’s name. I nodded for him and Clara to ride with us.

  When I climbed in, I tugged Fay’s sleeve so she would lay her head in my lap. She sighed so contently and I felt that bone deep satisfaction once again. For a moment, all was right in the world.

  And then Clara leaned over the seat.

  “I’m glad I was wrong about you,” was all she said before she kissed my cheek and leaned back. I was shocked that I didn’t want to punch something. Maybe Clara and I might…maybe….could be friends after all.

  “Um…are we gonna go?”

  I shook my head. No. No, we were never going to be friends.

  “I’m driving,” I threw back at her and started the car with a chuckle. “You just sit back and enjoy the ride, prego.”

  “Oh, you are most certainly not calling me that.”

  Fay laughed from my lap and rubbed my thigh.

  “Oh, boy,” she muttered and snuggled in closer as she tried to go to sleep. I rubbed her head and neck, knowing the next eleven hours of driving were going to be long, but the girls would sleep through most of it. I was actually looking forward to talking to my brother. Never thought that day would come.

  “Baby,” Eli said.

  “What?” she said, the exasperation in her voice clear.

  “Go to sleep,” he ordered softly.

  Anyone else would have been chopped in half by her sharp tongue.

  She sighed. “Okay.” She laid her head on his shoulder, but he pulled her down to his chest instead and leaned against the door, propping his feet up on the seat with her.

  “Just go to sleep, love. Where do you want to go?”

  I rolled my eyes, knowing right then that I wasn’t getting to talk to him at all if he was taking her in reverie. But then I squinted. “Wait, you’re human.”

  He smirked. “Not all.”

  “It’s okay,” she yawned her words. “I think your big brother wants to talk anyway.”

  I smiled. She remembered that I was the oldest by six minutes and she was perceptive enough to know I wanted to talk.

  He started to hum a little against her forehead and I felt a crack go through me. It was painful enough that the car swerved a little. Eli’s eyes opened, but he didn’t move. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” I answered gruffly.

  But I wasn’t. My chest and stomach were on fire. I drove on and eventually it subsided to a dull ache. The girls were asleep, but Fay was murmuring my name. I kept rubbing her hair. I didn’t know if Eli could hear it or not. If he did, he said nothing.

  Eli went ahead and hit me with the sledgehammer. “You want to know if what happened to me is what’s happening to you.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” I didn’t waste any time so I didn’t chicken out. “I didn’t want to be like you. I wanted to be a devourer. I don’t know why things are changing. I tried to fight it, with everything in me, but now…I wouldn’t change anything. I wouldn’t go back.” Fay’s silky black hair combed through my fingers and I didn’t deserve her. “I feel like it doesn’t belong to me.”

  “I think that’s the difference. You feel. What does Fay say about it?”

  I scoffed and smiled as I drove on.

  “For humans, everything’s easy. If you want to change, change. If you want to be forgiven, ask for forgiveness. If you want to be someone different, then don’t be the same man ever again.” I gulped. “That’s what I did. That’s what I’m doing.”

  We arrived at the Colorado camp the next day and they were prepared for us. They had a big dinner ready of soup and sandwiches. Their accommodations were a bit more primitive than the other camp we had been renting. This was all tents, no cabins or buildings of any kind, except showers and bathrooms. I sighed and it must have been louder than I thought. Enoch put his arm around my shoulder and brought my head closer.

  “We can always hit the road again and do the motel circuit.”

  I laughed. “That’s not sounding too bad.”

  “Hey,” Clara scolded and looked around. “It’s totally secluded. It’ll be like all those trips we took with Mom and Daddy to Little Bitterroot Lake. All we need is a tire swing and bugspray.”

  Enoch scoffed. “And some root beer and corn on the cob and a toothpick, right?”

  She squinted her eyes and punched his arm lightly as they walked by. “You’re going to be perfectly fine here. Even you can have fun at a bonfire. I’ve seen it.” She turned back to look at him. “Or was it just my sister’s influence?”

  “It was just your sister,” he said and smirked, pulling me closer by the arm around my neck.

  She rolled her eyes and gripped Eli’s hand as he laughed. They met everyone at the fires they had going and sat in the grass. It was dark, but they had tents set up and I was grateful. It was a lot of people in one pl
ace. A lot. It felt like boot camp; long lines and loud conversations. We sat with our group around a fire and the boys went off to have a meeting with the leaders of the camp.

  When Clara was talking with Bridgette about something, I turned to Soria and Regina. “Regina, will you tell me about your bond?”

  She smiled and rubbed her wrist. “Aries was shocked.”

  “How come some people have them and some don’t?”

  Soria grimaced. “Franz actually got upset, thinking that I didn’t want him enough. But it’s not really my choice. It’s something inside us, something that’s not really in our hands. You choose to bond before you even decided to.” She smiled. “It doesn’t mean I love him any less. I tried once, to bond myself to him. I tried so hard, but it wouldn’t work.” She shrugged. “Like I said, it’s something inside our very souls that decides, not us.”

  “Wow,” Regina sighed, “that’s really beautiful.”

  “Shut up,” Soria said and shoved her.

  “So,” I swallowed and clasped my hands behind my back, “you’re saying I have no choice?”

  “You’ve already decided.” She smiled in a knowing way.

  I gasped, barely. “Do you…know something?”

  She scoffed. “I can’t tell the future. I wish.”

  I rubbed my neck and pressed my lips together. “Thank you, by the way. If you hadn’t given me the sight, I never would have seen the witch’s fog and been able to avoid it.”

  “Yeah,” she stalled and paused avoiding my eyes. “You saved us all. We should be thanking you.”

  Regina hugged me. “So glad you’re all right. And don’t worry about the bonding, mating thing. It’ll happen in its own time.” She pulled back, but left her hands on my shoulders. “And I know Enoch slipped up and said ‘mate’ that one time, but just wait ‘til he tells you that you’re his. Ahh,” she groaned. “When you know you’re his and no one else’s, you’re his mate and then you have nothing to worry about.”

  I squinted. “Uh…”

  “You’re mine now, princess.”

  “And you’re mine.”