Dedicated to my son, Jaiden.
Regardless of how insane things get, no matter whether my work is appreciated, ignored, or despised, looking at you I know I brought at least one amazing thing into this world.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgments
Art
Also by Shannon Delany
Copyright
PROLOGUE
ONE WEEK AGO
Curled in Pietr’s arms, her knee aching from her ex-boyfriend’s brutal attack, Jessie Gillmansen knows monsters come in all shapes and sizes. She rests her head against Pietr’s fiery chest, appreciating the heat that’s the aftermath of his change even more now that she doesn’t know when she’ll feel it next. Listening to the staccato rhythm of his heart, her pulse races to match it as shadows fall over them in the barn, throwing them into darkness.
“Pecan Place—where the nuts gather,” she mutters, shaking her head as Pietr pulls her closer as if his body can shield her from this sudden betrayal. “The mental institution?” It’s only been a few months since her mother’s sudden death and the reality is she’s not handling things well. But beyond the heartache of losing her mother, Jessie is struggling with much stranger things. “No,” she insists, voice rising. “No, no, no!”
Pietr steadies himself. His breath stirs the chestnut-colored strands of hair that curl slightly by Jess’s ear and he says, “I won’t let them take you, Jess. I promise. I won’t let you down.”
Some seventeen-year-olds might make promises hastily. Might not be prepared to back them up. Jess has done her share of that.
But Pietr wasn’t made that way.
Pietr doesn’t take promises lightly.
Clutching his arm, she whispers, “Please—puhzhalsta…”
Her breathing calms. The thrumming of her heart slows as she feels a subtle shift in the muscles sliding just below his skin.
Pietr is her hero.
Capable of amazing things.
A growl builds softly in his gut, clawing toward his chest. “Don’t touch her,” he warns.
Looking at Jess’s father, Leon, Dr. Jones’s lips purse in a distinct, nonverbal cue.
“Now, Jessie,” Leon says, watching Pietr’s eyes flick from person to person as he weighs his options. “This is the best thing we can do for you.” He rubs a hand across his forehead. “I want you to cooperate. Pietr. Let her go.”
“Nyet.” He bites the word off. “I will not let you take her. She does not want to go.”
“Pietr, let go of her.”
“Nyet, Wanda,” he snaps. His breathing hitches when he looks at Jess, so often so strong and now so frightened.
Dr. Jones steps forward, speaking in low, measured tones. “It’s okay,” she consoles him. “This occasionally happens.” She glances at Leon and Wanda. “That’s why we bring extra help.”
Car doors groan open and two sets of heavy feet approach.
“Let her go,” Dr. Jones suggests gently, stepping back as the darkness shrouding the teens deepens.
Jess looks up, eyes widening. It would take three of Pietr to make one of the giant who thickens the shadows. And he’s the smaller of the two approaching men.
“Do it,” Wanda encourages him. “Just let her go.”
From the hay bale where he cradles his girlfriend, Pietr looks up. And up. His head finally stops, neck craning, when he locks eyes with one of the giants. “Nyet.”
For a moment time stands still—for everyone except Jess. She knows how fast it rushes by, based on the thundering gallop of Pietr’s heart.
The shadows shift, the men’s arms blurring as they tear the couple apart.
Stretching toward each other, Jess and Pietr’s fingertips brush and she whispers a single word in warning: “Witnesses.”
He roars. She’s right. He can’t change—can’t shift—can’t let the wolf inside free to fight. His expression twisting with rage, he struggles to keep from showing what’s really inside: his fear that he finally can’t keep a promise to her.
And this may be his most important promise yet.
Ten minutes before they were ready to face the truth, tell her father everything. Stop the lies. Face the consequences.
Together.
But now?
Pinned, Pietr goes wild, writhing. Then, as fast as the rage comes, it disappears. He lies there. Still. The only clue to his inner turmoil is how his eyes hold Jess’s, glowing a furious red.
“No,” Jess whispers, voice catching. The goliath clambers away and Pietr springs forward and grabs her, nearly pulling her free before he’s slammed to the ground again.
Her father barely gets a word of objection out before the women silence him. They’ve already discussed this possibility.
Teenagers can be stubborn.
And Jessica needs protection.
Pietr’s nose streams blood and a fresh gash spills red into his blinking eyes. His cheek is ragged, abraded raw. He’s not nearly as beautiful as he was just fifteen minutes ago.
“Pietr,” Jess whispers, choking back a cry as she’s dumped onto her feet and the pain in her knee explodes like fireworks caught beneath her skin.
The other giant sits up again, watching as Pietr staggers to his feet, swaying. With one more burst of strength Pietr shoves him aside and goes for Jess.
“Stop fighting!”
The biggest grabs Pietr by the shoulders and hurls him to the earth. Jess winces. The crunch of bones carries.
Clutching his head, Pietr groans, his eyes filled with Jess. Only Jess. And he struggles to rise. He reaches for her, arms trembling.
The giant snarls and Leon shouts for everyone to stop as he grabs at the doctor’s clipboard.
But she holds her ground. “Unless you want me to call Social Services and have them reconsider your youngest’s living arrangements…”
Pietr’s head cracks against the hard-packed dirt as Dr. Jones calmly continues. “… you’ll follow through with the treatment plan we’ve agreed upon for Jessica.”
Pietr’s body shudders, but he tries to pull himself back up.
“Stay down! God, Pietr … please, please stay down.…” Jess begs. “I’ll go with you,” she swears to Dr. Jones, grabbing her sleeve. “Hurry. Before he tries again.”
Car doors open and slam shut again and the car’s engine growls back to life.
For one long, horrified minute Leon and Wanda stand in the dirt-and-gravel driveway, autumn’s leaves teasing their shoelaces as the car lurches forward, heading down the drive. Leon moves first, shaking off the immobilizing power of shock to reach for the boy lying crumpled on the ground.
Wanda follows, crouching beside the battered boy as Pietr groans and struggles to drag his hands closer toward his chest. One arm is clearly broken. Wanda tries not to imagine how many other parts of him are fighting to mend.
He’s survived bullet wounds that would have
killed far bigger men; he’s killed murderers and mobsters—monsters who wore nothing but human skins. He’s proven himself a fighter when he must be, a gentleman when he can be. For all the wolf inside him, he still has moments when he’s an absolute lamb. A warrior with a gentle heart.
Regardless of all the blood and battling, no one’s really sure at what point one of his kind can no longer make it back from death’s door.
And Wanda realizes she doesn’t want to be around when they finally learn how much is too much.
Her ex-partner—her superiors—they were right. She has gotten too close to all this. Which means the pressure’s on to keep things looking as normal as possible. “Stop fighting,” Wanda whispers, reaching for his shoulders.
He grunts and tries to pull his arms under himself. He struggles to rise.
Just.
Once.
More.
His broken arm buckles beneath his weight and with a howl equal parts frustration and pain he falls back to the dirt.
Leon reaches for Pietr, his eyes still fixed on Wanda. “Call the ambulance,” he suggests.
But she looks at him blankly as if the word ambulance is no longer within the scope of her vocabulary.
“Let us help you.” She slips a hand under Pietr’s arm and something inside him rattles, the noise rising a moment before it slips into a wheeze. Pietr coughs, spattering the ground by his head with spit and blood.
Leon takes his other arm. “Here we go … careful now…”
They pull him up, supporting him between them. He raises his head and winces—not at the physical pain that threatens to consume him but at the sight of the car flashing away out of the driveway. Out of his reach.
Pulling out of their grip, he stumbles forward a single step before his legs give out and he crashes to his knees. Wanda drops beside him, looping an arm around his waist. “Let us help you,” she insists.
He shakes his head. “Help me?” he whispers between the wheezing of his lungs. “You took her from me.” He looks at her, his eyes fierce, mismatched in the intensity of the red that betrays the firestorm raging within.
Head trauma, Wanda realizes, reaching out to examine his face, his skull.
“You made a liar out of me,” he snarls, pulling back from her touch. “God,” he moans, quivering beside her, his head down, shoulders shaking. “I couldn’t keep my promise.…”
Her hand slips away from his cheek. Her fingers trembling before her, Wanda marvels at the moisture glistening on their tips. “Oh, Pietr,” she whispers. “Oh. God. Pietr. Please. Don’t cry.”
But hearing her use his name after ignoring that any of his people had names only makes tears come faster.
“Leon. Help me get him inside,” Wanda orders.
“Shouldn’t we call the ambulance first?”
“NO.” The answer comes in unison. An ambulance manned by uninformed public servants is precisely the type of help Wanda and Pietr must avoid.
“Okay,” Leon concedes, stooping.
Arms linked around his waist, they help Pietr limp to the house. Inside they start to set him down on the couch, but he protests. “Nyet. I’m bleeding.”
“We need to call the ambulance,” Leon tries again.
“Nyet,” Pietr whispers. “Old towels, sheets?”
“I do not understand you, boy,” Leon admits, and he leaves Pietr, supported by Wanda.
“You can set the bones?” Pietr asks her, grinding the words out between startling spasms of pain. “It’s too difficult with only one working arm.”
“I’ll set them. But first I’m calling Max.”
Pietr nods. He winces as she shifts, withdraws her cell phone, and makes the call. Returning with an armful of sheets Leon follows Pietr’s haltingly given directions and covers the couch. With a groan and some help, Pietr lowers himself onto the protected surface.
“Hey, that cut above your eye’s not bleedin’ so bad,” Leon mutters. “And your face…” He looks at Wanda.
Her complete lack of surprise does not reassure him. Neither does her lengthy silence.
“Let’s set your arm,” she grumbles, looking away from Leon as she grabs Pietr’s wrist.
Leon scrubs a hand across his face. “You know how to—”
Wanda doesn’t answer, but braces a foot on the side of the couch and yanks until Pietr snarls. “Better?”
He tests the arm with his other hand, fingers sliding along the edge of muscle and tendon to prod at bone. He grunts approval.
“We should splint it. Don’t want it healing wrong,” she points out. “Max would break and reset it, right?”
Pietr pales at the thought. She’s right. Internal organs mend decently when left alone, but broken bone crawls toward its mate regardless of awkward angles.
And Pier’s brother Max is not the gentlest of nursemaids.
“Leon…,” Wanda begins, but he’s already gone in search of something to serve as a splint.
At what point, Wanda wonders, must she tell Leon the truth? That she’s not a reference librarian—not only a reference librarian? That she works for a company she thought was CIA but now … Their willingness to murder some children and cage others has her asking questions she doesn’t dare voice aloud.
Not quite yet.
“What about your legs?” Wanda asks. “You didn’t seem able to keep them under you on your own.”
Pietr closes his eyes, taking a mental accounting of the injuries he still feels—things not ready to mend or not ready to mend right.
Outside, a car races up the gravel drive and stops short.
“What now?!” Leon shouts as Max bounds through the doorway.
Shoving the curls that shadow his glinting blue eyes back from his face, Max glares at Wanda. “Step back.” He rounds the couch, taking her place, his eyes narrowing. Silent, he peers down at his younger brother, his jaw so tight it twitches.
Pietr opens his mouth, but Max simply says, “Explain things later. All I want to know is what’s broken. And if they shot you.”
They both remember the drama of the last fight far too freshly.
“What?” Leon’s eyebrows tug together. “Shot?”
“Wanda,” Max snaps.
Wanda moves over to Leon’s side, taking his arm and drawing him toward the kitchen.
“What’s going on here? People have shot at them? And Pietr—he’s looking a helluva sight better than just minutes ago.… What’s happening here, Wanda?”
CHAPTER ONE
TWO DAYS LATER
Alexi
My cigarettes called to me, urging me to step outside, to light one smooth cylinder and suck down the richly tainted air before the autumn wind could tug it away. To breathe deep the poison that calmed me. My hand shook, fingers raking through my hair; overanalyzing our current predicament rattled my nerves.
Max, Pietr, and Cat remarked on my smoking once: how could an oborot be a smoker? How could anyone with a werewolf’s nose stand such a stink? I was, briefly, a puzzle to them.
Did I not disappear at all the right times to run beneath a moonlit sky? Did I not learn to pick out subtleties of sound and oddities of scent like the rest of them? Was I not quick on my feet and strong as a beast when I had to be?
Of course I was. I was trained by the best. Our parents built me up to be a perfect fraud—a fine work of fiction.
On the balls of my feet I descended the stairs as soft-footed as any full-blood Rusakova. At the bottom of the steps I turned, breathing deep. The mix of scent and sound told me Pietr and Cat were cloistered together in the sitting room, deep in discussion.
We lived, as my Russian predecessors would have said, like a cat and a dog—suitable in some ways but frequently quarreling and snapping at one another. I, once the domineering alpha, was now the too-human interloper skulking at the fringes of conversation until someone realized a need for my expertise.
Time spent working the black market came in handy, though I’d closed those doors as firmly
as I could.
“I need to get her out,” Pietr complained. Stating the obvious was only one of his ample gifts. Still bruised, battered, and with bones reset by Wanda, the very woman we’d been going head-to-head with over Mother’s imprisonment, Pietr was healing more slowly than ever before. Faster than a simple human might, but at a pace unbearably slow for an oborot—one transformed.
We did not discuss the fact he almost died trying to keep his girlfriend free. That was the main rule Pietr, as the current and yet understated alpha of the family, enforced.
“Da, Jessie should be out,” Cat agreed, and I peered around the door frame to watch a moment, patting my shirt pocket to make the cigarettes cease their insistent call.
Cat leaned over, a slender shadow stretched across the freshly repaired love seat’s arm. What any of us bled on or tore up or warred across—as a result of Pietr’s or Max’s past reckless actions or our attempts to free Mother—Pietr made sure was cleaned or repaired. He knew appearances mattered to our sister most.
Cat patted his hand. “She is only to stay there what?—a month?”
Pietr groaned and sat back in the chair, his eyes narrow as he gazed at his twin. “Da. A month. More, if she does not behave.”
“Then let her behave. Do not interfere.”
He groaned again.
“Think, Pietr.” She nudged his knee with her foot and laughed. “Think with the more proper part of your anatomy,” she teased.
He snorted.
“Do not become like Max, salivating over a girl.” Though I could not see them, I knew she rolled her eyes dramatically as she waved a hand to dismiss the idea altogether. “A month is not so long.”
“Not to you,” he said, cocking his head to examine her heart-shaped face. “Not now.”
Did she seem different to him since she’d taken the cure? Was she somehow less now she had more years to her life span? To me, she was still and always Ekaterina—Cat—beautiful and troublesome as ever. A danger to young men’s hearts … and anyone willing to try her cooking. Was there something about her my simple human senses overlooked? Something in her complexion, her carriage, her gait, her scent?
I drew back, slinking around the banister to head to the rear of the Queen Anne house we still called home, and the solitude of the back porch.