Clarity

  I shook my head. “No, but it’s like his body rejected whatever werewolf DNA was in her saliva. If that makes sense to you.”

  “Nothing makes sense to me anymore.”

  I couldn’t argue with that as I felt the same way.

  The nurse came back to kick me out. “Wait outside,” Perdita called after me. “I’ll be right out.”

  I scoped out the area once I was booted. The air stank of werewolf—male werewolf. I couldn’t believe nobody else noticed it. My first instinct was to chase the trail, but I needed time with Perdita. I couldn’t think straight until I spent at least a few more minutes with her.

  She followed me outside barely two minutes later, but it felt like forever. “I had to tell Dad and Erin where I was going.”

  “It’s okay,” I said before kissing her.

  She pushed me away, but her face lit up. “I missed you.”

  A shiver ran through me. “I’m sorry.”

  Another kiss. “Stop saying that. So what happened with your grandfather?”

  I ran through everything as quickly as possible. I couldn’t look while I spoke, but she took it well. Better than I did.

  “And that’s it. You’re not part of the pack anymore?”

  “It felt that way, but now I’m not sure. I think I disobeyed or took a higher place in the pack. Something’s changed if I managed to break his order. I don’t know how it works exactly. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get free. It wasn’t only me. It was the wolf, too. Opa felt weak, and the wolf took advantage. It’s hard to explain properly because it’s not something I know for sure. It’s more of a feeling.”

  “Are you going to go home?”

  “I can’t. I can’t face them. It’s been crazy. Opa’s been stuck in a room, and whenever he comes out, he starts waffling about plans and what has to be done. Amelia’s been having weird dreams and running off with her new friends. Jeremy and Byron are doing what they can, but it isn’t working. Everything is falling apart.”

  She stroked my arm. “I heard you took it out on Aaron.”

  I made a face, and she laughed. “Don’t be like that. It’s over now, right?”

  “Except for your Dad still being in hospital and those scumbag werewolves running around. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Stay with me,” she said.

  That sounded good to me. We walked around to the front entrance of the hospital, where she swore and pulled me behind a wall.

  “My mother’s there,” she hissed. “What the hell does she want now?”

  I glanced around to see the woman. She looked a little like Perdita, but a lot harsher, as though all of her features were sharper. “Why is she here?”

  She leaned against the wall. “I don’t know. Gran asked her to come. She’s acting as if she and Dad are still properly married whenever Erin is around. I can’t stand it. I’m not going home.”

  “So don’t. Let’s run away together.”

  She laughed. “Stop tempting me.”

  Twisting a lock of her hair around my fingers, I leaned in for another kiss. I had a lot of making up to do. A mixture of the curse and our hormones made it seem as though we were lucky to be in a public place.

  She finally laid her hands on my chest and pushed. “Calm down,” she said breathlessly, and I gave her my best wolfy grin. Smiling, she ducked under my arm to check if her mother was gone. “She keeps hovering around as if she belongs. I wish she’d go away.”

  We ended up sitting in the hospital canteen for a couple of hours, talking and laughing and being next to each other. I had almost forgotten about everything else when Byron strolled in and sat in the booth across from us.

  “Thought I’d find you around here somewhere,” he said. “Perdita, how’s your father?”

  “Sick.” She glared at Byron, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Maybe we can help with that,” he said in a low voice. He turned to me. “And you, ready to come home yet? We’ve work to do, remember?”

  I snorted. “You mean someone feels like bossing me around, right?”

  “I think now is the time to get all of this sorted, Nathan. Dad’s losing the will for this. You didn’t see him when you left. He was almost like himself again. We can fix this. I’m sure of it.”

  I hesitated, but Perdita squeezed my hand.

  “You need your family,” she said. “You all need each other. Amelia’s going through something. You all are, really. The only way to fix everything is to work together. As long as you can say you tried your best…”

  I held her gaze for a couple of seconds before nodding. “Fine. I’ll try one more time. If it doesn’t work, then we’re eloping.”

  Byron’s face paled. “That’s not funny.”

  “It is a little,” I replied and smiled wider as Perdita’s laughter filled the room.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nathan

  I hated leaving her again. I made her promise to stay in the hospital and around people no matter what. She kissed me lightly on the lips before sending me off to fix the world. She was right. The family had gone completely off-track when my grandmother died. It was about time we pulled together. I had promises to keep.

  “That was brave of you earlier,” Byron said on the way home. “It took a lot of strength to go against the alpha. I’m proud of you.”

  “I’ve never fit in with this family. It wasn’t that hard.”

  He glanced at me. “Sometimes it’s hard to accept what you are, Nathan. But that doesn’t mean you don’t fit in with the rest of us. Look at Amelia. She’s different, but she copes.”

  “Copes? Have you heard about her dreams? She thinks she’s some reincarnated gypsy.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds as though trying to translate what I had said. “Okay. Maybe we need to do something about that one.”

  “And the rest,” I muttered under my breath. “What did you mean when you said we might be able to help with Perdita’s dad?”

  “Dad reckons his sickness could linger if we don’t try to do something. He suggested actually turning the man into a werewolf, but I managed to persuade him that wasn’t the best idea. Still, we’ve all got a lot to learn.”

  “I feel like I’m learning something new every day. Jeremy helped me figure out the wolf’s trail, and it suddenly clicked with me. I don’t even have to think about it now.”

  “Good. That’s how it should be. It’s a pity we didn’t start with this kind of thing from the beginning.”

  “Oh, so you’re regretting being a domesticated wolf now, eh?”

  He laughed. “Not exactly domesticated. But maybe we need to embrace all sides of our nature.”

  “You’re good at the wolf thing. I don’t know why you let Opa take over.”

  “He wanted it more.”

  “And look how that turned out.”

  “We all make mistakes, Nathan, especially when we lose the ones we love. Trust me, I know. But don’t hold it against him for too long. He hasn’t realised what he’s doing yet.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When you lost everyone. What did you do?”

  His entire body tensed. “I protected myself. I never let myself care again. It’s only now that I’m seeing how utterly foolish that was. Sometimes I think part of the curse was only intended to addle our minds.”

  “Am I going to lose Perdita?” I blurted, voicing my biggest worry.

  He refused to look at me. “One day. Like everyone. So make the most of the present.”

  Amelia was home from school when we got there. The dark circles under her eyes looked deeper than ever. She popped two painkillers into her mouth in front of us, but there was a strange tension in the air between her and my grandfather, and I wondered what had happened while I was gone.

  Byron called Jeremy into the living room, and he flopped into a chair, the only person in the room who seemed comfortable. Amelia stayed close to the door, dis
tancing herself from the rest of us, as if ready to flee at any time.

  Byron and Opa stood at opposite ends of the room, both silently battling for pack seniority. I hoped Byron would hurry up and win. Opa refused to look at me, but I could feel his interest, and it made me twitch.

  “Perdita reckons the other wolf protected her. The male,” I said just to break the weird silence in the room.

  All eyes turned to me, disbelief on everyone’s expression.

  I shrugged. I didn’t quite believe it, but I knew Perdita believed it, and that mattered more to me. “It wasn’t only her. Her cousin, Joey, was there, too. He said one wolf was about to attack, but another got in the way and chased her off. Something’s off. The male wolf’s scent is strong at the hospital. I don’t like leaving her and her dad there.”

  “We’ll find them eventually.” Opa’s offhand tone made me angry again.

  “Eventually isn’t good enough! If you can’t be bothered to worry about Perdita, then what about your own granddaughter? Look at her! She hasn’t slept properly in weeks because of those dreams. I had dreams before I turned. What if hers mean something? Why hasn’t anyone done something about that yet?”

  “Dreams aren’t our priority right now, boy. I’ll think about worrying when it gets closer to her birthday.”

  “And Perdita’s dad,” I continued. “He’s still sick. The doctors can’t figure out why. This is on us. We have to fix it.”

  “I can help with that,” Opa said in a weirdly slick voice. The look in his eye changed, somehow reminding me of a frog catching a fly, except he was catching problems instead.

  “Hurry up then,” I said.

  His shoulders tightened. “Nathan, there’s no need to be rude.”

  “I’m not rude. I’m impatient. I’m frustrated. I’m sick of us not learning our lessons. We have to act, not react. It doesn’t work for us. You and your plans that you won’t share with the rest of us. Why won’t you tell us the truth?”

  “We’re not ready,” he insisted. “None of you are ready. I can’t teach you everything you need to know.”

  “Then start with what you can teach us,” Byron chimed in. “Tell us what you know. Nathan’s right, and it’s obvious you know much more than you’re telling us. Stop keeping secrets and be open with us for a change.”

  Opa bowed his head and turned away, leaning his palms on the mantelpiece. “There’s nothing wrong with secrets.”

  “There is when people start dying,” Amelia snapped, surprising me. She had barely spoken a word in days.

  I expected him to bite her head off, but he surprised me, too. “You’re right. I’m tired of this. The alpha wolf. I know him, but I don’t want to remember those days, son.” He gazed at Byron pleadingly, but Byron’s face remained impassive.

  “None of us want this,” Byron replied. “We need to hear what you know about him.”

  Opa nodded. It was hard to tell, but he almost seemed relieved to get it off his chest. He began slowly, but by the end, the words were spilling out without a pause. “When I was young, I was eager to run wild and find my mate. But the years went by, and I still hadn’t found her. I would have the dreams, a face would appear for a while, then poof, the dreams would end. Later, they’d start back up, but it would be a different face. A different girl.”

  Jeremy straightened in his seat. “How is that possible?”

  “I couldn’t figure it out at first,” Opa said. “Couldn’t understand what was going on. So I did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions. I eventually found out quite a bit. It took a lot of effort, but to make a long story short, a certain group of wolves were headed by a particular alpha who wanted to fix their pack. They had been unable to breed properly for years. The werewolves were dying out, becoming weaker with each new generation. All except our family. We kept getting stronger, and they wanted to break the line, to make sure we weren’t stronger than them.”

  He moved to the window, keeping his back to us, as though he couldn’t bear to face us. “The wolves had a special… tracker. She could find the mates, intuitively. I don’t know if it’s anything like what we do. The werewolves planned to use their tracker to find my potential mate and kill her before I found her. Just like that. No guilt. I found the tracker and… persuaded her to talk to me. She told me where to find Lia and said Lia was my true mate, even though the dreams of her had already stopped. So I found her, and I made her mine. Eventually, the alpha lost his role. He was overtaken by another wolf named Vin. Vin wanted to breed his own wolves, and he was convinced that our curse was actively selecting women who were capable of breeding with werewolves. He thought we were essentially stealing potential breed mates for his wolves. But he lost his tracker, so he had no way of taking the potentials away from us anymore.”

  “That’s sick.” Amelia sounded ill.

  He inclined his head. “Their werewolves will die out. I can understand why he would take desperate measures.”

  “Well, I can’t,” I said. “And we could have used this info ages ago. This is madness. If our mates die, we’re assigned a new one? What a load of crap!”

  “No, no,” Opa insisted. “Only if you haven’t connected yet, haven’t bonded. The curse has to continue one way or another. At least until it’s broken.”

  “I still don’t get why they’re doing this,” Jeremy said. “Why not let us have our mates and keep prolonging the curse if they’re worried about extinction?”

  “If they take the mates, they increase their chances of breeding themselves,” Opa said. “Maybe it worked once. Maybe they’re simply desperate. That’s all. We’re strong. They’re struggling to survive. It’s sad, really.”

  “But they didn’t try to take Perdita,” I reminded everyone.

  Opa inclined his head. “True. I don’t know why. Maybe you met her before they figured it out. Maybe they wanted you to meet her so they could kill her and ruin your chances of reproducing. Maybe their coming here to attack the girls was a cover-up for something else. Maybe it was some kind of cruel sadism that sent them here. I’ve no way of knowing.”

  I couldn’t figure out the whole story. One thing would make sense only to be muddled by another aspect. I kept thinking there was more to it all, something that might click everything into the right place.

  “So this is what, revenge? Domination? A reminder that they can cut us down at any time if they wish?” Byron sounded different, as if realising he actually had a family depending on him.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Jakob said.

  “So why now? I mean, why are they coming here now? What’s changed?” I asked.

  “I assume it’s something to do with Amelia, at least on some scale. I’ve no qualms about thinking the worst of a wolf like Vin. People are in hiding because of his methods. I don’t know his plans, of course. I can only guess. And things change. I’ve no way of knowing if he wants to kill or kidnap. Or even hurt those outside our circle. But I don’t care what he wants. All I want is to face him. Just once.”

  My stomach turned. “So you let Perdita be exposed to danger? And Amelia?”

  He ignored me. “What interests me is the girl’s father, the one who was bitten.”

  “Could you stop sounding so bloody fascinated?”

  Byron laid a hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t stop shaking with anger and frustration. I was terrified, not for me, but for my sister and girlfriend.

  “But I am. Fascinated, I mean. It seems interesting to me that he would react to his own blood type in such a way, and I truly believe it has to do with the bite. If we could prove that the soul mates come from bloodlines more susceptible to the change, it would turn everything around.”

  The growl came before I could stop myself. Jeremy stepped in front of me.

  Opa carried on, but his voice was shakier. “If we prove this, they may leave you all alone. They’ll have already gotten what they wanted—evidence that successful changes and breeding can still happen, with the right bloodli
ne.”

  “If that’s what they really want,” Byron said, scratching his jaw. “I don’t understand the gap. Why are they coming after us like this now? Why not my wife? Why not my brother’s?”

  “Not only now,” Opa reminded him. “My time, too. And who knows what happened to Louis? What if that was Vin’s work, too?”

  “So what, then? They forgot about it? Lost interest? Got their taste of blood and went home?” Bitterness darkened Byron’s tone.

  “There was never a female born to us before,” Opa said. “Your mother was turned, but Amelia was bred. And if the curse ends, they’ll have no way to find the potentially viable mates.”

  “We’re talking about people,” Byron exclaimed. “Not dogs. Stop talking as though we’re breeding litters here.”

  “Maybe that’s how they see it.”

  “Right.” All eyes turned to me. “But how does this explain why they keep going after Perdita? They don’t have anything to gain by hurting her, right?”

  Opa shrugged. “Like I said, I know nothing for certain.”

  I sat down wearily. Too much talking. Not enough action. Not enough things making sense.

  “I don’t think the man will recover,” Opa said.

  I almost jumped out of my skin. “You think Perdita’s dad is gonna die?”

  “Not die. At least, I don’t think so. But I believe the transfusion he received is causing all of the problems. His own blood could adapt to the bite, but the new blood… well, let’s say it mixed things up in the wrong way. I think I can help him if the malady continues. I believe we need to cleanse the corrupt DNA from his body.”

  “So how do we do that?”

  “If you give me time, and your loyalty, I’ll figure it out. Without those, I won’t lift a finger to help you. Think about that the next time you disobey me, Nathan.”

  I got up to leave, but hesitated at the door. “What about Amelia? Do you think her dreams mean something?”

  “I hope they do,” he said, staring into the distance. “I hope they are the last piece of the puzzle.”

  I left, feeling as though there was a lot going on just above my head. One thing was clear. I had to be prepared for anything.