“How’d you manage it?”
“Very carefully.” She busied her hands by shoving the fork into as many pieces of vegetable as she could get to stay on and shoving them in her mouth. It had taken a year. Months of memorizing where the guards liked to stand, how long the cameras spent pointing in each direction…using her claws to sharpen the rods of her cot into blades capable of cutting through anything her claws couldn’t. It had been painstaking because she knew she’d have one chance—just one—to escape. After all this time, it still hurt that she’d ultimately failed. “A person can survive anything as long as they can find a good enough reason. Especially me.”
“I think that’s the one thing you and I can agree completely on.” The warmth of his voice made her look up, surprised to find it was in his eyes as well. It was all she could do not to melt under that steady stare. How did he do that? Turn his gaze into a caress that all but stroked her cheek? How did he know when she needed it, even if she could never accept it?
“Yeah?” She couldn’t help the smile that pulled at her lips. It had been so long since someone had looked at her with approval, she knew her resolve against him didn’t have a chance in hell of staying firm if he got it in his mind to melt it.
“Absolutely. You’ve got to be the most obstinate, uncompromising female I’ve ever met.”
“There’s a compliment in there somewhere, right?”
The bastard, all he did was grin.
“So is fresh bread and broken knuckles the best thing you remember about your childhood?”
“No. Not even close. I have a lot of good memories from back then. Hell of a lot more than most of the folks I meet on the Underground. I know how lucky I was, even if it didn’t last.” He frowned into his coffee, taking another drink that did nothing to hide the sadness she could sense beneath the calm expression he wore.
“I was lucky once, too,” she offered, hating to see him feeling bad for having a happy childhood. No one should feel bad for that. “My parents really were good people. They tried to give us a good life, one where we could live just like everyone else. Free to do whatever we chose. The raid didn’t happen ’til I was almost twenty, so I’d had years and years to learn from my parents. To remember them. No matter what was done to me after, no one could take those memories away.” She thought back, considering something he’d like to hear. “I was named after my parents’ best friend. She was the crankiest, nerve-rackingist old lady you’ve ever met.”
“You loved her,” he guessed and she was glad to see that twinkle back in his rainwater eyes.
“Completely,” she answered with a laugh. “And she spoiled me rotten for it. My parents used to have to steal me back home.”
“Is that where the holding-your-breath-to-get-your-way thing started?”
“Who do you think taught me?” The memory had her almost giggling. “She’d be all of ninety-five now, if she’s still alive. Totally blind but don’t think for a second you can get anything past her. Aurelia is a force of nature.” The warmth of the memories faded slowly. She could still see Aurelia’s gnarled hands and brown, time-lined face. The thick white hair she’d used to brush, that special Aurelia scent of old lady and sheer stubbornness.
Of all the things she missed, Aurelia ranked right up there with her parents. Unlike them, who she couldn’t often allow herself to think about or it would hurt too much, Aurelia was a source of strength. An example that there was never a reason to give in. It was the greatest irony in this life that Asher preferred to use her full name, never knowing that his threats were always laced with a reminder to stay alive.
She ate her food quietly for a while, and he let her. The interrogator had morphed into the thinker. She could practically see the gears turning in his mind as he watched her, the questions he was telling himself he was closer to answering. That needed to stop.
She took a drink—and a fortifying breath. “Do you think Resurrection can last?”
“What?”
She could take a little pleasure in catching him off guard, couldn’t she? “Well, all these shifters in hiding…We’ve survived because no one knew what we were. We were spread out, rootless. If all of us gather in one place, doesn’t that just make us easier to get rid of all at once?”
Great, what was that smug look on his face? “I’m guessing you’ve never heard any of the stories, then?”
“What stories?”
“Pack lore.” He hitched a shoulder. “That’s what my mother called them, anyway. The old stories, fables and myths passed down from generation to generation. She said they were how Wolves learned to be Wolves. She loved telling them to us when we were growing up.”
It was her turn to frown, thinking back as far as she could. “Mom used to read me stories when I was little, but I don’t remember anything…wolfy.”
“Well, not everyone knows them anymore, so it’s possible they didn’t tell them to you. Taken as a compendium, the overlying message is that shifters are more powerful in numbers than on their own. Alone, we die. Together, we have a chance. We fortify each other. The more there are of us, the healthier, the stronger and the more resilient we become.”
“But not invisible?”
“No. Nothing can do that.” His expression turned distant then. She was about to grill him on what looked to be complete bull when he started talking again. “The most important story I was ever told was the story of the Four. Our origins. The Four weren’t shifters, they were Wolves, pure to the bone and Alphas to boot. The strongest of their kinds and ravenous. A white Wolf from the north, a black from the west. The gray from the east and the red from the south. Having fought their way to the middle of the continent, they immediately began to fight each other for dominance. The battle raged for days, but there was no victor.
“They fought until the fields had turned red with their blood, seeping into the soil, carrying their souls into the Earth, but the strength and the rage of the Wolves was too much for the Earth to take back into itself, so their spirits followed the path of their blood as it became one with nature.
“The Wolves were restless, even in death, still searching for something or someone they could possess and control in order to continue their quests. The trees had strength enough for the Wolf spirits, but trees couldn’t defend themselves. The stones were impenetrable, but had no will of their own and traveled only where others sent them. So they followed the river, and there they found Man, who had movement, strength and will, but who they believed was weak enough that they could take him over and use him as a vessel. Submitting themselves into his body, the Wolf spirits became one with Man, giving him their indescribable strength and their near invincibility, but Man had one thing the Wolves didn’t and couldn’t foresee—a thirst for power beyond their own.
“Once the Wolves came into Man, they found themselves trapped, for Man might have been softer, but he’d never give up control. So Man trapped the Wolf in his heart, stealing his strength for the times when it was most needed and using it to build a stronger place in the world. However, no matter if he walks on two legs or four, this new Man is forever changed, because his heart beats with the soul of a Wolf, who can never be conquered and never be destroyed.”
Lia had to work to keep the smile off her face. He made for a pretty good storyteller, but it wouldn’t do to tell him so. “That’s it?
That’s
the origin of the Wolf shifter? We bled until we died in the dirt, sank into the ground water and infected mankind?” She pushed the plate forward, so full that even her feet felt heavy.
“Pale’s mate, Jade, thinks there’s possibly some level of truth to it, actually.”
“His mate, the Sibile?” Lia blinked, shocked. “She’s real?”
“Oh, as real as you and me,” Tate replied dryly, taking a final drink of his coffee. There was a different kind of story there, she just knew it.
“The Sibile that makes rainbows and stars with her fingertips and heals any wound with a kiss? She’s
real?
”
He choked, putting the cup down with a clatter. “Where the hell did you hear a load of shit like that?”
“It’s what they’re saying in the safe houses. That the Alpha mated a Sibile who does that. I never thought it could be true because…well, she sounds more like a unicorn than a woman, much less a deadly mercenary.”
“Don’t let the rainbows fool you, Jade’s fully capable of reducing people to ash if she gets a mind to it.” He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, sending a wisp of amusement through Lia. Even with his habit of swearing like it was his first language, he was too well-mannered to be out walking across the country like a nomad. She’d have just used her sleeve.
“But she can really make rainbows?” Call it something leftover from her childhood, but just the thought of someone able to do that brought back a sense of awe and wonder she thought she’d lost. Of course, if she kept that up, she’d start looking for Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, too.
“Sure, she can. She also makes a staff out of light that can cut people
and
the cars they’re driving in half. Five-feet-five-inches of pure power. Even at her best, it’s like having a nuclear bomb for a sister-in-law.”
“Boy.” Lia laughed, and by the look on his face he knew it was at his expense. “She must
love
you.”
“We have a complicated relationship,” he agreed with a self-depreciating nod. “Sort of a cross between
suspicion
and
fuck you
.”
“And I’m sure your winning personality is helping that along nicely.”
“What can I say? If I wake up one of these days with a rainbow coming out of my ass, at least I’ll know who to blame.”
She scrunched her nose in distaste, laughing even harder at that mental image. Still, the thought of such strength was enviable. People like Jade probably would never have found themselves in places like the facility, trapped like animals in a cage…Lia blinked away that thought as fast as it formed. She couldn’t change what she was or where she’d been, no matter how she might like to. “So, how does she think a story like that is real?”
“Well, most fables have a foothold in reality. According to her, the Sibile believe that the soul is tied to blood. Jade believes that tie is formed with magic, or whatever that psychic mumbo-jumbo is she uses. The Sibile have huge amounts of power, so the bonds to their blood are beyond sacred. Shifters have less and humans have practically none. She figures maybe it was as simple as man blood-bonding to animals to increase their strength. Of course, that doesn’t explain all the intricacies of being a shifter, though, so I’m inclined to tell her she’s full of shit. Maybe not about the first part, but if we assume the Sibile have always been around and that humans have always been around, it’s a safe assumption that shifters have always been around too. Our physiologies are too complicated and work too well for it to be anything else.”
“You’ve really put a lot of thought into this.”
He nodded, standing and opening his wallet to drop a few bills onto the table. “You get a lot of time to think about things on the late watch in the snow.”
She could understand that. She knew well what it was like to spend hours alone with your thoughts. Waiting for the sun to rise and the next part of the endless cycle to begin.
She stood with him, picking up her pack as he reached for his. She shouldn’t ask, because Asher’s warning with the stag already showed his anger that she’d allowed Tate to get far too close, but she couldn’t help herself. While she was growing up, her parents had been most interested in being just like everyone else. Only on the rarest occasions had she ever seen them shift, even then, mostly to prepare her for her own change when puberty finally started making itself known. The chance to hear something as simple, as harmless, as a fairy tale just couldn’t be passed up. Especially when he was the one telling them.
“Are there more of these stories?”
“Plenty of them. Which do you want to hear? The story of the First Pack? Alpha’s Blood? Miracle at Winter Creek? Lone Wolf’s Travels?” They stepped out onto the street while Lia unraveled a red-and-white mint she’d picked up on her way out the door. He’d even held the door open for her, waiting as he rattled off options. “Kyrios’s Queen? The Wolf Who Cried Boy?”
She laughed around the mint. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. I used to wonder if the story originated as a Wolf fable, but I think it was just someone being cheeky. It’s about the dangers of letting humans know our secrets.”
She knew those dangers well enough. “What’s Kyrios’s Queen?”
He mocked a groan. “Females always want to hear that one. Sure you don’t want to hear anything about cross-country adventures or buried treasure troves guarded by feral dragon shifters?”
She threw him her most incredulous sidelong glance. “Positive. It’s the only one that doesn’t sound like it’s some male-hormone-driven fantasy about ninjas or senseless fighting or death.”
“It’s not the typical boy favorite, no, but all right, here goes. Long, long ago, in the packs of old, a great Alpha king named Kyrios—”
“Do any of these stories not involve an Alpha?”
“Hey, human stories are all about royalty. Why not ours?” His false affront was enough to make her roll her eyes. “Besides, how do you think Kyrios had a queen if he’s not the king?”
“Okay, okay, I was just asking.”
“Uh-huh. As I was saying, there was a grand high Alpha named Kyrios, the king over all the Alphas in his lands. He was a good king, one who kept his people safe and put nothing above them. So it was of some concern to his pack that he’d ruled for more than fifteen years without choosing a mate. He had his choice of females, any of which would submit to him with honor, should he ever ask. But though he likely enjoyed the charms of some, the Alpha never claimed a mate to bear his heirs.
“It was decided then, by the females of their pack, that they would petition the Alphas of each pack within the king’s realm to send their unmated females for an Alpha-female challenge.”
“Females have challenges?”
“In the packs, the challenges for ranking were for both sexes. Everyone answered to the Alpha, but the Alpha-female was nearly as important to pack structure. She was the heart of their culture. Her place was to lead the women, educate the healers, protect the children and, according to some stories, lead in the Alpha’s place.”
A sudden insight filled her. “That’s what your sister is to your pack, isn’t she? That’s why everyone in the safe houses talks about her like she’s their mother or something.”
Tate nodded. “To many of them, Mina is the only mother they know. But it’s more than that. She’s the center of what makes us a family.”
“I thought that was the Alpha’s role.”
He shook his head. “The Alpha’s role is to guide our people. The Alpha-
female’s
role is to guide us as family.”
“So what does it mean for Mina now that your brother has found his mate?”
“A lot of things. None of which we need to go into.” The rebuke was light, almost casual, but unmistakable.
His reasoning wasn’t so hard to figure out. He couldn’t tell her because that information would give away too much. Because she wasn’t pack. Not yet. Not
ever
.
With a sinking sensation in her gut, Lia forced herself to face the harsh truth. She’d forgotten herself for a few hours—Tate had a way of distracting her like nothing else—but she could never belong to his pack. Not if she wanted them to survive. Pretending otherwise would only hurt more later.
“For the women in this story,” Tate continued, oblivious to her black thoughts, “if their Alpha wouldn’t choose a mate to lead them, they would choose a leader of their own. If she was worthy enough, the Alpha could then chose her for his mate as well.”
“What if she didn’t
want
to mate the Alpha?” Lia asked, still stung and waiting for the standard “too bad for her” response.
“Shhhh, you’re getting ahead of the story.”
Her brows rose, earning one of his crooked, pleased-with-himself grins that for some reason curled her toes in her shoes. Intrigued again—God, he got to her too easily—Lia bit her lips to keep them closed and set her pace even to his longer-legged one.
“How much do you know about mating?” he asked, frowning when she stumbled on a rock at the unexpected question.
“Too much,” she replied, trying not to sound bitter and not doing a good enough job.
Of course, that just seemed to draw his frown into deeper grooves. “What do you mean
too much?
Pretty hard to learn that as an unmated female.”
Lia concentrated on the ground, tightening all her muscles to avoid revealing her fluster. “Wh-what makes you think I’m not mated?”
Tate tapped his nose. “I don’t think, I
know.
No scent markers. These days, males go around imprinting anyone they can hold down long enough, which means a lot of females end up with embedded scents that stay secondary to their own. If you’d somehow managed a true mating—which you didn’t, because otherwise, your mate would be here—males and females change to a singular scent indicative of both partners. Yours is
pure female.
”
Her cheeks heated again at the way he said the last. The slightest rumble edged into his voice, as if he savored the taste of her on his senses. She made herself ignore it. “I don’t understand. Isn’t mating…
mating?
”
“It’d be a hell of a lot easier if it was,” he replied agreeably. “But no, it’s not that simple. We Wolves have only a few options, and those get fewer once a female goes into Heat. The Heat in a female changes her pheromones, turns her into a walking aphrodisiac, which, at your age, I’m sure you’ve seen happen once or twice.”
A rush of memories flooded her, of males heedlessly chasing after her, fangs lowered, eyes black and mindless. “Yes,” she answered, her voice thick with revulsion.
Thankfully, he didn’t call her on it. “If a male isn’t used to it, it turns him completely apeshit. He’ll do anything to get at her, and many times, he will, whether she wants him or not. It’s ugly and it’s wrong, but that’s what happens. Worse, females tend to break when it happens to them, and their forced submission combined with the DNA of the male creates an imprint on her. Her body will only reproduce for his seed, and she takes on his scent in her skin. Because he submits nothing, the male continues on, unmated.”
“To ruin the life of any other female he comes across.”
At least he didn’t sugarcoat the truth. All he did was nod. “But with true matings, when matings happen the way they’re supposed to, something else happens. We call it the bonding. When a Wolf pair choose each other, they can bond—body and soul. She takes in his blood, he takes in hers, usually through a bite. The female is imprinted on the male, as well, and there’s never another for him. If they fully submit to each other, give everything they are to the other, they combine—two bodies, one soul. There is no life without the other.”
“Is that what the Alpha has with his Sibile?” She wasn’t sure what made her ask the question. He wouldn’t answer it. She wasn’t even sure she believed what he was saying, except for the seriousness with which he said it. That made it terrifying.
Bonded unto death…with Asher? A wave of nausea coursed through her.
He took his time before answering, almost as if he were figuring something out for himself as well. “I don’t think anything less than a true mating would have made Pale take a mate. He loves her and despite our differences I know she loves him. Believe me, she’d
have
to. But he made the choice to claim her, even knowing how precarious our position is. With so many people to protect, so much riding on his shoulders, it couldn’t have been an easy decision to make. But she fits his soul. And he fits hers. With your true mate, my mother used to say, you can’t just walk away. One way or another, part of you ends up with your true mate. You just have to decide if you can live without it or not.”
She cleared her throat, hoping to quell the sloshing in her stomach where her food was suddenly not settling so well. Asher didn’t fit her soul. Only her nightmares. “And once it’s done, there’s no hope for you? You’re just…trapped? Bonded to someone who stole a part of your soul?”
He shook his head. “A male can steal your fertility, but he can’t take your bond or your soul. That can only be given, and it can only be given once. It’s a gift beyond measure and if you never learn another thing about mating, learn that. We always have choices.”
They walked on in silence for a few moments. She knew he thought he was giving her time to mull his words over, maybe even take them to heart. But her heart was too walled up for that to happen. His story made for a nice fairy tale, one she wished she could believe. But she knew too well what had been stolen from her. What was gone as a result. If he didn’t know now, she wasn’t going to tell him how much of a lost cause she really was.
“So that’s what you do?” she asked, purposely making her voice antagonistic. “Go around sniffing people to figure out if they can still reproduce or not? Don’t you think that’s a little rude?”
Not that he was so easy to insult. “My senses are stronger than most. I take in all kinds of information without even trying. It’s like looking at a tree and knowing it’s a maple, that its leaves haven’t turned yet. I scent you with every breath, I know you’re a female, I know you’re eating a peppermint—I’m guessing that’s to offset your creepy toothpaste addiction—and that you’ve never had a male in your skin, therefore, you’re not mated.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or depressed at his explanation. He wouldn’t scent Asher on her because Asher had no scent. She barely had one, thanks to the injections administered to them both every three months. The drugs developed to heighten her pheromone output during her artificially frequent Heat cycles also reduced her typical scent to almost nothing. She knew because the few shifters she’d been with had made note of it. The suspicious lack, unfortunately, hadn’t been enough to make them steer clear. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Nothing fools this nose, Sunshine.”
The temptation to tell him he’d been fooled for two days was strong, but since she wanted the rest of the story, she simply shrugged and kept walking again. “What about you? Have you ever thought about mating?”
The proud smile on his face faded. He turned his gaze out to the road. “Once, but it didn’t work out.”
She’d expected another cocky “Are you kidding?” out of him. This answer set a twinge in her chest that almost had her rubbing at the fabric of her collar. “Why not?”
“She died.” Stark words, delivered in a don’t-fuck-with-me tone that sent a ripple of apprehension through her.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She had it coming.”
The anger of that statement made her wince. Too late, it hit her that she hadn’t accidentally nudged a sore spot. She’d trampled into an open wound. “I was just—”
He leveled a glare at her that silenced her instantly, his eyes flaring that glowing yellow she associated with the edge of his control. “I know what you were trying to do. Vayere just isn’t something I like talking about.”
Some
thing
, not some
one
. She meant to keep her mouth shut, but along with the anger radiating from him, she could also sense pain. Something about knowing he was hurting hit her as wrong. Too wrong to leave alone. “Why?”
His hawklike gaze stayed fixed forward. “Because she died murdering my mother and seven other kids.”
She tripped over her own feet.
Tate caught her elbow, his hand whipping out reflexively. He sighed, the anger in his eyes fading as quickly as it came, releasing her arm with a soothing slide of his fingertips over her elbow. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have put it that way.”
This time, she only let herself nod at him.
“I was young, stupid. She was different, exciting. I’d never seen anyone like her and I mistook that for love. When she seemed to think the same thing about me, I thought I’d found the mate my mother was always telling me about. Turned out I was just a distraction. Pretty common mistake for guys at that age. I learned from it. I moved on.”
Sure he did. Like her, his idea of moving on was to build up walls that no one else was going to get past. She understood that. Respected it, even, but she was trapped in her life through more than her own choices. Tate was free. He was strong. He shouldn’t be like this.
“Do you know why she did it?”
That startled him. “Did what?”
“Attacked your family.” She could well guess why Vayere would have an affair with him. She’d be hard pressed to find a woman anywhere who wouldn’t be willing to do the same. “Did she have a reason or was she just insane?”
Asher was one of those lucky psychopaths whose insanity was justified by someone else’s command. Most other murderous folks seemed to pick one or the other.
He was considering telling her to mind her own business. She could see the words plain on his face, but for some reason he wasn’t saying them.
“You could tell me what happened,” she offered. As if she was doing him a favor. Who knew, maybe she was. “I used to wish I had someone to talk to about my parents’ deaths. Wouldn’t make losing them any easier, but another perspective might help.”
“Thanks, but I’m not big on pop psychiatry,” he said as if nothing were wrong, a teasing glint back in his eye. But not the glint she’d come to recognize. The hurt was still there, just beneath. The charming mask was back on.
He couldn’t have irritated her more if he’d just told her to go away. “No, you’re more the hold-it-against-everyone-I’ve-ever-met kind.”
The smile disappeared as if it had never been. “I don’t see why you’re so intent on talking about this. I thought you wanted to hear a story.”
“I do,” she replied, glad he didn’t drag anything out to keep up his pretense. “I want to hear
your
story.”
“Why? It’s not very interesting. I got fucked over. I bet you can hear one just like it anywhere else in this town.” His broad gesture to encompass the storefronts on the main strip they walked couldn’t have been missed by anyone.