Daybreak (22 page)
Okay, he could do this. Refusing to succumb to panic, he propped her up in the curve of his arm. At that jostling, her eyes flickered half open—just a sliver of indigo. She opened her mouth to speak and he put food in it. They went on like that for countless minutes, until she stirred enough to reach for a slice of meat on her own.
“Feeling better?”
“Mmm.” She was still eating.
Tru let her take over, but didn’t move off. Not just because they needed to share body heat. He kept his arm around her, and his heart lurched when she snuggled against him. It had been years since a woman did that. Looked to him for more than sex. He waited for the usual panic about his past, but it never came. Though he was still angry, he owed her an explanation; he’d teased and promised paradise and then delivered mediocre sex, at best.
Maybe it was time to share the reason why. She deserved to know.
“There’s a reason I act the way I do, Pen.”
Her gaze flickered sideways as if to say she was listening, but her expression remained vague and dreamy. That made it easier. He’d never told anyone. How could he? He’d lost everything that day. There had been nobody left to tell.
“You already know I left Jenna and Mason when I was seventeen. I guess you were twelve? Nearly that?” At her nod, he went on, “I traveled for years. And I told you how I first learned to shift.”
“It sounded terrifying.”
“I thought I was going to die that day,” he said quietly. “But then, the days run together, and it doesn’t seem to matter. Birthdays, holidays, they’re all gone. The only thing left is staying alive.”
“I’ve been there.” More meat. Her color improved, but she didn’t look one hundred percent yet. Pen might not be snuggled up at his side if she thought about it, or if she was in possession of all her faculties. She might not ever again, after she heard what he had to say.
But for tonight, he could pretend it was her choice. That
he
was her choice.
he
was her choice.
“After years on my own, I started looking for a place to settle. And I found one.”
“Oh?”
“It was a small skinwalker community in what would’ve been Pennsylvania. Not that pre-Change geography matters.” Maybe he couldn’t do this after all. Some things never stopped hurting, even after you forgave yourself. Talking felt like ripping open a wound that had almost scabbed over.
“I recall what the old maps looked like,” she answered steadily. “North of here, yes?”
“Right. Well, like I said, small place, no more than ten families. I was around twenty, but I felt older. You know how it goes.”
Of course she did. People grew up fast in the Changed world, or they didn’t make it at all. No such thing as true innocence remained. Children were drilled on constant threats from the time they could understand spoken language: what to do about raiders, O’Malley thugs, and feral skinwalkers that had destroyed the demon dogs.
Pen had stopped eating. Hands folded in her lap, she watched him. Even in profile he sensed the weight of her regard. “Go on?”
Tru wanted to take his arm away, but she might see it as a rejection. So he sat still.
Remembering.
“There were all kinds of animals. Predator, herbivore, winged. Sometimes that diversity made for a challenge, but the leader was good at keeping order. He reminded me a little of Mason, and I guess maybe that’s why I stuck around long enough for—” He swallowed. Cleared his throat. Otherwise his voice would’ve broken, making it impossible to go on with the quiet recitation.
“For Danni to catch my eye.” He recalled those first weeks of courtship with a rush of adrenaline. So much. And so quickly. “We fell in love. Married in the skinwalker way. She was a cougar, closest I’d come to finding a proper mate. My lion didn’t scare her like it did some others. You should’ve seen how the ferrets ran from us.”
Pen didn’t laugh. Her grave expression didn’t tell him anything. Not that he could’ve borne sympathy. The only way to get through this was to ice it over, pretend the beauty and the agony had happened to someone else.
“I was there three years. We had a little girl, Laurel. Danni and I used to pretend to argue over what kind of big cat she’d grow up to be. Sometimes we wondered if she could shift into both cougar and lion. It’s the first generation for this stuff, so nobody really knows.”
He’d opened the door to so many memories. Too many. Laughter. Wrestling in a bed of clover. It hadn’t been an easy life, but it had been . . .
good
. Laurel had his hair and her mother’s eyes, brown velvet, like a doe. He missed them both with the fierce ache of permanent loss and unfulfilled potential. That was why he’d worked to keep their memory shut away, where it couldn’t cut him as it did in his dreams. His lion form made it bearable, grieving with less ferocity. His animal self had a fatalistic bent about such things. No changing it. The world ran on the principle of tooth and claw. No use dwelling. The lion’s cold practicality had saved his sanity.
good
. Laurel had his hair and her mother’s eyes, brown velvet, like a doe. He missed them both with the fierce ache of permanent loss and unfulfilled potential. That was why he’d worked to keep their memory shut away, where it couldn’t cut him as it did in his dreams. His lion form made it bearable, grieving with less ferocity. His animal self had a fatalistic bent about such things. No changing it. The world ran on the principle of tooth and claw. No use dwelling. The lion’s cold practicality had saved his sanity.
“What happened, Tru?”
“There were purges,” he said, not answering the question directly. “I’m not sure if you heard. News doesn’t travel like it used to.” Flicker of a haunted smile. “Zealots determined to cleanse our bestial taint. One day while I was out hunting, they found the settlement. ‘Cleansed’ it. When I got back, the houses were all smoldering, bodies everywhere but burned beyond recognition.”
O’Malley had planted the seeds for the first purges, riling zealots up with talk of species purity. First he didn’t think filthy skinwalkers ought to breed with humans. Then they ought to be rounded up and put in special camps where they could be watched. And finally, they should be exterminated. With his money and influence, O’Malley swayed a large number of folks to his thinking in the east. These days, it was safer to be a shifter out west, as Tru had learned the hard way.
“Danni and Laurel?”
“Gone.”
No words were bleak enough to describe that moment when all the light burned away. Intellectually he knew that if everyone in town had proved no match for the invading force, he would only have perished with his family. But the thought offered no peace. No comfort. His lion and human soul were, for once, in perfect agreement. He had failed to protect his pride.
A few other hunters had also been away from town that day. He wasn’t alone or unique in his bereavement, but the handful of men and women who walked away from that devastation couldn’t turn to one another for comfort. The hills rang that night with howls and growls.
A few despondent skinwalkers had hunted down those responsible. Killed them in their beds. Some had strayed so far from their humanity as to slaughter families, too. Children. An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Tru hadn’t taken part. Danni wouldn’t have wanted that. She had been a sweet girl, made of joy, and she’d have hated him if he painted her memory in blood. That alone had stopped him from joining the carnage. Instead, he ran into the wild. He grieved in silence and in his animal skin.
But the loss always remained, whether he ate or slept or fucked. For the past few years, nothing had mattered. Not a single impulse. Not whether he lived or died. Sometimes, he courted death, like when he’d targeted that O’Malley slave truck. Part of him had wondered, even then, whether a bullet in his brain would reunite him with Danni and Laurel.
“That’s why I didn’t want to touch you, after we reached the camp. From the beginning, I knew it would be different with you. Because we had history. You knew me back when I was a person . . . before I lost everything. And you made me remember, too.”
“So that’s why—”
“It wasn’t good. And I
am
sorry. I didn’t want to feel this. I was afraid.” Stark words, but brave in their candor. “But . . . that didn’t give you the right to do what you did to me, Pen.”
am
sorry. I didn’t want to feel this. I was afraid.” Stark words, but brave in their candor. “But . . . that didn’t give you the right to do what you did to me, Pen.”
“I just wanted to know . . . to see how other women felt for once. I thought you liked it.” Her voice caught.
Tru realized she really didn’t understand. “It’s not about whether I enjoyed it. Sure, it felt great in the moment, but I wasn’t ready then. You took what I didn’t offer, and that’s not all right.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am. I didn’t mean . . . I was just so disappointed—”
“I know. And that was my fault.”
“Are you still mad?” she asked.
“Not now. I was, especially when you tried to whammy me a second time. I meant it when I said that can’t happen again, or this won’t work. You have to respect my decisions.”
Her eyes shone with sincerity. “It won’t. And I will, I promise.”
“And
I
won’t leave. No matter how scared I get.” Tru couldn’t believe he’d even consider doing this again, knowing how it could end.
I
won’t leave. No matter how scared I get.” Tru couldn’t believe he’d even consider doing this again, knowing how it could end.
I can’t live through that again. I can’t.
Danni and Laurel appeared in his mind’s eye. It was a blessing he hadn’t been able to identify their bodies because he only remembered them as they’d been in a field of gold, running toward him with laughter echoing to the sky. That moment, he carried tucked against his heart, and the memory had swollen to such size that he couldn’t permit any other happiness to displace it. But there was room inside him again, even as his logical side urged him to run like hell, before it was too late.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly.
As he’d known she would. Saint Penelope, who would solve the world’s ills, martyr herself to death and never live. Never burn. Never suffer. In the hills, still smelling the smoke that marked his ruined life, he’d wept without reservation, without shame, for the first and last time. He’d cried until his throat was raw with it, before swearing he never would again.
Nothing remained of that life. For years he’d wandered. He became someone else, because the young man he’d been suffered too much damage to survive.
“Shut up,” he told her.
His anger spiked . . . because of all things, he did
not
want absolution from her.
not
want absolution from her.
“Tru—”
“Don’t you dare counsel me. A cause isn’t love, Penelope. Love breaks you wide open.”
TWENTY-THREE
Such sharp words should have cut her deeply. But she felt no anger. No loss. Just . . . emptiness.
Pen understood his pain. Only, she didn’t feel it. Not the way he wanted her to.
Dawn had brightened the interior of their shelter, so that she could see the clear, transparent blue of his eyes. Nothing so uncontrolled as tears. Not from Tru. The break in his voice was telling enough.
The impulse to offer him succor almost gave her courage enough to make the effort. She could hold him. Comfort him. Help him endure the loss he’d carried for years.
But that was the point. He’d borne it himself. He had endured on his own, without the necessity of her intervention. Strong and resourceful, he was the ultimate survivor. The acerbic, cynical boy she once knew had grown into a man capable of love.
What did that say about her? Nearly ten years as Mason and Jenna’s ward, and she had never cared that deeply about any human being.
Mama.
A sore spot in her chest ached around that single word. That thought disrespected her mother’s life, as well as her deep, abiding affection for Jenna and Mason. But she’d never loved a man. Never with the passion and joy Tru had shown when describing his wife. His
wife
. That spot in her chest widened and blackened. Was she jealous of the woman he described, or of his happiness?
wife
. That spot in her chest widened and blackened. Was she jealous of the woman he described, or of his happiness?
No, she was simply jealous that he’d felt anything, no matter the pain that followed.
He watched her too closely. No surprises there. People had always watched her, seeking a glimpse of proof she was as magical as the rumors insisted. Or as unhinged.
Both.
She turned away. “Don’t look at me that way. Please.”
“What? Like I’m pissed?”
“No, like I’m a freak.”
“Whatever.”
The storm had dwindled to nearly nothing, just a bluster without rain. Outside the shelter, gusts played with what remained of the fire. Tru would never respond to her pity, even if she felt it as deeply as a cut. But maybe she could make him understand. If Pen let him believe her a callous, distant martyr, he would never know her at all. And that hurt, too. Much more than she could admit.
“I killed a man last night,” she whispered. The memory left her shaking. She huddled into herself, already missing the warmth Tru had offered with his embrace. So simple. Yet so easily taken for granted.
“You probably killed more than one.” He spoke as if he couldn’t quite grasp the turn of her thoughts.
Understandable.
“I was there, remember. And I don’t think those knives of yours are for show.”
Understandable.
“I was there, remember. And I don’t think those knives of yours are for show.”
“With my mind, Tru. I killed him with magic. I looked into the driver’s memories and saw what he’d done to a little girl. And I didn’t hesitate. Just turned his brain to pulp with a
thought
.”
thought
.”
He shifted slightly, his gaze intensifying. His regard was a prickling heat across every inch of skin. “You can do that?”
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