Shifter Wars (38 page)

“What are you doing here?” I asked none-too-sweetly.

“I wanted to make sure everyone is okay.”

Jean Luc answered from behind me. “I sent you a report with the details.”

“Yes, but I wanted to see for myself. This incident could have caused a huge containment issue.”

Jean Luc answered. “Everything is under control. You do not need to
persuade
Kyle to erase anyone else’s memory.”

Nicholas glared pointedly at Jean Luc, and he returned the favor. I glanced between the two of them as they had their supernatural stare-down, and my skin tingled as power seemed to snap in the air like static electricity. Not good. I let go of the breath I was holding. “If we’re done here, I’m going into the house.”

I took a step and looked back over my shoulder. “Jean Luc, are you coming?”

“Yes,
ma petite
. I will be right behind you.”

Chapter 48

Jason stared stonily out the window and wouldn’t acknowledge me. We had been staying at Talia’s house while he and Griffin recuperated, and I had been giving him a wide berth, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. If he wouldn’t talk to me, I would do the talking.

“I am deeply, deeply sorry, Jason. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. When Griffin told me his suspicions I wanted to tell you right away.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because we really didn’t know much. We were hoping for a DNA match to find your family.”

“My family lives in Wisconsin.”

“Your biological family,” I answered softly.

He spun around to face me. “I’m not adopted! If I were, my parents would have told me.”

I held up my hands. “I’m sure your parents believed they had good reason not to tell you. We don’t know what the circumstances were, Jason. Maybe you were given to your parents outside of normal channels and they couldn’t tell you the truth.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“Yes, you can. Think about what you’ve had to accept over the past two years. This is another aspect of it.”

“Being a freak?” he answered.

“Why would you call yourself a freak?”

“I’m not truly shifter or human.”

“I know what it’s like to not be totally human. It can be lonely. But if you think Misha, Jean Luc, or I aren’t going to support you while you figure this out, then you underestimate us.”

He glared at me for a moment.

“Stay pissed at me for as long as you need, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to talk or to help when you want to discover the truth.”

I walked out of Jason’s room, feeling a little better, but not much. I couldn’t blame him for being angry. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I was ten times as stubborn as he was, so it would work out.

I found Sabrina alone in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee. “Misha was wondering when we can go home.”

“Jason can leave today if he wants.”

“And Griffin?”

“Griffin left this morning.”

I plopped down across from her at the table, my muscles suddenly having a mind of their own. “What?”

“I told him it was too soon, but he insisted. Gave me some line about needing to be home to show his people he was doing well, but we both know why he left.”

“He’s avoiding me. The chicken shit.”

She nodded but didn’t offer anything else. I studied her for a second. Something was off; her affect was dull. I had never seen her look anything but her best. “Are you okay?”

Sabrina looked at me for a moment before glancing away. “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

I narrowed my eyes on her. “Don’t try to bullshit me. I’m the queen of avoidance; I know the signs.”

She let out a hard breath. “Why didn’t you tell me your suspicions about Jason?”

“Because that’s what it was, suspicion without proof. When Doctor Jensen confirmed he had shifter DNA, we wanted to find his family first, so we could give him something tangible.”

She set her mug down on the table. “Which is why you didn’t tell Jason. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to, but I felt he was the first person I should tell. I owed him that much.”

She stood and walked over to the counter and placed her mug in the sink.

“Don’t do it, Sabrina.”

“Do what?” she asked, turning back to me and leaning on the counter.

“Distance yourself from him. I don’t think he can take it right now.”

She tightened her mouth and took a breath. “He’s part shifter.”

“Big flipping deal.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, Big. Flipping. Deal. He needs you. He’s scared. Everything he knows about his family has been yanked out from under him. You have to help him through this.”

She shook her head. “I need to protect him.”

“Are you protecting him or yourself?”

Sabrina’s mouth fell open. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you’ve finally found someone to love and you’re going to give it up? How many times have you told me to tear down the walls around me and let people in? Don’t be a hypocrite.” I held my breath waiting for the explosion, but none came.

“I’ll take what you said under advisement.”

She was throwing my own words back at me, but I was okay with it. “That’s all I can ask.”

She smiled slightly. “What about you and Griffin?”

“Don’t worry. He’s not getting away so easily.”

* * *

Misha was waiting for me in the van. When I came out of the airport alone, his smiling face changed to a perplexed one. The transformation would have been amusing if I wasn’t so tired.

“Where is everyone?”

I flung my bag into the back and scrambled into the front seat before the airport police whistled for us to hurry up. “Go. I’ll fill you in.”

He pulled away from the curb.

“I took a separate flight back. Jason doesn’t want to have anything to do with me right now and was trying to book a commercial flight back. Doc put her foot down and said he would be much more comfortable on Boris’s plane. So I volunteered to fly back solo.”

“What about Jean Luc?”

“He has some unfinished business with Talia.”

Misha’s mouth fell open, but it quickly changed to a wicked grin, and he chuckled. “Well, it is about damn time. Who made the first move?”

“Talia doesn’t know he stayed behind.”

Misha’s chuckle increased to a belly laugh. “Good for him. I take it you had a role in this?”

I shrugged. “I just pointed out a few salient facts to him. Namely, she is still crazy about him, and he needed to have a serious conversation with her.”

Misha merged onto the highway. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“I’m still mad at you about the whole Key business.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was just trying to protect you.”

Misha looked over at me and scowled. “Bull.”

My stomach somersaulted. “What do you mean, bull?”

He pulled to the side of the highway, put the car in park, and faced me. “I know you believe you were protecting us, but here is the thing. You are part of our family. Haven’t you figured out yet, little one, that family takes care of each other?”

Tears stung. “No. I know you would protect me. It was stupid of me. I should have told you the truth.”

His eyes softened. “You haven’t told me about your childhood, Kyle, but I know you didn’t have anyone to take care of you. So I’m going to tell you about the family you belong to now. When you love someone, you will do anything for them. Do you think Jean Luc and I could live with ourselves if something happened to you and we stood by and did nothing?”

Tears slipped down my face and I had trouble breathing. “You’re right. I promise you I won’t keep secrets anymore.”

Misha reached over and brushed the tears off my cheeks. “Good. Now tell me about Griffin. What do you plan to do with him?”

I almost giggled at the about-face. Misha always kept me guessing. “Oh, I’m going to confront Griffin the first chance I get. He ran away, which isn’t acceptable behavior in the new and improved Kyle McKinley handbook.”

“He doesn’t stand a chance against you.”

“Nope. I don’t know where this is going yet, but I care a lot for him, and I want us to spend more time together so I can
explore the possibilities,
as Jean Luc described it.”

“Go get him, little one.”

Both Misha’s and my phones beeped simultaneously, and he smiled. “Maybe it’s Jean Luc telling us he’s eloping with Talia.”

He picked up his phone off the dashboard, and I dug mine out of my pocket. It wasn’t Jean Luc. It was an email alert about the name Joe Dalton. Misha looked from his phone to mine, and when his eyes widened, I realized he was now on to my cyber-stalking. I’d had a good teacher, after all.

He smiled gently. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to still worry about him. He will always be a part of you. How about this? I’ll watch out for him for you. If anything happens I think you should know about, I will let you know. Will you trust me?”

I looked at the screen for a moment, and then clicked the delete button. “Yes. That’s what family is for, right?”

Chapter 49

Bea answered the door and gave me a big hug before I could say a word. “He doesn’t want to see you,” she whispered in my ear.

I stood back and shrugged. “Well, tough. His big, bad lion side doesn’t scare me.”

Bea smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way. But he’s going to throw a fit at me later.”

“I did a report on cats in grade school,” I mused. “Did you know in the feline family, the tiger is the most ferocious and, in a fight, will best a lion every time?”

Bea’s smile grew. “Yes, I’m well aware of that.”

“You said once before you didn’t expect me to backpedal. Well, here I am jumping into the deep end of the shifter pool.”

“So you are. Go on upstairs. I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed.”

I took the stairs two at a time, anxious to see Griffin. But when I reached his bedroom door, I hesitated for a second.
Don’t chicken out now, McKinley.

I knocked lightly on the door, and he called out, “Come in.”

When I walked in, his face shut down immediately.

“I must apologize, Kyle, but I’m not up for visitors.”

“So, I’m a visitor now?” I stepped over to the side of the bed. His left side still had claw marks slashed over the rib cage. They were healing, but the red lines stood out on his tanned stomach. “You know, there are easier ways for me to see you naked.”

His eyes held mine for the briefest of seconds before he looked away. “Don’t make light of it, Kyle.”

“Light of what?”

“I almost killed you.”

“But you didn’t. You stopped yourself and saved my ass in the process.”

He refused to look at me. “I appreciate everything you and your team did for us.”

Oh no, he wasn’t going to get away with this. “Enough!”

That got his attention, and he glared huffily up at me. “Excuse me?”

“I will not be dismissed. I’m staying right here.”

“I’ll be fine by tomorrow. There’s no need to watch over me.”

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you I’m not one of your pack. Which means you don’t get to order me around.”

He frowned at me for several seconds before responding, “What
are
we to each other then?”

My heart tightened in my chest. “I say we figure it out together.”

His eyes widened when I crawled into bed and lay down next to him, propping my head on my hand and looking up at his face. “I’m not going anywhere tonight. You’re stuck with me. Besides, I need to fill you in on some things you missed.”

And he watched me with those gorgeous green eyes while I told him everything, including my conversation with Running Wolf about the Key. Griffin deserved to know, and if we were embarking on something
big
, I wasn’t going to be secret girl anymore. Since I had bared my soul, it was his turn to share, so a little prodding was in order.

“Do you want to talk about William?”

His jaw clenched. “There’s not much to talk about. He was a twisted bastard who killed his own father to take over a throne which would have been his by right eventually.”

“And you found out about it?”

“One of Father’s mistresses was in the house when it happened. She hid in the closet and used an escape tunnel Father had installed in his bedroom in case someone attacked him.”

“What did you do when you found out?”

“Went to the Shifter Council and convinced them to let me confront him. It was my right.”

“Then how did he get away?”

He cringed. “I challenged him and gave him a choice. Either he turned himself in, or we would fight to the death. He was given twenty-four hours to make a decision. He chose to take his own life instead.” He shook his head. “I was given evidence he was dead. I didn’t push it. The incident needed to go away, or our pack would have imploded.”