One Deadly Bite

Chapter 14

“Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging her to stay in human form?” Macbeth asked me. For once, his accent and the set of his impeccably groomed eyebrows were completely his own.

“Moi?” I said innocently. “And how am I supposed to do that, hmmmm?” I threw Macbeth’s own pet noise right back at him. “I seem to recall something about my being completely human and unable to control the forms of subordinate wolves.”

Trying to force my will on Katie would have gone against everything I fought for on a day-to-day basis—not to mention the fact that opening up my pack-bond enough to force something on either of the babies would have left me vulnerable to having someone else’s will forced on me. That was a can of worms that I wouldn’t open unless and until I had to.

Kaitlin, blissed out in puppy form, sniffed at my shoes and then sneezed.

“And also,” I added, “I like her better this way.”

Katie nosed at the carpet and then gave it a good chew. When it proved recalcitrant enough that she couldn’t pull it up, she growled.

“Who’s a fierce little girl?” I asked her. “Who’s going to kick butt and take names and help her big sister get into all kinds of trouble someday?”

Macbeth snorted. “Sometimes, I think the term bad influence was invented specifically with you in mind.”

Considering that he knew nothing of my deep-seated need to fight my way to Ink again, that was probably an understatement. Rather than say something that might give away my thoughts, I opted instead for a surefire distraction.

“Not it,” I said.

Mac c****d one eyebrow at me, a trick that it had taken him years to absolutely perfect.

I gestured toward Alex, wrinkling my nose ever-so-slightly. “Not it.” My nose wasn’t anywhere near as sensitive as anyone else’s in this room, but even I could sense something rotten in the state of Denmark.

Unlike me, Macbeth had an animal’s tolerance of what I referred to as “diaper commodities.” In addition to having super-strength, accelerated healing, awesome senses, and an extended life span, werewolves, I had recently discovered, were also pretty much immune to the horrors of poop.

Macbeth picked Alex up and sauntered over to the changing table. Alex made some vaguely unhappy sounds, but Macbeth banished them by singing what seemed to be a punk-rock version of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Halfway through, he segued disturbingly smoothly into a number from Rent.

The music soothed me as much as it did the baby, and I turned my attention back to Kaitlin, who now appeared to be very conscientiously stalking my shoelaces. I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur—would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Mac?

I wondered if I’d be velvety black with ice-blue eyes, like Ink.

And then, I was there again, in that moment, watching his muscles tense and pull and send electric pulses through my body as he Changed. With equally little warning, I was elsewhere and another set of blue eyes glistened yellow as a large, gray wolf with a white star on his forehead leapt for the throat of a human man whose features had long been replaced by Callum’s in my memory.

Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end. …

A hand on my shoulder made me jump.

You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself, Callum told me with his eyes, but out loud, he didn’t say anything to me at all—he just squeezed my shoulder once and turned his attention to Kaitlin.

“Ach, Katie-girl, what are we going to do with you?” His brown eyes soft and his mouth set with mock sternness, Callum scooped puppy-Kaitlin up in his arms. She lapped at his face and he bit back an indulgent smile. “If your mama sees you like this, she’ll not be pleased,” Callum said, before puffing out a breath that had my little sister sniffing like crazy.

Even without being a Were, I knew what Callum would smell like to her: safe and strong and home. He was the alpha, and in our world, that made him as close and important to Kaitlin as her own parents. As important as I hoped that I would be to her someday.

Eventually, Katie tired of the confines of Callum’s loving hold, and she began to whine and wiggle, angling for the floor.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I said under my breath.

Callum didn’t bat an eye at my complaint. “You,” he said to Katie, “need to change back to human form, and you”—he fixed his gaze on me—“my dearest, darling, and not-quite-grown little girl, need to trust that I have and have always had your best interest at heart.”

My future mini-me and I were equally incapable of resisting Callum’s orders. If Callum said to Change, Katie had to Change, whether she wanted to or not. For me, Callum had a different kind of pull. Years of shielding myself psychically from my bond with the pack may have dulled Callum’s supernatural influence over me, but he still had a human one, and I couldn’t deny the truth in his words. Callum didn’t want to see me hurt, and he had no qualms about acting to ensure my safety. He cared for me.

Callum reached out and ran a hand over my hair, the same way Macbeth had stroked Katie’s. Meanwhile, the little princess settled into her baby body enough to thrash her little baby arms, and she let out a shriek worthy of an opera-singing banshee. I had to give it to her, the kid knew how to scream with the best of them. I could almost hear the howl behind her unhappy cries.

Kaitlin—or Kate now, clearly—did not like being caged, not by orders she had to follow or by limbs that wouldn’t do what they were told and skin that stubbornly refused to feel even the least bit like fur.

“Her Royal Highness is displeased,” I told Callum, translating Baby Kate’s wails into words.

He shifted her in his arms and crooned and patted her bottom, speaking to her in a mix of languages I didn’t know and couldn’t understand beyond the fact that once upon a time, he’d probably said the same thing to me. Kate resisted being consoled, but soon the wails died to whimpers and the whimpers to the occasional sniff. Expertly, Callum got her into a fresh set of clothing, since Shifting had destroyed her Baby Gap bodysuit and booties. Already, the twins were wearing clothes made for much older infants, and Katie, with her penchant for spending time in an animal form that aged much more quickly than she did, was growing even faster than Alex.

“I know that whatever you do you do for my good,” I said as Callum looked at me and I smiled and then I continued,” But that does not mean that whatever you do you do correct. I know you think that this is the correct decision since everyone listens to you like you are some kind of God, but actually you are not even close to it. You will keep on lying to me, you would have been still lying to me if I had not caught you in the midst of that. You have told me lies all these years and now you still think that I am some little child who is in need of protection.”

For some reason, that thought made me look at Callum again, and I wondered if he realized that inside, I was changing even quicker than the twins were on the surface. I think he knew, the way he always did. The heavy sadness of his eyes as he looked back at me glowed with something akin to premonition. In Callum’s gaze, I saw the reflection of my own sudden self-awareness that I was barreling toward adulthood, and that the next words out of my mouth would be my first running leap in that direction.

A leap that even five minutes before, I would have fought tooth and nail against taking.

“You are the one in the need of most protection, Rose. I know that you think you are all powerful but it is not true. Even though I am aware you will rebel and you will have to forge your own path but that does not mean that I am not going to do my best in order to keep away from danger,” said Callum and Macbeth and I both stared at him.

“What does that mean?”

“Not everything I say I understand completely till it has happened but I am aware that some thing is going to happen soon enough,” said Callum as he handed over Kate to me and then sighed as he left the room.