One Deadly Bite

Chapter 13

“There are bad people in the world. Some of them are murderers and psychopaths and telemarketers who won’t take no for an answer.” I kept my voice soft as I spoke and—for the benefit of my audience—made a real effort at ditching my protective layer of sarcasm. “Sometimes, bad people do really evil things, and good people get hurt. Even kids.”

My listeners hung on to my every word with round, wide eyes.

“Humans call their monsters sociopaths. We call ours Rabids.”

Baby #1 also known as Kaitlin or Katie or, if she was in a mood, Kate signified her acceptance of my older sisterly wisdom by blowing a spit bubble of mammoth proportions. Baby #2 made what appeared to be a real effort at putting his left foot in his mouth. Reflexively, I reached my hand out and tickled his sole before catching his foot in my hand.

Alex also known as Alexander, Little Guy, Big Guy, and Spot wrinkled his baby brow.

“Got your foot,” I told him loftily. Alex wriggled. Clearly, he was unsure what to make of this development.

“Messing with the minds of the next generation again, Rose? For shame!” Macbeth’s voice took me off guard. The twins, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. Even at the ripe old age of six weeks, their senses were better than mine. I would have sworn that they knew it, too, based on their little baby smirks.

“It’s not like I have much else to do,” I said. “Grounded, remember?” Winter had given way to early spring, and I was still under house arrest for my “antics” the day the twins were born.

Macbeth sat down next to me and started playing with Kaitlin’s feet.

“I seem to recall this grounding that you speak of,” he said. “Remind me again—is this the grounding that kept you from going with me to see the delightfully horrendous film adaptation of my seventh-favorite Broadway musical, or the grounding that came about because you almost got yourself killed? And didn’t bother to bring me along? Hmmmmm?”

Macbeth loved playing the martyr almost as much as he adored cheesy movie musicals, and my being housebound was almost as bad for him as it was for me. Our age-mates in the pack (or “the Philistines,” as Mac sometimes referred to them) couldn’t quite grasp the appeal inherent in most of the things that Macbeth enjoyed.

“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” I huffed, finally releasing my hold on Alex’s captive foot. I smiled at the way he joyfully flailed like there was no tomorrow once it was free.

“How many more times do you have to apologize?” Macbeth asked, pretending to ponder the question deeply. “At least thrice more, I should think,” he said, slipping into a distinctively rhythmic pattern of speech that made me think that a reenactment of his seventh-favorite musical might just be forthcoming again. Instead, though, he turned his gaze to Kaitlin and without even looking at me, he said, “You could have been killed, Rose.”

The way he was looking at Katie and the words he’d said reminded me that even though Macbeth was Mac, he was still a Were. He still had an innate desire to protect what he loved and to guard his females with his life. Without another word, he gently moved his hand up to Kaitlin’s head and gently stroked her downy-soft hair. Katie blew another spit bubble, completely unaffected by the nearly rapturous awe on Macbeth’s face. She was already used to getting that reaction from Weres, and when she was Katie and not the more tempestuous Kate, she reveled in it.

Just you wait, I told her silently. It’s all fun and games until they ground you until you’re thirty.

At this rate, Katie’s teen years were going to be a million times worse than mine, which was a scary thought in and of itself. No one but Callum and Ali had ever cherished me as much as the entire pack seemed to relish doting on Ali’s babies. Live twin births were rare in any pack, and Katie was only the second female born in Callum’s territory in the past hundred years. Something about the chemistry involved in werewolf conception made it impossible for girl embryos to survive the first trimester, unless they were half of a set of twins and had a brother to mask their presence in the womb. I was a little vague on the medical details, but from day one, it had been clear that the twins were special—and that Kaitlin had a very, very long road ahead of her.

Which is why it was my duty as her older sister to ease the way, and that meant disabusing my pack of the notion that girls (in this case, me) needed protection. Unfortunately, Macbeth was the closest thing I had to an ally, and even he would have throttled me if he knew that I was working on a plan to see Ink.

Ink.

Just thinking his name knocked the breath out of me, yanking me back to that night in Callum’s basement, as I’d watched Ink Shift, anchored in place by those three little words.

I got bit.

A grounding of epic proportions had not changed the fact that I had to see him again. On one level, I knew that it was a bad idea, knew that he was “unpredictable” and “not yet in control of his wolf” and that I would “find myself in a most unpleasant situation” if I “came within two miles of him.” I even recognized that Ink had all of the instincts and none of the discipline of a full-grown Were, and I’d lived in this world long enough to realize what that could mean. Callum had impressed upon me again and again that Ink was a danger to me—and that I could be just as dangerous to him.

He survived an attack that would have killed a full-grown man, Rose, Callum had said, his face absolutely serious, his jaw set, but he isn’t out of the woods yet. If we can’t teach him control, or if he were to hurt a human before he learns, the Senate would have him put down.

The Senate. As in the combined force of each and every pack alpha on the North American continent. When they met, the Senate tried for democracy, but I knew that when Callum said they would put Ink down, what he really meant was that Callum wouldn’t use his power to stop them. He might even be the one to snap Ink’s neck himself. Callum had few weak points, but I was one of them. Senate or no Senate, he’d kill Ink if Ink hurt me.

That was the only reason I’d managed to stay away this long. Up to this point, I hadn’t even tried to break my house arrest, because the idea of something happening to Ink made me want to vomit up my internal organs.

He was, without exaggeration, the only person who could possibly understand what it meant to survive what I’d survived before my adoption into the pack. He was the only chance I might have to fill in the gaps in my memory of what had happened that night before Callum and his guard had saved me from the fate the rest of my family had met. I needed Ink, and I wanted to be near him, and some part of me couldn’t shake the feeling that it was mutual, and that I would be the one to save him from himself.

Nobody knew what it was like to be torn between what it meant to be human and what it meant to be Pack better than me.

A high-pitched yip tore me away from my thoughts. Katie, ever the adventurous twin, had taken my mental absence as an excuse to Change, and now, instead of watching two babies, I had in my charge one human infant (to all appearances at least) and one rambunctious, wiggling-all-over, feet-too-big-for-her-body, whining-to-be-let-out-of-her-crib pup.

“I take it nap time ended just before my fortuitous arrival?” Macbeth asked.

Deciding not to mention that nap time had been briefly followed by story time, I nodded. Even in just a few weeks’ time, Mac and I had started picking up on the differences between the twins: their idiosyncrasies, temperaments, and internal schedules. For example, without fail, when the twins woke up from their afternoon naps (or soon thereafter), Alex almost always needed to be changed, and Kaitlin, in contrast, needed to be Changed. She already loved her wolf form and would have spent all day as a puppy if Ali would let her.

Personally, I didn’t blame her. In human form, the twins were far more advanced than most newborns, but as wolves, they were already more like toddlers than babies. Once she Changed, Kaitlin could walk (or run) on all fours and stick her damp little puppy nose into everything.

From her crib, Katie yipped again, clearly impatient. Little sis wanted what she wanted when she wanted it.

“Good girl,” I crooned, scooping her up and setting her on the ground.

“Why did you go there Rose?” he asked.

I had been dreading this conversation all this time. And I had put it away for as long as it was possible but now it was not possible any longer. So I did not look at Mac but I sighed at his questions.

“If there is one thing in my life that I hate, that is a lie. And that is what Callum did this time to me. He knew that I was sensitive about the fact and I was sensitive about rabids but that does not mean that just for the sake of protection he would omit things from me. It is no better than lying, Mac. You know that.”