Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

C ain

The trail has gone cold.

"I'm very sorry, sir. We have been trying our best, and we're not giving up."

My chief tracker, Pendleton, is in the room with me. He's a brave man to bring me bad news. Pendleton is a burly, bulky fellow, almost as tall as I am, with sandy brown hair brushed over his forehead. He has a round face with a mild expression and shrewd hazel eyes. I like this man. And that is why I am working hard to keep my temper as he gives me the kind of bad news that makes me want to break the necks of everybody around me.

"What do you mean—we don't know where she is from?"

"The name she used to apply here? Kira Smith? It doesn't correspond to the social security number she gave on her employment application. It's possible she's an illegal immigrant."

"We don't check that when we are hiring?"

Pendleton is not responsible for hiring decisions, but he tries to answer the question anyway, and to his credit, uses the term ‘we' even though he could quite easily abdicate all responsibility.

"We do not seem to have done so on this occasion, no. And as she used cash to pay for her fare, there's no trail in terms of credit card usage, which is a pity. In terms of cameras, most of the bus exchanges are lacking in security infrastructure." He slides a photo over to me, taken from security footage. "We did spot her at the state exchange, but lost her quick. I'm sorry. We're still working. We will find her. It's just not as quick as we'd hoped."

"You will be sorry, if this is some attempt to make her disappear."

He frowns slightly, and I immediately wish I had kept my mouth shut. That was a paranoid thought that doesn't even make sense. I have worried that perhaps she did not run away at all. Maybe someone in the pack saw fit to deal with the problem of her existence themselves. But there were no signs of a struggle, and there was no scent of blood. And now there's the fact that she was spotted on one of the bus station cameras.

I look at the image in front of me, her eyes wide with fear, her expression wracked with guilt as she looks up into a camera she may or may not even know is there. It feels as though she is looking straight at me. I wish she'd talked to me before she ran. I wished I'd been trustworthy enough that she felt safe to talk to me.

"Unfortunately, she didn't steal your credit card when she robbed you."

"She didn't rob me. She needed money to run. She was trapped in a hostile environment."

"Yes, my alpha. I will let you know when we have further information."

He dismisses himself, backing out of the room, noticeably avoiding turning away from me. I must be coming off as dangerous at the moment.

Kira

"Beer me!"

Colton and his father are watching the game. I don't know what game. It doesn't matter, either to them, or to me.

I bring them both a beer. Colton's eyes slide down me in a faintly icky way for a moment before returning to the screen.

I'm wearing an old t-shirt, some jeans, and some sneakers, all clothing pulled out from my old closet. I should be grateful it still fits, because there's no money to go shopping for anything besides the necessities. This place soaks up money the same way the soil soaked up the toxic run off from the mines. My hair is tied back in a ponytail.

I go back to the kitchen and watch my aunt as she throws food scraps to the dogs. I'm wondering if she knows what I am, or if she is what I am, or if my mother was what I am. From what I understand, only one of my parents had any wolf lineage. I don't know who my father is, though I've always thought my aunt knew. Families have ways of keeping secrets from less favored members, and it doesn't get much less favored than me.

"What are you staring at?"

"I was just wondering if you knew who my father was?"

"I know he was a low-down bastard who wasn't there when your poor mother passed giving birth to you."

"But did you ever know his name?"

Her lips purse tightly together. She's not going to say, but I think she knows.

"It's best not to ask questions about the past, Channi," she says. "It's dead and gone."

"I'm just wondering if they passed anything down to me."

"Like what?"

"Like, I don't know, diabetes, or some other sort of sickness." Maybe a tendency to turn into a wolf if the right guy fucks me? I don't add that, but I want to.

"You're healthy, Channi. Always have been. Always will be. You've got nothing to worry about."

She sounds so confident.

I want to know what she knows. I've always been content to let her have her secrets before. I knew what happened to my mom, and though I used to think about my dad coming to get me, and saying he was sorry for leaving me with my cruel aunt and uncle, and used to make up all sorts of scenarios as to why he hadn't come before… as I got older, I started to accept that he was never going to come.

"We need more beer," she says. "Why don't you run to the store, get me some of my magazines while you're there."

"Sure," I say. "You want some of your cans too?"

She's always had a taste for canned wine. She doesn't like to indulge too often, though. Tries to hold herself to a higher standard than her drunk husband whose brain is so fried he barely knows where he is most days.

"Don't try and butter me up."

I miss Cain so much it hurts.

The dull ache that began when I first left Denholm has only increased with time. It is a physical pain that makes me feel weaker and stronger at the same time. Weaker, because it saps my energy. Stronger, because it is like an impetus to return to him. I find my steps turning toward his unseen form, many thousands of miles away.

"What are you doing!?"

My aunt's irritated snap draws me out of what looks like my meandering in the field. I have been walking around in circles for almost an hour now, trying to decide what to do. I have to keep talking myself out of running back to him. I know he'd probably never forgive me, but I'll only feel the way I felt with him when I'm with him again.

"I don't know," I say. "Trying to think."

"What do you need to think about? That head of yours should be empty. It usually is."

I've endured her barbs for years, so I really don't know why that one hits harder than any of the others that came before it. I feel something inside me snap as I turn toward my aunt and words come out of my mouth. "I know what you are."

Her eyes narrow at me. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"I know what you are." I repeat myself, this time with more intention. "I know what my mother must have been. I know."

She pauses for a long moment, then snorts. "So that's what you were doing off in the big city. Not getting work. Getting railed."

I let her crude intimation slide, because it is confirmation that she knows, and that is what matters. I am not trying to get into a fight with my aunt. I am trying to find out who the hell I am. You don't just meet the nicest, hottest man of your life—well, he was mean at first, but then he turned nice—and then sleep with him, and then find out you're a wolf, and then a substandard wolf. And then… well. I know the rest. But I also know I need to find out so much more. My aunt, love her or hate her, has the answers I need.

"Come inside," she says. "We need to talk."

I follow her inside with very limited hope. I know she's not going to just tell me what I want to know. That would be far too nice and far too helpful of her. I know she's going to mess with me, tell me what she wants me to know, and nothing more than that. But if I'm smart, it might be possible to get more information out of her than she thinks she is giving me. My aunt is mean, but she's also stupid sometimes, and that's one of her best qualities.

"She finally knows what she is, Dale."

My aunt makes the announcement with just a hint of cruel triumph.

"Is that right, Ruby?" My uncle's response could indicate he knows what she's talking about, or he might not have a clue. It might just be one of his rote phrases that he rotates through. He moves a shaking hand toward his beer and takes a long, slurping drink. I hate the sound, but like most disgusting things in this house, it's hard to avoid.

Colton laughs at me. It's not a pleasant sound. I've been staying clear of him since he came home. He's probably going to end up on house arrest. Sounds like he fucked up this time. Right now, his charges are pending. He doesn't care about that, though. He never has. Colton is a few years younger than me, and he was never a nice kid. He has too much of my aunt and uncle in him.

He used to put dead lizards in my bed and in my book bag to scare me. Later on, he'd snoop and snitch on me. Not for doing anything wrong. I never did anything wrong, but for doing anything remotely good. He'd let my aunt know if I did a good job, and she'd make certain that I knew I wasn't special.

I have braced myself for whatever terrible things are going to come out of her mouth, but I know that whatever I think, there's a pretty high chance that what she says will be worse.

My aunt gives a humorless chuckle, sounding like an older, meaner version of Colton. The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree.

"It's not been easy on us, keeping this secret for so long. Letting you think you were normal. Watching you walk around the world as if there wasn't any part of you that you need to be ashamed of."

"I wish you had told me. It was quite a shock…"

"Oh, I bet it was, little miss prissy. I bet you were horrified to find out you're an animal deep down. No better than any other animal." She laughs at me in cruel tones. "I would have paid money to see you after that, covered in your pelt, maddened with hunger, ready to rip out your mate's throat. Did he mark you then? Bite your neck so hard you bled, then beat you until he got the beast out of you and took your human form again?"

My eyes widen as she describes something that must have happened to her by the way her tone goes all guttural and visceral. I don't tell her that didn't happen to me. I don't tell her that instead of being brutalized, I was protected and loved and shown how to behave, but not with any cruelty.

"Who was it? Some filthy city wolf? A gang member?"

"Something like that," I mumble. "I don't want to talk about it."

"He did you a favor. You've always been so soft. You need to be toughened up. That's why your uncle and I supported your going to the city. You needed to learn a few things. Now you know."

This is as kind as my aunt gets. I think, on some twisted level, she believes what she is saying. The world hasn't been kind to her, and she hasn't been kind to anyone else. She believes in giving what she gets, and getting what she gives.

Before my uncle drank himself out of his mind, and out of his body, he was cruel. Really cruel. Sometimes I'd hear them. I'd hear her cry. They'd fight a lot, but I used to feel sorry for her, until I realized she was always going to take it out on me. I'm the bottom of this particular food chain.

"It's good. Now you can go with your cousin on his next job."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Colton has been the one keeping this place afloat since your uncle got sick. He's the one who has kept the roof over our heads."

The roof leaks, but pointing that out would be petty and only invite all their rage.

"What jobs does Colton do?"

"I'll show you," Colton says. "Don't worry. I've got a system."

"I'm not going to sell drugs," I say. "I don't want a criminal record."

My aunt stalks over to me, her face twisted with disdain for my attempt to stay legit. "You think you're not already a criminal?" She takes hold of me by the ear between two thin, but strong fingers. She twists to make me look up at her at an agonizing angle. "You think the thing you are, the animal you become, isn't a crime here in this world of men? We are monsters. We are irredeemable. We are predators. And we will hunt any way we can to survive. Do you understand me?"

There's some part of me, some terrible, weak animal part of me that responds to her cruelty. I am a wolf without an alpha. I am alone, I am vulnerable, and my inner beast desperately needs to follow.

I answer with a whimper.

"Good," she says, releasing my ear. "You know, this is a whole new era for us. We're going to be the family we once were. Your mother was a very good retriever."

"Retriever?"

"That means I told her what to get, and she got it. Now Colton, he's better at selling, but you're a pretty little thing, and the boys around here are rough. So you're going to stay out of the way, and you're going to use your wolf form and your wiles to get what I tell you to get. Then Colton will sell it. See how that works? Everybody has their part to play."

I nod.

I do not want to commit crimes. I want a normal life. I want to go back to the city and disappear back into the mass of people, none of whom have any idea who or what I am. I want to go back to Cain, but I know he won't want me now, not once he realizes what kind of trash I am. He will find someone else. I know he will. His pack is full of females who worship the ground he walks on.

A little voice in the back of my mind tells me that if he wanted them, he could have had them at any time, that he chose me and told me that I'd be his mate for life. But I am not good enough for him. I look around myself, I see the family I came from, and I see the place I came from. I see how poor and stupid and unworthy we all are, how we keep choosing that poorness and stupidity and unworthiness. My uncle drank himself stupid. My aunt has wiles. She didn't need to live like this. Even Colton had potential before he started getting picked up by the cops in his early teens.

I thought I was going to be the one who was going to escape. But there's no escaping what's inside you. I am made of polluted land and a neglected home. I am made of poverty and cruelty, and going to college and getting a job at a big shiny corporation and getting fucked by my boss isn't going to change that.

These are the things my aunt would say, but she doesn't need to say them. Now I say them to myself.

"Show me that wolf form," she says.

I'm not even sure I can assume it on command.

"I haven't been in it much," I stammer. "I don't know."

"I can force it out of you if I have to," she says.

I catch a scent from her that I don't think I have ever smelled before. It is one of pure female dominant threat. She will hurt me if she needs to.

"I just need a minute," I say.

I go to the bathroom, because it's the only place in the house that has a lock on the door. I take off my clothes, and I look at myself in the mirror. Deep dark eyes look back at me. There's a stranger in the glass, someone who used to think better of me and now thinks nothing of me at all.

It might be a relief to turn myself into the beast now. I think less in that form. Things hurt less. Life is much more simple.

I take a deep breath in, and I let it out, and I embrace the pain and sink into myself as a simpler, better thing.

Shifting hurts. But it hurts less when you're already in so much pain. The physical ache of shifting flesh and bone is preferable to the agony of circling thoughts of regret and shame. I shrink in some ways, and I grow in others, and instead of being naked, I am covered in fur and a thick pelt which protects me in a way my thin human skin never could.

I also realize that I just shifted in the bathroom after locking the door, and my wolf body doesn't have opposable thumbs. I've locked myself in here.

It takes me a moment to even understand. My mind is so different in this state. All I have to do is knock a latch over, which I can do with nose and paws. My claws scrabble inefficiently at the door, chipping old paint. It takes a moment to pull the latch open, but I manage it.

The smell of the place is intense. It should repulse me, but this is where I was raised. This is home. I smell my family. I smell their similarity to me. It is a comfort. But there is something else going on too. An absence of scent. An absence of my mate. I miss Cain. I miss him like I am missing something fundamental to my survival. I missed him in my usual human form too, but being an animal makes it so much more intense. There are no other thoughts to distract me from what I am experiencing. There is just the experience itself. The longing. The need.

"What's taking so long?" My aunt's voice rings out, disrupting my misery. I have to do what she wants. I've always had to do what she wants. For as long as I've been alive, I've done what she wanted. That's how life works.

I pad out through the hall and present myself to my aunt, and by default, Dale and Colton.

There's a brief gasp, which is quite astonishing from a woman who never seems surprised by anything.

"Look at you!"

I didn't think they'd be surprised. I thought for sure I would look just like them. I thought she'd make some scathing comment about me, but I didn't think she would be surprised.

"Look at this!" She points at me, laughing. Colton joins in with a snickering nastiness. He doesn't care what I look like. He doesn't see me at all. I'm like wallpaper to these people. Wallpaper that occasionally gets them a beer. Even Uncle Dale manages a chuckle.

"What the… I said retriever. I didn't think you'd actually look like a dog!"

I run back to the bathroom and shift immediately. It hurts like hell. The ache goes right into my bones. Tears run down my face as I take deep, gasping breaths. I don't know if I'm crying because of the physical pain, the emotional pain, or if this is because taking my wolf form, if only for a few minutes, made me crave Cain so deeply, I think I might be going mad.

I get my clothes back on, planning to limp out to the fields behind the house. I just want to be alone. There's something so wrong with me that even the worst people in the world are laughing at me for how deficient I am on the inside. Being laughed at for my wolf form is humiliating. It's like having the very core of myself on show, and having it be mocked.

Before I can slink outside, my aunt comes and grabs me, dragging me from the bathroom by the arm. I wish I had the will or strength to resist her, but I never did have that, and I think I never will.

"This is perfect," she says. "I always thought your slut mother ran off in heat and got herself mated by a wolf who discarded her like the trash she was, but she didn't even wait for a wolf. She mated with some white trash waste of DNA and this is what she made."

This is now the second time I have been mocked for my appearance.

"You're perfect," my aunt says unexpectedly. "Colton looks like a wild creature, but you pass as a domestic stray. You're going to be able to get into all sorts of places he never could without being shot. We're going to make so much money."

"I don't think I want to do that."

She slaps me. Hard. Right across the face. Pain bursts through my ear. Everything goes high pitched and fuzzy as my body responds to the blow.

"What you want to do and what you're going to do are two different things. What you want to do doesn't matter. And what you're going to do is what I am goddamn well telling you to do."

I cringe away from her, my inner animal and the much smaller, sadder, more scared part of me all aligned with the fear of her. I will do what she says, because there is no room in my body or brain for dissent.

"You see those houses? People come from big cities, like the one you went to, and then they move out here and they buy up the land and build ridiculous houses on it. Then they sit empty half the year. We've been hitting a lot of those places for copper. Some of them have it as a decoration. Anyway. You can go up there in your dog form, and you can sniff out anything worth taking."

I don't think this is going to go well.