Blood Moon (Howl #2) (14 page)

Chris looked at Kyle, prompting him to say something. Finally, Kyle said, “Look, Josh came to me after Lilly died. He was devastated. Jason has no idea, and I knew you wouldn’t mind. Anyway, he t
old me why Jason killed Lilly.”

Samara raised an eyebrow. Everyone in the pack stared at her, and their eyes told her that they all knew what Kyle was going to say nex
t. “You told everyone but me?”

“We didn’t want you to feel guilty,” Colby intervened. “
Luke doesn’t know either because we figured that you would be able to hear it through his thoughts or he wouldn’t keep it a secret from you.” Colby shot Luke an apologetic look. “I feel guilty
because it’s not really your fault . . . I’m the one who put you up to pretending to initiate
with the Vyka.”

“Wait, Lilly’s murder has to do with
our plan that night
?” Samara asked. “I don’t understand. I thought Jason killed her because there was something going on between the two of them . . . they were fighting over something. Or I thought it was because Lilly was refusing to cooperate and be on his pack.
He
really
killed her
because of me?” Suddenly, Samara was beginning to feel sick to her stomach. She didn’t know what she had to do with Lilly’s death, but the guilt wa
s beginning to build up inside
her
once more.

“Jason killed Lilly because she came to us to
get us to help her stop your initiation
,” Kyle said. “She thought that you were going to go through
with the
initiation . . . she had no reason to believe that you weren’t. She had no idea you were just pretending. Lilly came to me that night, to tell me that I had to stop you before it was too late.” Kyle paused, blowing a puff of air, watching it form a cloudy circle in the cold autumn night. “
All of us . . . we didn’t know that what we were doing that night would have affected Lilly. We just thought that if and when Jason caught on, he would have started an attack on you. We were prepared for that. But w
hen Jason came looking for her, he tapped into her thoughts
because she didn’t know how to
completely
block him out yet
. . . and he realized what she was do
ing. That’s why he killed her.”

Samara slumped down on the log that she was
standing next to
. She felt the tears form behind her eyes. Lilly had been trying to help her . . . and now, she was gone.

*
 

Luke pulled into Kyle’s driveway and climbed out of the car
. Samara and Kyle followed him.

Samara hadn’t felt like going home right now, so she’d called her parents to tell them that she was going to spend the night at her cousin’s house. Her mom only objected a little because it was a
school night before giving in.
Samara thought that her mom probably knew that she needed to be around family right now, especially since she no longer had Seth in her life.

The truth was,
Sam
a
ra
didn’t think she could handle facing
her parents right now. She still hadn’t filled her m
om in with the details about her
phone
call with Detective Scotts, and
she was going to have a difficult time talking about Lilly right now without crying. Samara had never felt
this guilty in her whole life.

Aunt Rae swung the front door open. It was obvious th
at she had been expecting them. Her aunt’s dark hair was cut into a short bob. She looked so much different from the last time Samara had seen her, when it was long and curly.
Her eyes had dark circles under them, and it looked like she had aged about ten years in just a few months.
“Sam! How are you, sweetie?” her aunt said, pulling Samara in
to
a
warm embrace when she saw her.

Samara shrugged. “I’m okay. I’m just . . . s
till adjusting to everything.”

“Of course,” Aunt Rae clucked sympathetically. “This is some life-changing stuff. I’m surprised you’re taking it as well as you are. Lord knows I didn’t when Kyle went through the change.” Her aunt said ‘the change’ the way one would refer to a Trojan virus;
a malicious, destructive thing.

It was a little ironic that ‘the change’ was used to describe so many different things in life – pu
berty,
periods, and menopause. Sama
ra and the other werewolves went
through one of the biggest changes of all, and they didn’t complain half as much as a menopausal woman bitched about her hot flashes. In fact, Samara had never heard any of the wolves on her pack complain at all. Then again, they had been more prepared for this than she had. At least their families had filled them in on what was going to happ
en to them, instead of leaving them completely in the dark about it like she had been.

“So,
how’s
Billy?” Samara asked her aunt, glancing around the house.
As Luke and Kyle scampered off into the kitchen, Rae sat down on the beige microfiber sectional.
The furniture had recently been rearranged, but the house still looked the same as she remembered it. Samara had
slept over
at her aunt’s house
many times
, camping out in the living room under a fort that she, Seth, and Kyle had made out o
f couch cushions and blankets.

“He’s good,” Rae replied. “He works a lot.” Samara knew that Billy, Rae’s new husband, was often away on business. Samara hadn’t gotten to know Billy that well yet; most of what she had heard about him
came from Kyle or her parents.
Her parents weren’t too impressed with Rae’s new husband, but Samara figured that had little to do with Billy himself.

Most of the family had been shocked when Rae had gotten engaged only a few months after her first husband, Kyle’s father, James, had died. Rae had said that James wouldn’t have wanted her to be miserable for the rest of life, and there was no reason to wait because she had met someone who
she
knew could
help her put her life back together.

Samara’s parents hadn’t agreed that it was
the right time for Rae to get married
, but Sam
ara had been
happy for her. She would have hated for her aunt to be completely miserable after Uncle James had died. Speaking of which
. . . .

“Aunt Rae, did Uncle James really die from a heart attack?” Samara asked her aunt quietly. This was the first time she had ever asked questio
ns about James since he had passed away
, and she wasn’t really sure how Rae would react to it. Even though Rae had gotten remarried, she surely still had
a spot in her heart for James.
Samara was also making assumptions.
Kyle hadn’t really told her if his father was a werewolf, though he had made it sound like he wasn’t one. Samara got the feeling that he might have been avoiding talking about it, though, especially if the answer came with any pain.

Rae looked down at the floor and shook her head. “No . . . no,
James was a werewolf, Samara.”

“So, he was killed?”

Rae nodded. “There was a big fight. The Ima were trying to stop the Shomecossee from killing a pup who had unknowingly wandered onto their territory. Unfortunately, James was just in the wrong p
lace at the wrong time.
” Her aunt paused, looking up at Rae. “
I know this is all new to you, so I hope I didn’t scare you.
”

“Wow,” Samara whispered. It surprised her that Rae and
Kyle had been able to keep this dark, deep
secret from the
rest of the
family. Samara didn’t know if she could ever be that strong-willed; she couldn’t imagine not talking about it.
She also couldn’t imagine keeping the fact that she was a werewolf a secret from her parents for much longer, either. “Actually,
Aunt Rae,” Samara said, a light bulb going off in her head. “I need to know . . . do my pa
rents know about Grandpa Joe?”

Her face twisted into a facial expression that Samara couldn’t seem to identify. “I don’t know,” Rae whispered, p
utting her face in her hands.

“You don’t know?” Samara asked confusedly. “I mean . . . you and Dad are still close. Didn’t it ever come up in conversation?” Was it possible that only Rae knew about Grandpa Joe and that her dad really
didn’t know?

Rae shook her head, her long, brown curly ringlets moving with it. “I wasn’t allowed to bring it up,” she replied quietly. “Dad had to tell me about it because he was sure that I was going to be the next
woman
in line to be a wolf. He told me when I turned fourteen years old. He was afraid for me, and he made me promise not to tell Reed.” Rae paused, twisting her wedding band around her finger nervously. “When it didn’t happen – when I didn’t become a wolf – Dad made me promise to still never mention it to
your father. And I never did.”

“Why didn’t Grandpa want my dad to know?” Samara asked. It seemed a little strange for her
grand
father to tell Rae
,
and not Samara’s father, Reed. Wasn’t there a chance that her dad could have also been a werewolf? Surely, it couldn’t have been
limited to a female child only.

After all, Samara’s own brother was a werewolf, so it definitely didn’t skip the male
family members.
Plus, from what Samara knew, the werewolf world was very male-dominated. If anything, Samara would have expected her father to be a werewolf than her aunt if either of them had gotten the gene.

“This lifestyle is dangerous for anyone, but it’s especially dangerous for our family, Sam. Dad didn’t want Reed to get involved in all of this. He was afraid he would go looking for trouble.” Rae looked up at Samara. “As Dad was dying, he made it even clearer t
hat Reed could never find out.”

“So, then, he
really
doesn’t know,” Samara said quietly. The truth was that she had been hoping that her father did know that werewolves ran in their bloodline.
It would have made it easier to break the news to him that she had gotten the gene.
Now, she was going to have to deal with telling him – and letting him know that his whole life had basically been a lie, that his father and his sister had both kept huge
secrets from him.
Just the idea that telling him might come between her dad and his sister made Samara feel saddened.

“I’m not completely sure,” Rae said, furrowing her brows and shaking her head. “On the night our mother was murdered, Reed saw wolves in the backyard right after the murderers left the house. He asked me if I believed in werewolves, but
he never brought it up again.”

Recently, Samara’s mom had told her that her grandma had been murdered in the family’s home – and that her dad had hid in the bedroom the whole time it happened. This was when she had questioned her mom about Grandpa Joe to see if she knew about him being a werewolf. Samara had never questioned her grandmother’s death before – mostly because she knew that it was a sensitive topic for her father, but also because she had never even met the woman. Now, she wondered, though. “Was Grandma murdered by
a werewolf?” Samara asked Rae.

Rae shrugged. “
I’ve thought about it, but
I wasn’t there that night. I was
at
a sleepover
at one of my friend’s houses
. It wasn’t long after Mom was killed that Dad told me that I might become a werewolf, though. It never seemed like a coincidence to me.
”

“My m
om mentioned that it was one of his co-workers or business clients or something who murdered
Grandma,” Samara pointed out.
“Is there any truth to that?”

“That’s what he always claimed,” Rae replied, pulling off the sweatshirt that she had been wearing. Samara noticed that Rae had lost a lot of weight since her husband had
passed away
. Samara couldn’t ever remember her aunt ever looking this fragile. “We never met anyone he did business with,” Rae went on. “And to be honest, I think that he kept a lot of things from us because he feared that telling us the truth would
only
put us in danger. I just wish he had told us everything now,
or you know, written it down somewhere,
so that we would h
ave known what to prepare for.”

Samara nodded. From the kitchen, she heard Luke call her name. As she stood up to go see what he wanted, Rae grabbed her wrist. “Sam? We don’t think Kyle’s in much danger because he’s not a McKinley. He’s a Robinson. But you
are
a McKinley. If any of Dad’s enemies want to find you, they will, Sam. It’s just a matter of time.”

Chapter 12