Cry Wolf (13 page)

“I know it’s selfish to think of Ki as mine when she’s clearly chosen someone else,” Max said.

“Not everyone is made for the unique life that Britt, Jake and Renee have carved out for themselves,” Kelly said. “Sometimes people are only made for one at a time. It’s not selfish. Does Ki know how you feel about it?”

“She has an inkling. But I can’t deny her anything she loves,” Max said. “She doesn’t love him the same way she loves me, but she does love him. And the poor man has been through enough in his life without my telling him he can’t be with Ki when he needs…” Max tried to search for the right word.

“Intimacy?” Kelly said.

He pointed at her. “That. That’s exactly what he needs when he’s with Ki. Not just wants. Needs. He’s just always so alone, even when he’s surrounded by dogs or when he’s sleeping with us, which was why this werewolf thing packed a real punch for all of us.”

Max sighed, deflating a little.

“I’m also concerned that he can’t take care of her like before. He doesn’t have to change to hurt her. I don’t know whether you noticed, but Ki is a tiny person and Malcolm is much larger,” Max said.

Kelly laid out her hands as though asking for his palms so that she could read them.

“First, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Malcolm encroaching on your time with Ki. He isn’t looking for intimacy from every single encounter. I can help fulfil those other needs,” Kelly said.

“You make it sound so clinical,” Max said.

“I’m just practical,” Kelly said. “Second, your devotion to your mate is honourable. The real reason Ki continues to be with Malcolm is because you let her, and you let her because you know her truest devotion is to you. Malcolm is secondary because he hasn’t desired anything more than that. Maybe you only knew that subconsciously. Let it now be etched into your conscious mind.”

Max lowered his gaze, his expression a queasy mix of shame and relief.

“Third, and most important, if you wanted me to join you, you could’ve just asked,” Kelly said.

“I wasn’t asking for
that
…” Max sputtered.

Kelly laughed. “I’m kidding, Max. Ki will be wearing silver, which will help. And I’ll sense if something goes wrong. I’ll come running as fast as I can to defuse the situation. If necessary, though, I’ll oversee the entire process from a distance, voyeuristic though it may be.”

“I think I’d feel more comfortable if you were actually there,” Max said, “I mean, not
comfortable
comfortable, but safer.”

“Both Ki and Malcolm would object to my being there in person. It’s pretty clear Malcolm wants Ki tomorrow night, not me,” Kelly said. “I have an unsettling feeling about them being together so soon, but it’s not a premonition yet.”

“What’s the difference between your feelings and premonitions?” Max asked, brow furrowed. Now that she had planted her worry in his head, he wasn’t going to leave that alone any time soon. It had already set in roots.

Kelly wished she hadn’t said anything about her concerns, but at the same time, she hadn’t wanted to mislead Max about Ki’s safety.

“My feelings are just instinct. They’re sometimes inspired by magic, but they’re not precise by any means, any more than a mind can trust déjà vu. My premonitions, however, are never wrong. They may not
happen
, because they show only a possibility, and possibilities can be changed as soon as they are known, but they aren’t wrong. The prophecies, however…” Kelly said, thinking of the writing and drawings on the barn door and the wall. That indescribable feeling returned deep in her gut when she thought of the name ABRAHAM once again. “The prophecies are like an emergency warning system. They always come true, although I don’t always know what they mean. There’s nothing to do but brace yourself for a storm.”

“The painting thing you did last night,” Max said, “when you freaked everyone out, those were prophecies?”

“As usual, they came in threes—the past, the near present and the more distant future. Distant is relative. It could be the distance between a day and a week or a year and ten years,” Kelly said.

Her stomach clenched from explaining her least favourite magic. She took a few moments to relax her spine from the rigid pole it had become.

“So you don’t see anything bad absolutely happening, right?” Max said. “I mean, for Ki and Malcolm.”

“No,” Kelly said. “Not that it gets the rest of us out of the woods, so to speak.
Something’s
going to happen. The magic just hasn’t given me the courtesy of letting me know what it is. It’s resorted back to pictures and riddles.” Kelly hit the counter with her fist. “I thought I was done with this after I turned. I thought I had a handle on it.”

Max tilted his head curiously. “You and Grant seem to like being werewolves. Is that common, or are they more like Malcolm?
I
can’t imagine seeking it out. Not with the problems our kind tends to have with yours.” He gestured between the two of them.

“Do you have a problem with me?” Kelly asked.

“No, not
you
specifically. You smell wrong, but a person gets used to it.”

“Well, thank you.”

“No offence.”

“You smell like a meal,” Kelly said.

“Sorry.”

“It requires some adjustment,” Kelly said to answer his question. “When you don’t have a choice in the matter, you learn to live with it. I don’t like all of it, like what your scent does to me, but it’s given me a few things in return. Grant liked the freedom, but he turned it into anarchy. Malcolm will find his non-lethal silver lining eventually.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Max asked.

“I think he’s already started.”

“If he doesn’t?” Max insisted.

“There have been massacres, followed by bullets to the head,” Kelly said, telling it to him straight. “But like I said, Malcolm is already adjusting. He just needed someone to tell him it was okay to do so.”

“We tried,” Max said defensively. “We tried to tell him he was okay by us.”

Kelly held her tongue this time. She couldn’t explain it to him in a way that he would understand.

Telling Malcolm he was okay by them implied that there was something he needed to be forgiven for. He didn’t need someone telling him that he was okay and that they could handle him being around, regardless of the ingrained animosity between their two species. He needed someone like him to show that being a werewolf didn’t mean stalking the countryside looking for a bloodbath. A man could still have all his principles and live in his old world, with some modifications.

And more than anything, he needed to know that he never had to be alone.

“Whatever I’m worried about Malcolm doing, Max, it’s not killing Ki or changing her,” Kelly said.

“Then what is it you’re afraid of?”

“That in the heat of the moment he won’t know his own strength. The same thing you said you were worried about before we got into the beating heart of your concern,” Kelly said, remembering the bruises and scratches on Renee. “Still, those things can be healed.”

“Whoa, wait,” Max said. “What needs healing?”

“You’ve never woken up in the morning with something that needed a bandage?” Kelly asked.

“No,” Max said, raising his eyebrows. “Why, have you?”

“Werewolves rarely need bandages,” Kelly replied. She stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “There’s really no point in worrying too hard about something that even I can’t see, honey. All you’ll have to do is call me with your mind.” She scratched her nails over his scalp, making him duck. “By that time, I’ll probably already be on my way.”

Before she left the kitchen to go back to the greenhouse, Max called after her, “Don’t tell me Malcolm being with someone else doesn’t bother you too.”

“Not in the same way,” Kelly said. She didn’t think Max had heard her.

* * * *

No buzz from the gate signalling visitors, no knock on her door, and yet she knew…

Company’s coming
.

Kelly closed her computer, where she’d been handling some of her online magic business affairs. She pulled on her robe and climbed out of her trailer. Her bare feet met greyish brown grass, but they occasionally encountered patches of melting snow. She carefully made her way to the middle of the open lawn between the buildings and the forest. Dogs came up to her, sniffed with their usual caution then darted away.

“Renee, I need you now
,” Kelly thought.

The log cabin door squeaked as it opened and closed. Renee ran out to her.

“Usually I’d be worried if I started hearing things. Good thing I know the sound of your voice, even if it’s in my head. What’s going on?” Renee asked.

“Get the dogs in, as many as you can. I don’t think the pack will attack them, but just in case,” Kelly said.

Renee stared at Kelly with that closed-off gaze that made people uneasy when they didn’t know her. With Renee, it was all or nothing. She’d either aggressively avoid a person’s gaze or stare right at them, barely blinking.

“Should I find Malcolm?” Renee asked.

“It might be best,” Kelly replied.

“Okay.”

Renee ran back into the cabin, turned on the compound intercom and said as calmly as she could, “Wolf pack visiting. Please return the dogs to the dog barn as soon as possible.”

Kelly stood eerily motionless as frantic action occurred around her. Dog packs were led back to the compound. Some of the shapeshifters stayed in dog skin and joined the dogs for their own safety, but Renee’s primary pack came out to join Kelly after they had squared all the dogs away.

Ki was wearing a silver necklace she had never worn before, a small stylised bird. Kelly could sense that it was real silver. Max stood behind her, his arm around her shoulder as though ready to pull her back at any moment. It was funny in a way, because Ki was small, but in dog skin she was significantly bigger than Max’s Yorkie terrier. Not that a hound mix would be much of a threat to any werewolf.

“Are they close?” Jake asked, the set of his jaw tense.

He put himself ahead of Kelly by habit, which she would have to correct eventually, but it warmed her from the inside that he thought of her as part of his pack to protect, lycanthropy notwithstanding. Britt, too, was there in malamute form, standing a little ahead of Renee, her back leg pressed against Renee’s jeans.

“They’re in the sanctuary, running in wolf skin. They’ll get here quickly,” Kelly said.

She heard the click of a gun behind her. Renee lifted her rifle, the sterling silver knife duct-taped to the end to form a makeshift bayonet.

“Is that really necessary?” Malcolm asked. He warily approached, his eyes trained on the knife.

“Even if it isn’t necessary, it’s my duty,” Renee said. “I need to protect my dogs and my shapeshifters, and I can’t do that with anything other than this. Am I going to have to use it, Kelly?” Renee asked.

“Probably not,” Kelly said. “I think they come in peace. You may have to establish that you’re armed, though, if the alpha thinks you’re easy prey.”

Renee removed her finger from the trigger but continued to hold the gun.

“Is there anything I have to be prepared for?” Malcolm asked in Kelly’s ear. His energy was all werewolf on edge, fidgeting and shifting his weight from side to side.

“You’re not obligated to obey the alpha, but it can open you up to a dominance fight,” Kelly replied, “since you’re a free agent and thus a threat.”

“I don’t want a fight,” Malcolm said.

“You might feel differently when you see him. But if you don’t, I suggest you let me do the talking,” Kelly said. “An alpha will be less threatened by a bitch.”

Rogues were an unknown quantity. They could challenge the alpha or the head bitch and had the potential to completely upend pack dynamics. Tensions could easily run high, and werewolves were not known for their ability to reign in emotions.

She kissed his cheek lightly, a small claim but a claim nonetheless if the pack decided to make a fuss.

Everyone knew the wolves were close when the dogs in the barn began to bark.

The first werewolf—the alpha, by his confidence—emerged from behind the trees in his human skin. He could have sent scouts out to the flanks for an ambush attack, but instead all of his forces were behind him, spread out a little more than the shapeshifter pack but still held together. Atypical for werewolf attack behaviour. Kelly sighed in relief.

The alpha was a dark man, skin almost dusky, and like the rest of the werewolves emerging behind him, he was naked as the day he was born. He was a little shorter than his swagger suggested, with the same hidden strength in the cords of his muscles as most werewolves. Following him were three men and five women. Right behind him, a man and a woman took the places of greatest importance, best able to protect the alpha.

The woman was obviously head bitch, although head bitch didn’t always take first guard with the alpha. It was easy to tell, though, because of the way she orientated herself towards the alpha at the same time that she protected the pack behind her.

Kelly had been alpha’s bitch and had taken role of head bitch by default, but she’d never quite done things the way they were supposed to be done. David hadn’t minded. She’d had other means at her disposal to watch his back.

The head bitch crouched slightly, fingernails turned to claws, but her teeth were still human. Her light brown skin was warm and slightly flushed in the cheeks from the run.

The beta male on alpha’s left wasn’t even remotely orientated towards his alpha. His pale face was like stone, his black hair gleaming blue in the winter light. He wore scars all over, which meant that he was proud of them. Werewolf healing usually rid the body of scars, but some werewolves were able to stop the healing process by sheer will.

Kelly recognised the head bitch as well as some of the rest of the pack, but she knew the alpha only by reputation.

She stepped past Jake and the alpha stopped advancing, meeting her in the middle with an easy grin.

“What are you doing out of your territory, Damien?” Kelly asked politely.

“Everything’s all right. We’re just dropping in,” Damien replied, signalling his pack to stay behind. “We’ve come to invite you back. And the newbie in the back there. Yeah, we see you. We smell you, even over the smell of the shifters.”