Forbidden Alliance: A Werewolf's Tale (Forbidden Alliance Trilogy) (25 page)

Dad continued yell
ing
at me the entire drive home, through the house, and up to my room, where I slammed the door, locking it behind me.

“
Was it not
you
who said to play nice with the vampires?
Was it not
you
who told me to go out and have some fun and try new things?
What in the hell?
Why is it that when I finally do,
you
fr
eak
out?
” I yelled for what felt like the hundredth time. “
It isn’t like I was off killing people, swapping fluids
with a damn vampire or anything!
Tanis’ mom was even there, so we were totally supervised
...
for the most part
,” I mumbled the latter and threw myself back on the bed.

“You are grounded!” Mom yelled before laughing
halfway through the idle threat
.

That translated to
Mom
wasn’t
nearly
as pissed as Dad
,
and that tomorrow morning, after a mother-daughter talk, all
would
be forgiven.

I was startled
by the soft knock at my window.

“Jay, let me in.”

I hurried to the window to let Yahto in.

“Hey, what are you doing out there?”
I asked.

It had
been at least three years since Yahto crawled in my bedroom window like a misplaced asexual Dawson Leary.
I used to tease him by putting on that shitty
Dawson’s Creek
song when he’d climb in my window.
He didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did.

“Fishing,” he
said, making a face and
rolled his eyes.
“What in the hell do you think I’m doing out here?
I came to see you.”
He hugged me tight and threw us back on the bed,
and we stretched
out like we used to do as kids.
“Please tell me that you didn’t skip school to suck face with a vampire,” he groaned.

I smacked him in the chest.
“His name
is Tanis, not vampire, and yes...no...not really...
something in between.
He picked me up for school and I kind of lost it.
Not because he picked me up, but because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and last night I realized a lot of stuff and I didn’t like it.”

“Wait, you were tog
ether last night?” he whispered, the unmistakable sound of disgust in his tone made me smack him again.

“Yeah, you were supposed to pick me up from work and flaked as usual.”

Yahto smashed the butt of his palm against his
forehead.
“Shit, I totally forgot.
I am so sorry.
Please, oh please, tell me that I didn’t steer you to the arms of a vampire.”

I snorted.
“No.
You give yourself way too much credit.
Anyway, Tanis was waiting for me when I got off of work in case I needed a ride.
We waited until six-
thirty-one for you, and then he took me to Bellingham for dinner.
We at
e at that Italian place, D’Anna’s
on State Street.”

“No shit?
How was it?
I’ve always wondered.”

“It was delicious.
I wanted to kill him when I did the math.
Tanis didn’t think twice about dropping over a grand on dinner!”

“Shut up,” he gasped.
“Seriously?
That suckhead spent a thousand dollars on dinner?
And you didn’t even have to put out?!”

“Shut up!” I smacked him again.
“His name is Tanis, not suck
head or vampire or Count Suckula.
And no, I didn’t have to put out and we didn’t kiss.
We almost kissed today, while we were swimming, but his cousin interrupted us.”

“Wait, where were you swimming and you seriously want to kiss him, even though he has fangs and is nothing more than an animated corpse?”

Oh my god!
Why am I talking to him about this?

“
I have fangs, you have fangs, everyone has fans, even humans,” I reminded him. “And
, just so you know,
that
animated corpse is the only person who has ever treated me like a person,” I snapped
at him
.
“Sorry
,
that was rude.
You and your family are
part of the few
exception
s
, but I’m tired of being different.
Now that there are others around who are different
as well
, I don’t feel alone anymore.”

Yahto kissed the side of my head and wrapp
ed his arms around me even more, pulling me into him.
“Sweetie, you’ve never been alone.
You know that.”

“I know, but this is different.
I like the way I feel when I’m around him.
I like the way he makes me feel.
Is that so bad?
For a brief moment...when I’m around with,
I feel normal.”

He shook his head but didn’t say anything else.

We lay there for a few hours, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, just holding
each other like we used to do when we were younger, until he broke the silence.

“I need to tell you something,” he whispered.

“You can tell me anything, you know that,” I assured him.
“You’re my best and only friend, most of the time.”

“Ugh,”
Yahto
groaned
and sat
up, so I did likewise.

What has him so upset?

H
e fished something out of his pocket and held it tightly in his hand.
“When my brother and I found you, you were completely naked, except for his.”
Hastily, he shoved his hand at me and dropped the wad of
metal
in my lap.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen to you, and we didn’t want the white man to get it in case it was worth
something...y’know how that goes
.
I totally forgot about it until I found it while moving some shit from my brother’s room.
I thought he had given it to your parents, but you know how flighty he is, he’d forget his ass if it wasn’t attached.
Either way, happy early birthday,” he
said with a
shrug.

I untangled the
knotted pile of
silver and studied it.
The snake chain had a single dangling pendant hanging from it.
T
he pendant was an X on its side
with a circle in the middle
which
was filled with some kind of beautiful blue
glass
with smaller X
’
s in the corners.

I punched Yahto in the arm before fastening the necklace around my neck.

“What in the hell, you forgot?”
I demanded in a harsh whisper.

“Dude, you might be blonde but I’m really the blond here, you know that!
Hell, I forgot my own birthday this year, remember?
I’m sorry
,
babe. You
know I didn’t mean to keep it from you.
I love you, you know that. P
lease forgive me?”

Why do men have to be so girlie and emotional?

“Don’t I always?” I
rhetorically asked before I
kissed his forehead and he crushed me in a hug.

After that
,
I didn’t want company anymore.
I kissed him goodbye and he exited the way he
had come
in, leaving me to contemplate life and the only piece of my past
which
I now had.

The mystery of the unusual necklace, mixed with the rain sheeting against the window, kept me up, to say the least.

Sadly, that was what I
was
telling myself.

I should
have
be
en
sleeping, or trying to figure out the meaning of
the
necklace, but all I
could
think about
was
Tanis.
His face
was
all I
saw
when I close
d
my eyes; his
light tan skin, wide jaw and narrow chin,
large,
almond eyes
which are in
the most beautiful
,
haunting
shade of
blue with silver streaked through them.
His lips, oh god his lips,
were
so
beautiful and soft
, not to mention,
inviting.
I
still couldn’t
believe we were so close to kissing!

Mental
note to self; kick Romeo’s ass for that one.

A soft rapping came at my window.

I rolle
d over and looked at the clock: one-thirty.
Yahto should
have
be
en
asleep by
then
.

The sound came again
,
and I
suddenly
felt
as if I was in
some bad horror movie.

I looked down at my outfit and groaned; I guess
I was
dressed the part:
white ribbed cotton tank top and
white cotton panties
—just what every axe wielding serial killer
was
looking for!

Scared but curious, I headed over to the window and peeked out of the curtains.
I jumped back, grasping at my chest with one hand, covering my mouth with the other.

Staring back at me through the rain and glass were two large
blue
,
silver-streaked
eyes.

Tanis smiled, that crooked smirk of a smile that
seeming clouded
my
mind
in a thick, possessive
fog of
incoherency
to the likes of nothing I’
ve ever know, and
caused
my heart to race
embarrassingly loud
.
Not that I needed help with that, my heart was racing from him scaring the hell out of me!

I opened the window.
“What are you doing out here?” I whispered.

His eyes
moved
over my face many times before
they
worked
down
my body
and up again
.

Tanis licked his lips, and his eyes sparkled in the dim light. “Forgive my intrusion
this hour
and the unconventional means, however, I
simply
could not
wait to see you again.
That
is
two times now that I
have not
gotten to kiss you goodnight, and that
is not
acceptable to me.”

Tanis risked crossing the boundaries, starting a fight between our species, just so he could kiss me goodnight?

It truly was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me.

“Okay,” I whispered and stepped back, waving
him
inside.

He
hesitated and bit his bottom lip.