Pretty Poison (13 page)

“I don’t care.” Since Noah hadn’t been in the city enough to be familiar with what was available nearby, he stuck to the tried and true. He asked for his standard in-town treat. Fletcher just ordered more of it, several bags bunched on Noah’s lap when they pulled away from the golden arches. Noah washed down his burgers with frosty cold apple juice. Rather than letting his despair swamp him, he squared his shoulders. “Who’s Mia? Are we going to see her?”

“The optometrist first.”

“If Wade gave his permission for me to meet her, isn’t it logical that we can talk about that?”

The tightening of Fletcher’s mouth didn’t invite further discussion, though.

Dr. Wyler’s office was in a strip mall on the edge of town, which was why Noah’s family had selected him. The more distance between Noah and city shifters, the better. Again, the waiting room was eerily empty when they arrived. Jeanette, the bubbly front receptionist, ushered him into an exam room immediately. Unlike the staff at Vanguard, no one here gave Fletcher a second glance and Dr. Wyler grinned genuine pleasure when the machines indicated Noah’s vision had improved. “By half! From 160 to 80.” The optimist swung the arm that aided him in fine-tuning the calibrations away from Noah’s face.

“It’ll be better after the full moon,” Noah said, a smile stretching his lips because he finally believed that. Truly believed it. “Even then, I may always need correction.”

“A patient’s vision sharpening rather than deteriorating with age is a nice change.” The doctor chuckled. “But the full moon is only a week or so away. If you want to save money by waiting a little longer—”

“No,” Fletcher said from his position at the exam room door. “Trudy says that computers are hard on human vision, and Wade insists the boy choose a new laptop before the day is over.” Fletcher glared at Dr. Wyler, as though that were the human’s fault. “I was told you’d have the new prescription ready in twenty-four hours.”

“That costs more.” Dr. Wyler frowned at Fletcher, doubtlessly recalling the thousand times Noah’s family had scraped to afford Noah’s glasses on top of everything else.

“He wore glasses while humans were treating him, and he stared at computer screens then, straining his eyes. Trudy and Wade agree those variables must remain the same. Only his medical therapies should be different.” Fletcher glowered at the optometrist. “Nothing can skew the comparison results. If he’s still wearing glasses while working at computers and the frequency as well as the intensity of his migraines decrease, our treatments worked. Cost is no object.”

Noah’s stomach plummeted to the floor. So that’s why Wade had given in and promised Noah another laptop. The decision had nothing to do with professional respect or valuing the skills Noah brought to the pack. Wade wanted a level playing field to prove the shifter way of doing things was superior to human medical interventions.

As if today’s round of tests at Vanguard weren’t already evidence of that?

“
Noah’s
wishes are what’s important and what I care about.” The optometrist’s forbidding scowl pinched his eyebrows to a deep V and turned the blue eyes behind his own half-moon spectacles to icy chips. “You, I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” he told Dr. Wyler. “Do whatever they want.”

“The glasses will be here tomorrow afternoon then,” Dr. Wyler said to Fletcher, his voice as cold as the arctic tundra. “If pricing truly isn’t an issue, I recommend upgrading to disposable contacts after the full moon if he still needs correction. He’d have more lenses in his kit if a pair vanished in a shift, and contacts would boost his self-esteem considerably. He’s wanted them for years. His family just couldn’t afford it.”

“Dad did the best he could.” Noah looked everywhere, but at Dr. Wyler. And Fletcher. Bitter humiliation flooded through him. “If I wanted contacts, I could’ve bought them with my own money once I started my web design business.”

Dr. Wyler sighed. “You funnel every penny you can spare to your medical bills.”

“Wade will give his mate anything he wants or needs. Price isn’t an issue,” the beta replied. “Are we done?”

“If Noah is keeping the same frames he chose last time—”

“I am.” The wire-rims were geeky and one of the cheapest styles Dr. Wyler carried. Most importantly, the serial number of the frames would already be in Noah’s records, and that would hasten his escape.

“Then we are done,” the optometrist said.

Bad leg or not, Noah shot out of the exam chair. Trudy and Dr. Phares had traded his splint for his brace at Vanguard and his crutches seemed to want to trip rather than support his graceless sprint. Lingering was too painful, though. Embarrassing.

“Noah.”

Fingers clenching on the grips of his crutches, Noah froze in the doorway. He glanced over his shoulder at Dr. Wyler. “Yes?”

The optometrist’s mouth curved. The smile was rueful, the apologetic glimmer in his stare sincere. “I’m truly happy for you.”

Noah was glad
somebody
was. “Thanks.”

He and Fletcher didn’t talk as they clambered back into the dented van. Noah wedged his crutches in the narrow space separating the driver and passenger seats, then buckled his seat belt. He didn’t want to think anymore. Or speak. He couldn’t trust his words. What he said would either reveal his anger or his dejection, when he’d given Wade plenty of weapons to use against him already.

The van pulled onto the street and turned left, leaving the city behind them.

Focusing on vibrant green lawns that melted into fields of cornstalks, Noah no longer cared where they went. He was a tool to Wade. That’s all he knew. The fury and sorrow of that ate at him like corrosive acid.

“He honestly does want what’s best for you,” Fletcher said minutes later. He turned the van onto an unpaved gravel road bisecting cornfields. “Wade’s a good shifter, a great alpha.”

And a lousy mate.
Noah stared out the passenger side window at rows of corn as though he’d never seen a farm or field before in his life. “I’m not a child. Or a pawn on his chess board.”

“He’s trying.” Fletcher brought the van to a stop in front of a blue and white trailer hidden among the corn. A pair of kid’s bikes leaned against a sagging front porch. “Talk to him.”

“He fucks me.” Noah shook his head. “He doesn’t listen to me.”

Fletcher snatched his arm when Noah shifted his weight to fling open the van door. “Talk to him,” he repeated.

The beta heaved out of the van and circled the hood to support Noah on the broken, uneven gravel surface of the driveway, no matter how Noah shrugged and jerked his shoulder to tear away.

“I’m all right,” Noah said, irritation renewing at Fletcher’s hovering. “I grew up on a farm. I don’t need pavement to walk.”

“Wade would pick the flesh from my bones if you wrenched your knee again.”

He didn’t release Noah until they reached the porch stairs. The murmur of a cartoon filtered through the open screen door as Noah climbed the steps, one by one. When he got to the top, he yanked loose of Fletcher’s grip. “If he’s this damn concerned, he should have come to make sure I didn’t wreck my knee himself.”

“I called him before we left Vanguard. He had to be at the job site this morning for a meeting with clients, but he said he’d drive out here as soon as he could get away.” Fletcher hurried past him, stretching for the knob of the screen door. “C’mon.”

Fletcher strode into the trailer without knocking.

“Daddy!”

When Noah stumbled inside, he blinked in shock at the beta and the dark-haired boy clutching a Nerf gun. Noah was no judge of shifter whelps, but the kid looked about eight years old, dressed in denim shorts and a football jersey. The child had glued to Fletcher’s leg, and even with juggling the toy gun, the kid shimmied, trying to scale Fletcher’s side. A brunette dressed in worn jeans and a green T-shirt yelled from the kitchen. “Cease fire!”

Too late.

A foam dart streaked from a hallway beyond the living room. The missile pegged Noah’s center mass.

Laughing, Fletcher wrapped his arms around the boy and hauled him up for a fierce hug. “Noah, this is my son Chase.”

The kid wrapped around his father like a spider monkey, his grin revealing two missing front teeth. “Pleased to meet you,” Chase said, voice woodenly polite. He dipped his head as a gesture of respect, which only dumbfounded Noah more.

No one had ever recognized him as a shifter with a superior rank before.

Fletcher tipped his head toward the frazzled woman in the kitchen. “My mate, Grace.”

The woman glared. Not at Noah, though. Her narrow eyes focused on the hallway. “We do
not
shoot guests.” She tossed frustrated hands in the air. “Your daughter, Fletcher. You deal with her.”

Anchoring the boy more securely to his hip, Fletcher waved at the hallway. “Come on out, sweetie. He won’t bite.”

Nobody emerged from the hallway, but Noah spied pink ribbons streaming from a chestnut brown pigtail slipping around the corner.

“Mommy won’t bite, either. I promise.”

“Coddling her won’t help.” From the kitchen, Grace harrumphed. “She has to learn manners.”

“Mia has manners. No kill shot. She didn’t shoot him in the head.” The boy lifted the Nerf gun to Fletcher’s temple. “Surrender or die, Daddy.”

Fletcher heaved a sigh. “You’ve been letting him play Call of Duty.”

“They deserved a reward for staying on-task during their homeschool lessons. And I needed a break.” Grace grimaced. “You should have never brought that game here to start with. Too violent.”

“It was a gift.” The beta’s shoulders slumped. “Wade’s territorial. Everything I do irritates him because of...” Fletcher jerked his chin at Noah. “If you want to piss off your brother by rejecting a present for Chase, be my guest.”

Bewildered, Noah watched another foam dart bounce off his chest.

“Mia!” both Grace and Fletcher shouted.

“Out. Right now, young lady,” Fletcher growled, amusement wiped off his face.

Surprise floored Noah when a girl who was for all intents and purposes the mirror image of the boy wriggling on Fletcher’s hip hobbled from the hallway, head bent low so that drooping pigtails above each ear hid her face. The child grasped the toy gun with white-knuckled fingers in spite of her grip on the crutches.

Regular crutches. Not forearm crutches like Noah’s.

The right leg of her blue jeans ended in a closed seam above the knee.

“Drop the gun,” Fletcher said in stern warning.

The girl’s chin lifted, briefly. She shot a steely glare at her father.

“He isn’t going to hurt Uncle Wade. I swear.”

Shock slapped through Noah with enough force to make him stumble a step in retreat. “Uncle Wade?” he gasped, finally making the connection. He sputtered at Fletcher. “
Uncle?
”

Noah startled when Grace strode from the kitchen, arms raised. He stiffened inside her hug. “Wade’s my brother,” she said, squeezing the air from Noah’s lungs.

This time, the foam dart hit Noah’s temple.

Chase snickered.

“Mia!” Fletcher roared.

Grace loosened her hold on Noah and smiled ruefully. “Welcome to the family.”

* * *

Fletcher coaxed the girl from the hallway with the promise of cookies while Grace fetched bottles of juice from the kitchen. Apparently unfazed by the brace on Noah’s leg, Chase crowded against Noah’s thigh once Noah dropped onto the swaybacked sofa. “Mia’s sorry,” the boy said, slurping his drink.

Ignoring the proffered snacks, the girl in question had claimed the space Chase had vacated on Fletcher’s lap.

“She can’t talk.” The boy peered up at Noah and angled his chin at his sister, who was smaller by several inches, but looked so much like her brother the similarities dumbfounded Noah. “But she
is
sorry.”

“Fraternal twins,” Grace said with a shaky smile. “Just litter-mates. They look identical, but if that were the case, Chase would’ve been a Charlotte, a girl, and Bast said Chase would have inherited Mia’s birth defects, too. Chase can sense what his sister feels, though. They’re very close.”

An infinite number of questions whirled in Noah’s minds, dizzying questions. He didn’t know where to start, but settled on, “Why can’t she speak?”

“Damage from the convulsions, most likely,” Fletcher said, muscles taut, spine ramrod straight. The beta held his daughter against his chest, his fingers skimming the girl’s arm. He hadn’t touched the bottle Grace had placed on the coffee table in front of him or the cookies. Neither had the girl. “She talked when she was younger, but Bast didn’t find anything that would control her seizures until last year. Before that, we tried natural versions of human drugs prescribed for juvenile epilepsy." He shrugged a stiff shoulder. “Human drugs or her seizures injured the language centers in her brain. Maybe both.”

“Medical marijuana,” Noah murmured. The cookie in his mouth turned to dust, but somehow, he found the spit to swallow. “Two doses of extract under my tongue every day controlled my convulsions until my first shift.”

“We know.” Grace sighed. “How do you think we figured out what would help her? Bast bribed a clerk at Vanguard.”

“Trudy and Bast met because she was crossbreeding R4 strains of cannibus as an experimental cancer treatment.” Fletcher slid an arm around his daughter and hugged her against him. “Those two saved Mia’s life.”

“Cancer?” Noah asked, floundering. Shifters didn’t get cancer.

Or epilepsy.

Then again, shifters weren’t stuck in a wheelchair at the age of four, either.

“Loganville’s old alpha was dying before I challenged him. Colon cancer. Trudy had tried everything, but nothing, human medicine or ours, worked,” Wade said from the door. “He said he wanted to die with dignity. He and I talked about that. Agreed.”

Noah’s pulsed rocketed as he whipped around to face his mate.

Wade stared at him. Tension stiffened the alpha’s broad shoulders, but he leaned against the doorframe in a mock casual pose. The oxford he’d worn to the job site that morning was gone, replaced by a charcoal gray sweatshirt that deepened his eyes and emphasized his hair, black as midnight and drawn into a long tail at his nape. “He regretted what he did to your family. In the end.”