Rivals and Retribution (21 page)

I froze at the combination of CIA and DC. Either he had misheard or this was the work of the rogue branch. “And they are sending someone soon?”

“Yeah. Some woman.”

“Is it not amazing how many women have entered the field recently?” I commented.

“Not as many as you might think. Still pretty rare, from what I’ve seen.”

I nodded. As rare as Wanda? I wondered. What were the odds? “When is the agent arriving?”

“In two days.”

“Two days.” That wasn’t much time at all. “Mind if I take a peek?”

“Be my guest. Kid doesn’t do much at all. Just sits there looking miserable.”

“Teenager?”

He snorted. “Aren’t they the most miserable?”

“
Da
. I have younger brothers,” I sympathized.

“A son and two daughters.”

I slipped past him and peered in the door’s window. I was proud I did not drop my coffee cup when I saw Terra seated inside. “Looks miserable, just as you said. Well, good luck to you,” I said, raising the cup to my lips.

“Yeah, you too,” he said.

I headed down the hall and away. Terra had not been sneaking around Wondermann’s labs—that much I was certain of because she had never been anywhere near New York City.

Junction, yes. But not NYC.

Indeed Terra looked miserable locked in that room, but miserable was far better than dead or being the victim of some experiment.

Dmitri was in league with Wondermann. And Wondermann had set a trap for Wanda, I would stake my life on it. And she was going to take the bait, but for what reason, I could not fathom.

Two days.

I needed to get Terra out of here and make sure Wanda knew it was a trap before she got snared.

Because as much as I wanted her to pay for what she had done by betraying my mother, I wanted even more to be the instrument of her destruction.

I just needed to figure out how to do it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jessie

Back at Junction High I’d asked Counselor Harnek for the mother of all scheduling favors. After she’d muttered a bit and glared at her master schedule she was able to make sure most of the pups shared a lunch with Amy, Sophie, Cat, Max, Pietr, and me. Even the wayward Sarah occasionally made an appearance. We filled one and a half of the long tables in the cafeteria and I was able to feel like I still had some semblance of control in my own school.

Except when it came to the sheer volume of homework. Ms. Ashton had given us a new assignment, and it was heavy. We were all supposed to write a novel in a genre we enjoyed.

I thought about the notebook I’d already started filling in during her class. Oh, I’d write her a novel. In a genre I loved. And there’d be only about twenty of us who knew the truth about it:

That it wasn’t fiction at all.

That it would be the story of the Rusakovas in Junction.

Pietr was picking at his sandwich, the same pale color in his face he’d had since Marlaena had thrown me off the cliff. Since his change, he’d stayed pale, gotten some of his fire back, stopped needing to wear watches, and started to need to wear his special necklace—what Cat called his collar—again to keep simple human girls at bay.

Except, it seemed, for me and Amy.

“You usually scarf down sandwiches like they’re nothing,” I mentioned, reaching across to rest my hand on his. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He looked up at me, a strange hollowness holding back the light that usually glowed up from the depths of his eyes. “
Da
. I am fine,” he said. “I am just not hungry.”

The conversation at the table died down to nothing.

“
You
are not hungry?” Cat asked, her perfect eyebrows sliding close together in surprise. “But, Pietr, you are always hungry.”

“I ate my fill last night,” he said, referring to the hunt.

“But your metabolism…”

He waved a hand at Cat. “It is nothing.” He looked at me again, lowering his voice and putting space between each of his words like a warning. “I. Am. Fine.”

“Fine,” I said, though I believed him less now than ever. “You’re fine.” I glared at the sandwich. “Then eat your lunch,” I challenged him.

He snorted at me and tore a huge bite out of his sandwich, chewing with huge, zealous motions as he stared at me, contempt in his eyes.

Amy just watched him the whole time, putting down her own sandwich before saying softly, “Dick alert.”

He shifted his glare to her briefly and then returned its full force on me as he stretched his neck out and swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding.

And then he grew another shade paler.

“Pietr?” I asked as he vaulted away from the table and out into the hall.

I stood to follow, but Amy’s fingers snared my wrist. “Don’t,” she warned.

I shook free of her and followed as fast as I could, but I only saw the bathroom door swing shut as I entered the hall.

I ran to the boys’ bathroom and stood there, unsure of what to do next. Yes, Pietr and I had spent quite a lot of time in the boys’ bathroom the night of the Homecoming Dance—the night I shared my secret about my mother’s death and Sarah’s involvement in it—but he’d dragged me inside. It didn’t seem right going into it without a male escort.

“The drama that swirls around you constantly…”

I spun to see Max approaching, his long strides full of purpose. He wiped at his mouth with his hand, and I heard the rasp of his stubble as clearly as I saw it shadowing his face.

“A guy can’t even have a decent meal with his girlfriend around here anymore,” he muttered. “Not that my lunch could be called a decent meal.… But I wouldn’t be blowing my guts out over a sandwich, either.” He puffed out a breath and looked at me solemnly. “Stay here. And out of trouble.”

I snapped him a salute, and he plowed into the bathroom, grimacing.

Leaning against the wall nearest the door, I tried to hear what was going on inside. I heard their voices—the deep, rich rumble of Max’s at his most serious and the slightly higher and more frustrated pitch of Pietr’s. I waited impatiently. Toilets flushed. They talked a bit more. I caught one word,
truth,
and then nothing else.

Someone was coming down the hall and I tried my best to look inconspicuous—not an easy task standing outside the guys’ bathroom and not being a guy.

The boy paused a few yards away, looking from me to the door of the bathroom and back. Crap. My behavior would seem pretty suspicious.

Inside, they had resumed talking.

I stared at the kid, wishing him away. Couldn’t he use another bathroom? One not inhabited by werewolf brothers? But of course not. Hesitantly I reached out and knocked on the bathroom door.

The boy just watched me.

The voices fell silent and in a moment Max stepped out, followed by Pietr.

The boy’s eyebrows rose and I shrugged at him, trailing behind two of my favorite werewolves for a short distance—just until I heard the bathroom door swing open and then shut again—and I shoved Max. “So what’s going on?”

Pietr stepped between his brother and me and said, “I wasn’t hungry. You made me eat. Bad things resulted.”

Max glared at his brother. “Don’t be a dick. You know that’s not the whole story.”

“Well then, brrrotherrr,” Pietr said, rolling the
r’
s so they sounded like a distant drumroll, “what
is
the whole story?”

“I wish I knew. But something’s not right with you. Ever since you snapped through the cure,” he said slowly as if he was puzzling bits and pieces together. “You’ve been pale, you haven’t been as hungry—except when you hunt. It’s strange.…”

“You are imagining things. Perhaps I am pale because the fear of nearly losing Jess still hasn’t left me.”

I reached out and took his fingers in my own.

“Perhaps I have no consistent appetite because our family is more stressed than ever with nearly a dozen new long-term guests in the house.”

Max nodded slowly. “True. It is possible. But you’re also being a dick to Jessie.”

“I am not—” He shook free of me, tugging his fingers loose from my grasp to point in his brother’s face. “I am not being a dick.”

I cleared my throat.

“Am I?” he asked, turning on me so fast I hopped back a step.

He looked at me, his eyes scanning the surface of my face and finally landing on my too-wide eyes.

“I am, aren’t I?”

“Just a bit,” I squeaked. “But”—I reached out for his hand again, drawing it into my own once more—“you’re right. About the stress and the worry. It’s okay.”

“
Nyet,
” he whispered, his gaze falling to the floor. “It is not okay for me to treat you that way. Not ever.”

“Great,” Max proclaimed. “Now that we have that established, can I go back to
my
sandwich? You two can make up on your own,
da?
”

I reached over and patted his arm. “
Da,
” I said with a smile. And Max strode off.

I waited a solid minute, glancing down both ends of the hallway before I opened my mouth to speak again. “Just tell me the truth, okay?” I asked him. “If something’s wrong, just tell me. If something’s changed—be honest with me. We’ve been through Hell and back. I love you with every bit of my being. But if you don’t feel the same … just speak the words. I love you so much, I’ll let you go and wish you well on your way … and I’ll be mad at first—royally pissed—but I’ll get past it to see you as happy as you’ve made me.”

He looked away, uncomfortable with my honesty. “I do love you, Jess,” he said. “I’m just—adjusting.”

“To the new pack being around? It is a hell of an adjustment.”

He nodded, and I wondered if by speaking too soon I’d given him an easy out—something close to the truth that he could say and I’d cling to.

“Is that all?”

He nodded again and my heart sank. My nervous babbling in this case meant I might never know what he would have said.

Dammit.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“
Nyet
. You’re fine,” he assured me. A heartbeat too quickly.

“What do you
need
from me?” I pressed him even as my brain begged me to shut up. I was fumbling. Something was wrong with Pietr—something was wrong between me and Pietr, and he couldn’t define it, so I couldn’t fix it.

I felt sick.

“Time,” he said. “I need some time.”

I swayed on my feet and steadied myself by wrapping my arms tightly around his. Stupid girl, stupid heart. “Time away from me?” I whispered. God, how needy I sounded. It was disgusting.
Focus, Jessica,
I warned myself.
You’re stronger than this. Act it.

“
Nyet
…”

I let go of him and took a small step back. “No. It’s okay, Pietr. I’ll give you all the time that you need. I’ll always give you whatever you need.…”

“Dammit,” he said, reaching out to grab me. He pulled me tight against him, his arms like steel bars caging me to his chest. “I need you. I know that much. But right now,” he admitted miserably, “that’s all I know.”

“I’ll take it,” I whispered into his chest, knowing that this, too, was going into the book Ms. Ashton was making us write for lit class.

I’d be on top of this assignment and it’d be great therapy.

Alexi

I grabbed some important papers, locked up the lab, went down to the lobby, and signed out early. The guards at the lobby’s main desk watched me fill out the sign-out sheet.

“Taking the rest of the day off?”

“I may be taking off a long stretch of days soon,” I complained.

“Almost done with the secret project the boss has you workin’ on, yeah?”

“If I told you, it would not be so secret, would it?” I returned.

“Ah, he’s a clever one, this one, ain’t he? Well, you go enjoy your afternoon, you hear? And think of us poor slobs still stuck at work.”

Nodding, I spared them a smile, but the whole way to the train and back to the Queen Anne, I struggled to formulate a way this entire mess might still work out.

Luckily, trains were perfect for solving just such types of problems.

Marlaena

It should have been a simple run to the grocery store with Gareth, but the illness began to wash over me the moment I was confined in the car with him. I clutched the door’s handle and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to get my vision to stop swimming.

His scent permeated the warm air of the car’s interior, spice mixing with leather and the heating metal of a well-tended engine. I loved Gareth’s scent—I always had. But now it twisted my guts into knots.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his hand light on my arm.

I shivered under his gentle caress, my body rebelling against my heart.

“Fine,” I choked out. “Fine. Just drive.”

He drew his hot hand away from me and rested it on the steering wheel. “Okay.”

We drove in silence, and not the type of silence I had once enjoyed with Gareth—the kind that grew from understanding, and … I nearly gagged … love. But it didn’t matter now—none of it did. Because part of me was desperate to destroy the best bits of what we had, and I didn’t know why.

We got a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel and grabbed the items we needed. I walked alongside the cart as he pushed it and gradually we began to make small talk. About brands, about prices. To anyone watching, we would probably appear to be a normal couple. Not a couple at our happiest moment, certainly, but a couple in a functioning relationship—two people who had known each other long enough to stumble through even the dull moments.

But every time we passed a heater and a puff of air blew across him and toward me, I had to turn my head away or hold my breath so my knees didn’t weaken.

My head ached at the sound of his voice, my eyes blistered at the sight of him, and my heart? My heart was breaking because I still loved him, although my body—my treacherous body—was repulsed by his very existence.

“I—I can’t do this,” I finally muttered in the frozen foods aisle.

“What?” he asked, but I was already gone, loping down the last bit of the aisle and out of range of all the things I’d grown to love about Gareth.