The Truth About Kadenburg (11 page)

Lorcan nearly snorted as he stared at him, quirking a
thick brow high on his forehead. “I hate to burst your bubble, wolf-boy, but
you
stink
.”

“Your brother would say otherwise,” Dimitri said in a
taunting sing-song voice.

Lorcan released a frustrated growl as he pointed a
finger at the other male. He opened his mouth to reply, but what was he
supposed to say? He could see exactly why Liam had fallen in love with the
man. He was clever, Lorcan would give him that. And as much as Lorcan didn’t
want to admit it, Dimitri was right about the inevitable. Presley would have
changed at some point in her life, and he had to be grateful that she’d done so
in front of another shifter and
not
a human. It would’ve been
catastrophic on many levels.

“I did what I felt was right, even if it seems stupid
to you,” Dimitri admitted.

“You’re right,” Lorcan murmured, his eyes remaining on
the ground now.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I said you’re right,” Lorcan repeated a little
louder. He lifted his brown eyes to Dimitri’s hazel hues and frowned. “I’m
man enough to admit how irrational my thinking is sometimes. I just worry
about her.”

Dimitri gave a lopsided grin as he cocked his head to
the side. “You fancy her?”

With a roll of his eyes, Lorcan chose not to confirm
that. Instead, he moved over to the rucksack he’d spotted moments before and
bent down to open it up. Surely this kid had something that would fit him. He
wasn’t enjoying the draft.

“You
do
,” Dimitri jested as he squatted down
beside of him. “She’s pretty.”

“She’s also very vulnerable right now,” Lorcan tugged a
pair of jeans from the bag and turned his head to gaze at him. “How would you
react to finding out you could shift into a massive bear after leading a life
of normalcy?”

“Considering I’m a wolf, I’m pretty sure I’d be
horrified.”

Lorcan stared at him, not amused with his little
remark. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Dimitri nodded, a little more serious this time
around. “I’d probably be really confused and a hell of a lot of terrified.”

“Exactly,” Lorcan’s lips tugged into a frown as he
stood up, pulling the pants on and then buttoning them. They were a little
tight, but they would do. Unlike his brother, Lorcan wasn’t fond of another
man seeing what the good Urseth had blessed him with. “The option of easing
her into it flew out the window about thirty minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lorcan shrugged. “You don’t have to be sorry for it.
What’s done is done. Now we just have to figure out how to deal with the new
issue at hand; your pack,” he stared at him. “I want to know what they’re up
to right now. Your alpha just stirred up a hornet’s nest by killing my
brother. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I understand it,” Dimitri nodded. “I’m just as
pissed off about it as you are. We both lost someone important to us.”

Lorcan studied Dimitri’s face, noting the hint of
sadness clouding his eyes as they stared at one another. Lorcan wasn’t stupid,
or even self-centered enough to think that Liam’s death didn’t effect Dimitri
as much as it effected his family. Selecting a mate was crucial for any type
of thrope-and losing that mate was agonizing enough to drive a person to
madness. Presley’s mother was an excellent example.

He often worried about that day coming for his
parents. They were only in their mid-forties, but he knew when they got older
that one of them would go before the other. He didn’t like to think about
it-hell, who did-but the thought snuck into his head from time to time. His
parents had been together since their early adolescence, and the love two
ursithropes shared was such a powerful thing. He’d heard stories that when one
ursithrope dies, their mate would take their own life just to be reunited once
more.

If that was the case, then why was Presley’s mother
still alive? Maybe someone had misunderstood the original message behind that
story. Maybe ursithropes could really survive without their mates. Maybe an
ursithrope didn’t always go insane from grief. Maybe he had wasted the last
twelve years of his life trying to get a girl to notice him…

It was a stupid thought to have, but Lorcan couldn’t
help pondering everything he had been taught since childhood. Dimitri was
living proof that loopholes did exist and that created new worries in Lorcan’s
mind. If Liam and Dimitri found a loophole within the laws of nature, what else
was possible?

Eleven

“J
ust focus on me, Pretzel,” Uncle Arnold
said as he kept his eyes on hers. “You’re going to be okay.”

Presley was
sick
of hearing that. She wasn’t
going to be okay. None of this was okay. Normal people didn’t have the
ability to turn into a hideous bear with sprouting fur and ginormous teeth.
That wasn’t how the world worked! This wasn’t normal!

She kept her arms hugged around her knees as she
lowered her gaze to the hardwood floor. Anything to keep her mind off the
current situation. Anything that would keep her from going into full blown
panic mode. She hated feeling so helpless and enclosed. She didn’t like the
heaviness in her chest that squeezed the air out of her lungs. The sensation
of being unable to breathe was terrifying, and she felt it ten-fold at the
moment.

“Here,” Uncle Arnold offered as he held out a steaming
mug of tea towards her. “Drink this. It’ll help you.”

Presley’s nose scrunched up as the scent of whiskey
attacked her nostrils. How in the hell was that supposed to help her right
now?

“No thanks,” she shook her head. “I’m not sick. I
don’t need a hot toddy.”

“It’ll calm your nerves,” he promised. “Trust me. The
honey will soothe you.”

Honey? Was he serious? Presley rolled her eyes before
laughing bitterly. “Sure, that’s cute. Honey soothes bears, huh? It makes
sense.”

Arnold’s jawline flexed as he stared at her, placing
the cup on the coffee table as he moved to sit beside of her. “I know this is
a lot to take in, Presley-”

“You’re damn right it is,” she snapped suddenly. She
turned her head to look at him. “You’ve lied to me my entire life. A lot of
little girls secretly hope they’re a mermaid or a fairy, but I get to find out
I’m a
bear
!”

Presley’s palms smacked against her forehead as she
buried her face into her hands, letting out a groan of frustration as Arnold
stared at her. He licked his lips quickly and attempted to find the right
words before he continued on.

“I guess I’m going to be cliché here and say that I
just wanted you to have a normal life,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to see
you suffer like your mother did. The ways of our kind; sometimes there are
things that happen and we can’t control how we’ll react to those events.”

Presley lifted her head to stare at him, a frown
anchoring her lips downwards as her shoulders slumped. “Like when my dad
died?” She asked. It was weird to actually talk about him. They didn’t really
do that. It wasn’t because Presley didn’t grieve over him-she did. She just
couldn’t recall having conversations with her uncle about him that often.

“Yeah,” Arnold nodded as he lifted his hand to scratch
at the scruff adorning his chin and jaw. “Just like when your dad died. Your
mother was devastated and I was worried that she’d miscarry. It was pretty
miraculous that you came into the world, Kiddo. You have no idea what a big
deal it was for you to make it.”

At the mention of a miscarriage, Presley flinched and
it didn’t go unnoticed. Uncle Arnold’s arm wrapped around her shoulders as he
gave her a gentle squeeze.

“I’ve said it a million times before, but I’m gonna say
it one more time just to make sure the message gets across,” he rested his
forehead against the side of her head. “You can talk to me about anything,
Presley. I know I’m not your dad and I can’t fill those shoes, but I do love
you. I will listen.”

Maybe it was the stress of everything that had happened
in the past twenty four hours, or it might have been the pressure in her head
from shifting into something entirely not human-but Presley broke.

Her bottom lip began to quiver as tears blurred her
vision. Despite her best efforts to blink them away, the salty moisture leaked
down her cheeks as she let out a trembling breath.

How am I supposed to talk about it?
She
wondered to herself as she lifted a hand to wipe beneath her eyes.
It hurts
to talk about it.

The truth was she hadn’t talked
to
anyone
about it aside from Tim and the doctor. No one else knew.
Two conversations, one broken heart. That’s how it happened. One person who
said they were sorry for her loss and another person who told her to get lost.

She lifted her thumb to her lips, fully prepared to chew
on her nail as she glanced towards her uncle and noted the look in his eyes.
She could see the love he held for her, and the compassion he was trying
desperately to give her-but it was hard. It was so hard to talk about it. It
was difficult to go back to that night and to expose that emotional pain
again. It was a wound she’d been nursing for weeks and she wasn’t quite ready
to pull the band aid off. Maybe she’d never be ready to pull it off.

Could she really keep it to herself for the rest of her
life? Could she keep something like that hidden away?

Uncle Arnold sure did a hell of a job at keeping a
secret from me…

“No more secrets,” she
whispered as she lifted her head to meet his gaze once more. “Uncle Arnold,
I..”

Arnold was completely silent as he gazed at her,
waiting for her to speak. He knew she was struggling with something. He’d
known ever since he’d talked to her on the phone that night. The night when
she asked if she could come back home for a little while. He’d practically
raised her as his own child, and he had learned the tones of Presley’s voice.
He knew the “I’m okay but I’m not okay” voice. The voice that implied she was
trying to hold back the dam of tears that was threatening to burst open at any
second. She was more like her mother than she realized.

Presley swallowed the painful lump that developed in
her throat, licking her suddenly dry lips as she rested her hands against her
knees. She felt like she was a little girl again. There had been so many
confessions on this couch; everything from stealing a piece of bubblegum at the
store to digging up Nana Hettie’s prized rose bush and tossing it into the
Manor Lane creek because she’d been bored. The couch served as a confessional
for her and Uncle Arnold was the priest who granted her absolution.

Her green eyes closed as she finally found her voice
again and the words she wanted to say. “I was going to be a mom,” she
whispered.

She felt as his arms wrapped around her then, pulling
her into his chest as he buried his face against her hair. Any efforts to keep
it together had been in vain, because the flood gates suddenly exploded as the
sobs ripped from her aching chest. She turned her head, surrounding her face
with the scent of his cologne as she allowed his shirt to catch her tears. She
couldn’t keep it in any longer. She had to share this burden with someone
else.

“I’m sorry, Pretzel,” Arnold whispered as he stroked
the back of her head. “I’m so sorry, Baby.”

It could have only been five minutes that passed, or
maybe even five hours; Presley clung to her uncle as if he were a life
preserver keeping her afloat in the middle of the raging ocean. As long as she
kept her arms tight around him, she wouldn’t drown.

Her sobs eventually died down, her eyes were swollen
and sore from so many tears. She pulled back to gaze at him and she was
surprised to see the moisture glistening in his eyes.

“One thing you should already know, that I never taught
you,” He frowned, “is that two ursithropes of blood relation can feel each
other’s pain.”

He lifted his hands to cup her face, pulling her back
in until his lips could rest against her forehead.

“I love you so much, Presley, and I know you’re mad at
me right now. I know you’re confused and hurt, and I know you feel so alone-but
you’re not. I’m here.”

Presley could feel the stinging threat of oncoming
tears as she pulled away to gaze at him again. “I’m not mad at you, Uncle
Arnold,” she sobbed as she wiped at her eyes again. “I’m mad at my mom for
leaving me and I’m mad that Liam’s dead. I’m angry that I couldn’t even carry
my own child. I feel like a failure.”

“No,” He said firmly as his hands framed her face once
more. “You are
not
a failure. I know that it’s hard and I know it
hurts…I’ve been there.”

Presley sniffled, blinking a few times as she stared at
him. “You-you have?”

Arnold frowned, his brows furrowing as he nodded
slowly. “Yes. Meredith McClintock,” he smiled sadly. “She was my high school
sweetheart and I loved her like no tomorrow.”

When he didn’t continue with the story, Presley tilted
her head and frowned. “What happened, Uncle Arnold?”

He sighed, lifting his hand to rub at the back of his
neck. “Ah, you know. I married her. I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
I ignored the laws of our kind and we conceived a child.”

“You have a child?” Presley was shocked.

“No,” he shook his head, his eyes closing. “No, her
body wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t handle the child we’d created
together. Ursithropes and humans don’t really mix…It was too much.”

Presley’s eyes widened as she moved her hand to cover
her mouth. “Oh no,” she whispered.

“Meredith was only two months along when she died.
Your grandpa warned me it was a bad idea all along, but I didn’t listen. ‘Okay
to date, forbidden to mate’ he always said. It’s one piece of advice I should
have taken to heart.”

Presley could see the tears glistening in his eyes and
it felt like her heart was breaking all over again.

“Uncle Arnold, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Presley,” he glanced at her.
“It’s mine. I knew better, but I did it anyway. I thought that my love for
her would bend the rules somehow. I thought it would be okay. But I was
wrong,” he moved his hand out to rest over her knee before he gave a gentle
squeeze. “Just like I was wrong for keeping the truth from you. Maybe if
you’d known what you are you wouldn’t have gone out into the world so blindly.
You would have known that the little baby you were trying so hard to create
couldn’t survive in your belly,” his lower lip quivered. “If I’d told you
sooner then you would’ve known that you can only procreate with another
ursithrope.”

Presley felt the pressure on her chest again, weighing
her down as she tried to keep her breathing paced. Her stomach was churning
from the story her uncle shared with her. So it wasn’t really her fault, but
in a way it was still her fault because her baby couldn’t survive due to the
bear within? She wasn’t sure if she hated it more or appreciated her uncle’s
honesty. There were too many emotions running through her to be sure which one
was stronger.

“So, hypothetically speaking, even if Tim and I had stayed
together,” she toyed with a loose thread on her shirt. “It wouldn’t have
mattered. I could never have a baby with him, could I?”

Arnold frowned again as he slowly shook his head,
shifting to straighten up as he rested his hands on his knees. “No, I’m
sorry. Ursithropes were never intended to mate with humans. Urseth never
wanted the magic in our blood to be diluted.”

“Diluted?” Presley scoffed as she wiped at her eyes
again. As much as she wanted to have a snide comment over the “ursithrope
laws” and “the Great Urseth”, she really didn’t know what to say about any of
it. All she really knew at the moment was that her body had betrayed her,
someone she cared about was dead, and there were real life werewolves putting
all of them in danger.

Don’t forget the changing into a bear bit,
she
thought as she trapped her bottom lip between her teeth. She gnawed gently at
the tender flesh as she sighed.

“There is so much more to learn,” her uncle continued
as he leaned forward to pick up the mug of tea. “But I’m afraid we don’t have
time for lessons right now. There’s a bigger threat we’ve got to focus on and
it’s something we’ll have to solve together. Do you understand?”

This time, Presley did accept the mug of tea. She
sipped at it quietly as she nodded her head. She knew he was talking about the
wolves. She knew that this was a waging war between two species that didn’t
get along, but what she didn’t get was how it ever escalated to this state.
The world was such a big place. Why were the wolves even worried about a tiny
place like Kadenburg?

A knock sounded on the door and Uncle Arnold
immediately pushed himself up from the couch to answer it. “That would be
Lorcan,” he stated.

As much as Presley wanted to ask how he knew who it was
without actually opening the door, she had a feeling that this was a bear thing
and she just didn’t know about it yet.

She was all right with sitting on the couch as Lorcan
entered. She didn’t care if he saw how red her eyes were from crying, or even
what a mess her hair was. She hadn’t been too worried about fixing herself up
after transforming back into her human self. In fact, the only thing she’d
done was put on some proper clothing while Uncle Arnold kept his back to her. She’d
learned the hard way that an ursithrope didn’t change back fully clothed, and
some warning would have been nice.