Time Mends (10 page)

“
That’s Shifter politics.
A Pack member doesn’t question the Pack Leader. Ever.”

“
And if the Pack Leader is
wrong?”

“
Worst case scenario?
People die.”

Crawling back onto the ground and burying my
face in the mud for the rest of eternity was an appealing prospect.
“Jase, I can’t do this. I can’t decide what I want for lunch half
the time. How am I supposed to make choices when the wrong one
might end up with you dead?” Even with the problems between Jase
and me, the thought of him still and lifeless was unbearable. “What
if they come for Talley and take her away? How will I be able to
live with myself then?”

“
You’re seventeen years
old,” Jase said. “You’ve been a Shifter for all of two days, and
yet I swore my allegiance to you over Toby. Want to know
why?”

“
Because you’re
certifiable?”

A smile I hadn’t realized I missed until it
spread across Jase’s face wormed its way into my heart. “Because I
know you’ll always do the right thing. You’re like some crazy
do-right robot. The moment someone so much as suggests doing
something different you’re all ‘Does not compute. Does not
compute.’”

I laughed at his sad attempt at a robotic
voice, but the sound was hollow. My eyes skirted to the felled log
to my right. I wanted to be the girl Jase was talking about, but I
wasn’t. I was all too familiar with making the wrong choices, with
the consequences of those choices.

“
I’ll tell Talley to go
back to Toby.”

“
Good,” Jase said, then
dropped his head with a sigh. “No, don’t. You were right the first
time. It should be her choice. She’ll never forgive us if we send
her away.”

I looped my arm through his and rested my
head on his shoulder. “She’ll understand we’re just trying to
protect her.”

“
Sometimes when you try
too hard to protect the people you care about, you end up hurting
them instead.”

“
Jase—”

“
No. Let me say this.” He
pulled away from me, turning so we were face to face. “I know it
doesn’t change anything, but I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.
Seeing you lying in the hospital bed, knowing I did that to you…”
Tears clung to his dark eyelashes. “I’ve never hated anything as
much I hated myself for hurting you.”

“
It was the coyote, not
you,” I said, grabbing his hand. It broke my heart to see him so
shattered. He was Jase. Strong, confident, annoyingly arrogant
Jase. He should never look like that. Guilt sat heavy in my stomach
from the knowledge that I had let him suffer for weeks out my own
selfishness. “I didn’t understand before, but now I do. What our
animals do, it’s uncontrolled. Unpredictable.”

“
God, if only I could use
that excuse.” He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his free hand.
“But Coyote Jase and Human Jase merged into Jase the Screw-Up a
long time ago.”

That could happen? The wolf and I could
merge? I couldn’t even fathom what that would mean.

“
I know you didn’t mean to
hurt me,” I said, leaving out the other half of that statement, the
half that acknowledged what he had intended. That half would take
much longer for me to forgive. “I should have said so earlier, I
was just so—”

“
Do you hear that?” Jase
bounced up, tugging me with him. “Charlie and Tal are probably
ready to send out a search party. We should go.”

“
Jase—”

“
Talley is probably
frantic. You know how she gets.” He flashed another classic Jase
smile, tinted with mischief and arrogance. “Ready to see how fast
you can run, Pack Leader?”

I needed to say my apologies, but it was
clear he wasn’t hearing them, so instead I got into position.
“Ready…”

“
Set…”

“
Go!” we screamed in
unison before streaking across the forest floor.

***

“
Why don’t we all just
agree it was a tie and move on with our lives?” Talley peeled what
appeared to be a hundred year old gym sock off the ground and added
it to the pile of limbs and other debris she and Charlie gathered
up off the lawn. Somehow I forgot Dad’s decree that today we were
supposed to do yard work while I was traipsing through the
woods.

“
Because I won,” I said
between pants. The run had been long and hard. Not only were we
both injured, but between bad thunderstorms and the Ice Apocalypse
a few winters back, there seemed to be more limbs on the ground
than in the trees. There was an intense amount of jumping and
dodging.

I loved every single moment of it.

“
No, you didn’t.” Jase was
lying flat on his back in the middle of the grass. “I crossed into
the yard first.”

“
But I reached Talley
first. That was the finish line.”

“
No, it
wasn’t.”

“
Yes, it was.”

Talley leaned against the porch where
Charlie seemed to be taking a stare-off-into-space break. “Remember
two days ago when they weren’t speaking to each other? I’m already
missing that.”

“
It certainly was
quieter,” Charlie agreed, a response that got him a hand gesture
form Jase while I showed my feelings on the matter by extending my
tongue in Talley’s direction.

“
Were you running full
speed?” Charlie asked, his question clearly aimed at Jase since he
refused to look in my direction.

“
No. I’m breathing like a
freaking freight train as I lie on the ground dying because I held
back.”

“
And she still beat
you.”

“
I crossed into the yard
first!”

Charlie focused his attention on rolling a
blade of grass between his fingers. “That’s impressive for just
after your first Change. Usually it takes a couple of times for
your body to adjust and reach its full potential.”

Talley raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“Maybe she hasn’t reached her full potential.”

“
Or maybe it’s because I
could’ve outrun Jase before I got super-powers,” I added
helpfully.

Jase rose up on his elbows, leveling us all
with a cool green stare. “I crossed into the yard first,” he said,
carefully enunciating each word.

“
Seriously, there is no
way to to know what it is Scout might grow into,” Talley said,
turning around, which resulted in her back receiving the full brunt
of Jase’s glare. “Fate obviously has special plans for her. She
wouldn’t have Changed otherwise.”

I grabbed the rake someone left propped
against the house, unable to just sit around and watch as Talley
once again began to rid the grass of all the treasures which found
their way into the yard over the course of the winter. The boys,
however, didn’t seem to have the same issues.

“
So, since we’re without a
real, logical explanation as to why a non-Shifter is Changing,
we’re going to blame Fate?” My tone was a little nastier than I
intended, but I couldn’t help it. Destiny. Fate. They were just
stupid words people threw out when they didn’t want to take the
time and effort to find the real cause of something.

“
Maybe the old legends
aren’t legends after all,” Charlie said, still lounging on the
steps as Talley and I tried to work around Jase’s supine form.
“Jase’s scratch —”

“
Haven’t we already been
over this at least a hundred times? I’m a coyote. Scout is a wolf.
Contrary to uneducated belief, they are not the same
animal.”

“
Did A… Did another
Shifter scratch or bite you?” Charlie asked the spot just over my
left shoulder.

I tried to swallow around the lump in my
throat. “No.”

“
Are you sure?” Talley
tapped her chin with the business end of a stick-cum-Slayer-stake.
“That night was chaotic. It might have happened without you knowing
it.”

“
No.”

“
But you don’t
remember—”

“
I remember everything.”
At first it was only bits and pieces, but over the past month it
all came back. I could remember every swipe of claws, every
struggled breath. “Alex’s claws and teeth never came anywhere near
me.” A half-truth, but they never broke the skin, which was all
that mattered. No one else needed to know the details of the hours
Alex and I spent together before all hell broke loose.

“
What about the blood
transfusion?” Talley asked. “Maybe the Shifter DNA had a viral
effect of some sort.”

“
That sounds very
scientific and all, but I’m still a coyote.”

I stopped raking leaves out of Mom’s now
mutilated flower bed. “What blood transfusion?” I received lots of
blood while I was unconscious, but this was the first time I had
heard about any of it coming from Jase.

“
Lake County was the
closest hospital,” Talley said, referring to the small rural
hospital which had a grand total of four doctors and fifteen
patient beds. “They had to stabilize you before transporting you
down to Vandy, but they were low on blood because of a boating
accident that afternoon. From the way everyone was acting, I’m
thinking it was really against the rules, but Rebecca went all
Tiger Mom and made them take some of Jase’s blood and give it to
you on the spot.”

When Jase and I had to do blood typing our
Junior year, we were delighted to discover we shared the rare AB-
blood type. We joked about how it proved our status as twins. Of
course, that was the same day we discovered Jase had an adverse
reaction to needles. It took a solid week for people to stop
offering to fetch him smelling salts.

“
You gave me blood?” The
last tendrils of betrayal loosened from my heart.

“
Yes, I gave you blood.
Coyote blood. If you need to write that down so you won’t forget
again, it’s c-o-y-o-t-e.”

“
You let them stick you
with a needle? For me?”

Jase sat up the rest of the way. “No
needles. Sexy vampire. She bit me, then made you suck on her wrist.
It was all very sexy and disturbing, but it probably explains why
you’re a Shifter now since one supernatural creature can create a
totally different kind of supernatural creature and all.”

Conversations with Jase were like lessons in
hyperbole and sarcasm, and I had missed them more than I thought
possible.

“
How long before you
fainted this time? Did you make it a whole minute?”

He lunged at me, but this time the wolf
stayed buried. Apparently she knew the difference between a threat
and play. And Jase was definitely in a mood to play. Our injuries
made it impossible to do anything too boisterous, but we still
tumbled across the yard, skirting around trees and using Talley as
a shield. I felt lighter than I had in forever, even with the
knowledge that Charlie, who normally would have jumped into the
melee, was keeping his distance.

Jase had me in a headlock when Angel bounded
out the back door. “You better stop right now,” she said with a
put-upon sigh. “You’re already in big trouble.”

Angel wasn’t kidding. We were beyond
trouble. Up until that June, my biggest punishment had been losing
my phone and computer privileges for a week because I called Ashley
Johnson, a friend turned reviled enemy, a name that rhymes with
“cranky sassed witch” in front of my father and Miss Emily, my
Sunday school teacher. Destroying the kitchen and almost killing
your brother carries a much stiffer penalty.

Since the rest of the world thought I was
still the not-so-proud possessor of a mutilated stomach, my parents
decided it would be best for me to stay out of sight for the entire
summer. Completely out of sight. As in, not leaving the house
except for the nights my “condition” required it. And, as if being
on house arrest wasn’t bad enough, Mrs. Matthews called to inform
my parents that the pre-Olympic schedule of one of the world’s top
costume designers simply didn’t allow enough time to watch Angel
over the summer, leaving me with the responsibility.

“
But you guys are finally
getting along better,” Talley said as she attempted to mimic the
stretching exercises I was showing her in the make-shift dojo Dad
constructed in the loft over the garage. “It won’t be that
bad.”

I twisted to the other side, laying my head
on my knee. I got momentarily distracted by Jase and Charlie who
skipped warm-up to mess around with the bokkens Toby would rarely
let them use. They were mesmerizing to watch. Jase’s speed and
energy reminded me of a rabid hummingbird, but Charlie was able to
deflect him with a lethal grace I’d never noticed before. You could
barely see one of the muscles fleck in his bare chest before his
sword would magically appear between Jase’s blade and his flesh
with an audible thwack.

“
Angel is like a rich
dessert,” I said, snapping myself out of my reverie. “In small
doses, she’s wonderfully sweet, but get too much and you quickly
get so sick of her you can’t see straight.”

“
I don’t know what you’re
whining about,” Jase grumbled as he ducked away from Charlie. “Not
only am I grounded for a whole freaking month, but I have to miss
summer session
and
get a job.” He accentuated each of his punishments with a
bone-jarring swipe at Charlie.

I got to my feet and heard Talley do the
same behind me, but was unable to pull my focus off the boys. A
knot of conflicted emotions took up my entire chest cavity, turning
the normally simple task of breathing into a labor intensive
burden.