Clarity (6 page)

The air felt clearer between us. As a rule, hunting brought the family closer together. But Byron had avoided turning wolf since disaster had struck, and we were further apart than ever. I hoped that would change. I felt as though I were spiralling out of control whenever I left it so long between phases. It hurt physically to turn human again because my wolf relished the freedom so much.

“Can’t leave it so long next time,” I said, gasping after another retching fit.

He tensed.

“What’s with you?” I asked. “Why do you keep avoiding it?”

Hesitating, he glanced at me. “It’s hard for me to come back when it seems like there’s nothing to come back for.”

“Oh, great. Thanks a bunch.” I glared at him, watching his jaw twitch. So I had been right. Amelia and I were nothing to him. Hearing him say it felt as if I had been struck, though, and it kind of surprised me that I even cared.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You have
Perdita
. You have Amelia. Your head is in the right place.”

“I get it,” I said. “You’re still lumbered with the orphans. Why would you want to come back?”

“It isn’t like that, Nathan. Not at all.”

“Then how is it?” I asked, louder than I intended.

“I’ve been afraid. The last time I lost people I loved, the wolf almost got the better of me. I didn’t want that fight again. Grief makes me weak, too weak. Finding my way back was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

He fell silent, and I didn’t have a clue what to say. He soon changed the subject, making it easier for me to ignore the catch in his voice when he had said that grief made him weak.

We made it back to the house unseen and let ourselves in through the back door as silently as possible. I ran straight upstairs to have a shower and brush my teeth before
Perdita
saw me. As dried blood mingled with water, I was reminded of the past, but I pushed the memory out of my head before it could stick.

Clean and dressed, I ran down to
Perdita
and gathered her in my arms. Just seeing her made everything so much better.

“Stop!” she squealed, and I set her down, stealing a kiss as I did.

“Ugh. Get a room,” Amelia said before storming out of the room.

“Hunting really does do wonders for you.” Cocking her head to the side,
Perdita
grinned, a flash of the real her shining through. I squeezed the ticklish part of her waist to hear her laugh. I missed making her laugh. I didn’t want it to stop.

“Tell me we’re going to be okay,” I said.

Her laughter died. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened them again, her mask was back. “We’re going to be okay.”

I turned away, moving out of her reach so she wouldn’t feel what ran through me at her words. Night after night, I had lain awake wondering how I could fix everything, how I could ask her to forgive me for what we had done to her. I hadn’t found an answer.

She crept up behind me and wrapped her arms around my torso, her cheek against my shoulder blade. “Ask me again.”

I didn’t. I didn’t want the lie, and that was the only thing she could give me.

“Walk me home?” she asked after a moment of tense silence, sounding wearier than before.

I knew I was driving her away. My family wasn’t helping either. I knew that she saw what Byron thought when he looked at her, that she had made a mistake in helping me when his parents had really needed her help. He resented me for it, too. I nodded and went outside to wait while she said her goodbyes to Amelia.

I might be able to help Amelia, but I couldn’t figure out how to protect
Perdita
from her own memories or from Byron’s silent accusations. He would only deny them if confronted, but I knew the truth. Out of everyone who had been in the woods when Mémère died, I was the one he would have chosen to take her place. I was the disposable one.

I leaned against the gate with my eyes closed until I caught her scent. I felt her presence uplift me, even though I knew in my heart that I wasn’t happy. She placed a butterfly kiss on my cheek and leaned against me with a sigh. I wrapped my arms around her and wished I never had to let go. When I thought about it, we had only really had a couple of seconds of normalcy, back before the werewolves came along and ruined everything. I wished I could give her something better than that. But we couldn’t change it, bar miraculously ending the curse. Deep down, I didn’t want that either.

“Let’s go,” I said, taking her hand.

We hadn’t made it down the end of my street when
Perdita
stopped walking.

“What’s wrong?” I glanced around, on high alert.

“We need to talk.”

That sentence might have been scarier than the idea of werewolves hunting us.

“What? Now? Here?”

She pointed at the abandoned house I sometimes hung out in before leading the way. I tried to help her climb the bin against the wall, but she smacked my hand away and struggled up and through the open window all by herself. I had a feeling she was making some kind of point, but I had no idea what it might be. We might have been soul mates, but I hadn’t a clue what ran through her head most of the time.

I sat on a crate and watched her pace the bedroom. My stomach curled up and died while I waited.

“I’m tired of walking on eggshells around each other,” she began, pushing her hair behind her ears. “None of us are acting the way we should be, and it’s tiring.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but apparently she wasn’t finished yet.

“You asked if we would be okay. I can’t answer that. All I can say is, I’m not okay, and neither are you. None of us are okay, and you know what? That’s how it should be. Terrible things have happened. We’re all hiding them. That isn’t normal, and how are we supposed to be okay with that on top of us anyway? Yeah, maybe one day it’ll be different, but for now, I need to be sad and not feel guilty about it.”

“
Perdita
, I—”

“Wait, please. Let me get this out. I hate myself for what happened, for what I did, and I wish I could have helped
Lia
. I really do. But I don’t regret helping you, and if I could go back, I would probably do the exact same thing again. I’d have to. I’m sorry I—”

I silenced her with a kiss, because I didn’t know what else to do. The curse took a lot of the guesswork out of everything between us, but it still didn’t help me with the complicated worries
Perdita
had.

“It’s the curse,” I said when she pulled away. “It happened right there. I felt it. When I saw that wolf hurt you, everything went blank. I couldn’t tell you what happened next. I exploded, and I’m glad I did. There are some things the curse is good for, and protecting each other is one of them.”

“We can’t blame the curse because it’s convenient, though.” Her frown deepened. “But I felt it, too. I was so angry. I don’t ever want to feel so... crazy again.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” I promised.

“It’s not up to you to keep me safe,” she said, but at least she was smiling again. “You look a lot less stressed after, you know, the whole hunting thing. Did you... did you, um, have fun?”

I laughed at her grossed-out expression. “I feel better. It’s been too long. It might make the memorial a little easier.”

She wrapped her arms around me. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Just be here.” I touched her cheek, sort of amazed she could let me, knowing I turned into the exact thing that made her afraid. “We will be okay,” I said impulsively. I kissed her, and that overwhelming feeling of need wouldn’t allow me to let her go. When she pulled back, we were both panting. I couldn’t even tell what was the curse and what was normal hormones anymore.

We walked to her house, lingering outside because I didn’t want to let her go. Whenever she was around, I felt as though I could do anything, but as soon as she walked inside her house, the confidence left me.

After she had gone inside, my phone vibrated with a text message.

We
will
be okay
.

Back home, Byron made me sit in his office for a conversation. That surprised me, considering how much he had been avoiding me, but then I thought maybe the hunt had loosened him up again.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and although I’ve wanted to avoid the whole damn story, I think you need to be prepared for Jeremy’s return.”

“Jeremy’s coming back?” I barely remembered my cousin. I had been a kid, still struggling to understand the loss of my parents, when he was that gangly teenager leaving to see the world.

“I would imagine so. I expect the whole family to be reunited at the memorial, but that isn’t important right now. I want to prepare you for how you may feel around Jeremy.”

I screwed up my face in confusion. “What does that mean?”

He paced the room until I felt a little nervous. What the hell was wrong with Jeremy?

“You’re coming into your own now, Nathan. You’ve already met your mate, so you’re that much stronger than before, that much stronger in will. Jeremy’s still searching for the one who completes the curse for him, so although he’s older, he’ll be behind you in some ways.”

“What are you getting at?”

“The family hasn’t ever had this problem because there had always been only one young man at a time. Then there was your father and me, always competing. Even though there’s nearly a decade between you and Jeremy, the fact that you’re maturing is going to make it naturally harder for either of you to place yourselves beneath the other in ranking. And then there’s
Perdy
.”

My stomach turned over. “What about
Perdita
?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, and colour flooded his cheeks. “The curse works in strange ways sometimes. Your story is a lot like mine. I met Diana at school when we moved to a new place. We were kids, teenagers. But Louis saw her first, and he felt like he had some sort of claim on her.”

“You better be kidding,” I said, unable to stop the growl in my throat.

“He was wrong,” Byron continued hurriedly. “That’s the point. He was my twin, so he had a connection to her. Before he met your mother, he felt a little hard done by. He thought he had been robbed of his chance at happiness. He had this idea that, because we were twins, there was one option of a soul mate, and that I had stolen her from him.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I gestured for Byron to hurry up with the story.

“Of course, when he met your mother, he realised how ridiculous he had been, and I sensed the same connection with your mother as he felt with Diana. His feelings for Diana were nothing compared to how he felt for your mother, but until you’ve felt it, you can’t understand. You can’t know how great your capacity is for feeling until you’ve experienced it.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I sense the same thing with you and Amelia. She has that same connection to
Perdy
. Not as strong, obviously, she’s not a wolf. But it’s there. I’m afraid that it might work with cousins, too. It’s not necessarily bad, just more confusing.”

“This is just... just... are you saying that Jeremy might think he actually has a chance with
Perdy
? Or that she was never mine? Because I swear—”

“Oh, calm down, you moody pup. I’m saying be prepared for feelings that don’t make sense. That’s all. Listen to me. These connections are good. Good for the pack. It’s when people start dying that the connections hurt. Make the most of them while you can.” His eyes turned sad, and his mood shifted completely, but I couldn’t let go of that spark of anger.

“Nothing’s going to happen. Or at least it won’t if you start acting like the wolf you’re supposed to be. It’s time for changes, Byron, whether you like it or not. You can’t keep hiding away in your office when there’s a house to look after, bills to pay. We can’t live on fast food and secrets forever. It’s not good for us. It’s not good for the wolf, and I can’t hack it.”

Byron stared at me in surprise, and I felt the shaky relationship between us wobble even further.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you need to wake up and soon. Those wolves could come back at any time. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re the only adult around. Somebody has to deal with it.”

I stormed out of the room, shaking with the fury running through my veins. Byron made me crazy at the best of times, but I couldn’t carry on the way we were going. He was strong—I could sense his strength when we ran as wolves—but he never tried to live up to his potential, and that drove me nuts. To make sure my sister and girlfriend stayed safe, I needed him to indulge in that aggressive streak.

I needed him to let the wolf out of its cage.

Perdita

I changed clothes at least four times before finally settling on an outfit for the memorial. Amelia and I had decided not to wear black because
Lia
had loved colour in life. We agreed to wear a black flower in our hair and leave that as the extent of our mourning fashion. I hoped Byron wouldn’t be offended. We weren’t being disrespectful, just acknowledging
Lia
in our own way.