Crimson (The Silver Series Book 3) (11 page)

I nodded and Grace squeezed my fingers, her
hand resting softly in mine.

Chapter 10

We stopped at a small cottage at the end of
a long road of alfalfa fields. The unfamiliar scent of the growing
hay, grazing cows, and a newly irrigated field tickled my nose. I
fought the urge to investigate further like an eager farm hound and
led Grace toward the cheerily lit house. Light filtering past white
curtains cast a warm glow against the soft yellow paint of the
house. The door opened and a black-haired man that resembled Jet in
everything but his underlying edge of
mess-with-me-and-I-will-kill-you stepped out and gave a hearty
wave.

“
Welcome!” he called out.
“The more the merrier!”

Two small children, a black-haired boy and a
brown-haired girl, pushed past their father and leaped at Jet
before he reached the house. He let them tackle him to the ground
and then proceeded to tickle them with a big grin on his face. When
their laughter filled the night sky, he took off toward the back of
the house and the twins followed close behind.

Taye glanced at me and saw the surprised
expression on my face. “They bring out the childhood he was never
allowed to have,” she said by way of explanation. She smiled in the
direction of more laughter behind the house. “I love it when he
comes here.”

“
Us, too,” Mr. Davies said,
giving Taye an affectionate hug. “Welcome back.”

“
Thank you for inviting
us,” Mrs. Carso said. “The children mean the world to our
family.”

“
And we come bearing
gifts,” Brock called from behind a bunch of party bags he and Mouse
carried. At Taye’s exasperated look, he shrugged. “We don’t like to
wrap. Besides, bags serve for more than just carrying gifts.” He
reached his hand into one and brought out a roll. “They’re
extremely handy.”

“
I thought I smelled bread
before we left,” Nikki exclaimed. Brock offered her one, but she
turned it down with a roll of her eyes that made Brock
laugh.

“
Fine, more for
me.”

Jet ran back in our direction, the twins hot
on his heels. He ran around the party once, sniffed, then darted at
Brock and was off toward of the back of the house again with the
roll bag in his hand and an astonished Brock holding nothing but
gifts with his mouth open next to us.

He shoved the roll he still held quickly
into his mouth. “He’s not getting this one,” he said, spitting out
bits of bread as he talked.

“
Thank goodness,” Taye
replied.

Mr. Davies took half of the bags from Brock
and led the way up the steps. “Mrs. Davies is finishing up the
potato salad. Hamburgers are barbecuing out back as long as the
boys don’t find-“

Brock dropped the bags and vanished through
the house before he could finish. Nikki sighed and picked up the
bags to set them neatly on the table Mr. Davies indicated.

“
Well, that’s one way to
keep him busy,” he said with a mischievous twinkle in his
eyes.

“
There’re no hamburgers?”
Nikki asked.

“
There’s no grill,” Mr.
Davies answered and we all laughed. “I’ve been meaning to get one,
but Mrs. Davies makes such a mean meatloaf I can’t
resist.”

By the time Jet, the twins, and Brock came
in, the food was on the table and we ate with the gusto of double
our number.

“
Seven, wow, are you
excited?” Nikki asked Alex and Cassie. Both of the twins nodded,
their faces bright and eager. Mr. and Mrs. Davies exchanged proud
glances while Jaze reached out to high five the
children.

“
Are you ready for the
party?” Taye asked. The kids nodded and threw anxious glances
toward the table of presents.

“
This is marvelous
meatloaf,” Brock said between mouthfuls. “Far better than any
hamburger.”

Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Carso looked at each
other. “Now that’s a compliment!” Mrs. Carso said and they both
started laughing.

I couldn’t help glancing out the window
again as the shadows of night overtook the last hold of day. My
skin ached to phase and my bones trembled with the remembered
knowledge of my wolf shape. Toward the end of the meal I found
myself by the dining room window without knowing how I got there. I
started in surprise and glanced at the table. The others were
quiet, watching me.

“
Sorry,” I said, sitting
back down.

Jaze gave an understanding smile and tipped
his head at me. “This is his first full moon,” he explained to the
Davies. “He’s never felt the pull before.”

Mr. Davies looked at me expectantly. “I knew
there was something different about you, but I didn’t want to be
nosy. You smell different, you know?”

“
So I’ve been told,” I
replied in an even tone.

“
What’s your story?” Mr.
Davies pressed. His wife squeezed his hand and he smiled
apologetically. “That is, if you want to talk about it.”

I glanced at the children. They had drifted
to the presents and now poked the bags, eagerly guessing what was
inside. Jet and Brock guessed with them, throwing them off and
distracting them from our conversation.

“
I was killed in a car
accident, then woke up a werewolf in a lab. Grace and I escaped and
Jaze found us,” I said quietly.

Mr. Davies’ brow wrinkled. “You were turned
into a werewolf after you died? I’ve never heard of such a
thing.”

“
That’s horrible,” Mrs.
Davies breathed, a hand to her mouth. “How could they do
that?”

Mrs. Carso touched my shoulder. “We’re just
grateful he was there to help Grace escape. Without him, she’d
still be trapped in that horrible place.”

Grace nodded, her lip between her teeth.

“
So you’ve never phased
before?” Mr. Davies asked, striving for a lighter topic.

“
Not because of a full
moon,” I replied.

He grinned. “Then we might have three new
wolves out tonight. What a treat!” He looked at his children who
searched eagerly through the gifts. “Speaking of treats, should we
have the cake and ice cream before they figure out every
present?”

Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Carso cleared away the
plates with the help of the girls, then Jet carried over a cake
shaped like the moon. The children blew out their candles and tears
shone bright in both of the parent Davies' eyes as Jet helped them
take out the candles and cut the cake. They held each other close
and watched their children like someone who had been given
something precious and would never take it for granted.

“
What happened to them?” I
asked Mrs. Carso quietly while the children opened their
presents.

She smiled at Jaze who stood next to us.
“You want to answer that one?”

He nodded. “Jet was raised a fighting
werewolf, like a pit bull in illegal arena battles. He’d been
kidnapped when he was only an infant and though the Davies never
stopped searching, they couldn’t find him. By the time we heard of
the battles, Jet was sixteen and was about to be put to death
because he won a fight he was supposed to have lost.” Something
dark crossed Jaze’s expression and then vanished. “Luckily, he
found his family after coming home with us and was reunited with
them.”

“
How long has he been
home?” Grace asked.

“
Only a couple of months. I
think it’s still hard for any of them to believe this is
permanent,” Jaze said softly.

I watched the way Jet ruffled Alex’s hair,
then bent down to whisper something in Cassie’s ear. She ran and
tickled Brock with a pink dress-up feather boa from one of the bags
and took off giggling around the table. Jet watched them with such
awe, every touch gentle as though he was afraid he would break
them. Once in a while he glanced at his parents, and the expression
of love in their eyes seemed to cut him to the core with both
happiness and pain. When he paused and looked like he wanted to
bolt from the room, Taye’s soft touch on his arm brought him back
to himself.

The longing for my own family rose in my
chest with such intensity I could barely breathe.

“
Your parents need you,”
Mrs. Davies said. I met her eyes in surprise and she gave me a
knowing look. “Parents are nothing without the children that are
their world.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that easy.”

“
They love you no matter
what, Kaynan. Go home to them, if just to let them know you're
alive.” She looked back at Jet. “When we met Will,” she smiled, “I
mean Jet, after Jaze rescued him from the fighting ring, it almost
killed me to let him out of my sight again. It took almost losing
him for the second time to accept that every moment together was a
gift and I shouldn’t try to control each situation. Having him back
after thinking him dead or worse is like breathing again after
drowning. Your parents are drowning without you.”

“
They think I’m dead,” I
said softly.

A look of pain touched her eyes. “Than give
them their son back.”

I wanted to tell her that I would rather
give them their daughter instead, but the words caught in my
throat. I clenched my hands to keep tears from falling and turned
back to watch the children unwrap the rest of the packages.

“
It’s close to nightfall,”
Mr. Davies said with an expectant look in his eyes. He took Mrs.
Davies’ hand and squeezed it, making her smile.

A pit of nerves seethed in my stomach. I
knew I needed to phase so that Grace could see the children’s first
full moon, but I worried that it wouldn’t work like it did before.
I worried about disappointing Grace, and also about how the others
would look at me after they saw my crimson fur. Maybe they would
finally realize what an abomination I really was.

I touched Grace’s shoulder and whispered to
her that I was going into the next room for a minute. She gave me
an understanding smile and turned her head to listen to me leave.
The conversations around us faltered slightly, then started again
as though they hadn’t noticed my departure. It felt like the whole
room expected some sort of miracle that I wouldn’t be able to
give.

I shut the door to the Davies’ guest bedroom
until only a crack remained, then took off my clothes and closed my
eyes to wait for the change. When nothing happened, I opened one
eye and looked around. Light from the lamp outside trickled through
the yellow curtains and made swirled patterns on the dark blue
carpeted floor. My bones ached and muscles trembled, but I didn’t
know how to start the phase.

After a few futile minutes of trying, I
remembered Grace’s words about phasing back into human form. I put
my hand in the light from the window and let it play across the
back of my fingers, pretending it was the soft caress of moonlight
my soul remembered from the night before. A slight breeze brushed
across the window pane and I remembered the way smells were
heightened to the point of perfect clarity, the way my mind
categorized them and stored every minuscule detail in case I needed
it later.

I thought of the scent of the dried sage and
sandy earth from our walk in Utah, the feeling of the dirt beneath
my paws and the way it touched my nose with the memory of snow and
winter’s chill even though we walked through the last days of
summer. My bones quivered when I remembered the scent of the
rabbit, the way my muscles tensed and instinct bade me to give
chase, to forget the human world lose myself in the promise of the
wild.

Something touched my memory. We had visited
the zoo many times when I was younger. My father had a friend who
worked there, and on one particular occasion the zoo was open for
night access to workers and patrons. I ditched my family when we
got inside like I always did, and found myself wandering through
the forest exhibits. Barn owls blinked at me from their tree
perches while mice scurried across the path in search of food from
the day’s tourists. I was standing by a cougar exhibit when a sound
reverberated through the air.

The haunting song caught at my soul even
though I didn’t know what made it. I followed the sound to its
source and saw a wolf in an enclosure on the hill sitting in the
security of the trees and howling. The howl was so mournful and
lonely it threatened to break my heart, and when there was no
answering cry, the look in the eyes of the wolf haunted my memory
for days. After that, I often felt like the wolf howling to reach
someone who understood, and having no one answer.

The irony of truly being a wolf brought a
small smile to my face even as my nose and mouth elongated, fangs
lengthened, and the dark red fur ran up my arms and down my legs.
My joints shifted, bones changed length and shape, and my ears
became pointed and moved to prick forward on my head. The nausea I
had felt at the thought of becoming the wolf again faded, leaving
only a growing joy at the freedom of leaving my haunted memories to
my human side.

Chapter 11

I stretched, yawned, and shook my fur to get
used to the wolf form, then nosed the door open and padded quietly
down the carpeted hall. I kept my eyes on Grace when I entered the
room, but my sharp ears caught the small intakes of breath at my
dark red coat. I glanced at Jaze and took a small breath of relief
at the lack of judgment on his face. His eyes met mine and he
merely nodded. I went to Grace’s side.

She still sat on the couch, one hand hanging
casually over the side. I touched her hand with my nose and sent
her the image I saw of the room. She gasped, straightened up, then
bent and put her arms around my neck. “It’s so nice to see again,”
she said softly, her voice catching.