Second Nature (51 page)

"I'm sorry you had to barge through the door to stop me from pouncing on your human, and I'm also sorry for almost attacking you." Leigh's gaze flitted around the room until it finally darted up to meet Griffin's. "If the human hadn't dragged you out of there, it could have gotten ugly."

"I certainly wasn't helping the situation either," Griffin admitted to herself and to Leigh. Only Jorie pulling her away had stopped her from getting into a serious fight with her sister.

Leigh tilted her head in agreement. "You coming through the door like an angry avenger was pretty spectacular and not the best you could have done to calm me down."

It hadn't been the clever thing to do, but when she had heard Jorie being attacked, there had been no stopping her. She couldn't remember ever feeling so protective of anyone in her life, not even Ky.
I wonder why that is. Is it really just my protective instincts that she triggers, or is it... more?
She shook her head at herself.
Bullshit. She's human. You've never before been interested in human females, and that's not gonna change because of Jorie Price.
A voice in her head whispered that she had also never before refused to follow an order from her tas, had never openly questioned the First Law, and had never asked her family for help — and still all of it was happening now.

"I started all of it, though," Leigh interrupted her thoughts. "I shouldn't have attacked the human, and I deserve the lecture I'll no doubt get from the dads about violating pride hospitality. It was a really dumb thing to do; it's just..." Leigh looked down and swept a few crumbs off her thighs.

"You were insanely jealous," Griffin finished the sentence for her. Seeing the usually confident Leigh so tongue-tied was amusing.

"Yeah," Leigh said. "I heard Rhonda tell the human that she has been in love for fifteen years, and I thought she meant you. I thought I had waited too long and had lost her to you."

Griffin could imagine how she must have felt when she thought she had lost out to her big sister, who had never been part of the pride and hadn't even been there for Rhonda as Leigh had been.

"I really thought she had fallen in love with you that summer you spent with us." A hint of red on Leigh's cheeks showed her embarrassment. "I could sense something between the two of you back then, and to tell you the truth, I've always been a little jealous."

So this was one of the things that had always stood between them. Griffin walked back to the table. "There's never been anything between Rhonda and me, Leigh." She hesitated, then admitted, "I had a little crush on Rhonda, but she never showed any interest in me. She never even knew I liked her."

Leigh's eyes widened. "You had a crush on Ronnie?"

Heat flushed through Griffin's cheeks as she nodded. She couldn't read Leigh's expression. A lot of different emotions blended into a confusing scent.

Leigh leaped up from her seat and rounded the table.

"Stay calm," Griffin said, extending a soothing hand. "Don't go crazy again. I'm not trying to take Rhonda away from you."

It was no use. Leigh didn't listen. She threw both arms up and pounced.

The surprised Griffin was almost lifted off her feet by an exuberant hug. "What are you doing?" She growled in surprise.

"It's called hugging my sister," Leigh answered, her voice muffled by Griffin's shirt.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Jorie's amused voice came from the doorway.

Griffin closed her eyes.
Great. Two hugs in one day. Now she'll really think I'm just a cuddly pussycat.

Finally, Leigh withdrew her arms from around Griffin and stepped back. She looked as embarrassed as Griffin felt.

"No, you're not interrupting anything," Griffin answered. "Just my sister going crazy."

"I hear love will do that to you," Jorie said mildly. She didn't fully enter the kitchen, maybe to give them some privacy, maybe because she was wary of Leigh after twice being attacked by her. The stale scent of someone holding a grudge was absent, though.

"I was just relieved," Leigh mumbled.

That much had been obvious. What Griffin still didn't understand was the reason for her sister's relief. "You were relieved to hear that I once had a crush on your girlfriend?" It sounded absurd.

Leigh threw a quick glance at Jorie, then at Griffin. The scent of her surprise and confusion drifted up. Leigh probably wondered why Griffin would casually remark on something so personal in front of Jorie.

There was no need for secrecy. Not anymore. She had accidentally let it slip earlier, so Jorie already knew about her teenage crush on Rhonda.

"Rhonda was your first crush, right?" Leigh asked.

Griffin nodded. "Yes. Why does that make you grin like the cat that got the canary?"

Leigh's grin widened, now reaching from ear to ear. "Not the canary. The lion. A part of me was still wondering if I'm just second best. I thought maybe Rhonda just settled and convinced herself that she was falling in love with me because she couldn't have you — but she could. She was aware of your crush on her. She told me that she knows who you had your first crush on."

Rhonda knew and never said anything? Probably to spare us both the embarrassment. Wish Leigh would have done the same.
"Wonderful," Griffin grumbled, very aware of Jorie's curious gaze. "One embarrassing situation after another today." She gave Leigh a slap on the shoulder. "I think I better go to bed before you think of something else to embarrass me."

*  *  *

Leigh watched as her sister sidestepped through the doorway, squeezing past the human who was still standing there. Their gazes connected when they passed each other.

What is this?
Leigh thought, irritated by the connection she felt between them. Her family had always stayed away from humans, and now Griffin's life was in tatters because she hadn't kept her distance. With every hour that passed, every minute they hid from the Saru together, Griffin was bound tighter and tighter to the human.

"I better get back to bed too," the human said.

They're not sharing the bed, are they?
Leigh wondered. A wave of hostility swept through her, but she forced it down. "Wait," she said when the human turned to go. "I need to apologize to you too. You are a guest in Rhonda's house and in my fathers' territory. I shouldn't have attacked you." Never before had she apologized to a human. It wasn't something she wanted to make a habit, but this time, her honor demanded it.

The human turned back around. Her dark eyes met Leigh's without flinching, and Leigh found herself fighting the urge to look away. "And if I had been outside of the house and outside of your fathers' territory, it would have been all right to attack me?"

Leigh flinched. She hadn't expected the human to call her on her careful wording. Her mouth opened and closed without answering. She didn't know what to say.

With one more step, the human was now fully inside the kitchen and paused right in front of Leigh, despite the wariness that Leigh could smell from her. "Why do you hate me so much that you want me dead?" she asked softly. "What have I ever done to you?"

"Nothing. I don't want you dead," Leigh said. To her surprise, she found that it was true. For the first time, a human had earned her grudging respect. "I lost my head when I thought I had lost Ronnie, and I lashed out at you." The presence of one of the hated humans in that emotional situation had made her lose control. "Again, I can only say I'm sorry."

"It's not that I don't accept your apology, but I'm getting tired of being treated like shit by you and the other Wrasa," the human said, her voice low, but firm. Her dark eyes glowed with determination. "I've been attacked in my sleep, chased from my own house, kidnapped, held prisoner, and then attacked by you — not once, but twice! I'm not your enemy or prey you can play with, so why do you keep treating me like that? Why do you hate humans?"

Decades-old anger boiled up in Leigh, almost extinguishing the peacefulness that being with Ronnie had brought her. "Humans nearly wiped out our whole species. If that's not enough reason for us to —"

"No," the human interrupted, "I'm not asking about your species. I'm asking about you, Leigh Westmore. Why do you hate humans?"

"Eldridge," Leigh corrected with a growl even though she suspected that the differences between being Brian Eldridge's and being Nella Westmore's daughter were lost on the human.

"Fine. Eldridge, then." She looked at Leigh as if she knew that her direct gaze was a challenge from which Leigh wouldn't back down. "Why do you hate us so much?"

"You wouldn't understand," Leigh said. A species that killed without thought, just for the fun of it, wouldn't understand her pain.

"Try me." The human was so calm that it fueled Leigh's anger even more.

"One of you," Leigh stabbed her finger at the human, "killed my mother and got away with it. He even got money for it. Now tell me I don't have good reason to hate you!" Leigh had never been allowed to express her anger openly. Wrasa laws said her mother's death was to be considered an accident. She was allowed to grieve, but not to get angry, and she was expected to control her emotions to avoid shifting or losing control. But the anger had never really died down, and she was surprised how consuming that fire still was.

Dark eyes widened. "A human killed your mother? Someone paid him for it?" The human sounded shocked, and if Leigh interpreted her scent correctly, she wasn't pretending. "Why? Did he know about the Wrasa's existence?"

Leigh shook her head. "No. Not that it would have changed anything," she said bitterly. "He killed her like an animal. My fathers had to go and barter for her body with the hunter who shot her."

"Barter for her body?" The human looked horrified. "But wasn't the hunter shocked to see that he had accidentally shot a human... a humanoid being?"

Leigh's nose wrinkled. "You clearly haven't the slightest idea about us." Maybe Griffin was right. Maybe the human didn't know enough about them to be a threat.

"And how could I if you refuse to tell me anything?" the human shot back.

"You assume that we shift back to our human form when we die — well, we don't." Sometimes, Leigh pitied humans. They were so caught up in the experience of being limited to just one body. Apparently, the woman thought that their human body was their true form and their cat form just a temporary trick of nature. It was far from the truth of what the Wrasa were. "My mother stayed in her leonine form when she was killed. If my fathers hadn't bartered for her body, she would have ended up over someone's fireplace. A taxidermist might have discovered that she was not what she appeared to be, so my fathers had to buy her body from the hunter. The price for my mother's life was five hundred dollars."

The thought was still enough to make her blood boil and her soul scream out in pain.

The human took a quick step forward.

Leigh tensed.

A gentle hand landed on Leigh's forearm. "I'm sorry," the human said, her voice a whisper. "I'm sorry your mother was killed, but you have to realize that it was just one human who killed your mother, not our entire race. I didn't kill your mother, nor did I ever kill a human or an animal. I abhor hunting for fun or for trophies."

Leigh stared down at the hand on her arm. It was the first time a human had touched her. Jorie's touch was cool and soft, not at all repulsive as she had thought it would be.
Is this human exceptionally brave or exceptionally stupid?

"How old were you when your mother was killed?" the human asked when she finally took her hand away. "Were you old enough to understand what had happened?"

The question took Leigh by surprise. She had thought that the human would tell her it had been an accident and that the human hunter was not to blame in any way. "I was five," she said. "And, no, I didn't understand. I still don't understand why humans think killing animals is a great sport and how treating it as an unfortunate accident could be right."

"I don't pretend to understand either. Losing your mother or any family member to such a violent act is horrible," the human said. Her dark lashes trembled with emotion. The sadness and the sympathy in her eyes seemed sincere. "But do you think human families don't grieve when they lose someone to a Wrasa attack? Do you think my mother won't be devastated if you kill me? We humans feel grief, sadness, anger, loss, and despair in the same way I think you do. How is that any different from how you felt after your mother was killed?"

"The difference is that my mother was killed while she was out on a stroll. If the Saru kill a human, it's because you're a threat to us. It's self-defense!" Leigh felt her voice rise, enraged that the human was acting as if there were no difference between her mother's death and the Saru eliminating a threat to their hidden existence.

One dark eyebrow lifted. "Self-defense? So you kill humans because you feel threatened by them? Don't you think the hunter who shot your mother would say the same? Imagine how that poor man must have felt when he went out to shoot a deer and suddenly came face-to-face with what he must have thought was a lion — a lion in the middle of Michigan! He probably panicked, and that's why he shot your mother."

It still didn't make her mother's death an act of self-defense. That hunter had no right or need to kill her. He could stop at a grocery store for his dinner and didn't need to shoot animals to survive any longer.

"I'm not saying it was good or right, but if he had known you Wrasa exist, he might have reacted differently, and your mother might still be alive. I guess Wrasa being shot by human hunters is the price you pay for hiding your existence," the human said, not unsympathetic.

"Don't judge our way of living, and don't tell me it's our fault that my mother died!" Leigh snarled. "You don't understand what revealing our existence would mean, human." For many generations, elders had handed down the gruesome stories of how their kind suffered during the Middle Ages. Leigh didn't want to even imagine what kind of cruelties the modern Homo sapiens would come up with in the name of science and progress.