The Reluctant (12 page)

I felt the blood drain from my face
and Will’s grip tightened even more. Will had explained to me on
the trip that the Mexican clans served human at almost every meal,
but I would be protected as his guest.

Raníer pulled away quickly. “Like
lavender,” he said suddenly laughing. “Not very edible at all, but
something to please the nose.”

Will relaxed and I exhaled. What the
hell was wrong with these people?

“I apologize,” Raníer said, reaching
out to take my hand and pat it before I could spit out some mundane
comment. “Credo! I do not have the chance to interact with young
humans who know what we are very often. And my English is not good.
I have no intentions of eating you, my dear.” He waved his hands
flamboyantly in the air. “Goodness knows that there is enough food
here already!”

“Yes,” Will agreed seriously, visibly
relaxing his grip on me. “My mother spared no expense for this, did
she?”

“Well, it is her third bond.” The
older man laughed. “What do they say in your culture, Emily? The
third time is luck?”

I nodded. “They say the third time’s
the charm.”

“Ah yes, that’s the word. Charm.” He
snapped his fingers. “Like you! Charming.”

I laughed into my hand. “Thank you,
sir.”

Will smiled approvingly at me but
turned his attention back to the elder. “Are you on the council
this year, Raníer?”

“As ever.”

“I hope to have your support in my
endeavor in acquiring a good luck charm of my own.”

Raníer’s eyes widened. The old man was
canny, and he would not miss the intended meaning.

“You will have opposition,” he
stated.

“I am prepared for it.”

Raníer shot a glance around the room.
He, too, knew that nothing was safe to say, even when we thought we
were being ignored.

“I will consider it, but others will
not be so understanding.”

Will nodded. “I know. That is why I
hope I can trust you to support me.”

“What does Luka say?”

Will’s face tightened and he looked
away. “He and I have not spoken for some time.”

Raníer frowned. “Is my son
well?”

I gasped. “You’re Luka’s
father?”

“Of course. Can you not see where he
gets his handsome face?” Raníer asked. He clapped Will on the
shoulder and laughed. “He and Will make those Lycanti women louco
for them. I did in past times, until I met Luka’s mother.” He
sighed. “Ah, but she is worth ten Lycanti—I mean no offense,
Will.”

“It’s alright, sir,” Will responded.
“You know I bear no grudge against your family for
anything.”

I knew that Will would not speak
further about Luka. I took Raníer’s hands again. “Luka is very
well,” I said softly. “He is a fine man.”

I felt the jealousy come hot and
sudden through Will’s touch, but he did not let it color his
tone.

“Yes, we still hunt together. He would
make you proud.”

Raníer’s appreciative smile was all
the reward I needed to compensate for Will’s hurt at my compliments
of Luka.

“Then I am pleased! Aya! I cannot wait
until he takes a mate and comes home to us.”

“You may be waiting for some time,”
Will cautioned. “You know he still mourns Shasta.”

“Yes,” Raníer agreed solemnly. “But he
knows his obligation to the Clan. When he is thirty, he will come
home and I will pick a bride for him if he has not chosen one. Our
line is a long one, and he knows his place.”

Will started a rebuttal, but Raníer
waved his words away.

“Not everyone can find such a
beautiful menina. I can only hope that Luka will find such a girl
one day.”

Will cut his eyes to me. “So can
I.”

I swallowed. I did not like the
possessive side of him, but I would not show it here.

A young man came up and touched Raníer
on the arm, saying something rapidly in Portuguese.

Raníer turned to us. “It is time.
Where are you going to put Emily during the Bonding?”

I thought I had misheard him until
Will’s answer came, calm and clear:

“She will go with me.”

The room fell silent. Every
luminescent set of eyes in the room glared at me with hate; some of
the kinder ones stared at Will with shock.

A middle-aged woman stepped up beside
Raníer, bold and unabashed in her animosity of me.

“You will not defile our ceremonies,
human puta.”

“Calm down, Anya,” Raníer said. “There
is no need for harsh words.”

“It is law, Father. There are no
humans allowed to witness our traditions. The magic is not for
them.”

“Perhaps it is time for a new
tradition,” Will said, fighting to control the anger rising in his
voice. I felt his hands tremble on me. “Lycanti once were human,
and you allow them to witness the events.”

“Yes, and I think that all trash
should be kept outside to let the rats gnaw on it,” Anya
snapped.

A series of growls erupted and the
tension in the room thickened until it made my skin crawl. A few of
the Lycanthrope held tightly to their Lycanti mates. At this point,
I was glad that these Changelings had Masters to control
them.

“Anya,” Raníer growled deeply. “You
will apologize.”

She crossed her arms and raised her
chin. “I will do no such thing.”

His blue eyes met hers in a clash of
wills of the like that I had never seen. It was like two pools of
liquid blue flame had ignited right there in front of
me.

“We are guests in this house. Our
host’s own son is Lycanti. You will apologize.”

“I will apologize to the Lycanti, for
they are my brothers and sisters and deserve an equally honorable
mention in our line,” she said in a soothing, manipulative tongue
that considerably cooled tempers in the room. “I will not apologize
to the human.”

Raníer knew that he had stretched the
limit by asking her to do so. He turned to me. “I am sorry, Emily.
My daughter is young and rash. Even in thirty-six years she has not
learned to control her tongue.” He glared at her. “One day it will
get her killed.”

I nodded silently. I felt I had
nothing to say that anyone wanted to hear anyway. The old hippie
slogan of “Can’t we all just get along?” would not work
here.

He looked at Will with regret in his
eyes. “Do not bring the human.”

Will shot a quick glance at me, then
looked back to Raníer. “I will not leave her.”

“Then you will not attend. I will give
your regards to your mother. She will see you after.”

Will stood there in silence, gripping
my hand as both Lycanti and Lycanthrope left us standing in the
foyer without a further word. Even Anya did no more than scowl at
Will as she passed.

Will kissed me softly on the neck.
“Drink your wine,” he whispered. “The Clan loves tradition. They
have a hard time accepting new things, but don’t worry. They will
accept you.”

I appreciated his attempts to console
me. Unfortunately, I could not help but wonder if his words were
just empty wisps of optimistic hope.

Will

It took a year of hunting together for
Luka to trust me enough to meet Shasta.

“She is too good for me,” he’d joke.
“Gods help my self-esteem if she wants you instead!”

His fears were completely unfounded,
because when I met her, I could not imagine a more perfect couple.
They even looked right together. They were always smiling, never
arguing, and could not keep their hands off each other. I was
jealous, but Brooke and I had become something of an item. It was
more from familiarity that I sought her out—a relic of my former
life that I could use to feel halfway normal again, even pretending
we were human and just having fun like old times. But when I saw
Shasta and Luka together, I knew that Brooke was not what I wanted.
By this time, I had finished my education. I wanted someone to love
me like Shasta loved Luka, not use me for her own selfish purposes.
So I called it quits with Brooke, physically and emotionally. She
didn’t take it well—obviously.

She’d stalk me, pouncing on me at
inopportune moments trying to arouse me and get me to sleep with
her again. I wouldn’t. I would sooner go to my mother’s clan and
have a mate forced on me, I told her. That enraged her even
further, and her motives turned venomous.

Shasta was still human at this point,
but she wanted the Change. She had a great amount of self control
as a human, and Luka thought she could handle our life. And they
wanted children. Luka has several sisters and his family means
everything to him. I did not grow up in the Clan, but he did, and
he loves all of them as if they are all immediate family. As a pure
blood, he had the right to Change Shasta at any time without the
approval of the Council. So they decided the third week in May
would suffice at the next full moon.

He warned her it would hurt, and she
admitted a fear of the pain. That was how Brooke got to her. Luka
took great pains to keep Shasta’s existence secret from the Lycanti
for the very reason I keep you from them. As the only two males in
the area, female Changelings seek us out continually, wanting our
protection for assimilation back into the Clan. Knowing that these
women had killed their previous mates made them instantly
undesirable to me. I am not a suicidal lover, no matter how
beautiful the bait may be. Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to you. I
guess your innocence appealed to me that night in the park. I feel
like you’d never hurt me. I feel selfish mostly, since this our
relationship seems to be from self preservation in this
sense.

Brooke, however, would kill anyone who
got in her way. I think she instinctively knew that the angelic
perfection of Shasta made me wary of her own unscrupulous ways;
therefore, she sought to destroy Shasta. Not only destroy her, but
turn her into something that Luka could never love.

Unfortunately, we will never know the
truth of what happened that night unless Brooke decides to tell us.
Even as the best friend, I did not attend their ceremony since it
is usually a sexual event with the swapping of body fluids acting
as the catalyst for the Change. Luka told me later about the dagger
Shasta brought to the event—a small ornamental dagger that would
blunt the pain according to a wise woman. He used it at her request
to give her comfort. When I saw that dagger, I was catapulted back
to my own Change. The best I can figure is that Brooke laced it
with poison and Shasta was dead before Luka tried to Change her.
The Change has to happen at that pivotal moment between life and
death. Luka did not expect her to slip away so quickly; he wanted
her to experience the euphoria of bleeding to death slowly. When he
tried to heal her with his fluids, she did not awake ravenous for
the warmth of his flesh. She awoke craving the salt of his blood.
He fought her off and she fled—and it broke his heart and left him
carrying the guilt of her botched Change all these
years.

He gets better every year, but he
keeps that dagger by his bed to remind him of how he lost Shasta.
Even in my painful and blurry human memories, I remember the
professor slashing my throat with that small knife. I will never
tell Luka; he would kill Brooke and then regret it. He needs no
more burdens on his soul.

Besides, I want that pleasure for
myself. Because of her, the one thing in my life that could have
been ideal has been shattered. Luka mourns Shasta, and I mourn the
loss of his happiness. He has not been the same since losing
Shasta, although I seem him smile and banter with you, and it
reminds me of the old him.

What is there for me if my best friend
cannot be happy?

Emily

The small crowd filed out of the
private audience chamber that Will and I had been excluded from. I
noticed again how elegantly everyone dressed and thought for the
umpteenth time how stupid I had been to wear my jeans. But Will,
too, had forsaken the black tie affair and wore a nice pair of
slacks and a button down shirt. After all, he had reasoned while
dressing in the hotel earlier, he had already been to a previous
Bonding of his mother’s that had been an even ritzier ceremony and
ended just a few nights later in disaster. He also gave me a bit of
history about his father. Why get all dressed up if she was just
going to kill the guy accidentally on purpose—again?

I had no desire to be there, and
honestly, I felt a bit piqued that I was there at all. We escaped
the heavy atmosphere of exclusion on a balcony.

“A Bonding is a beautiful ceremony. I
hate that you missed it,” Will said while kissing me and playing
with my hair. I relaxed instantly. Only he could soothe me in such
a manner.

“I didn’t wanna watch a bunch of
werewolves getting all misty eyed anyway,” I grumbled
playfully.

“We’re not werewolves,” he chastised
me delicately. We had had this discussion before.

“By what standard? I still don’t
understand.”