Page 46 of Crave
Me: How about we put her in the middle of the room and see which one of us she comes to.
BabyGotBake: Pretty sure cats make you their bitch, not the other way around.
Over the next fifteen minutes, I got into a firefight with August, which had me down to two life bars, but managed to ambush River and Guillermo in the middle of a standoff, taking my brother out before he could find cover. And yeah, he was probably going to send his Tracer buddies to my house in the middle of the night, but who the hell cared? Lacey and I were going to go back to her place, make sure our cat hadn’t developed a phobia due to the seventeen bowls of water she’d left out, and spend the rest of the night getting lost in each other.
I was just crossing the creek where it forked off west towards the lake when my target vest buzzed with a hit. Cursing, I ducked low and spun, trying to get a bead on my attacker. A few craggy trees twisted their bare branches up towards the night sky. The jagged face of the limestone bluff to my right was strewn with boulders. Beyond it, wild ranchland. Had to be the bluff.
My vest buzzed with a second hit. Checkmate.
“I’m out.”
“Never give up the high ground.” My mother emerged from behind the closest outcropping.
I held up my hands. “You got me. Nice trip wires, by the way.”
“You saw them. Maybe I’m getting sloppy.”
“Or you taught me well.”
A smile played at her lips. But only briefly. “How’s that shoulder?”
I dropped my head. “Mom—”
“Shirt.”
Sighing, I stripped off my target vest, then the shirt. “It’s fine.”
“Did Naomi examine this?”
“How did Brody answer during the pre-interrogation? Cause I’ve heard it’s important to keep your answers straight.”
Ignoring me, she probed the muscle, then guided my arm up, testing for range of motion. “Did you let her call one of the pack doctors from Austin?”
“It was already closing. She put in stitches. Given that we have no idea what the vamps infected Lacey with, or who could be involved, we didn’t want to chance reaching out to another pack.”
My mother tossed me my shirt. “Naomi is an excellent veterinarian and has saved more than one life in this pack as a first line medic and EMT. But she’d be the first to tell you that some injuries are beyond her level of skill. The Austin packs both have surgeons. The last thing you need is to have an injury this serious heal up wrong and cause you problems down the line.”
“Dad never trusted doctors from outside the pack.”
“He was raised not to trust anyone. You weren’t.” A beat. “I guess there’s no need to ask if you and Lacey Blair are together.”
“Wow, Mom. Really?”
“Is it serious?”
“You and I talk every week. Pretty sure you already know the answer to that one.”
A ribbon of cloud passed ominously in front of the moon. “So end this stalemate with Ethan.”
“Okay. Good talk.”
“Shifters don’t like to share. The need to mark, to possess, goes against every instinct in our wolves, especially in males. But it’s creating division within our family and the pack. Brody said you didn’t even stand with the rest of your brothers at the ceremony today.”
“Glad to see Ethan has no shortage of people ready to make excuses for him yet again.”
Her eyes held mine. “If you think I’m proud of what your brother did, you’re wrong. But it’s done and he’s with Hayden now. And holding onto all this anger is only going to hurt you in the end.”
Here’s the thing. Ethan and I hadn’t always had it out for each other. At first, I’d even been excited about the idea of him coming to live with us. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how his being around all the time shifted the dynamic in the house. We began to get into squabbles. Stupid kid stuff, really. He’d take the last hotdog at dinner or I’d step on his drawing paper, which was always scattered all over the bunkroom we shared with West. And every time, my dad would come down twice as hard on me because apparently Ethan was too special to be punished.
