Page 34 of Bound

“And still you feel I’m the right messenger?”

“When we show signs of the disease, we’re culled. That’s what you do with an animal. With someone you consider expendable. I’m asking you to remember that there are men, women and children suffering in cages alongside your brother. Who will come for them? You wolves ask the world to remember that we all have souls, that shifters should be offered the same protections and rights as humans. The question is whether you mean those words.”

Suddenly Vlad swayed in place, pressing fingers to his temples. River.

“Wait,” I said urgently.

But Vlad was already backing towards the edge of the roof.

“I believe we are all worth saving.”

And with that, he disappeared.

5

West

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WENT FROM BAD TO DUMPSTER FIRE. Topher and I sent word through River that Vlad wanted to negotiate. My uncle shot that idea down even faster than the time he’d come to pick me up from school because August was sick and our parents had taken him back east to see specialists and I’d suggested we pull through the drive-thru and grab a sack of cheeseburgers to take home for everyone. That was a hard no. Apparently, real food didn’t require a toy to convince you to eat it. Also, had I ever noticed there was a decided lack of stray dogs wandering around that particular dining establishment?

Guillermo drove us home and told a ten-year-old Dallas he was allowed to cook anything he wanted for supper, ignoring the mayday looks the rest of us exchanged. Maybe it was Dallas’s desire to show off for company. Or maybe our mom’s lectures about no one wanting to eat something when the ingredients sounded like they’d been chosen on a dare were finally paying off—that would be my brother’s rainbow potato salad with watermelon and pineapple that our dad had unsuccessfully tried to pawn off on the goats. But that night we were treated to chicken fried steak with black pepper cream gravy, whipped garlic potatoes, and fresh green beans from the garden drizzled in butter, after which Uncle G took us out into the woods for a pack hunt despite it being a school night.

My uncle could be a ruthless bastard. But at his heart, he loved us, and would have done anything to keep us safe. Except of course, have a conversation with a vampire.

Guillermo: I read your email. I understand you’re angry with me.

West: I just don’t see what the harm would be in talking to him. What if Vlad could provide us intelligence on Zara’s compounds and military assets?

Guillermo: It’s something we considered. But ultimately even that information would come at too high a cost.

West: So what is Kieran Greer’s life worth, exactly? And what if it was my dad we were talking about? Do you know I still have the last text he sent me that morning? I read it every day.

Guillermo: There are currently 284 shifters listed as missing across the southern territories. I’ve reviewed each of their files personally and have teams assigned who are working towards their recovery. We will not rest until every one of them is brought home. Including Kieran Greer and Ben Caldwell.

Guillermo: My charge is to protect all the packs in this region, something I cannot do if those who would seek to harm us learn the surest way to guarantee the Council’s cooperation is through terrorist demands.

West: I have to go. You and Uncle Rafe are coming down for my birthday this weekend, right? Dallas is grilling.

Guillermo: I wouldn’t miss it. Give your brothers my best. And tell Topher I truly am sorry.

The following Tuesday dawned with a brilliant sunrise across the rolling hills east of Blood Moon in a dozen shades of magenta, fiery tangerine and cornflower blue. Bands of high feathery cirrus clouds streaked across the morning sky, yet another dry hot day ahead with no sign of rain.

In Texas, the temperature rose every summer to over one hundred degrees for months on end. It didn’t rain for so long that you started to feel twitchy with a desperate, breathless sort of hope every time a cloud passed overhead, just hoping maybe for an hour of relief from the blazing heat that roasted you like a rotisserie chicken from the second you stepped outside away from the air conditioning, which Texans kept cranked to perma-frost. Kind of our shibboleth down here. Adding to our torment, the nightly weather forecast played shamelessly with our emotions, teasing empty promises of rain that every single time got the whole state staring up at that bright blue sky, checking their phones, and stalking every cloud like it was a rogue member of a boy band.

“Mr. Caldwell, how much longer do you think it will be?”

With the predatory instincts of a pack of velociraptors, the twenty advisory students crammed together in the back corner of my classroom began to squirm. I silently counted to ten, shooting a longing look at the extra-tall caramel macchiato Ethan had made for me that morning when I’d stormed into Dark with a killer headache.

To his credit, my brother hadn’t pried, even though I was pretty sure he could guess this headache, like all the others lately, was Topher Greer-related. Instead, he’d just added extra shots to my drink without needing to be asked (three, thank God), while watching me obsessively type and then delete two text messages, at which point he’d topped things off with enough caramel and whip to take out a small alpaca. And now I was stuck staring longingly at said extra-tall caramel macchiato despite the migraine of the century knowing full well reaching for it thirty minutes into a supernatural lockdown drill when my class was stuck in what the district’s risk assessment experts had deemed the safest corner of my classroom equaled prison riot.

And not the fun kind.

“One,” I said. “No talking during drills.” The velociraptors snarled like I’d dangled a freshly buttered goat in front of them, only to snatch it back. We also weren’t supposed to have phones out, but after the first fifteen minutes I’d decided to pick my battles. “Two, half of you have a vocab quiz next period. Study.”

Rubbing my temples, I surveyed the disaster area formerly known as my desk. A tower of journals I needed to mark before fourth period teetered precariously by my thirty-year-old classroom phone, whose receiver was wrapped in duct tape in the school colors after someone had carved an f-bomb and the previous English teacher’s name into it. And kill me now, my red message light was already blinking. On the cork board over the phone, a messy collage of photographs was tacked up with multicolored pushpins. There was one of Brody and Major out at the ranch, Major making hopeful eyes while dragging half a tree behind him for my brother to toss for him, Cal laughing in the background. The one beside it was from Dallas and Lacey’s wedding back in June, Hayden and Ethan squeezed in beside them in the frame, Ethan in a tux, Hayden in a dark blue dress that matched the fierce daisy tattoo snaking up the inside of her arm, so many smiles that it was hard to believe there was a time none of them had gotten along. I flicked my gaze along the rest of the photographs, stopping on one of all of us from that day. And like every other time I looked at it, my eyes found him.

Topher.

It was easy to miss the small things, the details he worked so hard to hide. The dark shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there before. The weight he’d lost. The way that in every frame, he held himself slightly apart from the rest of us, a subtle dismissal before we could reject him. And I wondered in that moment if with Topher I was always seeing what I wanted to see, telling myself he was okay, adjusting to the upheaval that had been the past year. If in an attempt to protect him from my curse, I’d instead failed utterly to listen at every turn.