*Xander*
The farmhouse was in shambles, but it was obvious people had still been living in it, and for so ti. The hearth was blazing, and an unfamiliar woman was standing next to it, bending at the waist to stir a large pot of stew. She didn’t look up at us as we ca into the room. Bethany was trailing behind , and the man who had introduced himself as Gideon stopped for a mont to whisper into the woman’s ear.
She glanced at only briefly before laying the spoon across the pot and quickly leaving the living room. I heard the front door open and shut as we began to walk up a flight of stairs.
“My sister, Alma,” he said, motioning his hand dismissively. “She doesn’t talk much.”
I followed him through an incredibly narrow and ill-lit hallway until finally he stopped walking, and pulled out a heavy set of keys. Fury rippled through as he unlocked the door.
“You locked her in?” I sneered, but Gideon only shrugged.
“I locked everyone else out,” he said calmly, glancing at before stepping out of the way to let and Bethany cross into the bedroom.
It was a dark room, the only light coming from a single window with faded lace curtains. It was stuffy in the room, and cramped, with little room to walk around with three grown adults now taking up most of the free space.
Lena was lying on the bed on top of the bedspread, her arms limp at her sides. She had been redressed in a pair of sweatpants that were too large for her fra, and the button-down shirt she was wearing was open to expose her abdon. I sucked in my breath as my gaze traveled from her face to her stomach, where four long, deep gashes stretched from beneath her breasts all the way to her hip bones.
The injury had been cleaned and was no longer bleeding, but the entire area was coated in the black muck I imdiately recognized as blood root, the sa substance Henry had used to treat the wound on my chest–the wound Jen had given .
“Who are you?” I breathed, directing my inquiry at Gideon without looking over at him.
“That doesn’t matter right now. My brothers are dealing with the hybrid, and Alma will see to Lena’s care–”
“Hybrid?” I asked, and this ti I did look at Gideon.
He was not a very tall man, standing only a few inches taller than Bethany. His dark hair was swept back, his eyes a soft, pale green. But his skin was so pale I could see the fine, blue veins in his face and neck, and his fingers were long and narrow as he motioned to Lena’s wound.
“She should have been dead,” Gideon said calmly, shrugging one shoulder. “All of you, actually. No one has survived these creatures–”
“There’s more than one?” I ground out, a dozen questions blurring my thoughts. “What the hell is a hybrid?”
“It’s the thing that did this to you. A wolf, a shifter, but changed. They’re feral. Rabid... and when that new part of them takes hold they beco increasingly out of control. We’ll kill the creature, I hope you know. Whoever it once was, is already long gone.”
“What is the new part of it? What is it mixed with?” I asked, clenching my hands into fists. “What does it want, exactly?”
Gideon glanced at Bethany, and it sent a jolt of suspicion through my body.
“What,” I began, looking at them both, “are you not telling ?”
“Later,” Gideon murmured, motioning to Bethany to follow him. “I assu you want to stay with her, or do you want the opportunity to interrogate whatever fraction of humanity is left in the hybrid?”
I looked down at Lena, my heart squeezing painfully. I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t know if I could trust these people.
“She’s safe,” Gideon assured, his voice suddenly rich with empathy.
I looked over at him, flexing my jaw as I sized him up one more ti. “You’re going to tell everything,” I stated with conviction, to which Gideon only nodded, a look of surrender flashing behind his eyes.
***
Gideon’s brothers happened to be the sa group of n he’d been standing with at the bonfire at the lake. It was obvious they were related, all of them short of stature with their odd, translucent skin and pale erald eyes. We were standing in a barn, which was caved in on one side, the other side just tall enough for us to stand at a comfortable distance from each other, surrounding the “hybrid.”
Jen was looking right at , her eyes reddened and her pupils dilated so extrely I wondered if she could see us. Saliva covered her chin and neck, and her long teeth were cutting painfully into her lower lip as she snarled and snapped at us.
They’d chained her to a fallen and rusted beam with her arms crossed behind her back. She wasn’t going anywhere, that was for sure.
Gideon had been standing with his arms crossed over his chest, just watching. After several minutes of silence from the group, he nodded toward one of his brothers, who stepped forward and swiftly removed my knife from Jen’s side. She howled, the sound so shrill it sent a ripple of gooseflesh across my skin and made my ears ring.
“Where are the others? Elaine, and Henry?” Gideon asked in a business-like fashion.
Jen laughed in a delirious manner, tilting her head back and looking at us down the bridge of her nose.
“Maxwell will co for –”
“You’ll be dead by then,” Gideon replied flatly as he accepted the knife from his brother. He wiped it on his jeans, then handed it to .
I gripped the knife by the hilt, turning it over and over in my hands as I looked down at Jen.
“What are you?” I asked.
She smiled. It was the ugliest, most terrifying smile I’d ever seen.
“Death,” she said simply, her voice nothing short of a choked whisper as her lips curved at the corners.
“What happened... to Jen?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.
There was a flash of understanding behind her eyes, but then they darkened again, her pupils now two different sizes. She didn’t answer, instead baring her teeth and screeching so loudly we all covered our ears.
“Kill it before it calls the rest of them here,” exclaid one of Gideon’s brothers.
“How many more of them are there?” Bethany croaked, her face draining of color.
“Not many. Not any others this close to a settlent in this r—” Gideon began, but broke off, his eyes locking on mine.
My chest tightened. I knew exactly what he was about to say. I knew he knew the truth about at that mont. How he knew–I would need to find that out, and fast.
“We need to bring her to the Alpha,” I said hurriedly, but Gideon shook his head slowly, his gaze leaving mine and settling on Jen.
“We can’t,” he said.
“Why the f*ck not?”
“I’ll explain when the ti is right. When Lena is awake. Until then, we let this hybrid weaken. She’ll be easier to kill if she’s gone without sustenance for a few days. She’s the only one of her kind for miles, from what we know. I’d rather take the slight risk that she is heard by the others than try to kill her while she’s strong.” Gideon turned on his heel, leaning into one of his brothers to whisper into his ear, then he turned to look at , motioning for to follow.
“What sustenance?” I hissed as I caught up to him.
Bethany was following close behind, her footsteps crunching in the dead grass as we walked back to the farmhouse.
“Blood, of course.”
***
Bethany took the truck and returned to the estate. I stayed behind. I had absolutely no reason to go back to the estate, and I didn’t want to. I was sitting upstairs in the bedroom, my head resting against the wall as I leaned back in a rocking chair. I’d tried to close my eyes, but found myself staring out the window, watching the sky darken as the worst day of my life faded into dusk.
Lena hadn’t moved at all. She was breathing, but her breaths were shallow and pained. Her wounds were still open and exposed, and I found myself on the verge of breaking down every ti I looked in her direction.
This was not how things were supposed to go. If I’d known... If I’d know this path would have put her in danger....
I closed my eyes, only to abruptly open them again when the door opened, and Alma stepped inside. She was carrying a tray and quickly handed a huge pewter bowl of stew, which I accepted gratefully. I couldn’t rember the last ti I’d eaten, but just as I picked up the spoon, her hand ca toward , and she opened her palm, a dusting of black powder falling into my soup.
I blanched, eting her eyes. “Why?”
“You were bitten,” was all she said.
The blood root was pungent, and I knew it had given the stew a sowhat acrid taste as I lifted my spoon to my mouth and tested it. Bethany told it was poisonous. Maybe it would put out of my misery.
I ended up drinking the soup straight from the bowl, hunger overtaking . I hadn’t even looked at the scratch marks on my back and chest from our battle with Jen, but I could feel them as I finally rose from the chair and set my empty bowl on the dresser near the door.
Alma was cleaning Lena’s wounds. She glanced at as I gingerly began to remove my shirt, hoping to catch a glimpse of myself in the filthy, dust covered mirror above the dresser.
“I need to treat them,” Alma said as she reached into her apron and pulled out a jar of blood root powder. She pointed to the long, shallow scratches along my shoulder blades and back, which were already causing purple streaks to fan out over my skin.
“I was told blood root is poisonous,” I said, wadding up my shirt and tossing it on the rocking chair.
A soft, knowing smile touched Alma’s mouth. She wasn’t a beautiful woman. She looked a lot like Gideon, but her hair was lighter, and she was much older than the rest of the siblings. There was a severe sadness behind her eyes, sothing that had been lingering there for a long ti.
“It’s poisonous to those who haven’t been marked by a hybrid. That’s what she did to you, the first ti, right there–” Alma pointed to the scar on my chest, which had healed nicely but was still raw and pink.
“Mark ? Like–”
“Not like the mark done by your kind,” she whispered as she sat on the edge of Lena’s bed with the tray in her lap. She poured the powder into a pestle and added so kind of light, floral slling carrier oil to it as she began to make a paste with the mortar.
“My kind? Are you not a–”
“No, I am not.” Alma didn’t look up at as she spoke.
“That’s impossible–”
“Haven’t you realized that everything is possible? Of all people... you should know.”
I swallowed hard, adrenaline prickling my fingertips as I watched her reach for what looked like a paintbrush. She coated it in the blood root salve and then painted it over Lena’s abdon.
“She won’t fully heal from this,” Alma whispered, her voice edged with regret.
“What? Why?”
“She’s not your kind, either, Xander. Not totally. She’s fragile now. She shouldn’t have been. There should have been no reason she couldn’t have fought that creature with nothing but a look in it’s direction. Tell , what do you know of her?”
I didn’t answer. My silence was enough for Alma, she was looking at , searching my eyes for understanding. She must have found it, because her expression softened as she turned back to her work.
“She’ll struggle to carry a pregnancy,” she breathed as she laid the paintbrush on the tray and reached for a large piece of unblemished linen to cover the wound. She laid it over Lena’s stomach, her hand resting there for just a mont before she reached for the tray again. “Does that ruin your plans for her?”
I swallowed back the retort that was on the tip of my tongue.
“You tasked yourself with protecting her, but you didn’t truly understand who, and what, she is. Did you?” Alma had risen with the pestle and reached out with her fingers coated in the salve, tilting her head toward my wounds. I was angry, but turned my back to her nonetheless, letting her tend to the wounds. “What will you do now? Does she still hold the sa promise in which you sought?”
I closed my eyes against Alma’s words. Normally, I would have lashed out, defended myself. But Alma wasn’t wrong, not at all.
In the beginning I was after Lena for one thing, and one thing only.
But now everything had changed.
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