Page 27

Faith’s pulse raced as she glanced sideways at Tala, who tightly gripped the steering wheel.

Tension radiated off Tala in thick waves. She stared into the rearview mirror, then hurled a furious glare at Faith. “What the fuck is going on? What are you doing here, in the middle of the night—with a gun? And who are they?” She jerked her head back toward the forest, likely talking about Noah and Violet. “They’re your father’s people, aren’t they?”

Faith shrank back from her booming voice. But then seething anger bubbled up inside her too. “The better question is: Who are they? The wolves?”

“You know who they are. My family!”

Her family were wolves, and Tala had never told her? Faith couldn’t believe it.

“Who you put into grave danger!” Tala added. She sped along Skyline Drive, ignoring the speed limit. Her chest was heaving, either from anger or from the exertion of their mad dash through the forest.

Faith suddenly realized she was staring at Tala’s naked breasts in the glow of the Subaru’s dashboard lights. She snatched her gaze away. It made her even more furious that her body kept reacting to Tala’s nakedness…and that she still found her beautiful.

“Will you please stop and put some clothes on!” The words burst out of her.

Tala hit the brakes.

The seat belt dug into Faith’s chest as she was jerked forward.

The car slid to an abrupt stop on a patch of grass on the shoulder of the road. Tala shut off the engine, grabbed the key fob from the cup holder, and pulled the gun from the compartment in the driver’s side door, where she had stashed it earlier with the safety on. “Stay in the car!” She threw the door open, then got out and slammed it shut with a force that rocked the SUV, echoing through the darkness.

Then she was gone, leaving Faith behind with a still-racing heart and many unanswered questions.

After their frenzied escape from the forest, the sudden silence was jarring.

The adrenaline that had kept her going was ebbing, leaving her weak and trembling. Her entire body ached.

Images replayed through Faith’s mind. Glowing eyes. The wolves closing in. Tala leaping between her and the pack, protecting her. Then the frantic run through the pitch-black forest, with Noah and Violet hot on their heels.

Faith shuddered and rubbed her arms with both hands. Her palms stung, but the ache in her heart was stronger.

Tala’s pack had charged after her, growling and snarling, the way Faith had always seen her mother being hunted down in her nightmares. And yet Tala had defended her—even against her own family.

What did it all mean?

The silence in the car held no answers, only another question: What would Tala do now? She wouldn’t storm off in anger, leaving Faith behind…would she?

The sound of the hatch opening answered her question.

Faith quietly exhaled.

Tala wasn’t abandoning her.

Relief flooded her, even though she knew she probably shouldn’t feel it—not after everything that had happened.

~ ~ ~

Barefoot, Tala stalked around to the back of the SUV and yanked open the hatch.

Like most Wrasa, she always kept a change of clothes in her car. She pulled on jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt with jerky movements.

Then she hesitated with the gun in her hand. She had half a mind to take it and head back into the forest to hunt down their attackers and protect her pack.

But as a Saru, she had been trained not to engage humans unless absolutely necessary. Shoot-outs never ended well—especially not now, at a time when the media already made the Wrasa out to be the bad guys. Her pack would be safer fleeing in their wolf forms, especially since she had lured the pursuers away from them. They knew every inch of the forest and could hide until it was safe to return to their cars.

Sighing, she lifted the panel of the spare tire compartment, placed the gun inside, and slammed the hatch shut.

Her skin still burned with the urge to shift, so she inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to calm the storm raging within her before she got back into the car.

Faith sat rigidly in the passenger seat, her face pale except for a red welt marring her cheek.

Tala sucked in a breath. Earlier, she’d been so angry that the small injury hadn’t registered. She reached out to turn Faith’s head toward her and examine the welt, then stopped herself.

Faith had interrupted a sacred ritual and sent her entire family fleeing through the forest like hunted prey. She wasn’t the victim here, and Tala needed to remember that.

“Why were you hunting us down with a gun? Did your father send you to kill us while we were shifting and defenseless?”

“What? No!” Faith shrank back against the passenger-side door. “I wasn’t there to kill you!”

Tala snorted. “Right! You were wandering through the forest in the middle of the night with a gun in your hand to congratulate Rey and Mirella on their engagement.”

“I was there because I needed answers.”

“And you thought pointing a gun at us was the best way to get them?”

Faith wrapped both arms around herself. “No, I… The gun was just for my protection. To avoid—”

“Avoid what?” Tala snarled.

“Ending up like my mother,” Faith shot back, her tone becoming more heated.

Tala paused. “What does your mother have to do with—”

“You killed her!” The words tore from Faith’s throat, her voice so hoarse Tala barely understood her. Her shoulders fluttered up and down under her ragged breaths. “Or you might have. I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe anymore.” The last few words ended in a whisper, her voice choked with tears. She scrubbed her face with both hands, then flinched as her fingers raked over the red welt on her cheek.

“Killed her? What are you talking about?”

Faith gestured in the direction they had come from. “My mother died in that forest more than twenty years ago. She was found with teeth marks from either wolves or dogs on her bones. Right where your ritual spot is. Are you going to tell me that’s just a big coincidence?”

Tala struggled to make sense of what Faith was saying. Twenty years ago… Right where our ritual spot is… Oh Great Hunter! She couldn’t believe it, nor did she know what to say. Finally, what she got out through a dry mouth was: “That…that was your mother?”

“You know about her?” Faith’s voice was pitched high, like an alarm bell.

Tala nodded and suddenly couldn’t look her in the eyes—not because she felt guilty but because she knew the pain she would see there all too well.

“So I was right?” Faith squeaked out. “It’s not a coincidence?”

“It’s not,” Tala said quietly.

Faith went even paler, though Tala hadn’t thought that was possible. “Y-you admit—?”

Tala held up a hand. “That doesn’t mean we killed her. Please stop assuming the worst of us. We chose that spot for our rituals about twenty years ago because the old location had too many tourists and hikers around, and we realized the new spot was the one place in the entire national park humans tended to avoid like the plague. I heard it was because someone had been found dead there, but I didn’t know it was…” She cut herself off, realizing that she was talking about Faith’s mother as if she were just a dead body found in a crime show.

They sat without moving and stared at each other.

Conflicting emotions warred within Tala. She was still angry, but the pain and grief in Faith’s eyes was unmistakable, and she couldn’t help feeling for her. She knew what it was like to lose a mother, even though she had never gotten to know her biological parents. If she had reason to believe that the accident that had killed them hadn’t been an accident after all, wouldn’t she have tried to find out who was behind it too?

“I’m sorry about your mom, Faith,” she said in a soft whisper. “Really sorry.” Tala only realized she had reached out and put her hand on Faith’s arm when Faith’s muscles stiffened beneath her touch. She quickly pulled her fingers away. “But it wasn’t my pack. We had nothing to do with your mother’s death. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I want to,” Faith whispered, an expression of longing on her face. “But I don’t know what to think anymore. You lied and deceived me all weekend, just when I was starting to believe my father was wrong and you aren’t all manipulative liars. How can I trust you’re telling the truth now?”

“When did I deceive you?” Tala had no idea what Faith was talking about. “This weekend, I told you things about myself and my family that I never…” She bit her lip and stopped short, not wanting to finish the sentence and make herself even more vulnerable. But it was true. She had shared things with Faith that she had never dreamed she would tell anyone, least of all a human—things about Rey, her grandmother, and her relationship with Lasandra. How was that deception?

“That’s true,” Faith said with a nod. “You did tell me a lot about your family…which makes it even worse that you failed to mention one very fundamental thing. You let me believe they’re all foxes. You had a million opportunities to mention that they’re wolves, but you didn’t. And that makes me think you purposefully hid it from me.”

Tala shook her head so firmly that she got dizzy for a moment. “No. No, Faith. That’s not…” She licked her lips, which felt stiff and almost unable to form words, but she forced herself to say them. “I wasn’t hiding the fact that they are wolves. I was hiding that I’m not.”

“Huh? That makes no sense. I already knew you’re a fox. It was even in the tabloid article.”

A growl escaped Tala. “Human tabloids don’t know shit about who I am. Remember what I told Sutton earlier? That I was a late bloomer too?”

Faith nodded, her forehead still furrowed.

“I was talking about the first time I managed to shift shape. All the pups my age had been running with the pack for years. Even Rey had his First Change before I did. I tried and tried, but the change wouldn’t come.” Tala squeezed her eyes shut. “It was humiliating, especially since some pack members already thought I was different and weak.”

Why on earth was she telling Faith all of that—baring her deepest, most personal secrets to this human, even after everything that had happened tonight? But for some reason, the admissions kept tumbling from her mouth.

A ghost of a touch brushed her arm, but when Tala opened her eyes, Faith’s hands rested on her own lap.

“It took me ages to figure out why I couldn’t shift,” Tala finally continued. Her throat felt raw, and yet she couldn’t stop the words. “I needed to picture a fox to initiate the transformation, but all this time, I had visualized a wolf. Because that’s how I saw myself. Telling you my family aren’t foxes would have only called attention to the fact that I am, and I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

Faith’s features softened. “Can’t you be both? I mean, I’m starting to understand that the Wrasa are just as complex as humans, so why should you be only one thing?”

It sounded like what her mother had told her this morning, in the sunroom. Tala hadn’t been ready to hear it earlier, and she wasn’t sure she was ready now. “I only ever wanted to be one thing. A strong Syak—a wolf. Not a weak fox.”

“I did see you earlier, in the forest,” Faith said. “I mean, I saw your fox. There was nothing weak about her. About you. You jumped between me and the pack and saved me from that huge scary black wolf—”

“Rey,” Tala threw in. “He wouldn’t have hurt you. He just had to assert his authority and show off in front of his future wife’s pack.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Faith muttered.

Tala studied her. “Will you? Will you believe me when I tell you my pack and I have no intention of harming you and that we didn’t kill your mother?”

Faith breathed deeply and stared through the window into the dark forest to her right. Then she turned back toward Tala. “I…” She swallowed heavily. “I do believe you.”

Tala had received several commendations for her work as a Saru, but this felt bigger. Monumental.

She studied Faith in the moonlight filtering in through the windshield.

Faith’s brown eyes were damp and filled with emotions—bone-deep exhaustion and grief, but also trust and a new openness, raw and unguarded.

“And I hope you believe that I never meant to harm you or your pack,” Faith added quietly.

Tala did. Faith had carried a gun. She could have easily used it against them or called out for help, but she hadn’t.

They looked at each other.

A glint of light in the rearview mirror wrenched Tala’s attention away from Faith. She whirled around in the driver’s seat.

Headlights approached from behind, quickly coming closer.

Faith craned her neck. “Oh shit! I need to call my father! Tell him I’m fine. He needs to call them off!”

Adrenaline surged through Tala, making fire flare along her skin. Cursing, she started the car and hit the gas. “The two humans in the forest… They were HASS, weren’t they?” she shouted over the roar of the engine. “Your father sent them to kill us, and you knew!” The realization hit Tala like a punch in the gut.

“No! I mean…yes, they’re HASS, but I didn’t know they had followed me to Silver Falls or that Dad would send them after me. He promised not to.” Faith gripped the dashboard with one hand while frantically digging through her pants pockets. Then she stilled as if dimly remembering something. “Crap. I lost my phone in the forest. Give me yours!”

“It’s with my clothes, in my sister’s car,” Tala shouted, her focus on the road ahead. “My fur suit doesn’t have any pockets.”

The headlights behind them grew brighter.

Shit. Tala gritted her teeth and pressed her foot onto the gas even harder. Great Hunter, she really wished she hadn’t left the gun in the back.

The lights behind them turned off.

Then flared back on.

Only to flicker off and on again.

“What are they doing?” Faith asked. “Is that supposed to be Morse code or something? Because it’s not.”

Peter MacAllister’s goons liked playing soldier. They would probably know proper Morse code, wouldn’t they? Tala exhaled sharply and eased up on the gas pedal.

Faith, who had twisted around to see the car behind them, whirled back around to face her. “What are you doing?”

“It’s not your father’s people; it’s my pack!” Tala could now make out other sets of headlights in the rearview mirror.

Faith slumped against the back of her seat. “I think this is when you say: ‘Oh thank the Great Hunter!’”

But Tala wasn’t in the mood to joke. “I can’t believe you brought this hate group down on us, putting my entire family at risk!”

Faith ducked her head. “I didn’t know he would send them after me. I made him promise he wouldn’t. I didn’t want them to hurt any of you. That’s why I followed you alone.”

Tala didn’t answer. She believed Faith, and a part of her could even understand her. The pack having a mysterious ritual at the site where Faith’s mother had died had to appear suspicious to someone who had been influenced by Peter MacAllister’s rhetoric ever since the Wrasa had first come out.

But a spark of anger still smoldered deep inside of Tala. Or maybe it wasn’t so much anger. If she was honest with herself, she was hurt—hurt that after everything she had shared with Faith, she’d still believed the worst about her and her pack and had followed them to prove they were killers.

She slowed the car and then pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road. “Let’s flag down Arlyn and get my phone. You have to call your father before he sends every HASS member in Virginia after us.”