19. Sol
CHAPTER 19
Sol
L ater that night, I found Guin in her old room, sitting on her bed with a book spread open on her lap. She’d decided to stay for a few days just in case Percy came back with any stupid ideas, but I figured he’d gone to pout in private.
“Hey,” I said, taking a few steps toward her as she glanced up at me. The soft glow from the lamp on her nightstand cast her in a delicate light that reminded me of our mother. She’d hate that comparison, so I didn’t bring it up. “Can we talk?”
She nodded and set her book to the side so she could cross her legs and make room for me. I crawled on the mattress next to her the way I’d used to do when we were kids.
“I’m surprised the shareholders were so easily swayed,” I said. “I can’t believe it went so well.”
She shrugged. “They didn’t know there was another option. Now they do.”
“Just like that, huh?” I said.
“Well,” she continued. “I had to scratch a few backs and call in a few favors. But we got it done, so all’s well that ends well.”
“How did you know I’d turned?” I asked.
“I could feel it.” She rubbed a finger over her brow, brushing back her ginger hair that matched mine. “I’ve known I was a shifter since I was a teenager.”
I balked, widening my eyes at her confession. “What? How?”
“It’s a long story,” she said. “Suffice to say we used to have some day workers that were shifters, and the more time I spent around them, the more it brought it out of me.”
I thought back to what I knew about her as a teenager, but I’d been young, no more than five or six at the time. I vaguely remembered a guy she’d liked, a guy around her age that one of the ranch hands had taken in as a child.
“Van?” I said, squinting as I remembered.
Guin sighed and rolled her eyes. “He goes by Vermillion now. He’s a Bastard…in more ways than one.”
“How? Did you go through a transition? Did he help you?” I was desperate for more information, specifically why she’d kept it to herself. If there was a possibility that any of us were also shifters, she could have said something.
“Sol,” she drawled, looking out the window as she closed her eyes. “The Bastards aren’t good people.”
“Neither are the Scorpions.” I crossed my arms as an ache splintered down into my gut. I missed Orion, and I’d only been parted from him for two days. He hadn’t reached out since Kodiak sent me home, but admittedly, neither had I.
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved with either.” Guin pulled one side of her mouth into a smirk. “I’m sorry Percy backed you into a corner.”
“I tried to fight him,” I said. “I tried to do what you would have done. I just didn’t have enough sway at Vanderbilt Holdings without you. I’m glad we worked it out together.”
She cast me a sympathetic glance before brushing a stray piece of hair behind my ear in a startlingly endearing move. “Tell me about your time with the Bastards.”
I did. I explained how I’d learned to take care of the sheep and feed the horses, how I’d gone through nesting and my transition. “Orion helped me, more than I could ever repay him for. And then…” I clutched myself tighter, forcing myself to say it. “And then I think we mated each other, but he found out about this stupid betrothal and we got into an argument and now I don’t know what we are.”
She narrowed her eyes at my neck before glancing over the rest of me and returning to my face. “I don’t see a bite.”
“We didn’t get that far yet,” I said. “He wanted to wait for the ritual, for Kodiak to welcome me into the pack…but then I fucked it all up.”
“Mates are for life, Sol,” she said. “If you truly are mated, he won’t be able to stay away from you for long. Nor you him.”
I had so many questions. “Are you in the pack? When did you transition?”
“I didn’t know anything about this when it happened to me. I was barely eighteen. Vermillion got me through it.” She kept her features blank, almost purposely so, like she’d built a wall between this current version of her and the one that had been that girl all those years ago. “And for my first moon, he took me out to a remote part of the woods where it could just be the two of us.”
“Are you a fox, too?” I was desperate to know if she was like me, if our animal side ran in the family.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know how the type of animal is determined, perhaps through family or personality.” She shrugged. “I met with a Bastard named Ares in the Dallas MC, but his experience is different from ours. He can change at will whenever he wants. I think there’s so many kinds of magic in the world that it depends on circumstance.”
I winced, attempting to absorb all of this so quickly, even though it pleased me to know I wasn’t alone in our family, that I had another person like me. “Is Vermillion your mate?”
At that, she laughed and shook her head. “No, thank God.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
She shrugged. “I’m glad I’m not bound to someone so permanently, and if I have it my way, I never will be. Being mated makes you vulnerable. Your world ends when your mate dies, and I have no desire to go through that type of loss. Ever.”
Orion hadn’t even died, but I felt the stinging pain of his loss every minute we weren’t together. I hated the separation. Even still, her nihilism had caused her to miss out on all the good things about being mated—the shared emotions and deep intimacy and bonded magic. Even this far away from Orion, he still hummed under my skin like a low wave vibration.
“And the Bastards?” I asked, urging her on. “Did they take you in? Are you a part of their pack?”
“No.”
“Why not?” I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out the first thing that came to mind, even if it seemed to make her frown and blink back tears.
“Because I didn’t mate the vice president,” she spat, giving me a venomous look that could only come from an older sister chastising her younger one. “And I prefer to run alone.”
I wanted to ask more about the relationship between her and Vermillion, but Orion had told me that most shifters don’t mate the person that helps them through their transition, so I let it go and shifted the conversation elsewhere. “Where do you go on the moon?”
“I lock myself in my apartment,” she said. “Or I use the land out by the Missouri. Once I turn, most of the predators leave me alone.”
“That sounds lonely,” I said, reaching out to grab her hand. She gave it a soft squeeze and curled her lips into a hesitant smile.
“Don’t worry about me, little sister,” she said. “Those first few moons are rough enough as it is. Focus on yourself.”
I cleared my throat and scooted closer to her. “Thank you again for helping me with Percy. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Yes, well.” She rolled her eyes and reached over to turn out the light, bathing us in the darkness of the waning moon trickling in through her curtains. “We need to be careful. The Scorpions will be offended once they learn he’s gone back on the deal.”
“They’re vampires,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “They’re even more despicable than the Bastards. That’s why I worked so hard to get you out of it. But now you’re in their crosshairs. They won’t leave you alone until they feel the debt has been paid.”
“They haven’t enacted their side of the deal,” I said. “They said they wouldn’t until we were married.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Guin explained. “They’ll see it as a threat to their pride, to their reputation. Especially when he learns you’ve mated the Bastards’ second.”
“I haven’t mated him…not really. It’s complicated.” I bit my bottom lip and scooted under the covers, fluffing the pillow up around my head. It felt nice to be next to her, and even though she was ten years older than me, the company of another shifter, of family, of pack, soothed the anxiety brewing in my gut.
“I can smell him on you, Sol,” she said. “Whether the human wants it or not, your other sides have already accepted it. I bet his wolf is driving him bonkers right now, trying to get to you.”
I didn’t want to think about that, so I changed the subject. “Are Maeve and Avalon shifters, too? What about Liam or Galahad?”
She shrugged and let out a sleepy hum. “I don’t know.”
“What about our parents? Do you think it was Father or Mother that had the gene?”
“Mother,” she said. “If she’d been around, we likely would have had our transitions earlier. Father either didn’t know or did whatever he could so we didn’t turn out like her.”
“Was she a fox, too?” I couldn’t help the questions from coming now, as if Guin had become my own personal shifter history book.
“I don’t know, Sol,” she said, resigned. “Try to get some sleep. You’ve had a long couple of days, and it’s not going to get any easier from here.”
I bit my bottom lip and snuggled farther under the duvet, watching as my sister closed her eyes and relaxed her features.
“The Bastards didn’t kill her, Guin,” I said. “At first, I didn’t believe it. But now, I know. I feel it deep in my gut.”
“I know,” Guin said. “I know.”
It didn’t matter why the war between our families had started. Blood. Land. Money. Even though our mother had died nearly twenty years ago, the grudge had continued. Someone had to stop it. Someone had to usher in a new pact. The people who had committed these acts were gone now. Twenty years ago, Orion would have been fifteen, maybe sixteen, and he’d admitted to Kodiak being his best friend, which meant that the current alpha had nothing to do with the war between our families. Could I blame them for the actions of people who came before them? Could they blame me for the things my father had done?
Eventually, Guin’s breathing evened out, her inhales as shallow as her exhales, and I realized she’d finally drifted unconscious. I closed my eyes and reached out for the part of me that existed outside of myself, the part of me that was in Orion, my other half.
I sensed him in the center of my chest like the steady beat of a drum, like poison in my veins that ached and soothed at the same time. I yearned to reach out to him, to use what little connection we still had to rectify this whole thing.
I missed him. Terribly. It had only been two days since I left the Fiver, but it seemed like an eternity. Everyone had been right. We were truly mated, deep down inside, and the fury with which I longed to be near him was all the evidence I needed.
I grabbed my phone and scrolled over his contact, the same as I had the night before, but this time, I sent a text.
Me: I miss you, big grumpy wolf. And I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
I waited for a reply, but after a few minutes with nothing, I swallowed my pride, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.