Chapter 3
The sight of Gerald bleeding and broken, the stench of death surrounding him blinded Misti to everything except for Anders’s wolf, lying there, waiting for her to end him.
And she was so ready to. She even charged Anders, her wolf screaming for more of his blood.
But then Gerald said one word: “Don’t.”
Her teeth had just touched his fur. All she had to do was clamp down, and it would all be over.
“Don’t. He… he was trying…”
One bite and she could return home. Father need never know what she had done, that she had not only disobeyed him concerning sleeping with a werewolf, but with a vile Shadowed Star. To kill the one responsible for Jason and for stealing away Gerald might even elevate her high enough in her father’s esteem that he would stop his talk of making Xavier his heir. Her cousin was nothing more than a pup compared to her, too willing to do whatever her father wished to even stop and think whether or not it was for the best. The pack needed someone who could be logical and brilliant if they were to survive the feud against the Shadowed Stars.
Maybe her father should look elsewhere other than her or Xavier.
Her mouth watered, and she readied to snap her jaw shut.
“Trying to save…. Save me,” Gerald said through strangled gasps of air. He collapsed onto the ground and stopped moving.
Misti jerked back and ran over to Gerald’s side, changing as she went, not caring about her nakedness. “What happened to you?” The stench of blood and decay was stronger now that she was beside him.
Anders walked over, naked as his name day, bruises already coloring his body, blood dripping from spots.
She glowered at him. “What did you do to him?” She had to fight herself to not revert to her wolf form, so great was her fury.
“I did nothing but try to save him.”
“You expect me to believe that?” she snapped. Did Anders think that just because they had slept together, she would forgive his sins or accept his lies?
“After we parted, I wanted to try and make things right.”
“How on earth could you think killing Jason would make things right!” She kneeled beside Gerald and held her hand to his chest. He felt so cold, too cold, deathly cold. While she and her father hadn’t always seen eye to eye—more like hardly ever—she and Gerald got along just fine.
“He… tried… save…”
“Sh, don’t waste your energy trying to talk.” Misti blinked back tears. Unable to look away from her pack member’s face, she barked, “Tell me what happened, and it better be the truth, or else I will kill you this time.”
Out of the upper portion of her vision, she spied Anders nod. “Like I said, I wanted to make things right. I thought about turning myself into your family. They would give me a quicker, more merciful death than my father would.”
“Not likely,” she said bitterly.
“Be that as it may, I hadn’t quite made up my mind. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to die yet when I came across the guard?—”
“Jason,” she hissed.
“When I came across Jason,” Anders conceded. “I decided to try and tell him the truth.”
“The truth?” she asked, horrified. What all had the wolf shared?
“I told him that I had met you and fallen for you and wished to claim you. He listened to my words without saying anything back and then attacked me. I defended myself.”
“That’s… I…”
“Gerald overheard everything. He tried to break up our fighting, and Jason’s blade nicked him on the chest.”
Sure enough, Gerald’s shirt did seem to be the source of the blood, and she spied a tear. Through it, she could see blackened, upraised skin.
“Jason… poisoned…”
“Jason’s blade was poisoned tipped. When he refused to tell me of the antidote, my wolf took over, and I slew him where he stood. Since Gerald had done nothing wrong, I took him with me to try and find some medicinal herbs, but so far, nothing has helped.”
“I… ready… full life…”
“Gerald, don’t talk like that,” she commanded. “But… is his story true?”
Gerald weakly nodded.
While his story might be, what he had claimed might not be. “Fallen for me?” she scoffed. Although he had tried to claim her, that much was true.
Anders shrugged. “It might be one way to prevent war.”
“War is coming.” Could he be that na?ve? “And you might be the cause of it.”
“The last thing I want is war.”
“We don’t always get what we want.” Gerald’s hand in hers slackened, his grip weakening. “There is nothing else you can do for him?”
“I have tried all of the herbs and flowers that I know of. I didn’t think it was wise to bring him to a hospital.”
“You should have,” she snapped, but he had a good reason for avoiding them. The world at large remained ignorant of werewolves, but the chances that the tests a hospital would run might reveal abnormalities their technicians could not explain and would want to develop further meant hospitals and doctors were places werewolves avoided. “If Jason used poison, he must have kept the antidote nearby. You never should have moved him.”
“I did what I thought was best.”
“You thought wrong,” she said stubbornly, but really, what else could Anders have done? As a Shadowed Star, he would have been killed had he been discovered.
Ignoring her, Anders kneeled beside Gerald. “Would you like something to eat or drink?”
Compassion. Or was it only an act? Anders was intelligent, and she could not bring herself to trust him. Even so, she found her gaze wandering over his naked body that glistened with sweat from the exertion of their battle. Trust or not, she still craved his touch.
Embarrassed and ashamed, she glanced away.
“Wa…”
“Water?” Anders nodded. He walked away and returned a moment later with a small clay cup. With care, he lifted Gerald’s neck and poured the water. A little trickled down his chin, but he swallowed some of it.
“Thank…”
“Of course.”
“Gerald, I…” Misti shook her head. She couldn’t ask more of him. The man was dying, and he should have some moments of peace before he passed.
“Your father…”
“Hush. Don’t you worry about my father or me or anything at all. You just relax.”
He opened his mouth.
“Stop.” An idea came to her. “Do you want me to sing to you?”
Gerald nodded. Then he turned his head to the side and coughed. Blood spattered onto the grass.
She hadn’t sung in years. Her father had claimed she was tone deaf, but the others in the pack had seemed to enjoy her singing voice. After someone had complimented her and her father overheard, he had the flatterer whipped. Misti hadn’t sung since.
It only took her a second to think of which song to sing. She sang about the sun rising on new tomorrows, about the peaceful blowing of the wind, about the blossoms growing full and bright. Her pitch rose as she sang of new life and lowered as she sang of possibilities. It was a song full of hope and optimism, but her heart ached, and her voice faltered over some of the words.
Dimly, she noticed a few splotches of water trickled down Gerald’s face. Her tears, she realized, and worse, she noted his glassy, lifeless eyes.