Chapter 13
Kieran
Dinner in my kitchen has become a lot more social since Olivia started spending every night with me. I want my mate all to myself, but since it seems to make Olivia happy, I tolerate it.
Tonight Olivia is at the table with her feet tucked under her, reading one of the lorebooks she brought down from the library.
Rose is sitting cross-legged on the counter, which I've told her not to do roughly nine hundred times. Ass off my counter, I said. And does she listen?
Amaryllis stopped by twenty minutes ago to drop off a salve for Rose's training bruises and somehow ended up staying for the roast, eating her third helping. She has circles under her eyes and as I look at her, I realize that she’s actually losing weight, despite how much she’s been eating.
She’s told me repeatedly that she’s fine, nothing’s wrong. She’s lying to me. I’m going to have to call in Gemma or Peyton and demand that they examine her.
Before I can open my mouth to try one last time to get her to tell the truth, Stephen walks in with his jaw set and his shoulders squared.
“Alpha, I would really like to take Rose to the dance,” he says. “Please. Respectfully.”
Not this again.
I stab a piece of roast beef with a steak knife as I stare at him with a hard gaze. “I already told her no.”
"She really wants to go," he says. "She's been talking about it for weeks. She's never been to one."
I pin him with the heat of my glare. His gaze drops. "I'm aware of what Rose wants. The answer is no."
He looks up at me again. "Alpha, she is almost an adult. Younger girls than her go to the dance all the time. The dance is very safe. There have never been any incidents at a tri-pack dance.”
I give him a look which has made much stronger men whimper and cry. He swallows hard, but his feet don't move.
Olivia is sitting at the kitchen table watching us, wincing.
"She'll have an escort," Stephen says. "Bram already said he'd go. And Olivia and I would be there."
"The answer is no."
"Why?"
I’m starting to get straight-up pissed off now. He has no idea how lucky he is that he is Olivia’s baby brother. I’d have backhanded any other shifter off his feet by now. "Because I said so."
"That's not a reason."
"It's the only one you're getting."
Stephen's jaw sets. His hands are shaking — I can see them trembling at his sides — but he doesn't drop his eyes, and he doesn't back down.
"Rose deserves a life," he says. "You can't keep her locked up forever just because you're scared of losing her. That's not protection. That's a cage."
I let out a snarl, leap up, and stand between him and Rose.
And Stephen shifts.
It happens mid-breath. One second he's an eighteen-year-old boy with his fists clenched and his chin up, and the next second there's an explosion of light and sound and a wolf is standing in my kitchen.
A small wolf, lean and narrow, with brown fur and bewildered golden eyes, standing in a pile of shredded clothing, shaking from ears to tail.
The wolf looks up at me.
I am a full Alpha, six foot five, two hundred and forty pounds in human form, and my wolf is approximately the size of a small horse. Stephen's wolf has just challenged me to my face and realized, in the space of one heartbeat, exactly what it has done.
The wolf pees on my kitchen floor.
I throw back my head and laugh. I can't help it.
The boy just achieved the single most important moment of his life, in my kitchen, while arguing about a dance, and his wolf's first official act was to urinate on my tile in sheer terror.
This is the funniest thing that has ever happened in this house, and I include the night Olivia swept my legs out from under me.
Olivia leaps out of her chair. "Stephen! Oh my God, Stephen!" She's crying and laughing at the same time, dropping to her knees in front of the trembling wolf, grabbing his face in both hands. "You shifted! You actually shifted! Look at you!"
Stephen's wolf whimpers and tries to simultaneously hide behind his sister, which is difficult because he's already the smallest wolf I've ever seen. His tail is tucked so far under his body it's practically in his chest cavity.
"It's all right," I tell him, still grinning. "You're fine. You're on my territory, under my protection. Nobody is going to hurt you. Although somebody is going to clean my floor."
Rose gapes at him.
"Oh," she says softly. "Oh, Stephen."
The wolf's ears prick forward. Just slightly, just for a second, before flattening again. Rose crosses the kitchen slowly and kneels down next to Olivia, and she puts her hand on the wolf's head, gentle and sure, the way a healer touches, and Stephen's wolf stops shaking.
And that's when it hits me.
The wolf was faint. Amaryllis said so herself — buried deep, barely there.
Ley-line energy and examinations don't produce a spontaneous first shift in an eighteen-year-old with a diluted bloodline.
Something else did this. Someone poured enough healing energy into this boy, day after day, week after week, to drag a half-human wolf to the surface and give it enough strength to break through.
I know what it costs to do that. I know exactly what it costs, because it cost me my mother.
I turn around and Amaryllis is standing in the kitchen doorway. She's been watching. Her face is pale, and she's leaning against the door frame with one hand and the other is pressed to her chest.
She knew this was coming.
"Amaryllis," I bark.
"It worked," she says quietly.
She goes down.
No stagger, no warning, no dramatic clutch at the doorframe. Her eyes roll back and her knees fold and she drops to the kitchen floor.
The kitchen explodes.
Every cabinet door blows open at once. The dishes inside launch themselves into the walls.
The table flips. The windows crack, not shatter, but crack, spiderwebbing from the center outward.
A glass of water on the counter detonates into a spray of shards, and the chairs hit the far wall and splinter, and I am on my knees on the kitchen floor holding my unconscious twin sister while my power destroys everything within thirty feet of me.
"KIERAN!" Olivia's voice, sharp, cutting through the roar. "KIERAN, STOP!"
I can't stop. My sister is dying in front of me. The house is shaking.
Olivia grabs my face. Both hands, hard, forcing me to look at her. Glass is still settling around us and Rose is pressed against the far wall with Stephen's wolf cowering in front of her. Olivia is kneeling in the wreckage in front of me, inches from my face, unafraid.
"She's breathing," Olivia says. "Look at me. She's breathing. Feel her chest. She's breathing."
I look down. Amaryllis is breathing. Shallow, thin, but there. Her heartbeat flutters under my hand, fast and light.
The cabinets settle. The last piece of glass tinkles to the floor. The house goes quiet.
"She's alive," Olivia says.
I can't speak. I'm holding my sister and my power has destroyed my kitchen and everyone in this room is looking at me, and I can feel all of it — the fear, the damage, the silence — and I can't speak.
"You knew," I say. My voice comes from a long way away. "You knew she was treating him."
"I didn't."
"You’re lying! You knew!" I'm looking at her and I'm thinking about all the meals they've shared, all the afternoons together, Olivia and my sisters thick as thieves for weeks while my twin was burning herself alive.
"You've been with her every day. You watched her get worse and you said nothing because you were in on it. "
"Kieran, that's not true—"
"You sat on my couch and talked to me about trust and walls, and the whole time you were helping her hide this from me." I lay Amaryllis down gently. Rose rushes over to her and puts her hands on her. “Olivia, call Gemma!” she yells, and Olivia rushes to the phone.
“You knew! You lied to me!” I shout. My wolf is howling with rage, with hurt, and it explodes from inside of me. My fangs are descended, claws out, I’m on all fours, and I run out the back door before I do something I can never, ever take back.