Chapter 14
Black Sheep
Isaac
Water crashed against the boat, salt coating my skin. The storm was on us, thick clouds raging overhead and blocking out what little light the fading stars provided.
Eli stood at the bow of the boat, barely human as his eyes scanned the water.
My heart lodged in my throat. His mate had been out here for almost thirty minutes.
I didn’t want to watch my brother break.
The old boat ramp came into view.
I stood beside Eli, pointing to a pale square shape rocking in the waves. A small figure clung to the edge.
The wake of the boat tossed the platform violently, knocking the figure into the water.
A bullet whizzed past us. Lightning cracked. Eli didn’t hesitate. He dove headfirst from the boat, disappearing in the black water.
He was going to get himself killed for her.
A muzzle flashed from the corner of a broken window.
The beast surged to the surface, slamming into me like waves crashing against the concrete walls.
They thought they could come into my town, into my home, and threaten my brother?
Threaten Tara?
Because that was where this would lead. Jacques wanted to hit us where it hurt. Wanted to drive us to the brink of madness and watch us succumb to the Barbeaux curse.
He wanted a monster? I would show him a monster.
I ducked behind the side of the boat, shoving a new magazine into my gun. Then I fired every round.
In the shadow of the building, I saw blood spray from my target. The scent of it was in the air, and the beast circled like a hungry shark.
Twin gasps sounded on the other side of the boat. Eli bobbed at the surface, holding a frail woman as she coughed and sucked in air.
“Cover!” I shouted to Saul as more bullets came at us.
“On it!” Saul maneuvered the boat to block Eli and his mate, keeping his head low.
I watched Eli from the corner of my eye, waiting until he was out of the water and running for cover before I signaled for Saul.
The boat jerked sideways, fighting the tide. A bullet slammed into the side where I was standing, missing my hand as I gripped the rail to keep from going over.
Saul worked the motor hard, retreating back out into the bay. He slowed long enough for Eli to jump into the boat, his mate huddled in his arms.
She was screaming over the motor of the boat, waving frantically at the bloody stain on Eli’s chest.
A bullet hole.
Eli took a bullet for her. Almost drowned for her.
He spoke softly to the woman in his lap, expression gentle, but I could see the look in his eyes.
He risked everything to save her. He was going to risk more by telling her the truth.
Centuries of secrets—for a woman he barely knew.
Something sharp and unfamiliar twisted in my chest. Eli had an entire life that I didn’t know about. Didn’t bother to ask about.
There was no one to blame but me. I was selfish. Always had been.
Staring at Eli, watching that uncharacteristic softness play over his face—the same features I saw in the mirror every day—I was struck with a sharp sting of jealousy.
In another life, I would have wanted that.
But I didn’t deserve Tara, and she and I both knew it. I had nothing to offer.
Rain pelted us as Saul finally navigated the boat up to Eli’s dock. Cady was crying about the bullet, about hospitals—
“No hospitals,” Saul grunted.
“What?” I winced at the pitch of her voice.
I propped an arm under Eli, helping him off the boat with a smile. “Saul can get the bullet out just fine, miss Cady.”
That was the wrong thing to say. I waited impatiently in the sand, anxiety boring holes in my calm facade as Eli coaxed Cady toward the house.
He was about to tell her the truth, and she was not going to take it well.
How could she? What woman wouldn’t run screaming when she saw what we were?
I trudged to my brother’s house, leaving Eli to comfort his hysterical woman in private.
The front door flew open. Saul stomped out with a loaded shotgun. His voice was even, his posture relaxed, and to someone like Cady, he might seem like he was handling this well.
But the beast inside me could sense the one inside him.
Saul had a temper. I’d been on the receiving end of it too many times to count.
This was different. This version of him was a calculated predator. Methodical.
I studied my brother, his wet beard clinging to his neck. Hair unkempt, clothes old and ripped. What would happen to him if he had to kill Jacques’s new pack?
After he tried to kill his own blood.
I always resented him. It hadn’t occurred to me what a burden it was to be the firstborn.
I didn’t say any of that to him, my assessment interrupted by Eli and Cady stepping onto the porch.
I paced the kitchen, trying not to listen to my brother’s conversation. The scent of fear spilled through the cracks in the door.
How would Tara react if I told her?
Cady was pale and soaked when they stepped inside. A pair of handcuffs kept her arms at an awkward angle in front of her.
I searched around for tools in Eli’s kitchen, settling at the bar with her to work at the lock. Saul was back, using a pair of pliers to fish a bullet out of Eli’s chest.
I kept my breathing shallow, trying to ignore the lingering scent of fear and blood.
Cady was afraid of me. Of Eli. He risked his life for her and she was terrified of him.
The worst part was that he would do it again. He had no regard for his own life anymore.
I didn’t know if I could live like that.
I had for the last three weeks. It was miserable. Unable to sleep. Constantly on edge.
How could my whole life shatter over someone I barely knew?
None of it made sense. I felt crazy. So, when Saul sent me to the next big town to buy supplies, I didn’t argue. I couldn’t.
My brothers would keep it locked down on the bayou.
I had to get out of there before I did something I would regret, like turn off the main road and drive straight to where I knew Tara was waking up with the sunrise.
Ifroze in my brother’s kitchen, arms loaded with shopping bags. The scent filling the open space was unmistakable.
Thankfully, Cady was asleep on the couch beside him and they were both clothed.
“Seriously?” I dropped my bags onto the countertop. “You’ve got a bullet wound and you still can’t keep it in your pants?”
“Couldn’t help it. We bonded.”
The way he smiled—I’d never seen it before.
I turned my back on him, shoving a pizza into the freezer too hard.
“What’s it like to be bonded?” I shouldn’t ask, but I had to know. I could be wrong about Tara—about what I felt.
“Well, at first I thought I was going mad and the beast wanted to kill her.” Eli ran his hand over Cady’s hair in a gentle caress. “Feels like coming home. Like waking up to hot coffee and breakfast on a Sunday morning and the whole world is just right.”
I resisted the urge to scratch at my skin. “That’s corny as shit.” I scoffed.
I know exactly what he means.
“By the way, what did Jacques mean about you taking his mate?”
I froze, the rest of his words lost to the buzzing in my ears.
“She wasn’t his mate,” I snarled, turning around to glare at him. “She was just some—"
My throat closed, the words catching.
“Where have you been all month? You know we were worried about you.”
I took a breath, sliding my hands in my pockets and forcing myself to relax as I muttered, “Getting my dick wet.”
“You know, it was secrets that got us into this mess.”
“Her name is Tara,” I sighed. “What are the chances, Eli? For both of us—it wasn’t supposed to be possible.”
Eli reminded me about Saul’s lies. What they earned us. That was all it took for me to spill everything—my compulsion to come back to her, the complication with Jacques. How I blocked off my rental last night with a plan to ask her to stay.
Before I realized what asking her to stay would mean.
“She’s going to get killed,” Eli told me plainly.
“Don’t say shit like that.” I fought back a snarl.
“It’s the truth. You saw what Jacques did to Cady. You gotta find this girl and be honest.”
I shook my head. “Bad idea.”
She would be better off without me. The best thing I could do for her was let her leave this town.
“It’s your only option.”
“I’m not like you, Eli! I haven’t been some heroic gentleman this whole time. I’m a piece of shit and she knows it.”
“Who’s a piece of shit?” Cady was awake. She barely spared me a glance, too fixated on Eli to hear what I was saying.
It was clear in the way she looked at my brother that she loved him.
Of course, she did.
Eli was easy to love. He was charming, smart, easy to talk to. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. What you saw was what you got, and it was all good.
Eli took care of everyone around him. I only took care of myself.
Saul was back again, muttering about Celine and solstices. I let myself fade into the background, watching my brothers get comfortable as if this was normal.
Some stranger in on our secret.
I was so concentrated on acting sane that I didn’t notice Eli sidle up beside me. “Are you going to go get her? Or should we send Saul?”
“Don’t you dare tell him where she is. He’s more likely to send her into hiding.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I tugged on my hair, hating the way it flopped in my face. I should just cut it all off. Forget the stupid gel. The stupid jeans. Every part of the costume I wore to fit into a world that I didn’t belong in.
This was my world. It was dark and violent. Everything that a woman like Tara wasn’t.
How did you bring someone like her into this? It wasn’t fair.
Maybe I should send Saul. Give him that bag of cash Eli was hiding—it was rightfully hers anyway, after what Jacques put her through.
She would disappear, and the Barbeaux curse wouldn’t become a noose around her neck like it had for the rest of us.
A howl split my thoughts in two, so piercing and agonized that my eyes fell shut.
No. The beast wouldn’t give her up. He would scour the countryside, searching every corner of the continent and beyond to find her.
He didn’t live this long just to give up the only redemption he’d ever get.
Eli’s hand was on my shoulder, his words swimming in my ears. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was too focused on the beast, considering him in a new light.
I’d hated him for as long as I had known him. I didn’t want to be this thing.
But for the first time, I realized that he didn’t want to be it either. He didn’t choose this any more than I did.
Even if he was beholden to his most base instincts, he never hurt anyone on purpose. He was loyal to his brothers. He was loyal to Tara.
Before he knew her name.
Who would have thought he was a Goddamn romantic?
“Isaac?” Eli shook me. “Are you listening?”
I thought the problem was the beast, and the horrible life I would give any woman that had to deal with him.
Maybe he was never the problem. He was another excuse.
The problem was me. The Barbeaux fuck up. I tried to make up for it by working hard. By never getting attached to anything enough to ruin it.
And what did that get me?
A cold, empty house. Brothers who barely knew who I was anymore. Hundreds of nights spent coated in perfume and alcohol, all of them blurring together into one solid knot of regret.
I didn’t know how to get it right.
“I told you, I’m a piece of shit. She knows it. I know it. You all know it.”
“You’re an asshole. I’m an asshole. Saul gets the asshole of the century award. It runs in the family. So what?”
“You don’t get it!” I snapped, shaking his hand off my shoulder so I could pace. “I’m not good like you.”
“Is that what this self-pity shit is about? You think I’m somehow better than you?”
“Don’t play dumb. You know you are! You were always the good twin.”
“Listen, baby brother—"
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
“I’m older, so I have the right.” He grinned at my outrage. “There’s nothing wrong with you, except that you keep messing up your life on purpose. You’re smarter than me, faster than me, and definitely richer. My dick is bigger,” his grin widened, “but you can’t win ‘em all.”
I couldn’t muster the indignation to punch him. My eyes stared open and dazed at him for so long they began to water.
“Don’t cry, baby brother. I’m sure she’ll think your baby dick is plenty big.”
This time, I did punch him, but my heart wasn’t in it.
My ribs flared with a shuddering breath. Somewhere in that hollow, carved out place in my chest, there was a whisper of change. It echoed through me, growing louder as it rang truer and truer.
“You can’t just say that and fix everything.”
“As a bonded man—"
“You’ve been bonded for half a minute.”
“As a recently bonded man, let me help you avoid the same mistakes that I made.” Eli crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look serious. The twinkle in his eye gave him away, and a smile broke out as he muttered, “Damn, it’s just so crazy.”
“What’s crazy?”
“That a woman like that wants a redneck like me.”
Not a beast. Not a monster. He was just a man and he thought his least appealing quality was being a country boy.
I stuffed my hand in my pocket, fisting the keys to my brother’s truck.
This was a mistake.
She wasn’t going to stay.
“I’m borrowing your truck.”
I didn’t wait for a response. The sun was rising over the bayou. My time was almost up.
I was going back to ask Tara to stay—even if it meant risking everything.