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  I sighed and stood back up, only to find Adriana Paige watching me. It wasn't fair, but she'd appeared at the same time as my latest round of bad news. She wasn't the cause of Brandon's machinations, but to some extent she'd become associated with them.

  It seemed that my dreams were even less of a refuge than I'd hoped.

  "Of all the places for you to intrude, why did it have to be here?"

  The mask that she wore almost constantly seemed to slip slightly and I was struck again by just how attractive she was. The hint of light playing beneath her skin was incredibly alluring. In another shape shifter it would have marked her as powerful, desirable because it meant she'd be able to protect herself and future children.

  In her it was merely an odd genetic quirk, and instead of dwelling on it I found my gaze drifting to an exceptionally symmetrical face, to beautiful blond hair, and a trim body that was perfectly framed by faded shorts and a thin tank top. The perfection ended as soon as she opened her mouth.

  "Only you could see such beauty and think only of keeping it to yourself. Trust me, even with surroundings like this I'd much rather be elsewhere if you're part of the bargain."

  The rebuke caught me completely by surprise. It'd been a long time since anyone outside the pack had spoken their mind so freely to me, and even the pack tended to be circumspect in their criticisms. Unlike Brandon, I wasn't the type to punish people for speaking their mind. Unfortunately, from the outside, the humans often weren't able to determine which power bloc was committing which atrocity.

  Before I could fully process her statement, Adriana shot me another venomous look.

  "At least you won't have to suffer my presence for much longer; we'll be gone all too quickly."

  It was too reminiscent of something I'd heard time and time again. My dream mind was once again reminding me of why it was so dangerous to get involved with humans. Barring death in some kind of challenge or war, I could look forward to nearly three hundred years of young, vibrant life. She, just like Rachel, would be lucky to experience fifty or sixty years of existence before age and illness tainted the remaining decade or two of life.

  "No, you're right, all too soon you'll go the way of so many others. If I can depend on nothing else, I can rely on that."

  Another finger of wind darted down into the grotto and Adriana reflexively closed her eyes, almost like one of the moonborn tasting the air. The mask slipped a little and the simple joy that replaced it made me mourn for my own loss of innocence. Most days I'd trade everything I had to be able to go back to the time when I'd enjoyed the simple things of life, when I'd still had dreams.

  I had one last glimpse of beautiful blue eyes and then I was ripped screaming from the dream.

  Mother's sobs pulled me out of bed and into a full sprint towards her room before I was even fully awake.

  Chapter 4

  "He's gone. Oh, Alec. What are we going to do without him?"

  The words pulled at my mind, burrowing their way deeper and deeper into my being. Mother had sunk into a full-blown attack. I should have seen it coming. 'Welcoming' was the last piece she'd ever played before the cycle ended and she started over again. Apparently I was too distracted to properly attend to my own mother either.

  My earliest memories had been of the attacks. Even back then my presence had been the only thing capable of calming her. Of course calm was a relative term. For a child barely old enough to speak, even the minor attacks had been terrifying. The nightmares had lost most of their power over me since then, but still occasionally made an appearance.

  Rachel continued to hold out hope that the shrinks were right, that the repeated cycles might eventually lead to her coming to terms with the loss.

  I'd given up on that idea a while ago. How could she possibly come to deal with what she'd lost? Dad had been her entire world. She'd cut herself off from everything else with the abrupt completeness of the Ja'tell bond, and his death had simultaneously been the loss of her husband and her pusher.

  She'd spent the night reliving the experience of being informed of his death. Rachel had tried to go to her before I arrived, but she'd turned away from her daughter with the unseeing eyes of someone who, however briefly, believed she only had one child.

  On good days Mom acknowledged Rachel's existence, but the attacks were never good days. Even once I'd arrived she'd sobbed for hours, gripping me with a frail strength that couldn't possibly hurt a grown shape shifter, but which had been almost painful to a child still unable to understand what was happening.

  By the time she'd finally lapsed into unconsciousness, it was too late to return to sleep. It was fortunate that the night of the full moon was now behind us. Still, I was so exhausted that the lesser pull of the moon was very distracting.

  Shape shifters required less sleep than humans, but our sleep was consequently more important. My beast was prowling at the edge of my self-control, almost as though sensing my weakness. I shouldn't be going to school, but we couldn't afford to show weakness, and Brandon's pack already viewed our staying home from class the day of the full moon as a lack of strength.

  Rachel and I rode into school with Jasmin in her Mercedes, and even before we made it inside the teasing started. One of the senior jocks on the football team dumped her books without looking up from his phone.

  He'd done it without realizing who he was tormenting, or he wouldn't have dared. When he looked up to see the results of his handiwork he'd gone instantly white, but constrained by my oath I'd simply helped Rachel pick up her scattered books instead of throwing him against the wall and ordering him to pick them up for her.

  Jasmin didn't look any happier about it than me, but Rachel almost glowed as the ox-brained jock turned and fled down the hall with his skin fully intact.

  The morning went pretty much as normal except for the almost constant flow of incidents. Apparently word spread faster even than I'd expected. There was still enough fear of the pack for the teasing not to progress to the truly terrible things that teenagers could work themselves up to, but the sheer volume bothered more than just Jasmin and me.

  By third period a click of girls had formed around Rachel, and they served as a kind of buffer between her and the rest of the world.

  I was frankly amazed when I arrived at the cafeteria and saw the group with Rachel. I wouldn't have expected her idea to work at all, but it hadn't been quite the disaster I'd expected. The girls who'd surrounded her weren't the ones I'd have picked as friends. They tended towards the social climbers and gossips, but it was more acceptance than Rachel usually got from the school at large.

  Jasmin and I loaded up with two slices of pizza and an extra-large serving of fries each and headed towards Isaac and the others. One of the benefits of being moonborn was the kind of metabolism that would let even the girls stoke up on thousands of 'extra' calories per day and still not build up any appreciable body fat.

  We were nearly to our usual table when I heard it happen. Having extra acute hearing doesn't necessarily mean you can understand everything you hear. In especially noise-rich environments it can sometimes be hard to simultaneously follow so many different conversations. I usually coped by listening for specific voices. Like Rachel's.

  I caught the tail end of one of the girls next to her.

  "…Cassie wouldn't like that."

  "Please. She doesn't own him. If you like him you should go for it. It's not like she'll provide any competition. I've never seen her keep a normal boy interested for more than a few days. Once they realize what she's really like they never hang around."

  The giggling that followed was cut short as Rachel's 'friends' looked up to find Cassie standing at their table.

  "Are you really that stupid? Did you really just make this about you and me?"

  Cassie overturned the table and then shoved Rachel just hard enough to knock her chair over. As everyone else backed away to give the two girls plenty of room, I realized Cassie's anger was purely a show. She was creating
an incident, but I had no way of knowing why.

  The pack moved in to defend Rachel, to shield her from someone who could easily snap her back, and I nearly lost control of my beast.

  My subvocalized growl was enough to pull everyone up short as Cassie resumed hurling insults.

  "You're going to get what's coming to you, you little slut."

  Rachel was bewildered. She looked calm, but I could smell the fear begin to roll off of her. She'd gone too long without adequate sleep. Or maybe she was just too enamored of the illusion of popularity to even contemplate releasing me from the bond.

  Whatever the reason, her response came out calm and even.

  "I haven't done anything to you, Cassie, and you know it. This is all just an excuse."

  The crowd was pressing in closer now, filling in behind the two packs but leaving the usual no-man's-land between as they chose sides.

  "Shut your lying mouth. I'm really going to enjoy this."

  Cassie sent a challenging wave of power out and Jasmin started shaking slightly as she nearly lost control of her beast. I grabbed her arm before she could hurl herself forward. Stopping her sufficed, but my beast all but demanded I attack her from having come close to violating my bond.

  Brandon shot me a satisfied smirk as Isaac moved up closer to my back. I knew the latter wanted to spare Rachel from what was coming, but I shook my head. Until and unless Rachel said the binding words I couldn't let him help any more than I could help myself.

  I'd spent my entire life trying to amass the power needed to protect my family and my pack, and I was just as powerless as ever. Cassie spat something else venomous and pointless at Rachel, but it was evident Rachel was starting to realize just how bad things could get. She was shaking now, and almost tripped and fell when Cassie shoved her into me hard enough to leave bruises.

  The situation was rapidly escalating out of control when someone stepped into the buffer zone between the two packs.

  Adriana stepped into the circle, catching Cassie's attention and causing her to spin around and confront the recent arrival.

  "Take off."

  Adriana shook her head, clenching her fists a little tighter as she began trembling ever so slightly. Isaac let out the briefest growl and I suddenly realized that the racing heart and trembling could be interpreted as something other than fear.

  As she began to glow even more brightly than she had a moment before I realized there was a chance she was gearing up for a confrontation, and there was no way for Cassie to be sure that she wasn't facing a hybrid.

  Adriana leaned ever so slightly into Cassie and uttered her first words.

  "Leave her alone."

  It should have caused Cassie to attack. She wasn't used to backing down inside her own pack, and she'd shown a willingness to fight Jasmin despite being woefully outclassed. For a second I thought she was indeed going to knock Adriana to the ground, but then Brandon reached forward and restrained her.

  As quickly as that, the fight was averted. The spectators broke up as the two packs left the cafeteria through separate doors. Rachel started into shock before we'd even made it to the thicket of trees we routinely used when we needed to discuss pack business while still at school.

  Jasmin slipped an arm around Rachel's waist and then all but carried her the last fifteen yards. Isaac and Dominic crowded around her to make sure she was ok. I wanted to join them, but my mind was spinning so quickly that I was frozen in place.

  Donovan had gone to great lengths to try and train me to think beyond the immediate obstacles, and I was creating contingency plans, picking and choosing among ideas with a speed that sometimes didn't even allow me to fully contemplate an idea before my subconscious had judged and discarded it.

  "They'll attack her. Maybe not now, but Brandon can't allow anyone to stand up to him and not punish them. Maybe not directly, but she's going to suffer for having stood up to Cassie."

  Jasmin and Isaac looked up at me, obviously seeing where I was headed. They hadn't thought things through to that point by themselves, but now they could see the inevitable conclusion.

  "I'm going to offer her our protection. Brandon won't attack her as casually if I bind her to us."

  Jessica and James went from disinterested to enraged in the briefest of moments.

  James crossed the distance between us and was in my face quicker than most humans were able to blink.

  "You'll get us killed! She's not worth us bleeding over."

  Isaac appeared behind James and threw him back into the closest tree.

  "You don't have the right to challenge Alec until you've defeated me."

  James' eyes were nearly the yellow of his beast; Isaac had already crouched down into a combat stance.

  "Enough. As pack leader I invoke my right to stand in Isaac's place."

  It was an old rule, one rarely invoked, but I was tired of Isaac bleeding to keep James in line.

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth James sprang at me, but I rocked him backwards with a punch to the stomach and then stepped back and let my beast roar up to the surface in an explosion of power.

  James rode his transformation to his hulking hybrid form at the same time that mine completed, and then we went at each other with claw and fang as the rest of the pack fell back to serve as lookouts.

  James was big, and fast, but I was bigger, faster, and gifted with the blessings of the royal line. He rushed me and I sidestepped him, slashing up his arm with the semi-retractable claws on the end of each finger.

  He spun around, sinking his left hand into my side, but I was already moving forward. I bowled him over, sinking my foot talons into his chest and right arm at the same time that I immobilized him with one hand and wrapped the other around his throat.

  It was a killing position. We both knew it, and my beast thrummed through me demanding I close my right hand and rip his throat out.

  He struggled, trying to buck me off, and I lost a sliver of control. The claws pierced his throat enough to increase the flow of blood, and he froze as even his beast couldn't deny the imminence of death.

  "Yield."

  My voice was harsh and distorted, coming as it did from a throat that hadn't really been designed with language in mind, but the demand was unmistakable.

  The fury in James' eyes hadn't lessened, but he finally relaxed, raising his head to fully bare his throat in an unmistakable gesture of submission. I released him and turned to take in the rest of the pack.

  "Does anyone else wish to dispute my decision to offer our protection to Adriana?"

  One by one they all dropped to their knees and raised their chins, exposing throats. Jasmin was the last, unnecessarily courting punishment once again.

  I felt a stab of pain as I let my shape shrink back down to the one I'd been born with. The wound in my chest wasn't immediately life threatening, but it was bleeding fairly profusely. I looked around, found the wreckage of my clothes and used what was left of my shirt to apply direct pressure.

  James and I were both clad in only ha'bits, our clothes shredded from the transformation to hybrid.

  "Jess, go get your Escalade. We need a change of clothes."

  When we arrived at the estate, Donovan took in the gash in my side and shook his head. He waited until Jess left to drop James off at his mother's cottage before speaking.

  "I trust it was worth it, and that you came out the victor?"

  "You were right. I should never have made that promise to Rachel. Cassie used it to set Rachel up for the beating of her life. If the new girl hadn't bluffed Cassie into backing down, things would have gotten ugly."

  Donovan steered me to the examination table and started taping up James' handiwork.

  "Rachel released me from the promise as soon as James and I got done fighting, but I'm worried about what Cassie and the others will do to Adriana if we just leave her out on her own."

  I got a nod as Donovan taped a large patch of gauze to my side. "Hence the challenge from Jam
es. You do realize his worries are not entirely without merit. Unaided, the Paige girl is doubtless going to regret her involvement in facing Cassie down, but offering her your protection brings its own set of risks."

  My beast didn't like Donovan's words but I forced it down. He was just offering advice, not challenging our dominance.

  "I know. If she becomes aware of what we are, Brandon won't have to play games with the Coun'hij anymore, they'll have the exact excuse they need to come in and wipe us out. Still, she stepped in and protected one of our own when we couldn't do it. That obligates us to assume some risk to protect her as well."

  Donovan nodded wordlessly and then left me to make my way back to my room.

  I tiredly pulled out another set of clothes, something similar to what I'd worn before the fight, and then retrieved the excuse slip that Donovan had just written out in my 'mother's' handwriting, and rejoined the others.

  Jess looked just as pissed as always. James was more subdued than normal—presumably he'd just had his own 'debriefing' with his mother.

  We made it back just in time for me to slip by the office, hand over my excuse slip and then rush off to Pre-calculus. Mrs. Campbell gave me an odd look when she saw me, but I couldn't think of any reason for her to think anything was out of the ordinary.

  Once the last bell rang, Jasmin intercepted me before I'd even made it back to my locker.

  "Alec, I know you're the boss, but I'm worried about this Adri girl. She doesn't feel like a wolf, but she glows like a Fir'shan and she faced down Cassie. I think you should consider the possibility she's not what she appears."

  I needed to get back home and rest before I lost control. It was getting harder and harder to override the most basic instincts of my kind. Dominance, submission, fight, flight—it was all slowly slipping through my grasp.

  "I understand your concern, Jas, but she risked more even than she knew standing up to Cassie. I'm offering her some kind of limited protection at least."

  As soon as Jasmin nodded in acceptance I set off looking for Adriana. It wasn't difficult. I knew where her locker was; from there I just followed the freshest scent trail.