Fate Succumbs (24 page)

The corner of Liam’s lip turned up, but it
wasn’t a smile in the classic sense. “You’ve got the wrong brother.
I’m not much for all that pre-destined crap. I’m more of a
responsibility and greater good kind of guy.”

“
And killing Sarvarna is
for the greater good?”

“
Overthrowing the Alpha
Pack is for the greater good. Killing her, and anyone else who
opposes us, is the unfortunate way we achieve our goal.”

“
And the responsibility…
It’s all mine? I have to be the one to go all Thunderdome on
Sarvarna? And then the rest of the Shifter world?” I remembered
Jase’s reasoning for Liam not taking on the task himself. Was I
just a weapon, like Liam had said? “Where will you be while I’m
bathing in the blood of our enemies… or getting myself good and
dead? Watching from the sideline? Maybe waving a pom-pom, spelling
out my name and trying to convince the world if I can’t do it, then
no one can?”

Liam’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Gee, Scout.
I’m going to get a big head with your high-as-the-sky opinion of
me.”

Refusing to let him intimidate me, I leaned
forward. “I believe in the cause. I understand the necessity of
fighting. What I want to know, is why do I have to do it
alone?”

“
Why the hell do you think
you’re going to be alone?”

“
Why the hell would I think
otherwise?”

He lunged, and my body reacted before my
brain could even process the movement. By the time my mental
faculties caught up, I was sitting on the table instead of the
chair, my legs wrapped around Liam’s waist. One hand was bunched in
his sweater, while the other held his head to mine. Even then I
entertained few thoughts other than the feel of his lips and the
taste of his tongue. A growl rolled through the room, and I had no
idea from which of our throats it originated, nor did I care.

His hands, whose span had been clinging to
my outer-thighs, traveled up and around to my lower back to nudge
me closer, as if it was possible. For the first time in months, I
didn’t feel the cold. All I could feel - all I could smell, taste,
or see - was Liam.

Then, it ended just as it began - much too
abruptly for me to realize what was happening. One minute he was
there, pressed against me, sending tiny electrical storms of
sensation all over my body, and the next he was striding out the
door. I waited until I heard him moving through the trees, away
from the cabin, before sliding off the table and onto the floor. I
spent the rest of the night in that spot, my fingers trailing over
my kiss-swollen lips, waiting to see if happiness, lust,
embarrassment, guilt, or betrayal was going to win out as the
dominant emotion.

Chapter 20

Liam didn’t come back that night. Some time
shortly before dawn, I crawled in the bed and dozed off. When I
woke up, freezing cold from sleeping alone, Liam was sitting at our
one and only table, a can of peaches by his elbow as he sketched
something on one of the papers he gave me the night before.

I’ve been in many awkward and uncomfortable
situations in my life, but sitting there, wondering how I was
supposed to act around Liam after the most amazing kiss anyone ever
kissed in the history of kisses, was by far the most awkward and
uncomfortable. It might have helped if I managed to figure out
exactly how I felt about the whole situation, but I was still
filtering through about a million different emotions a second.
Maybe if he was someone else, if I hadn’t loved his brother first,
it would have been different. Maybe I would have called after him
last night, begged him to stay. Maybe I would have told him how
much I missed him when he wasn’t right beside me or how his smile
could instantly make my day happier.

Then again, maybe not.
Maybe I would have still wondered if it was actually
Liam
who made me feel all
sorts of warm, fuzzy emotions, or if I was just reaching out to the
only other person in my tiny, cabin-fevered world.

I was in one of those
emotionally-wrought, my-soul-is-so-filled-with-angst-I-can’t-breath
places the emo kids are so fond of. I’m talking listen to bad
country music and wail along in despair kind of thing. Would it
have killed him to at least pretend he was feeling
something?

“
By my estimate,” he said,
apropos of nothing, “there are at least a half dozen men who will
stand beside us, close to two dozen who might, and more than fifty
who will support us once we’ve established new Alphas.”

“
Okay…”

I jammed my feet into my boots and got out
of the bed, pulling on another sweater as I made my way across the
room. I dropped into the chair opposite Liam in what I hoped was a
clearly apathetic heap.

“
A half dozen to the Alpha
Pack’s twenty-four? Good odds.”

Liam rubbed the back of his head, still
messing with the names on his list. He would scratch one off of one
column, and put it in another. Then, he’d do it again. And again.
And again. I sat on my hands to keep them from taking the pen
away.

“
It doesn’t really matter,”
I said after he moved Silas Elliot’s name around for the eighth
time. “We’re not prepping for a battle, Liam. I’m issuing a
Challenge. It’s not a a group effort.”

Liam moved Kirk Cates to the “Maybe”
category. “It does matter.”

“
Why?”

Serious grey eyes met mine. “Because no one
should feel like they’re all alone.”

That day we trained harder than ever before.
The next, even harder. We still only had a tiny space in which to
work, but we got creative. Somewhere in amongst all the push-ups,
drills, and attempts to Change when the moon wasn’t full, the kiss
went from the center of my thoughts to a faded memory. The first
few nights after it happened, bedtime was a tense affair, with one
of us making it a point to be asleep before the other crawled under
the covers, but eventually we fell back into our old routine. And
after a few weeks, I got so comfortable I started titillating
conversations most good, sane girls knew better than to even think
about. But snuggled up under the covers, the heat of Liam’s back
sinking into mine, under the disguise of darkness, I couldn’t help
myself. The desire was too strong.

“
I would kill for a
cheeseburger,” I said into the night. “The kind with a really
thick, juicy patty sitting on a fresh bun with crisp lettuce and a
sweet tomato.”

Liam’s voice drifted across the bed. “I
would assassinate the President of the United States for a steak,
with a baked potato covered in butter and sour cream.”

“
I would take out the Queen
of England for a salad. One of those huge restaurant affairs with
chicken strips and honey mustard dressing.”

“
There is literally nothing
on this earth I wouldn’t do for a sandwich.”

“
French fries! French
fries! My frozen Canadian kingdom for a single freaking French
fry!”

“
I want tacos.”

“
I want Mexican
rice.”

“
Fajitas.”

“
Lasagna.”

“
Spaghetti.”

“
Pie.”

“
Cake.”

One night I actually cried because I craved
a Mello Yello with such a raging desire I thought I might die
without it.

Every night we would talk about food until
we drifted off to sleep, and every morning we would eat our ration
of canned fruits and vegetables and wild game as if we were
perfectly satisfied with what we had.

I told myself any parallel I noticed between
our food situation and any other situation was completely in my
head.

As the winter drug on, I found myself
talking less and less. There were no more questions about the
various Shifters who were aligning themselves against the Alphas,
no random thoughts or insights, no clever quips to try to coax a
smile out of Liam. Back home there was a commercial from a local
mental health facility which provided a depression checklist. From
what I could remember, I had them all.

There were times when it got exceptionally
bad. The sun wouldn’t shine for days, the snow would keep us
imprisoned in the cabin, and there would be nothing to occupy my
mind but fighting and blood and death. When it got to the point
where I thought I would break, my lifeline would come from the
great beyond while I was asleep. My meetings with Alex were never
long, nor did anything significant happen, but for a few moments I
would get to stretch out under the warm sun and laugh as Nicole
tickled my hand or neck with her little puppy tongue while Alex
talked about anything and everything just to keep the conversation
going.

In March the weather started getting warmer.
It wasn’t like March down in Kentucky, which would herald in the
wearing of flip-flops, but the temperature did transition from
frozen-river-in-the-inner-ring-of-Hell cold to normal cold. Liam
and I were able to be more active outside, which was great.
However, we weren’t the only ones.

The first time I realized we might have a
problem I was crouched on the ground two nights before the full
moon, cursing Liam and wishing for horrible ends for all his
descendants. I was no closer to being able to Change at will than I
had been in the fall, but he still had me spending ten minutes out
in the cold without my knickers on just in case. To keep me from
getting frost bite on my naughty bits, I was stationed by our
outdoor fire pit, the giant flames keeping one half of my body a
reasonably warm temperature. I was watching the shadows the fire
created dance across the forest when I noticed something in the
snow. Grabbing any excuse I could find to pull on my clothes, I
found it necessary to investigate.

I didn’t realize I knew exactly what both
Liam’s and my paw prints looked like until I was standing over the
markings.

“
Liam.” It came out as
little more than a breath. I pulled more air into my lungs and
tried again. “Liam!”

I was shaking all over by the time he
arrived, and not from the cold. I knew I was panicking, and I knew
I really shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. Someone had found us
already, and I wasn’t ready. I needed more time to train and
prepare. It couldn’t start now. Not like this.

“
What’s wrong?” He came
running up from behind the cabin. I had to throw out an arm to keep
him from running over my evidence.

“
We have company,” I said,
pointing to the tracks, not that they were incredibly hard to
notice. The forepaw was at least five inches long and maybe four
and a half inches across.

Liam squatted down and lowered his nose to
the ground. Once he got the scent, he followed the trail,
occasionally stopping to sniff a random tree or bush. Not wanting
to get in the way, I stayed where I was. Eventually, he came back,
concern etched on his face.

“
It looks like there are at
least four of them, maybe five,” he said, plopping down on the
fireside bench next to me. “And they’re all huge. All of the prints
were about the same size as the one you found.”

“
Four?” My heart pounded
against the confines of my chest. Who would they have sent? A local
Pack? The Taxiarho? The Stratego? Could Liam and I take on five and
win? “What do we do?”

Liam kicked a chunk of ice off the leg of
the bench. “Nothing, I guess.”

“
Nothing?”

“
Yeah, wolves usually leave
us alone. I’m surprised they got this close to the
cabin.”

“
Wolves don’t…” It finally
clicked into place. I couldn’t stop the laughter erupting from my
chest. “Wolves. As in natural wolves, not Shifters.”

The look I got suggested I might not be
mentally stable, which was a pretty accurate accusation. “You
thought they were Shifters?”

“
No.” Of course not. Nope.
Not me. I didn’t jump to ridiculous, outrageous conclusions and
almost have a complete and total meltdown over them.

Proving he wasn’t stupid, Liam didn’t
believe me. “If there was a Shifter nearby, we would both know it.
I promise.” He frowned as his eyes followed the trail the tracks
left in the snow. “Actually, I can’t believe we didn’t notice these
guys. It must have happened while we were asleep.”

“
Do you think their den is
close?” Knowing I wasn’t going to have to fight for my life, I
became curious. I had never seen a natural wolf in the wild before
and was eager to compare them with us.

“
Doubt it. They were
probably just passing through and caught our scent. We’ll probably
never see them again.”

But he was wrong. We didn’t see the wolves,
but their tracks became a common sight in the area surrounding the
cabin. They never again got as close as they did the first time,
but they seemed to travel around it on all sides. I thought it was
cool, but Liam seemed uneasy.

By April, we were able to spend longer
stretches of time outdoors. Liam and I resumed our sparring
sessions, taking an exorbitant amount of delight in throwing one
another into trees and rolling across the semi-frozen ground. Our
canned food supply was dwindling down to virtually nothing, but we
were able to compensate with wild game. Liam and I were both out
hunting - me with a spear since the bow and arrow, while cool and a
sentimental favorite, wasn’t exactly functional, and Liam with
teeth and claws - when I heard the wolf pack for the first
time.

The howl ripping through the afternoon sky
was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I stood in awe,
listening for more. Then, I heard them. A second wolf growled. And
then a third. A fourth.