Fate Succumbs (36 page)

“
I can’t protect you if
you’re Alpha,” he said, his fingers gently tracing the damage on my
hand. “This isn’t going to stop any time soon. The entire Shifter
world is in chaos, and you’re at the center. You’ll be safer if you
just disappear.”

“
And what message would
that send?” I shook my head. “No, I can’t run and hide anymore. I’m
going to stand up for what I believe in, even if it means I have to
take a few hits every now and then.”

A kiss against a knuckle missing all of its
skin. “I don’t like seeing you hit.”

“
Well, to be quite honest,
I don’t like being hit unless it’s by you.” As soon as it was out
of my mouth, I realized what I had said. “That sounded all sorts of
wrong.”

“
Insanely so,
actually.”

“
To be clear,” I said to
any overhearing ears, “I hit him back--”

“
Hard.”

“
It’s a very give-and-take,
non-abuse type hitting situation…”

The sides of Liam’s mouth folded up like an
accordion. “You should probably stop now.”

“
I’m trying. My mouth keeps
moving of its own accord.”

I felt the vibrations of Liam’s laugh as he
pulled me once again into his arms. “Go with me,” he whispered
against the top of my head.

“
Stay,” I
countered.

“
I can’t.”

Tears threatened, but I blinked them back.
“Neither can I.”

Chapter 31

“
Banana splits are too
health food. It’s dairy and fruit and nuts. Dairy and fruit and
nuts are good for you.” Angel spooned up more sugary goodness from
the bowl that was as big as she was. “Tell him, Scout.”

“
The kid is right. Dairy,
fruits, and nuts are indeed good for you. We know. Our mom is a
nurse.”

The Strip was crowded,
which was pretty much standard operating procedure for the summer.
Tourists and locals swarmed to the only place in Lake County with
anything that could pass as entertainment. I liked it well enough
on rainy days and at the end of the season when the temperature
dropped and everyone else had grown weary of its charm, but being
there on a sun-shiny July Saturday was akin to torture, especially
after the complete circus of the last three months. We had only
been there for fifteen minutes and already three people had come
over to either ask if I was
that
Scout (like there are five or six of us running
around) or express their sympathies over those long months I had
spent as a hostage of God’s Army of Defenders. It was the same
every single time I went out in public. For some reason people
thought I would want to tell them all about “my personal tragedy”
(CNN’s wording) when I refused to grant an interview to every
single media outlet in the world.

“
Milk is good for you. Ice
cream is not,” Joshua, who was living with us for the summer,
countered.

“
Ice cream is made of
milk,” Jase added helpfully.

“
So is the whipped cream,”
Charlie chimed in.

“
She wasn’t lying about the
fruit either. Bananas, pineapple,
and
strawberries. It’s like a vitamin
explosion.”

“
And that would be the
final nail in your argument’s coffin,” I said. “Talley is, as
always, the deciding vote. You lose.”

“
Loser, loser, loser,”
Angel chanted. “Joshua is a big, fat L-O-S-E-R!” The second, third,
and fourth verse were the exact same as the first.

It was good to be home.

I took a deep breath, delighting in the
humidity laden air. Sure, it smelled of fish guts and sweaty
children, but it was Timber air. At moments like this, when I was
surrounded by the familiar, I could almost convince myself things
were back to normal. It was hard to remember all the death threats
(which had slowed from daily to weekly), Really Important Decisions
(which I had to make with alarming frequency), or blood I had
spilled when the teacher’s aide from my kindergarten class was
munching on a hamburger ten feet away from where my little sister
was being slung over the shoulder of an 80 year old teenager.

Okay, maybe “normal” was pushing it.

“
But you said we could ride
go karts,” Angel wailed, bringing my thoughts back to the here and
now.

“
They were full. We had to
get a reservation,” Jase explained for perhaps the twentieth
time.

“
When’s our
reserve?”

“
Reservation,” I said. “And
it’s at two o’clock.”

Angel pushed a stray curl out of her face.
“What time is it now?”

“
Fifteen minutes until
two,” I said.
Which means it’s 9:45 in
Romania.

Not that I kept up with what time it was in
Romania and thought about what a person there might be doing at any
given time of the day. Nope. Not me. I wasn’t one of those crazy
kind-of-not-really girlfriends. I mean, it wasn’t like I constantly
thought about him and sometimes, like when I was hanging with my
favorite people on earth at The Strip, swore I smelled him on the
breeze or anything.

God, I was a sad, pathetic excuse for a
human being.

“
Fifteen minutes? It’ll
take us an hour to walk there!”

Joshua, who had released Angel only when she
agreed to hand over her banana split, pointed with the long, red
spoon. “Those go-karts over there? It’ll take us an hour to walk
across the street?”

“
Yes!”

I couldn’t decide if she really didn’t have
a firm grasp of time and space, or if she was being overly
dramatic. Either way, it was kind of hysterical, especially since
it seemed to really bug Joshua. Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy,
but he’s really fun to annoy.

“
We probably need to go
anyway,” I said, peeling myself off the plastic picnic bench.
“There will be a line--”

The world ceased to exist around me as I
became entangled in a stare. He didn’t smile or give any other
indication that he was happy to see me, but I knew.

You always know with your mate.

I started to cross the
street, but then had a better idea. “Go on without me,” I said over
my shoulder as I headed back towards the lake. There was a moment
of indecision when I wasn’t sure which tree was
the
tree, but eventually I found it
and made myself comfortable. I didn’t have to wait long.

“
So, the guy sitting on the
next bench down from me--”

“
He smells like Play-Doh.”
I threw up a hand to shield my eyes from the glaring
sun.

“
Why?”

“
It’s one of life’s
greatest mysteries. I don’t think we will ever know.”

Liam sat down across from me. I wanted to
reach out and touch him to verify his existence, but I didn’t. A
part of me knew he wouldn’t mind, that he would want me to.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the part of my brain controlling my
motor functions. That part imagined how much it would hurt if he
pulled away or looked uncomfortable at the contact. So, I sat
there, hands in my lap, and tried to appease myself by looking at
him.

“
We could ask
him.”

“
Don’t be ridiculous.” The
urge to touch wasn’t fading, so I leaned back against the trunk,
putting more distance between us. “I don’t know where you come up
with these crazy ideas.”

It wasn’t like we hadn’t talked over the
last few months. We sent emails (social networking sites weren’t
really a great place for me to be, so we had to kick it old
school), called, texted, and even had a weekly Skype check-in.
Still, it was different to see him in person, to be able to see
each of the folds in his cheeks when he smiled.

“
Any new Challenges?” I
asked to divert my attention.

“
Just two since Wednesday;
one backed down as soon as I walked into the room.”

“
And the other?”

Liam plucked a blade of grass from the
ground. “Dead.”

Which brought the total up to four. With
each failed Challenge, I hoped it would be the last. It wasn’t that
I doubted Liam’s ability to always prevail, but I worried about the
scars it was leaving on his soul. We had already revoked the
fight-to-the-death clause of Challenges, but there were some who
refused to submit, no matter how badly they were beaten. I couldn’t
decide if I found those men audacious or stupid.

“
I had a Challenger from
the Logsdon Pack show up this morning.”

Liam froze mid-pluck. “At your house?”

“
Yeah, but he never got
around to actually issuing the Challenge. Apparently he was one of
Talley’s former suitors, so Jase answered the door with Joshua’s
sword. I think the poor guy may have cried a little.”

Liam went back to ridding the earth of grass
one blade at a time with a chuckle. I was about to ask him if he
had heard any more about the pack of Siberian Husky Shifters
someone was rumored to know when he looked up with a frown.

“
Why are you wearing that
face?” he asked.

I touched my cheek. Thanks to my mom and
Gramma Hagan, I was starting to gain weight, but my cheekbone still
stuck out a bit too far.

“
This is the face God gave
me,” I said, trying to hide the hurt in my voice. “I can’t exactly
take it off and put it on a shelf.”

“
I’m talking about this.” A
finger brushed against my mouth. “And this.” He tapped the corner
of each eye.

“
Those came with the face.
It was a package deal.”

“
Did they come all
scrunched up like that? Because, in my experience, you only look
like that when you’re stressed or frustrated.” He huffed out a
breath and rubbed the back of his head. “Is it because I’m here? I
should have called you first. Sorry. I just wanted to surprise
you.”

Something in my chest felt warm, probably
the last little piece of my heart melting for him.

“
I’m frustrated because I
want to touch you so bad I’m literally hurting my hand to prevent
it, and I’m stressed because I don’t know how you’ll react when I
lose control.”

Liam looked at me like I was an alien for
about half a second before crawling over me, one hand finding the
back of my head to drag my lips to his. He was enthusiastic in his
kiss, and I responded in kind. I didn’t realize how much I missed
the taste and feel of him until he was in my arms.

Nearly two years had passed since Liam and I
first met at this very spot. So much had happened; so much had
changed. I wasn’t sure what brought us to this point - fate,
destiny, or merely the choices we made - but I wasn’t sorry for it.
I regretted the pain I caused others and mourned the lives lost,
but I knew I was where I was supposed to be. It wasn’t a happily
ever after. We had more than our fair share of challenges and
Challenges ahead of us, but we were heading in the right direction.
Liam and I are going to make the world a better place. Together.
And for us, it’s enough.

Scout’s journey may be over, but the world
of Shifters & Seers

lives on...

New series

coming in 2013!

Acknowledgements

I’m just starting to accept the fact that
Scout’s journey began in the first place, so I can’t even begin to
comprehend the fact it’s over. This entire process has been beyond
my dreams and expectations. I sincerely thank each and every person
who has walked this path with me. Thank you for taking a chance on
a self-published book, for loving the characters like I do, and for
encouraging me to keep going, even when it wasn’t easy.

Thanks are also owed to...

My early readers, Crystal Blackwell and
Jennifer Noffsinger, who push me to keep coming up with more words.
These have been my go-to girls from the very beginning, believing I
could do it even when I wasn’t so sure I could finish a chapter,
let alone a whole trilogy.

Alyson Beecher and Erin Lowery, who have
looked at messy first drafts and helped me find the story hidden
within. Scout (and I) owe you a lot.

Victoria Faye, the best cover illustrator in
the business, for making me look good.

Dr. Joe Lowery, who answers all my
uneducated science questions with patience and in a way I can
actually understand.

The Beta Fish. Scout wouldn’t have existed
without you, and you’ve helped her find her way time and time
again. Each of you will always hold a very special place in my
heart.

Jennifer Sanders and Lydia Powell for being
such awesome new beta-readers. Your guidance was greatly
appreciated!

Leslie Mitchell, for letting me be her
test-run as a freelance editor. If there are errors in here, it
means I changed something after she looked at it.

Sarah Pace-McGowan, who finds all my lost
commas and only asks for a free meal in return. This time, we’re
eating steak!

Everyone at the Marshall County Public
Library. Life would be much less bearable if I didn’t love my day
job so much.

Holli Powell at Thrive Consulting for not
only taking care of my finances, but also being an awesome friend
who makes awesome playlists.

Samantha Young, my first “fellow writer”
friend. You are awesome. One day I’m going to visit Scotland and
buy you a drink.

All the UtopYA girls, especially Abbi
Glines, for being fantabulous.

My friends - Becky, Dusty, Jason, Shauna,
Matthew, Jennifer, Robby, Kelly, and Crystal - for dealing with my
constant distraction and whining. If I’ve forgotten an important
event or date in your life over the past two years, my sincerest
apologies.