Gifted: A Holiday Anthology (7 page)

“Um, yeah. Only the best Christmas present ever.”

He faltered at that.

I did. I tried.

“Oh, I’m kidding. Geez, Lo, you take everything so seriously. Of course, may I point out that your amazing sister
did
get you the best gift
evah
.”

“Ignore her,” Mom said, walking into the front hall. “We went to town to grab a few groceries and let her talk us into another hot chocolate. Then made the mistake of giving her a ten and letting her run in herself. She got an extra-large. She’s been bouncing off the walls ever since. Too much sugar.”

“Sugar doesn’t trigger hyperactivity, Mom,” Logan said.

“Smarty pants. Caffeine, then.”

“There isn’t enough caffeine in hot chocolate—”

“Yes, yes. I’m wrong. Very, very wrong. You do know we’re supposed to get a few more years of you thinking your parents know everything, right?”

He smiled. “I never thought that. Sorry.”

She smacked his shoulder and waved him into the study. “Your dad needs to talk to you about something. Jer, can I speak to you? And, no, you aren’t going to just stay quiet and hope to escape the chaos. If it doesn’t work for Logan, it won’t work for you. Kate? Go . . . run around the house ten times or something.” She steered Logan toward the study and motioned for Jeremy to follow her.

“What’s up?” Logan said as he walked into the study. He said it as casually as he could, considering his palms were sweating so hard he had to shove his hands in his pockets.

He’s found the puppy. He went for a walk and found it, and now I’m in trouble. He doesn’t want to bother Mom about it, not when tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.

Christmas was important to Mom. Logan and Kate had always known that. Dad went out of his way to make it perfect, and he was a little more inclined to discipline them himself at this time of year, to keep everything running smoothly. Logan and Kate never asked why it was important. It just was, which meant they had a magical Christmas themselves every year, because that’s what Mom wanted for them.

Dad was busy cleaning out the fireplace—his head stuck in it—and he didn’t seem to hear Logan’s question. Logan had to smile at that and said, “You, uh, don’t need to do that this year, Dad. We know. Remember?”

“What?” Dad backed up. “Oh. Right.” He rubbed his chin, leaving a smudge of soot, and he looked . . . disappointed. As if he’d forgotten this year would be different, part of the magic left behind in the world of childhood that the twins were quickly leaving.

“You probably should, though,” Logan said. “Kate may have been the one to insist on an honest answer, but . . . ,” he said, lowering his voice, “I think she still believes.”

Dad smiled and shook his head. He’d know Logan was humoring him, but he’d do it anyway. It was tradition, and they still believed in that.

Dad backed out and Logan said, “Should I, uh, shut the door?”

“What?” Dad’s face screwed up. “No, no. You aren’t in trouble, Logan. I just need to talk to you about something. Before we went to town, your mom, Kate and I took a walk out back, and we smelled something.”

Logan clenched his fists, breath jammed in his throat.
I’m sorry.
That’s what he’d lead with.
I’m so, so sorry.

“A mutt,” Dad said.

“What?”

“Yeah, I know. There hasn’t been a mutt near Stonehaven in years.”

“R-right. They know better.” At first, when Dad said
mutt
, all Logan could think of was the puppy. It
was
a mutt: a crossbreed. But that was also their word for non-Pack werewolves, and it showed how distracted Logan was that it took him a moment to remember that.

“I’m 99% sure we’re wrong,” Dad said. “It was just a whiff, and it passed so fast that all I can say for sure is that we smelled canine and human, and hell, it might have just been some guy walking a dog along the road.”

Or a puppy, covered in your son’s scent.

“Your mom is sure it’s nothing, but”—Dad shrugged—“I’m not taking any chances. We don’t need to go for a run until the Pack Meet, so there’s no reason to head out back. We’ll be on alert, but Jeremy’s still leaving later, and no one’s changing any plans. The only thing is that I need to ask you and Kate to stay out of the woods.”

Logan went still.

Dad peered at him. “Is that a problem? I know your mom said you’ve been restless. We can go for a drive later, the two of us.”

“No, I’m fine.”

More peering. Then Dad nodded, not seeming entirely convinced, but only saying, “If you change your mind, day or night, and you need to go out, you just tell me, okay?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Now, if you’re still feeling like being extra responsible, you can help me with this fireplace.”

The puppy needed to eat. It needed food and fresh water, and he couldn’t let it go without either until morning. He had to tell his parents.

He should have talked to Jeremy. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Logan might come by his independent streak honestly, but that was no excuse. Now, Jeremy had left, and he’d told Logan to call if he wanted to talk, but, when Logan worked up the nerve to do it, Jeremy had been in an out-of-service area.

His parents kept going in and out, scouting the perimeter, and Logan couldn’t stop thinking about the puppy getting lonely and scared. Would it start howling? Would his parents find it?

After dinner it was time to bake cookies, one of their favorite Christmas traditions. Logan couldn’t ruin that by bringing up the puppy.

He had to slip out again after dark. There was no mutt. There hadn’t been one on the property in years—it certainly wouldn’t happen now. Mom and Dad had smelled the puppy. Logan was safe. He just couldn’t get caught, because that would be a serious infraction, worse than anything he’d ever done. Worse than anything Kate had ever done. For this, he’d be punished—not as a boy disobeying his parents—as a Pack wolf disobeying the Alpha.

He couldn’t get caught. It was that simple.

Logan watched the clock tick toward midnight. He had his own bedroom now. He and Kate had shared one for as long as they could—up until two years ago, when Mom finally declared they were too old. He stayed in their room, which used to be Malcolm’s. Kate moved to Mom’s old room, from before she and Dad got together. Or before they got together for good.

Logan was a little confused on the exact timeline. His parents had been together and then broken up, but, because Mom was Pack, she’d stayed at Stonehaven, at least some of the time, and . . . it was confusing. All he knew for sure was that Mom had kept her old bedroom, though she hadn’t used it for years.

Deciding to move Kate in there had been something of a family joke. The room was super girly. Mom said that when she joined the Pack as the only female werewolf, it was the kind of room Jeremy figured she needed. Kate was about as girly as Mom was—which was to say, not at all—and now Kate had that room, and, like Mom, she couldn’t complain too much for fear of hurting Jeremy’s feelings. Logan figured by now Jeremy knew that it wasn’t really their style, but it was like he was in on the joke, and everyone played along. Still, Kate was slowly but surely redecorating, piece by piece, poster by poster.

Logan’s room was at the back, across the hall from Jeremy’s. Kate’s was on the other side of Jeremy’s, across from Mom and Dad’s. This meant that, when Logan snuck out, he’d have to pass Mom and Dad
and
Kate on his way to the stairs. This was a problem. His parents slept soundly. It was Kate who was overly attuned to his sleeping patterns. He’d be jumping out of the window instead.

Being a werewolf meant window-jumping wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it might be. It wasn’t now, that is. The first time they’d tried it, they’d been three. Logan twisted his ankle, and Kate sprained her wrist, and Mom totally freaked out. They hadn’t hopped out any windows for years after that. But now, at their age, it was as simple—and safe—as jumping out a main floor one.

Logan opened his window, took out the screen and set it inside. Then he poked his head through to check below. He spotted a figure in the yard and jerked back fast. When he peered out, he saw . . .

Kate.

His sister was making her way across the back yard.

What the hell? He almost said that. Almost shouted it out the window. He started to jump out after her. Then he realized he was wearing his jacket and boots, which would take some explaining. He stashed them under his bed, pulled on a hoodie and slippers and jumped out the window.

He hit the ground and tore off after Kate. The fresh-falling snow was too powdery to squeak under his slippers, and she had her hoodie pulled tight, so she didn’t hear a thing until she was flat on her face in the snow. She twisted, fists clenching. Then she stopped.

“Logan?”

“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled, and she didn’t tell him to watch his language. She heard that tone and her gaze dropped, and she pushed up from the snow carefully, her posture submissive, which meant she knew what she’d done was wrong, because there was no submissive or dominant wolf in their relationship. They were twins. Equals in everything.

Normally, he’d have let it go at that. The wolf in him said that if she submitted, acknowledging her error, he should take the high road. She might deserve a cuff on the ears and another snarl, but that was it. Tonight though, with everything going on, he didn’t feel like dropping it quite so fast.

“No, really,” he said. “What the hell were you doing, Kate?”

“I . . . I was restless?” Her voice rose, in a question, as if looking for the answer that might appease him.

“So, you took off in the night
again
? After what happened this summer?”

“I—”

“No, this is worse than last summer, because this time you were expressly told not to come out here at
any
time. To sneak off in the night—”

“I’m sorry.” She stepped toward him, her gaze down. “You’re totally right.”

He eased back, then, grumbling, his temper fading.

She looked up at him. “Are you okay, Lo?”

“No, I’m not. My sister tried to sneak into the forest when there’s a mutt—”

“There isn’t a—” She swallowed the rest and dropped her gaze again. “Whether there is or isn’t, the point is that I disobeyed a direct order.”

“From your
Alpha
.”

She shifted. They both understood the difference, even if Mom might not. If she told them to brush after meals, that was their Mom. If she told them to stay away from a potential mutt, that was their Alpha.

“Are you okay, Lo?” Kate asked again. Then she shook her head. “No, stupid question. I know something’s bugging you. It’s what happened at school, isn’t it?”

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. More than a minute, because he’d honestly forgotten about it. His sister had problems at school with the other girls. Kate was smart and talented and—according to the other boys—pretty. But she hung around with Logan and a few of the other kids who didn’t quite fit in, and that drove the popular girls nuts, like she was thumbing her nose at them. They could be mean. The last day of school, one of them had tripped Kate, and his sister had hauled off, whacked her and sent her flying. The girl had been too scared to tattle, but Logan had a talk with Kate after that.

“I know I need to rise above it,” she said. “Ignore them. Never hit them, because I can really hurt them. And because Mom will get a call, and she doesn’t need that.”

“Right.”

“It won’t happen again. But you’re still mad, aren’t you? I disappointed you.”

“What? No.” He gave her a rare hug. “I actually forgot all about it, Kate. If I’m a little off, it’s just that: I feel a little off. Like you did this summer. I’m running behind. Boys
do
mature slower than girls.”

She laughed at that and hugged him back. “I don’t think anyone would accuse you of maturing slowly. All right then, as long as you aren’t mad at me.”

“About the school thing? No. About sneaking out tonight? Yes.”

“I know. It was dumb. I’m a kid. I’m allowed to do dumb things. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get inside before Mom or Dad catches us or we’ll
both
learn exactly how dumb it was.”

An hour after giving his sister proper hell for disobeying an order, Logan was doing exactly the same thing and painfully aware of the hypocrisy. But the puppy had to be fed.

He gave Kate time to fall asleep. Then he put on his coat and boots and climbed out the window. Snow was still falling, already obscuring their tracks from earlier. He had a ways to go, and he really wanted to get this done quickly, so he circled out to the road, which was easier. Any other time, he’d have enjoyed walking on a crisp and clear night with lightly falling snow. The nip of the cold didn’t bother him at all, and he walked with his hood down, moving between a fast walk and a jog, depending on the depth of the snow.

He’d hit a good run at a plowed section, and he was ripping along, hearing nothing but the wind whistling past his ears. The snow started driving his way, and he narrowed his eyes against it. The cold wind numbed his ears and nose, and he was truly running “blind,” all senses deadened.
Just keep moving.
A little farther, and then he’d veer into the woods and—

There was a figure on the road.

It seemed to appear from nowhere, but the truth was, he just hadn’t been watching where he was going. Not watching. Not listening. Not smelling. He’d had his eyes on the road, and then he glanced up, and there was a man standing ten feet away.

Logan stopped fast. He rubbed his hands over his face, and, when he pulled them away, he caught the scent. His stomach did a double flip.

No, that wasn’t possible. It had been a misunderstanding. His parents had caught a whiff of the puppy and mistaken it for . . .

Logan inhaled deeper and swallowed.

And mistaken it for nothing. There was a mutt, standing on the edge of their property.

A mutt, twice his size, staring right at him.

Logan knew he should run. That’s what they’d been taught. But he couldn’t, and it wasn’t fear—it was something deep in his gut that saw a rogue werewolf on their territory and refused to flee. He planted his feet, and lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. And he waited.