“Or Kimmie, or Dimas, or Aki,” she whispered, staring out over the backyard and looking lost.“Or Noah—”
“Noah?”I asked archly.
“Shut up.”
“He’s cute—”
“And you’re anasshole.”
“I am that,” I agreed.“I shouldn’t have just left you without a word.I wasn’t thinking clearly that night, and I’m sorry.I was too angry.”
“At what?Why?Why don’t you evertalkto me?”
“I try, but things have been happening pretty fast lately.And I was angry because I thought Hargroves—my boss—was going to try to force those of us who took the Relic potion to become the Circle’s new strike force.”
“Like Sebastian.”
“Yeah.Like Sebastian.And I couldn’t have that.”
“Why not?”the red head tilted.“They need you, and it would bring prestige, which everybody says we need around here…”
“Fuck prestige.Those other Relics are children, not soldiers.They never signed up to be the tip of the fucking spear.And I don’t put my family into the hands of strangers.”
Sophie stared at me for a second, possibly at the anger in my voice, and then her blue eyes flooded with new tears.“Your family?Does that include us aux’s?”
“Of course it does,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t realized how unfortunate that term was for someone like her.Who had always been Other, no matter what she did, and now wasn’t even a core member of the clan, just an “aux.”
I could be a real idiot sometimes.
“You know,” I told her.“If we’re building a new type of clan, maybe it needs to reallybenew.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, no more auxiliaries.Clan is clan, family is family.That’s it.No more distinctions.”
“You mean it?”She looked shocked, like she didn’t believe me.Maybe because she’d been around Weres long enough to know how crazy that was.Like making a clan out of outcasts, like Changing as a sufferer of Neuri, like everything that had happened recently.I was becoming an expert in crazy, so what was one more thing?
And this was a good thing.
“Yes,” I told her.“I mean it.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
You won’t believe it!”Sophie said excitedly when Jen emerged from the back door with Kimmie, who, as usual, looked like a model in a pink gingham playsuit.“We’re no longer aux!”
“What?”Jen demanded, immediately flushing and looking at me.“We didn’t do anything wrong—”
“No, silly!”Sophie hugged her and then hugged Kimmie, too.And then hugged them both, stretching so her arms would fit.“We’re clan!Like fully!”
“What?”Jen looked blank.
“If you want,” I put in, because Jen had always been the more reserved of the two, and Kimmie even more so.Maybe they wouldn’t want that level of acceptance if it also tied them closer to the crazy.
“I want,” Kimmie said immediately.
“What brought this on?”Jen asked suspiciously.
“It should have been offered before,” I said.“After you fought for us at Wolf’s Head, or at the very least after Tartarus.You put your lives on the line for the clan when you didn’t have to—”
