“And be ready,” he added. “You and your friend? You’ll regret crossing me. Might need to switch packs after I’m done.”
Ishould’vebeen scared. But I wasn’t.
“Well, guess what,Rude-olph?” I hissed. “I’m ready.”
I hung up. Slammed the power button.
“Tiziano, I think we just started a war,”I sent through the mind-link as I peeled off my clothes and folded them neatly.
“Nice!”came the instant reply.“I need a break from the Ultras. They’re such a bore now. Why shouldn’t we have smashed up the Golden Furs’ minivan? Of course we had to!”
I stepped outside, closing my eyes and filling my lungs with the scent of home. Earth. Bark. Wind through pine. My blood pumped hotter under the command of my heart. I felt content, somehow reinvigorated.
I was about to shift. About to run with my dad. That was why I felt this alive. No other reasons.
None at all.
CHAPTER 13
YVAINE
Working in a hospital, I met death more often than most humans or werewolves ever would.
Death.The one constant that terrified the masses and seduced the poets.
To me, death wasn’t a metaphor. It was the flatline after a desperate round of CPR, the asystole that stared back from a monitor. It was the rupture of an aneurysm, the malignant recurrence that laughed in the face of remission.
Death was also the quiet implosion in a parent’s gaze when we delivered the tough news.We did everything we could.We became its mouthpiece, its messenger in a sterile gown.
And sometimes, death wore our own faces. A slip of a scalpel. A dosage miscalculated. A decision made a second too late.
Most people never think about mortality until it brushes against their own, until death’s radar locks onto someone they love.
In my family, it had a permanent seat at our table. It had walked side by side with my family since my little brother’s birth. A constant fight between us and death. Between the progress of medicine and the unknown. Between hope and failure.
As I stared at Ian’s bedroom door, I took a deep breath to ease the guilt.
Since I had arrived at my parents’ house two days ago, a four-hour bumpy car ride away from campus and into the mountains, I hadn’t yet built up the courage to visit him. I always postponed, like the cowardly excuse maker I was.
And then, the evening before returning to campus, there I was, with my hand resting on the doorknob.
Uncertain and weak.
I could hear a stable heartbeat and regular breaths coming from inside.
Ian, a ball of perky energy, was forced into bed most of the time, wasting years of his childhood, one after another.
And that was why I stayed. Why I turned down my scholarship in Switzerland. Why Lachlan gave up Scotland.
Because if we left, Ian wouldn’t have us. If we left, our parents wouldn’t just lose one child—they’d lose all three.
When I finally convinced myself to open the door, careful not to make a noise, I spotted the little werewolf sleeping soundly. His small body under a thin blue sheet covered in snowflakes, was in the same red, Ferrari-shaped bed, in the same colorful room that served as his whole universe. Walls were hung with drawings and pictures of an outside world he never saw, and big wooden baskets were filled with toys he rarely used.
It was at that moment that the dam broke, and I began to cry like a feeble soul.
Tears of rage, against the injustices of the world. Tears of frustration, because I loved him so much. Tears of anguish, for those years we wouldn’t share together. So many memories that Ian would not be part of. My nails dug bloody half-moons into my palms.
Ian couldn’t see me like this. He would catch my scent eventually and wake up from his peaceful sleep.
