“Doesn’t mean he didn’t pay someone to doit.”
“Perhaps, but Lucas picked up on a foreign smell out there.” Frank raised his wary eyes to mine. “I think we might be dealing withCreeks.”
His admission hit my ears like shattered ceramic. I actually looked down to check I hadn’t dropped the mug. It was still clutched in my white-knuckled fingers. “Lucas scented foreign wolves on Liam’s property yesterday. Were they Creekstoo?”
“Creeks?” Evelynasked.
Frank scraped both his hands down the length of his face and sighed, setting his gaze on the bow window across from me. For a long moment, he looked at the rolling hill dappled in long blades of sun-burnished grass and wildflowers that matched the ones in thevase.
“The Creek Pack,” Frank explained, “was once the smallest pack, and then in one bloody night, they brought the largest pack to theirknees.”
Evelyn tightened her grip on the couch’s armrest. “Dios mío,” shemurmured.
My body had turned so cold that I was afraid to move, afraid my limbs might just chip away like icicles. “Did you warnJulian?”
Frank looked back at me. “Liam’s meeting with him later today. He’ll try to negotiate a firmalliance.”
Considering how much both packs antagonized each other, I sensed this outcome was momentous. Had the Pines and Boulders ever workedtogether?
“Why would the Creeks murder Everest?” I asked after a longmoment.
“Liam believes it has to do with the Sillin,” Frank said. “We did another sweep of your bedroom. We didn’t find anything, and we’re hoping no one—no Creek—got to it beforeus.”
While Evelyn asked what Sillin was, and Frank explained it to her, I tried to puzzle out under what my cousin could’ve hidden the pills. If it was the pills we were talkingabout.
* * *
Later in the morning,Evelyn and I stopped by the new apartment I was supposed to call home from now on. We cleaned the place, made up the beds, and unpacked my clothes. All the while she repeated that she wasn’t happy about the arrangement, that my uncle was unfit to care for me, that I should stay with Frank and her. Her unhappiness increased when my uncle dropped by the apartment with a mammoth suitcase and several cardboard boxes close tobursting.
While he unpacked, he talked almost manically, never once mentioning Everest’s name. It was as though he hadn’t processed his son’s death. I asked how Lucy was doing, which won me a pointed look followed by a sourretort.
“She killed our son by covering up for him. I don’t give a rat’s ass how she’sdoing.”
When Frank drove Evelyn and me to Headquarters that evening, there were so many parked cars that they spilled onto the road. Every Boulder and their family had come. As we approached the body wrapped in a white sheet, my heart tripped. I felt like I was seeing my father’s body all over again. He, also, had been enveloped in white. Werewolves weren’t buried in caskets; they were placed in the ground with nothing but a sheet around them, so the earth could reclaimthem.
For a moment, I wondered if the sheet that cocooned my cousin came from the inn, and then I drove that inane thought out of mymind.
A raucous whimper pierced the still air—Lucy.
I hadn’t seen her since the day she’d held Evelynhostage.
My senses sharpened at the sight of my aunt’s kneeling figure. I could hear the tears tracking down her milky-white cheeks, the beats of her heart pumping blood through her organs, the sweat dripping into the waistband of her blackslacks.
Evelyn squeezed my arm, which drove back my sudden urge to sink my fangs into my aunt’s throat. And then Isobel and Nelson were suddenly in front of me. Where he simply nodded, face tight with grief, Isobel palmed my cheek and caught the fingers I’d balled into a fist at myside.
On the other side of the shallow hole stood Liam, flanked by Lucas and Matt. All three had their hands linked solemnly in front of them and their heads bent. I watched Liam although he didn’t watch me. He stared at thehole.
Did it remind him of his father’sburial?
Would he have afforded Everest a funeral had my cousin died at the Alpha’shands?
Liam must’ve felt the weight of my stare because he lifted his eyes to mine. They were so very dark and rimmed with red. Had he cried or was it just the mark of fatigue? Probably fatigue. Why would Liam cry over someone he’dloathed?
Ness?His unwelcome voice prickled myskull.
I lowered my gaze to my uncle, who was pressing his palm against the swathed remains of hisson.
Please look atme.
