The conversation of who the shooter was cropped up. I supposed it was unavoidable, especially since no suspect had been found. Then again, Lucas and Liam had known who’d attacked the hiker before the rest of us had, so maybe they did know and would unmask the killer in the graveyard.
“David Hollis was a sharpshooter in the military back in the day,” Corinne Goldberg, one of the eldest shifters on the compound, said. “His father too, for that matter.”
“Tommy said David and his wife were running alongside him last night when the gunshot went off,” a still-pregnant Wren said.
I picked my head off my fingertips. “What about Camilla and Grant?”
“Camilla was there with her friends,” Corinne said. “As for Grant, he’s out of state. Well,was. He’s probably been called back for the funeral.”
Right.David had sent him to dig up damning information on Lori.
Mom sighed as she pulled up along a stone wall made of flat rocks that everyone on the compound had supplemented at least once in their lifetime, a memorial of sorts. “Sadly, too many of our people are good with guns.”
The tragic irony was that it was Cassandra Morgan who’d forced us to learn to handle them. She’d wanted us to be capable of protecting ourselves in case of a human insurgence. She was so convinced that it would happen someday, that word of our existence would spread and paint targets on our backs.
I wasn’t naïve enough to think itcouldn’thappen, but I was optimistic enough to hope that if it did, the majority of humans would be accepting.
Hundreds of shifters were already amassed in the graveyard, and many more were heading down the winding path that cut behind the orchard, beehives, and chicken coops. The compound wasn’t completely self-sufficient, even though that had been Alaric’s dream. Our old Alpha had been the one to add the chickens and the hives. I realized I’d never asked Liam if he had any interest in making the compound fully autonomous.
Thinking about Liam spurred me to look for him. Between his height and commanding presence, it didn’t take me long to find him. Most shifter males were tall, but few had such a prodigious aura. Part of it was due to his position in the pack, but another part of it was due to the man himself.
As I approached on Mom’s arm, Liam’s gaze found mine across the deep pit. Purple halfmoons stained the skin beneath his eyes, and his cheeks looked as though someone had taken a chisel and hollowed out the skin.
Mom squeezed the arm I’d threaded through hers before releasing it. I wasn’t sure if it was her way of telling me to go to Liam, but I chose to stay next to her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to him, but I wasn’t sure he wanted me at his side in public.
As Lucas leaned over to whisper something in Liam’s ear, I cast my attention on the pale-blue fleece wrapped around the baby carrier, then lower, on the sheet that ensconced Lori’s body. Even though the coppery, sulfurous scent of death clung to the air, no blood stained the white cotton.
My ears began to ring with yesterday’s gunshot, her gasp, my screams. I shut my eyes and shivered so violently Mom snaked her arm around my waist. I rested my cheek against her shoulder and focused on breathing until my pulse calmed and my mind cleared.
When I finally dragged my lids up, the crush of bodies had thickened, and although I’d never felt claustrophobic, I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Nikki?Concern creased Liam’s brow.
I patted my throat, hoping it would convey how I was feeling, and pulled away from Mom. After spotting Nate standing beside my maternal grandparents’ headstones, along with the twins and Adalyn, I limped toward them.
Nate was sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses that made him look like the cop he was, even though he’d worn them to hide the grieving man that death had turned him into. I wrapped my arm around his middle and leaned into him, taking in the myriad of dry eyes. However troubled by the manner of her death, most Boulders wouldn’t grieve Lori’s passing.
“A penny for your thoughts?” Nate’s breath ruffled the flyaways that had escaped my ponytail.
“How many people around here actually care that she’s gone?”
Adalyn sighed. “Many.”
“Do you care?”
Ads gasped. “Of course I care. No one deserves to be murdered. Not even her. Actually, I take that back; her brother and mother definitely deserved it.”
Boulders. I’d say good morning, but it isn’t. Last night, a great act of hatred was perpetrated within our pack. We may shift into animals, but we arenotanimals. And yet someone, perhaps the person standing beside you, forgot this and assassinated one of us. Many of you aren’t stricken by the passing of Lori Morgan, but all of you should be stricken,outragedby the way her life ended.
I’m ashamed to be standing out here today. Ashamed of your festering contempt toward a woman who, for all her differences, never once used them to hurt her fellow packmates or her fellow humans. Lori Morgan didn’t deserve your hatred, the same way she didn’t deserve to be shot in the heart.
After you pay your respects—because you will pay your respects to our fallen sister—each Boulder in possession of a firearm will head home and gather it. I want them all brought to Pondside during the wake.
Boulders, we are wolves. We have claws and fangs. We do not need bullets and guns.
People squirmed and kept squirming even after Liam had stopped doling out threats about evicting gun owners who refused to surrender their weapons.
Soon, it was time to toss handfuls of dirt over Lori’s body and wish her departed spirit safe travels back into the land which had birthed us all.
