CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Valdez
“Oh,” Ellie said as the stairs squeaked.
Rhen had clipped his black waves short to match the nearly bald patch he’d been left with from the removal of his antenna.
“Koda is gonna be pissed,” I mumbled over my cup of coffee. I still didn't feel right from the past few days. Drunk, werewolf blood, vampire blood. I was too old to bounce back from daily benders.
His hand went to his lack of locks, frowning. “Yeah. Not looking forward to that conversation. She's going to be pissed at me enough for being out that far to ask the merfolk what they know about my sister.”
His stomach growled. Mine did too.
“Food. Let me try to make food.” Ellie went to the fridge to try to find something to cook.
Rhen’s eyebrow had shot up at the word ‘try.’ I just brushed him off with a small shake of my head. Koda no doubt had him spoiled already. She was a good cook.
Ellie was handling him being a shapeshifter well, all things considered.
“How's the foot?” I took another sip of the black coffee.
“It will heal.”
“Do you guys have a preference?” Her voice was muffled, her head in the fridge.
“The salmon will be fine, Ellie.” I’d taken it out of the freezer yesterday when making breakfast. I had originally thought to make it for dinner.
She nodded to me as she shut the door, moving to the other side of the counter to where Minnie had kept the cookbooks. Ellie’s hand trembled as she tried to focus. I wanted to go wrap my arms around her and tell her things would be okay.
But they wouldn't.
I shouldn’t have dumped everything on her like I did less than an hour ago. No one deserved to find out about the supernatural that way. She’d paled when I’d told her that her officer friends had been killed by vampires. I thought she was going to pass out, and yet I’d kept going. I shouldn’t have corrupted that memory for her.
Rhen poured himself a cup of coffee. I needed to tell him his sister was back. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to own up to—sleeping with her two nights ago, or letting her walk away last. I glanced at Ellie. She was busying herself making food. I didn't want Ellie involved any more than she had to be. She needed plausible deniability in case things all went belly up like everything else in my life had a tendency to do.
“Ellie, we're going out back to bring in some more firewood. Back in a bit.”
The selkie’s blue eyes narrowed at me.
“Alright,” she called without looking over her shoulder as she peeled potatoes.
The seal followed me out the back door to the porch where we had found him not long ago. Rhen took a seat on the railing, arms crossed against the cold beneath his t-shirt. I pulled the sleeves of my thermal back down as he stared.
“Sucks to be human.” There was a confidence in his voice I hadn't heard since he'd shared that cramped apartment with Koda all those years ago.
Part of me wanted to be proud to call him family. The other part scratched and clawed at the duct tape that held me together, still wanting to kill him. Times like that, when I actually had to think about what he was, brought out my crazy.
“Certainly does.”
“Why’d you pull me out here?”
“Your sister.”
“Seems to be the only thing we talk about anymore, Dez.”
I found myself nodding, hating to be in agreement.
“You know as well as I do, Ravenwhite, that I never should have let her walk away after she killed Mr. Romans. She’s a danger to us all. Who knows what she’d do to the boy if she got pissed off enough.”
Rhen shook his head. “She wouldn’t. Not to Rook.”
“You are absolutely sure of it?”
“Yeah. Willow would kill to keep him safe.”
“When was the last time you saw your sister?”
“Not since I left Washington.”
“She's in Alaska. I saw her three nights ago.” I looked up toward the ridge where the clouds hung. I didn't want to put myself out there, but I had to.
“The night you were drunk off your ass at Broken Tusk?”
“She was at the office. Tricked me in to thinking she was a dream. “
“She was a dream. She's not in Alaska, Dez. She knows we’re looking for her. She'd never come here. Willow is smarter than that.”
I swallowed my pride and waited for the backlash. “I slept with her that night.”
The Selkie snorted.
“Willow? Not this new girl, thinking it was my sister?”
“Both.”
I heard the disappointment in my own voice. I wasn't exactly proud of sleeping with two women in as many nights. Not even my younger self would have been happy with that. It was easier to tell him I'd slept with her than to tell him I let her walk away.
I glanced up when Rhen didn’t bother with a response. He glared at me, almost expecting the statement to be sarcasm.
“Well, not at the same time.”
Those blue eyes darkened, lip curled in a bit of a snarl. “Just tell me, once and for all, so I can hear it from your own lips: did you know what my sister and I were when you were sleeping with her before we left Alaska?”
Her spotted fur. Her sharp teeth. It had been enticing as hell knowing I was doing something I shouldn't have been. I'd even used it against him in the cabin when the loup garou was hunting him. The words were hard, but I had to say them. I needed to own up to it. No more hiding.
“Yeah. I knew.”
“You're unbelievable. Look down your nose at us, but you are more than happy to fuck us any chance you get. You sure that you're not just interested in helping get my son back so you can get rid of us all at once?”
I deserved that. Didn't like it, but I deserved it. It took every smidgen of resistance I had to sit on the steps, stare at the clouds, and take whatever he wanted to throw at me verbally. I was pissed and wanted to go after him. But he was wrong. I didn't want him gone. But I couldn't force those words yet. That acceptance I was still at war with.
“Willow took my knife. She's up to something.”
“Yeah, sure.” His words were full of bitter sarcasm as the wood creaked under his shifting weight as he headed back into the house.
“Her eyes are blue, Rhen.”
The wood groaned as he stopped his movement. “I don't believe you. You were hallucinating. Willow isn't back in Alaska.”
I pulled the collar of my shirt to the side so he could see the bite on the top of my shoulder. I had tried to play it off when I first saw it in the mirror that day. But it had been Willow.
His breathy curse told me he knew exactly what he was looking at. He had marked Koda a few weeks ago with the same type of bite.
“Her eyes are blue, Rhen. Whatever Selkie magic you messed with that night, it messed with Willow, too.”
He cursed under his breath again.
“If we kill her, what happens to you?”
There was no cursing that time.
“Do what you have to do. Don't tell Koda. If something were to happen, she'd never forgive you. Or me.”
“Caleb says you're going to Big Mount next mining season. Are you?”
“Haven't decided yet.” He walked back in to the house.
I turned back to the slowly falling snow as the squeaky storm door shut on its own.
The silence of the fresh snow was deafening. I couldn’t hold on to a single thought. Koda. Rhen. Kenai. Connor. The mine. The dogs. The hunting. My parents. Ellie.
I rested my elbows on my knees, my face in my hands, and gave myself over to the madness.