CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“¿Quiénes son ellos?” Blanca asked Lily later that evening as Lily tried to coax French Fry out from under the kitchen table in the trailer. The damned dog didn’t want to budge.

Knowing what she now knew, it was taking every ounce of self-control Lily possessed not to pepper the woman with questions, starting with, “What the hell was up with Nayeli?” and “Are you going to die soon?”

She had to be circumspect. Blanca was cheeky and fun and would have fit right in with the messy personalities in Maria who Lily loved so much, but Lola had said the Jaguars were unstable and unpredictable. Lily wasn’t going to push her luck just yet.

“Who is that?” Lily asked her. “You mean with Lance outside by the road?”

French Fry kept moving just out of her reach. He’d gotten too comfortable in the trailer and refused to be shooed. Lily really didn’t care one way or another if he was there, as long as she could get some sleep. The day had just been too…extra. She was tired and weak and wanted more than anything to just crawl up into the loft, put her head under a pillow, and snarl into the mattress until sleep took her.

“Sí. ¿Quiénes son?”

Lily backed out from under the table. If Blanca wanted the dog, she could get him herself.

Blanca wasn’t even paying attention to him anymore. She was looking out the window at Lance, Regina, and the boys, who were in the midst of an animated conversation. Lily hadn’t met them yet. She didn’t see why she needed to. After all, she wasn’t in their pack. Lance’s business was his own. She was going to go back to Maria, try to exorcise his funky smell out of her, and mind her business.

“The lady is the grandmother to one of the boys,” Lily told Blanca. “The boys are Coyotes. Lance came here to fetch them for his pack. Remember when I told you about that a couple of days ago? We were hoping to head home tomorrow.”

“Ah.” Blanca grunted and tipped Martha’s bottle back a bit for her. The baby was half asleep and had a lazy suckle, but any chance of her sleeping through the night ultimately hinged on how satiated she was. Her little tank needed to be topped off.

Why do I even know that?

At the memory of Lola’s dire prognostication about the Jaguars, Lily’s heart plummeted into her belly. Unless things changed, Martha was doomed to less than half a life. She had to do all her living in that little sliver of time, and Lily wondered if the women were so accustomed to their state that they’d come to believe that was all they needed.

She couldn’t ask. Couldn’t tip her hand and let them know what she knew.

There was one thing she could ask, though.

She cleared her throat and tossed a bit of kibble just beside the table, hoping French Fry would take the bait.

He didn’t.

“So…” she said lightly. “Do you date at all? ¿Tienes novio?”

Please say yes.

Blanca snorted, and said emphatically, “No.”

“Why not? You’re pretty and funny and really talented. You haven’t thought about settling down with someone?”

“Marry?”

“Yes. Or, you know. Domestic arrangement. Whatever floats your boat.”

“No. What good for?”

“Yeah. What good are they, huh?” Lily turned to hide her grimace. Perhaps it was possible Blanca didn’t know. Maybe none of the women knew. She threw out a bit of bait: “Sometimes shifters have to take mates for balancing. To trade off traits that are too dominant.”

Lance could certainly stand to leach a few, in Lily’s opinion.

Shoulda left him to suffocate in the van.

“No-o-o,” Blanca drawled. “We don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“No time.” She turned slowly to Lily and waggled her dark eyebrows. “Can’t make the crafts if we’re on our backs, huh? Be nonstop.” She pursed her lips and did a little shimmy. “Soy irresistible, eh? All the hombres say, ‘Ay, Blanca. Despacito, Blanca. Is too much.’” She snorted but her little smile quickly fell off. She looked sad, and Lily didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound corny or patronizing.

Changing the subject seemed to be the gentle approach.

“Hey, did you sell a lot at the fair today? Enough to make Estela happy?”

“Ah, sí. Much more comfy van.” Blanca pantomimed knocking her head against something. “No boxes fall and squish.”

“So, you take the money home and live on it until you’ve created enough product to hit the road again?”

Blanca fanned her hand in an eh gesture. “Para las otras.”

“Other ladies, you mean? Back at home?”

“Mmm. And children.”

The taste in Lily’s mouth went sour. Children meant Martha wasn’t the only one with few years to look forward to. “Oh. That’s nice,” she said weakly. “How…many children?”

Blanca shrugged. “¿Doce? ¿Trece? Can’t stay still to count.” She laughed.

Lily tried to laugh, too. Thirteen was a lot. “How many total women?”

Blanca narrowed her eyes and carefully tugged the flattened bottle nipple out from between Martha’s gums. “Eh. ¿Treinta?”

Lily turned and grimaced again. That was about one minor for every two adults, which should have been a pretty safe ratio, but not if a large cross-section of the women were out on the road at any given time.

“Martha,” Blanca said, “don’t stay home. She come.”

“You usually leave the babies home?”

“Sí.”

“What’s different about her?” Lily knew how brazen her prying was, but if Blanca was going to run her mouth, Lily was going to find out what she could. If there was any way to help those women at all, she could find out. Of course, she also had to find out if they wanted to be helped.

“Her mamá…she couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t leave her?”

“Sí.”

“So…you’re not her mother?” Lily asked gently. She didn’t really expect Blanca to answer. She’d been so coy about everything else, but she shook her head, and mouthed, “No.”

“Want to tell me who is?”

Blanca’s teeth pressed into the meat of her lower lip and she seemed to be looking right through Lily, probably pondering if the question was safe. Probably knowing innately that it wasn’t.

Lily sighed. “Don’t answer that.”

“I should…” Blanca made a lip-zipping gesture and rolled her eyes. “Pero no entiendo.”

“You don’t understand what?”

“Why not say? I should not say.”

“Say what, Blanca?”

“We should say.”

“Say what?”

“Estela, siempre nos dice no. ‘Don’t talk. Shut mouth.’ She always say.”

“She doesn’t want you to talk about what you are?”

Blanca rolled her eyes again and made a throat-slashing gesture imitative of Estela. “Been that way since el barco. Secret. Why secret?”

“Sometimes, you have to keep some secrets. Secrets mean safety.”

“From all? Everybody? Why no others? Cats, Coyotes, nothing. So lonely, huh? Why?”

Blanca’s questions were getting more and more frantic. Her tongue was getting looser, and Lily knew she should pull back to mitigate the younger woman’s eventual regret, but it was like the stopper had been pulled out and no one was going to be able to cram it back in.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Lily said gently. “I’m not sure what I can do for you.” She wished she knew. Why should they have to suffer for what they didn’t know?

She didn’t envy them and didn’t envy Lola for having to choose to disengage. She simply couldn’t give everything to everyone. Lily knew that circumstance very well.

Blanca sucked her teeth. “Eso no importa. En realidad no sé lo que quiero.”

It didn’t matter, she’d said. She didn’t know what she wanted.

She probably didn’t know what she could have, and it wasn’t Lily’s place to tell her.

Or is it?

“You leave in morning?” Blanca asked.

“That’s the goal. We’ll stick around if we have to.” Lily dabbed a bit of milk from Martha’s cheek with the corner of her bib. “Do we need to, Blanca?”

“Hmm.” Blanca smoothed down Martha’s hair and fixed her stare out the kitchenette window for a minute. “Night-night.”

“Well, goodnight, then, Blanca.”

She left.

French Fry gave up the fight and padded after her, glancing once over his shoulder at Lily as he went.

She wished she understood dogs.

They continued to frustrate her. It didn’t matter if they were on four legs or on two.

*

In the morning, Lance waited for Lily to shut the truck’s passenger door and put on her seatbelt before asking, “What’d they say?”

“They said ‘see you next year.’ I’m assuming they were joking, but maybe not. Estela doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

“You saw all of them?”

“All except French Fry and Nayeli. He’s probably handling his business in a bush somewhere. Not sure about Nayeli.”

“Hmm.” Lance eased the truck onto the road and got the trailer straightened. Regina was idling on the road behind him, excited to hit the highway and get someplace where she and the boys could settle down. The old lady had to be exhausted. Lance sure was, and he hadn’t even managed get done one of the more important tasks he’d set out to do.

He and Lily were still no closer to organizing their split. Between the interruptions from the Jaguars and Regina’s disordered collection of her grandson, they’d hardly had time to think, much less have a dignified conversation.

Lance had never been afraid of tough conversations, and yet they just couldn’t have it. Every time he thought to bring it up, something got in the way.

“You know,” he started, taking a breath. “I—”

“I thought about taking Martha and bouncing,” Lily said ruefully as they approached the exit gate.

Yep. Every single time.

He just couldn’t get the words out, and he couldn’t ignore that explosive statement she’d made, either.

“I don’t think they would have let you get very far,” he said.

“Yeah, but the thought still crossed my mind. Anyway, she needs her mother…whoever her mother is.”

“Not Blanca.”

“Nope. I don’t think Blanca would lie about that.” Lily pounded the bottoms of her fists against her thighs, took a deep breath, then pulled her blanket tighter around her neck.

She was cold. He got that. But if he didn’t have that window open, he was going to be sick. He’d inherited his mother’s carsickness gene, and with a vengeance. Flying didn’t bother him at all, but rolling over roads at any speed over forty miles per hour stoked turmoil in his digestive system.

“I feel I should have told her more,” Lily said. “Warned her, or something. She seemed desperate for the information—any information, really—but I guess we have to play this game.”

“The game of minding your own business?”

“When you put it like that, walking away and washing my hands clean of the situation sounds perfectly righteous, but maybe that’s not my personality.”

“So I noticed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Say nothing. Less trouble that way.

Lance caught a glimpse of Regina in his rearview mirror and searched behind her. No mysterious vans on their tail. Yet. He just didn’t buy that after the rocky start he’d had with those women that they were going to let them leave without further insult. With the exception of Blanca, who didn’t want to stop hugging Lily, and Nayeli who’d been nowhere to be found, they’d seemed far too blasé about the departure. They hadn’t asked a single new question about La Dama, and they should have…unless they didn’t need Lily and Lance for clues anymore. That frightened him.

“Why do you assume that every sound that comes out of my mouth needs to be sliced and diced for accuracy’s sake?” he asked.

“That’s rich, coming from the same man who says one thing and does another.”

“I always do what I say.”

“Okay. Maybe you do. Maybe it’d be more accurate to say that you don’t do what you should.”

“What should I be doing, Lily?” He was starting to feel a little sick to his stomach, so he let the window down more and took a deep gulp of fresh air.

“Just putting this out there, but it seems to me that you should be doing everything in your power to ingratiate yourself to your wife.”

Lance opened his mouth to retort, “You’re not my wife,” but let his window down even more instead. Technically, she was. On paper, if not in action.

Lily’s hair was starting to whip around in the wind and her blanket was fluttering at the corners, but at least he wasn’t going to vomit.

The fact that Lola would stir shit up like that and then flutter away back to her goddess safe space infuriated him.

“Why would you want to be married to me, anyway?” he asked. “I’d think you’d disavow such a horrific existence.”

“Maybe I’ve decided I could do worse.”

“Oh, that’s a ringing endorsement, for sure.”

She shrugged.

“At the risk of dinging my own pride here, I think you can do better than not the worst.”

“Have you stopped to consider that perhaps not the worst is the best for me?”

“I don’t see how that would be the case.”

“Why not?”

His turn to shrug. “You just deserve more.”

“Define more.”

“The house with the white picket fence located somewhere that just so happens to be on Tiny’s taco truck route. Maybe with a nice little Pomeranian puppy or something to dig up your grass. The two-point-five kids to track dirt into the house and leave greasy handprints all over the walls.”

“And you’re saying you can’t give me that?”

“I’m saying that, first of all, you shouldn’t want it from me, and second—” He swallowed some bile and took another breath of brisk of air.

Shit.

“Second…of all, I’m not going to put you through the torture of wanting kids and not being able to have them.”

“I—” Her brow creased deeply, or at least, he thought so from his quick glimpse. Her hair was blowing around too much. “You just said so much and I’m not sure I can even address it all, but I’m going to try anyway. Why shouldn’t I want you? Give me an answer other than the obvious. I already know you’re a degenerate with gray morals, but a lot of shifters are. Tell me something new.”

“Gray-moraled degenerate isn’t a good enough reason for you?”

“No. Apparently, it isn’t. I like you in spite of that.”

He had to take his eyes off the road for a moment just to see if she was pulling his tail on that. Didn’t look like she was. Her expression was as serious as it always was. Swallowing yet again, he put his gaze ahead and tried to ignore his sick feeling. The drive ahead of them was going to be a long one if he couldn’t get his body in check.

“I think maybe your father is right,” he said. “You’ve been spending too much time around your cousins.”

“Oh, so you’re on my father’s side now?” She crossed her legs at the knees and tightened the blanket at her neck. “I wouldn’t consider that company to be so worthy of vaunting.”

“He’s just trying to protect you.”

“Is that how you’d choose to protect your daughters?”

“If I thought I’d ever have any, maybe I would.”

“Why couldn’t you? What’s stopping you from having two-point-five or more of them?”

“Not gonna risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“Doing that to you again. You want to know what I dream about? Hmm? Well, I’m going to tell you. Same shit over and over again. The nightmares came back after you told me you miscarried. Hadn’t had one since I was a kid, Lily. All that anxiety and trauma builds up and when you can’t do anything with it, it fucks with your head.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“The worst time was when I was twelve…maybe thirteen. My mom picked me up from school every other day. She and my aunt switched off on the chore. The schedule was predictable. Established.”

“She didn’t show up when she should have.”

Lance grimaced. “It’s hard to think about it now—being that kid who’d fancied himself to be so strong and aggressive, just like my father. And I was sitting there in that car, frantic. Nearly losing my shit like I was five or six, and Kenny was there, and he looked so mortified.”

They didn’t talk about it. Not really.

“My father picked us up and I knew something was wrong, and I think that was the first time I knew exactly what had happened. They’d been so tightlipped about the previous ones, but after so many, I figured it out. And maybe all the stories about the bad things that could happen had found me, and I believed every one of them could happen to her. She didn’t get to go home that night.”

Lily was quiet, staring down at her hands. Lacing her fingers over and over again.

“They didn’t…stop there,” he said. “They kept trying for a while longer after that. By the time they gave up, my mother just wasn’t the same anymore. Every time there was a new baby in the pack, she’d shut down for a couple of days, and she’s the kind of person if she’s not around, people notice. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” Lily whispered after a moment.

And Lily would be that kind of person. Everyone would notice if she pulled away—if she wasn’t there. She’d be missed and she’d be sad, and he’d hurt because he’d done it to her.

“So, now you know.” He shook his head hard. “It’s just not worth it.”

Her head snapped up. “You think that what happened is your fault?”

“Knowing what I know, I can’t help but to think so.”

“I’m sorry that happened to your mother, Lance,” she said softly, “but it’s no one’s fault. It was just a fluke. The midwife said so, and so did the doctor I got the second opinion from. They said there’s no reason I won’t be successful the next time. It happens to women all the time, and sometimes before they even know they’re pregnant. Biology is a frighteningly complicated thing. Gestation isn’t going to work perfectly every single time. Am I upset? Yes, I’m upset that I got to ten weeks without knowing something was wrong, but I’m not going to just go crawl into a hole and die now.”

“You plan on trying again, then?” His mother had been insistent, too. That had gotten her nothing but heartache. She’d wanted that happy brood so badly and the results were out of her control.

“Well, yes, Lance. I’d like to try again. Obviously, I’d like to be a little more prepared the next time, though.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.”

He clapped his palm against her forehead. “You must be deliriously feverish.”

She knocked his hand away. “You can’t compare what happened to your mother with what happened to me. Also, bear in mind that shifters are actually less fertile than their animal counterparts. Plus, my aunt Glenda had four kids, whereas her brother-in-law only had one with his wife. She’s a Cougar.”

“Glenda is human.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you mean, exactly?”

“I mean that for them, the circumstances were probably uncomplicated. No competing magic. No weird hormonal stuff. I imagine that her body wouldn’t have automatically done anything differently.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I’ve always been told that it’s harder when couples are mixed.”

“Told by who? The pack you and the others couldn’t wait to get out of?”

Oh.

Lance massaged the bridge of his nose and drew in a long breath.

He hated that he hadn’t been skeptical enough. He’d been an aggressive skeptic about so many of the statements made by pack leaders, but never that.

And why not?

The Sparks pack hadn’t been the most insular group of Coyotes Lance had ever encountered, but he realized then how heavily the elders had pushed the like-with-like doctrine. They’d said it’d be impossible to have a thriving pack with half-breed Coyotes.

But given what he knew now about Randall and the rest, Lance suspected the old man had had other reasons for discouraging outside matches.

It seemed too simple a solution—that everything would be normal just because she was human.

“But wouldn’t it be nice if it was?” he murmured.

“Wouldn’t what be nice?”

He gave his head a shake. “Didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“It’d be nice if it really was that easy.”

“And if it were?”

He shrugged jerkily and put the window up a bit. His eyes were starting to water from all the wind. “We’d just…carry on as we were, I guess.”

“Glowering at each other behind our glasses of mescal?”

“No. The…parts that came after that.”

“Oh,” she said mysteriously.

Oh?

Lance motored the window down again and gulped. He was feeling too sick and the coyote part of his consciousness was adding to the ick factor by pushing at his seams, demanding to be let out to run.

He usually didn’t need to be let out so far from the full moon, but Lily had him all out of sorts. Actually, if he had to be brutally honest with himself, he’d been out of sorts since their first argument back in May. She kept talking back—she wouldn’t back down. That immunity she had to his shifter charms obviously didn’t work both ways. The dog wanted what he couldn’t have, and that didn’t necessarily make her a mate or wife material.

But doesn’t it?

He couldn’t get the window down any farther and he needed air. He was going to suffocate.

Blue hadn’t gone looking for a mate but he’d ended up with one that, at first, wouldn’t have touched him with a ten-foot pole. He couldn’t really explain why Willa was right, except to say, “She just is.” The best proof of the rightness was in how Blue had changed in ways no one but the inner circle would have noticed ever since he gave in. His motivations had changed. His priority was to nurture a quiet and peaceful community that his wife would feel safe in. That just happened to benefit everyone around them.

Lance hadn’t been paying attention, but it was apparent that his motives had started shifting as well. The very idea of Lily finding someone else to have those two-point-five daughters with made him want to round up all the likely suspects and direct them expeditiously the nearest trapdoor to hell.

So what’s that mean?

He knew what that meant. He just didn’t know what to do with it.

He pulled over, undid his seatbelt, and got out.

“Lance?” Lily called after him. “What are you doing? Why’d you stop?”

He held up a hand bidding her to wait, hopped down into a conveniently dry riverbed, and tossed his cookies where no one could see.