Feral (14 page)

Blinking, Icarus disregarded my accusation.  “This is your home now,
Thaleia.  It’s only natural you should have your own personal space.”  Placing my bags at the end of the bed, he pointed to the door on the east side of the room.  “You have your own bathroom.  You’ll find towels in the linen closet.  Any toiletries you need we can pick up at the store when you feel up to it.  There’s a small closet on the other side of the stairs, but as I said, it’s small, so I ordered you a dresser.  A few other pieces as well.  They should arrive tomorrow.”

“You didn’t have to do that.  I had stuff at home.”

“Money’s not an issue, but if there’s anything that you want to keep for sentimental reasons, I can arrange to have it moved.”

“Thank you
.”

With one last look, he nodded.  “I’ll leave you to get settled in.”

Curling up under the mountain of covers, I tried to exploit the last dregs of night, but between human trafficking and Marcus’s transformation to Bennie and my parents filling my thoughts, I found it difficult to sleep.  Instead, I ended up chewing the inside of my cheek.  When finally I gave up on the vain effort, I fished my phone from my bag and sent Benny a text.

“
U o
k
?” I said succinctly.  I only had to wait a few seconds for a reply.

“
Get a gri
p
,” he texted back. 
“
Taking your room.  It’s bigge
r
.”

I smiled, reassured.

A second later,another text popped up. 
“
R
U
?”

“
Get a gri
p
,” I replied. 
“
I have my own bathroom now
.
”

Tossing my phone on the bed, I decided to investigate said room.  It
roughly matched the size of our bathroom at home, but where our bathtub was a built in with sliding glass doors, this one had a freestanding claw foot tub and a frilly shower curtain.  Chipped and weathered, the vanity was a vintage find with a porcelain vessel sink and a brushed steel faucet. A silver guild framed mirror finished the ensemble, flanked on either side by a pair of rustic sconces.

Obviously, Icarus meant it when he said money wasn’t an issue because there was no way he decorated the room himself.  From the shabby bedspread to the frilly shower curtain, there were feminine touches everywhere.  He must’ve had the help of a decorator or at least a personal shopper.  Either way, I was flattered with his generosity and kindness.

Honestly, I could almost forgive the muffin poisoning.  Almost.  At best, I could understand why he did it.  He had committed the act in desperation.  While I may have taken everything else he told me with a grain of salt, I hadn’t taken his concern about my safety seriously enough.  If I had gone to school, Alec would surely have abducted me and God only knows where I would’ve ended up.  I could imagine worse places than Icarus’s custody.

Showering, I brushed and flossed,
making myself respectable.  I took the time to dry my hair and run an iron over it, then carefully apply a little mascara, eyeliner and lip gloss with the hope that I’d feel rejuvenated.  Mind over matter, I told myself.  It worked in the past.

Downstairs, I found the house nearly empty.  Max sat at the island eating a bowl of cereal, and Hailey was scowling balefully into hers.  The others had just left, leaving a wake of
dirty dishes behind.  The counter was piled with bowls stacked six high and leaning like the Tower of Pisa.  Boxes of cereal littered the counter, tops left open for the cereal to stale.  Puddles of milk and cereal covered the counter, remnants of the recent free for all.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, assuming the task of clearing the mess.  It was habit.  I had been used to handling the kitchen at home
and it had become second nature.

“School,” Max answered around a mouthful of Captain Crunch.  That explained the mess.  They’d rushed out the door to make it to school on time after their late night stakeout
at my house.  “Icarus and Lucius are outsid—”

“I can do that!” Hailey snapped.

“It’s ok.  I don’t mind,” I assured her, which only made her temper flare.  Apparently, I was stepping on her toes because she dropped her spoon into her bowl, sending milk and soggy Cheerio’s sloshing onto the counter.

“I SAID LEAVE IT!  I CAN DO IT!”  The kid made Damien Omen look like Theodore “The Beaver” Cleaver.  I was waiting for her head to spin on her shoulders while she
spewed split pea soup at me.  Eerie, she was just eerie.

“Hailey!” Icarus rumbled, emerging through the back door.  “Enough already!  Now apologize!”

“But—”

“Now!” Icarus roared, using his alpha voice.   Even I flinched.  Hailey’s eyes rimmed with angry tears, her lips pressed to a thin, white line.  She turned her head to me, eyes narrow.

“Sorry,” she sneered and ran to her room.

Afraid to speak, I stood in silence, still as the air around me.

Icarus ran his hand through his hair and exhaled loudly, his cheeks puffing out.  Eyes flickering to me, he looked me once over.  “You look much better.”

“I thought I’d feel better if I got out.”

“Shopping?”

I nodded.

From what I guessed to be Hailey’s room, I heard a loud crash, followed by several smaller ones.  Glass might’ve been involved, and a rubber ducky…?  No, that was Hailey’s high-pitched girly shriek.  The Omen was having a tantrum if I ever heard one, and an impressive one at that.  If she struck another cord like that, I thought the windows might shatter.

“Wait outside if you don’t mind,” Icarus requested, heading in the direction of Hailey’s room.  “I’ll be out shortly.”

Max stood and placed his bowl in the sink.  “Come on.  This could get ugly.”

“What’
s he gonna to do to her?” I asked, watching from over my shoulder as Max grasped my arm and began leading me out the door.

“Whatever’s necessary.”  Once outside, he released my arm, leaving me to my own faculties.  “Kid’s not right in the head.  That’s what happens when you turn them too young.”

“That’s not her fault.”

“No, it’s not, but you need to understand.  Her body’s twelve, her mind…that’s where the problem lies.  She’s the intelligence of an adult, but the maturity of a child.  She’s juvenile, temperamental and confused, which can be dangerous in our kind.”

“So I see.”

“Unfortunately,” Max continued, “With no other women in the house, she’s been alpha female for too long.  Now that you’re here, she feels threatened.  She’s defending her territory.”

My mouth popped open.  “Over doing the dishes?  They’re a chore where I come from.  If she wants to do them, she can have at it.  Besides, I’m not the alpha type anyhow.”

Max laughed at this, entertained.  “You—who disobeyed Icarus—are not the alpha type?  Do you know how many times
any
of us has disobeyed Icarus?  Never.  It’s not only unheard of, it’s impossible.  It can’t be done—
unless
you’re the alpha type.”

“
Whatever,” I said, feigning interest in my cuticles.  “If the kitchen’s hers, she can have it.  She was here first.”

“
No!” Max blurted.  Clearing his throat, he quickly collected himself.  “That’d be bad all the way around.  You claimed the kitchen when you cooked last weekend.  If you back down now, she’ll never respect you again.  She’ll walk all over you.  You’ve seen how she can be.  Is that the way you want to live out your eternal existence?  Hmm?”

Intuition kicked in. 
Not that Max didn’t have a point.  But his enthusiasm left little guesswork.  Men were so transparent.  “You want me to do the cooking.”

Smiling sheepishly, Max said, “Yeah.”

I stood in contemplation, my toe tapping on the pavement, deciding how I could make this work in my favor.  Chances were, taking responsibility for the cooking, I was most likely taking responsibility for the cleanup, too.  And after seeing what the kitchen looked like today, I wasn’t thrilled with the aspect.  “Fine, I’ll do it, but only if everyone agrees to clean their own dishes afterwards.”

Pumping his fist, Max grinned triumphantly
.  “Deal!”

Transparent.

“The kitchen isn’t really the issue,” Max assured, recanting his claims.  “Icarus is.  It’s only been Hailey the last five years.  And now his attention’s all on you.”

“Yeah,
well, she’s free to have his attention all she wants.”

Smiling wryly, Max arched one brow.  “You still don’t like him much, eh?”

I could feel his presence before I heard him.  Call it intuition, a sixth sense, or a hunch, call it whatever you want, I could feel him behind me.  It was as if his body emitted a micro electric signal that in some conscious level, while insubstantial, I could detect.

The problem was that signal screamed
danger
.  Maybe it was something we are all born with, a natural means of survival, an instinct that told us to run.  A predator was near.  Clearly, mine worked differently.  I hadn’t run when I faced Marcus in the woods.  I had stood my ground.  Yet now, every instinct told me to flee. 
Get as far away as you can
, it told me.

Deep down, I knew the reason why.

“This way,” Icarus said, aiming his key fob at the garage.  The fourth bay door began to rise.  “We’ll take Lucius’s car.  It has more trunk space.”

“Get a roast!” Max said.  “With those little
red potatoes!”

Rolling my eyes, I slid into the car and buckled the seatbelt.  Icarus turned the key in the ignition, starting the engine.  It growled like a sick dog, the reverberations palpable against my chest.  One hand clutched instinctively onto the seat belt and the other onto the seat beneath me.

“Relax, Thaleia.  We’re not driving Nascar.”

Looking at my hands, I realized my knuckles were white.  I let go of the seat and stretched my fingers out.  I stole glances at Icarus as he backed out of the garage, bracing himself on my seat as judged from over his shoulder, steering the car carefully out of the bay.  He must’ve
been doing the same because our eyes met for a fraction of a second that seemed to last forever.  I looked out the passenger side window to hide my flush.

Icarus cleared his thro
at.  “I want to start over.  I’ve left you with a monstrous impression of me and I want the chance to repair that.”

“Ok.”

“Ok?” Icarus repeated, expecting an argument.

I shrugged.  “I’ve made my share of bad judgments, though they weren’t as execrable as yours—” Icarus looked ready to object, but he quickly straightened his face.  “But I’m willing to overlook them so that we can move past our differences.  I think it would be best for all involved if we got along.”

This seemed to appease him because he pondered over it several minutes.  When he wasn’t inclined to say anything further, I asked, “What happened with Hailey?”

“We had a talk.”

“Is there anything I can do to…I don’t know…help?”

“No.”

Again, he wasn’t inclined to discuss the subject any further.  “Max said she was being territorial.  The thing is…I don’t know how this all works.  Am I stepping out of line if I don’t yield to her demands? Aren’t you supposed to decide the hierarchy here?”

“No, alpha male and alpha females stand alone.”

“Ok, but—”

“Enough about Hailey, ok?”

Clasping my hands together on my lap, I shifted away, facing out the window.  I had a terrible poker face, so there was no pretending I wasn’t annoyed.  I was only trying to understand the structure and etiquette within his home so that I wasn’t constantly causing discord.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Icarus apologized.  “I’m trying to give you normal,
Thaleia.  You’ve dealt with enough this morning.  Let’s just be two people out shopping, and enjoying each other’s company.”

Normal?  I could use normal.  “Fine.  We’re two people…shopping.”

“And enjoying each other’s company.”

The corners of my lips turned up.

Icarus smiled.  “Stretching it?”

Chapter 8

“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked loudly so that Icarus could hear me above the ringing in his ears.  I hadn’t considered his heightened senses or how the
volume of the stereo would affect him.  Shoving his fingertip in his ear, he tried to dislodge the complaint.

Music should be listened to loud in my opinion.  I liked to feel the base as if I was sitting in the front row of
a concert, feeling like your heart was nearly defibrillating in your chest.

“You were enjoying yourself
.  And you have a nice voice.”

“Gah,” I
said, cringing.  “The point of the volume is to drown it out.”  I grabbed a cart from the chute and pushed it backward and forward a few times, testing the wheels.

“What are you doing?” Icarus asked, eyeing me warily.

“Checking the wheels.  You get a reject and everyone stares.  Ooh, bingo, we’ve got a winner.”  The wheel stuck and as I pushed the cart, it squealed a constant C sharp.  I smiled sweetly.  “See?”

Grimacing, Icarus rubbed his ears.  “Point taken.”

Grabbing another cart, I started through produce.  “Why don’t I feel any different?  I mean, you’re hearing is better.  I’m assuming all your senses are.  You even move more quietly.”

“Your body is still changing.  As the moon waxes, your senses will grow stronger.  They’ll reach their height after you’ve
shifted the first time.”

Stopping at the cantaloupe, I picked a few up, judging their ripeness.  Such an ordinary thing to do while discussing lycanthrope puberty.  Icarus must’ve been of the same mind, because he promptly changed the subject, watching my exploits with feigned interest.

“How do you tell when they’re ripe?”

“Everyone says
differently.  Some say squeeze them.  Some people say tap them to see how hollow they sound.  Me, I smell them.  The sweeter they smell, the riper they are.”

Selecting two examples, one green tinted and the other a nice cream color,
I held them both up for his appraisal.  He eyed me dubiously and smiled, taking in the twin melons balanced parallel with my chest.  I followed his line of sight and rolled my eyes.

“Really?” I admonished.  “You’re supposed to be the adult here.”

“Thaleia, men are always children when it comes to breasts.”

“Or anything resembling them, obviously.”

“It’s inbred.”  Biting back a laugh, he dipped his head and smelled each, picking the riper of the two with a grin.  “That’s good to know, but the boys will never eat it,” he said.  “They never eat anything healthy.  It’s against their principals.”

“Perhaps that’s because I’ve never cooked for them before.”

“Cocky, aren’t you?”

“Confident.”

“They still won’t eat it.”

“We’ll see,” I said, placing them in the cart.  I picked through the fruits and vegetables
, pointedly sending Icarus for some alternate items like potatoes and onions while I picked through the phallic varieties like cucumbers and carrots in peace.  He was right.  Men were such children when it came to boobs.  Then again, coming from him, I felt quite surprised.  I didn’t think he had a sense of humor.  Moody, yes, or even bossy, but boyish I hadn’t expected.

In any event, Icarus step
ped up when we reached the meat counter.  He and the butcher seemed to have a small tête-à-tête before the butcher turned and disappeared behind a set of plastic flaps that led to the freezers.  Close to a half hour later, he came back with half a cow, a slab of bacon, four chickens and a large paper wrapped bundle marked liver.

The butcher’s name was Boris, which he pronounced with a long Russian drawl, and he insisted we come every Thursday and he would have the best cuts set aside for the newlyweds and doubly insisted that I needed to eat lots of liver.

“You vant babies, you eat liver.  Boris knows.  Six healthy sons, I haf,” he boasted, his gray whiskery eyebrows meeting in the center with vehemence that dared me to doubt him.  “Liver give you sons.  Big sons, strong like bulls.”

“Oh no,” I corrected him hastily.  “We’re not married.  No.”

Boris smiled at this.  “Then vut you need is,” he said something that sounded like “yaĭtsa” and pounded Icarus on the back with his meaty hand.  “They make
you
strong like bull! 
Then
she marry you!”  Chortling, he withdrew behind his counter again.  “I get for you, yes?”

“What is yaĭtsa?” I asked in
nocently.

Boris touched his index finger to his lips, searching inwardly. 
“How you say…testi-culls?”

“What!” I choked.

“Testi-culls,” Boris repeated, talking animatedly with his stubby hands.  “They’re delicacy.  And medicinal.  Make your man virile.  You vant, yes?”

My eyes impulsively flickered to Icarus, my face going red.  He raised an eyebrow.  Mind numb and half-blank with shock,
my eyes drew—on their own accord—to his groin.

I heard him chuckle lowly.
  “I’d think you got a good look the other day.”

I gasped indignantly.  “The wonder twin’s told me that it was their room!  I didn’t know you would be in there!  And you should’ve locked the door!”

Icarus flashed a row of dazzling white teeth.  “You still looked.  That makes twice now.”

“Two,” I told Boris, holding up the equivalent number of fingers.  “He needs aaalllll the help he can get.”

Boris bellowed loudly, a rolling belly laugh.  “If dis does not vork, you come see Boris.  He still haf four eligible sons.”  Disappearing behind the plastic curtain, he continued bellowing.

“I should warn you that if you expect me to eat these,” Icarus
hedged, “I’ll hold you responsible to accommodate any effects they may have on my virility.”

I stared,
striving to determine his angle.  He was flirting, but there was gravity behind his words, and that worried me.  I didn’t need serious when it came to men.  Especially Icarus.

“Fine, let’s go before Boris comes back,” I said, beating a quick retreat down the closest aisle.  I began grabbing things from the shelves and throwing things in the cart, adding nearly one of everything in the store.  Icarus’s cupboards were bare and with six men and two girls eating, I felt confident that nothing would go to waste.

“Is the prospect that unappealing?” Icarus asked with mock insult.  When it didn’t elicit a response, he grew visibly disappointed.  “I thought we were starting over, Thaleia.”

“We are.
”  I’m just not interested.

“Then lighten up. 
I don’t bite.  Usually.”  His mouth quirked, fighting a smile over his own lame joke.  This only provoked my frown to deepen.  He did bite.  He hurt me, dominated me with his entire family standing outside the door, and I didn’t see the humor in it.

“You,” I said, turning on my heel, “are supposed to be my guardian.
  The next best thing after a parent.  Try acting your age.  Whatever that might be.”

That seemed
to strike a nerve, because for the next few aisles, he remained broodingly silent.  I almost preferred the flirting.  Almost.  Surely there had to be a happy medium.  We just had to find it.  Unfortunately, that was difficult, if not impossible since we weren’t speaking.

Occasionally, Icarus added items to the cart, anything boxed or bagged
and could be quickly and easily prepared for those that were unskilled in the kitchen, but I had to put my foot down when he began loading his arms with cans upon cans of Hormel chili.

One at a time, I took the cans and began placing them back on the shelf, labels facing outward.  “I have everything I need to make chili if you want chili.  Except chili powder.  If you go
back to the spice aisle, it’s dark red.  The jar is usually fairly large so you can’t miss it.”

Picking up the cans I just set back on the shelf, he began loading them back into the cart.  “Cans are good for days
we don’t feel like eating out.”

Again, I began
plucking them from the cart and set them back on the shelf.  “How many days a week is that?” I inquired.  “One?  Two?  If it makes you feel better, I’ll make a pot of it and freeze it.  You guys can reheat it whenever you want.  Besides, mine’s better.”

Icarus’s jaw muscle twitched.  “I don’t expect you to do the cooking.  I’ve managed to keep everyone fed
up until now.”

“I won’t have to do it forever,” I dismissed.  “By the end of each day, one if not two of your cousins will each
learn a thing or two.”

Slowly, I could see him softening.  “
My cousins?  You think you’re going to teach them to cook?” he said skeptically.  “They hate working in the kitchen.”

“That’s because they’ve never worked in the kitchen with
moi
,” I said fluttering my eyelashes and accompanying it with an ingenuous smile.

“And when the novelty wears off?”

“Then I turn into Frau Blücher.”  Pushing the cart up the aisle, I giggled as Icarus whinnied behind me.  I think I had broken the ice and found our medium.

“
I can’t believe you know who Frau Blücher is.”

“It’s a classic.  Don’t be so surprised.
”

“I pictured you more of a romantic comedy kinda girl.”

“Sci-fi, horror, classic comedies.  Every Saturday night, Bennie and I pop a big tub of popcorn loaded with salt and butter, and sit on the couch watching movies.  We’ve been doing it for like the past…I don’t know…since I can remember.”

Preoccupying myself with kidney beans and tomato sa
uce, I hid the frown that formed on my lips.  I supposed I wouldn’t be having family movie night with Bennie anymore.

It
was all so surreal.  My world had just turned upside down and I was out grocery shopping.  Part of me was still expecting to wake up at the snap of someone’s fingers, strapped to a gurney in a locked and padded room.

Keeping busy.  That’s what I was doing.  Otherwise I’d fall to pieces.
  In my mind, I wasn’t only listing ingredients; I was planning a week’s worth of meals.  But everything seemed to circle back to my family.  Kidney beans. Tomato sauce.  Chili, Bennie loved chili night.  He’d stink bomb my room so that I’d walk into a wall of noxious fumes when I went to bed.  Boneless chicken breasts.  Mushrooms.  Mom loved chicken marsala.  Dad pretty much anything you put under his nose, except pistachios.

Noting my change of mood, Icarus placed his hand over mine
.  “Thaleia.”

“Chili powder,” I reminded him
, sucking a ragged breath.  “By the time you find it, I’ll have finished the last two aisles.  I only need a few more things.  Then we can go.”

“Ok,” he acquiesced, allowing me my space.  By the time I turned the corner, he hadn’t moved, but watched until I was out of view.  Probably wondering what
in the hell he got himself into.  My mood swings were off the charts.  If he were smart, he’d leave right now.  Skedaddle while he had the chance.  I certainly wouldn’t hold it against him.

I guess he was a glutton for punishment, because as I reached the registers, he was holding a space in line. 
No sooner than I reached him, he began tossing things indiscriminately onto the conveyer belt, regardless of their shape, size or weight.  Eggs, bottles of cola, loaves of bread, laundry detergent.  I nearly had a heart attack, envisioning the carnage.

“Stop!  Stop, please, allow me,” I intervened.  “Just step back.”

He did, looking puzzled.

Quickly, I
pulled back a few items from the conveyer so that soda and detergent didn’t crush the bread and eggs.  God, I was so domestic it was sad.

“I didn’t realize there was a right or wrong way.”

“Well there is, unless you don’t mind paying for squished bread and broken eggs.  Heavy things go up first, so when you load them back into the cart, they’re on the bottom.  Freezer stuff goes together so that you can get it to your freezer quicker before it defrosts.  Eggs, bread and perishables go last so they aren’t crushed.  It’s all about efficiency, see?”

Icarus stared dubiously.  Questioning my sanity, I’m sure.

“Keep loading,” I told him, “and I’ll start bagging.”

Doubtful, but accepting my logic, he began loading things onto the belt, glancing every so often in my direction for approval. 
He looked aghast when reaching my tampons, dithering for a moment before giving up and throwing them on the belt.  Typical male reaction.

You’d think periods were contagious
by association.

ΑΒΩ

“Six hundred dollars.”

“I offered to chip in,” I said for the
third time.  “Besides, it won’t cost that much every time we go.  You do realize you don’t even have ketchup in the fridge, don’t you?  And the salt and pepper had weevils.  Gah!”  I shivered with the heebie-jeebies.

“
I’ve never spent six hundred dollars on groceries.  Not once in my life.”

“
Well maybe if you didn’t buy half the farm…”