[Kassandra Lyall Preternatural Investigator 03] - Bloody Claws (14 page)

CHAPTER 
seventeen

t wasn't until I emerged from the basement and into the main hall that branched off of it that I realized I didn't know exactly where Rosalin's room was. I knew it was upstairs, but aside from that, I'd never even seen her room. I strode barefoot past the life-size statues that lined the wall, rounding the corner and ascending the stairs that led to the upper level. Even if I specifically didn't know where her room was, I should've been able to find it by smell. I stopped to consider which way to go, left or right? I went down the hall to the right. I was sure I'd seen or heard Rosalin coming from that direction before.

As it was, Carver stood outside the second doorway on the right. He too, was barefoot, wearing a pair of light jeans. The white shirt he wore was dirty, probably the same one he'd been wearing last night.

"I see you haven't had a chance to shower, either," I said.

He shook his head. "Claire's in there trying to comfort her. We've been taking turns keeping guard outside the door."

I wondered why they were keeping guard. Lenorre's house should have been safe territory. Surely, Sheila wasn't crazy enough to try anything on Lenorre's property.

"She's still shaken?" I asked, keeping my voice soft even though Rosalin and Claire could hear us on the other side of the door.

Carver visibly relaxed in front of me, leaning against the wall, his shoulders dropping. "This is the worst I've seen her," he said. "She usually takes it better than the rest of us. As beta, she has to."

I understood what he meant, although I was anything but happy about it.

"After everything she's endured," I whispered, "the last thing she deserved was Sheila Morris."

"The last thing any of us wolves deserve is Sheila as alpha," he said.

I gave him a considering look. "Why?" I asked. "Why'd you help me yet again, Carver? I was an ass to you."

He smiled, but there was something sad in it. "I'm not strong enough to overthrow her," he said. "None of us are. I recognized your mark the moment you walked into my trailer with the police. I was angry about a stray walking onto my turf, accusing me of murder. How would you have felt? I realized when you visited the pack, that if we ever had any hope of getting rid of Sheila, you're it. Funny, huh?"

"I don't know that I'm you're hope, Carver."

He pinned me with a very serious expression. "You have to be, Kassandra. You stood up to Sheila last night. You're the only wolf I've ever seen stand up to her. Many of us have wanted to, but we didn't, we don't. If she doesn't punish us, she'll punish someone else within the pack that we care about. She finds a weak spot and drives her claws into it."

"I felt her strength, Carver. She's strong, stronger than even I anticipated."

"She is strong," he said, "but she's not powerful. Physical strength doesn't equal power, not always. You touched a wolf in the clearing and she fell to her knees in the face of your power."

"She was like, eighteen."

"She was the
epsilon,
the fifth strongest wolf in the pack and you dominated her with nothing more than a touch. Why do you think the wolves finally parted? You showed them power, the true power of an alpha."

I hadn't remembered Carver being behind me when I'd returned to the pack to confront Sheila. He must've followed me, but I didn't like it that I hadn't known that at the time.

"Why is it everyone's throwing this alpha thing in my face?" I grumbled, more to myself than to Carver.

"Why is it you're fighting it?" he asked, and because I'd already had that little conversation with Lenorre, I gave him an unhappy look.

"I'm not a fan of the title."

"Don't worry about the fucking title," he said. "Worry about fucking helping us."

"I can't worry about that right now, Carver. I'll do what I can, but right now I need to worry about Rosalin."

I reached for the doorknob, but it opened before I touched it. Claire stepped out of the room. Her eyes were red as if she hadn't gotten any sleep and as if she'd been crying.

She touched my shoulder. "I hope you have better luck than I did."

I nodded and with a heavy heart stepped into Rosalin's room.

*

"You're not going to accept it, are you?" Rosalin's voice came from under a mound of blankets on the bed.

"Accept what?" I asked, shutting the door quietly behind me.

"That mark in your hair and everything it means," she said.

"I'm a bit skeptical." I gave the mound a light push. "Move over."

Rosalin obliged, wiggling closer to the wall her bed was pressed against. I sat on the edge of her bed. Her room wasn't nearly as spacious as Lenorre's, but it was spacious, nonetheless. A painting hung on the wall by her closet doors. The painting was of a dark forest, here and there golden eyes peeked around bushes and the trunks of trees. In the middle of the painting, a wolf crouched low, skulking out of the shadows like darkness given form. The others seemed to watch, patiently waiting for that one lone wolf to guide the way.

My chest grew tight and I couldn't explain why.

"I see you're not holding up very well," I said.

"The bed is holding me just fine."

I reclined against the pillows. "So I see. Why are you hiding?"

"I don't know. Why are you skeptical?"

"I don't understand how a streak of white in my hair marks me as an alpha or how I'm supposed to be an alpha."

"You carry your wolf with you in human form," she said, "that marks you as an alpha."

I didn't want to bring up Lukas Morris, but something he had said to me crossed my mind. I decided to leave his name out of it. Morris was probably the last thing Rosalin wanted to be reminded of.

"I thought the mark of the alpha only happened with hereditary lycanthropy?"

She peeked over her blankets at me. "You actually know about hereditary lycanthropy?"

"Not a lot, but I've heard of it, yes." I was trying to remember Lukas's exact words, something about the virus taking a turn and mimicking hereditary lycanthropy in that regard. Honestly, I didn't understand either.

"Then you'd know that the lycanthropy virus actually branched off of hereditary lycanthropy."

"So you think it's a possibility because of that?"

"Don't you?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not a scientist."

"And lycanthropy is something that still baffles modern science."

I nodded.

"You want to know what I think?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me either way, so go ahead."

"I think you're questioning it to death because you don't want to accept it and if you keep questioning it, Kass, you're never going to accept it."

"Why is everyone ganging up on me today?"

"Sheila isn't going to let last night go."

"If we're going to have this conversation, can you at least come out from under the covers so I'm not talking to a pink cocoon?"

She pushed the covers down. Her honey eyes were as red and raw as Claire's had been, if not more.

"Don't try to change the subject," she said. "I can't tell if you're being arrogant and solitary or if you're really seriously just scared of being an alpha."

"I am scared, Ros. I'm not like you. I didn't come into this and find a pack to call home. I was infected and the only person there for me was Rupert, and he couldn't help me learn to control my beast because he's human. Everything I know, everything I've learned, I've learned fighting tooth and nail with this thing inside of me."

"Do you resent being what you are?"

"Every day? No. Sometimes, yes. The wolf and I are on much better terms, but there are still times when I don't understand her, don't understand this, this thing I am, this thing I'm supposed to be."

"I don't understand why you're scared, Kassandra. I really don't."

"Because, Rosalin, I'm not completely wolf. I'm human too and there are times when I'm afraid. Maybe, because of what I do for a living, I shouldn't be."

"Are you scared of Sheila?"

I had to think about my response for a moment. "I'm not scared of what she could do to me, because given the chance I'd pump several rounds of silver into her as fast as I could, but I'm scared of what she could do to those I love and care about. I'm supposed to be an alpha, and yet, I wasn't there for you when you needed me last night. I didn't even know what she'd done to you."

"How could you?" she asked. "It wasn't like I told you I was going to a pack meeting. I'm the one that idiotically tried to carry on as a member of the pack after you'd…"

"Go on," I said. "Say it. After I accidentally marked you. And look what that mark did, Rosalin. It brought you harm. It put you in danger. I promised to protect you and I failed at that. Some alpha I'm supposed to be."

"No." She stubbornly shook her head. "Sheila brought me harm, not you. You couldn't have known that she was going to punish me."

"But you did," I said. "You knew she'd punish you."

"I've been to a couple of meetings with the pack after you marked me. She didn't do anything then, so I thought she hadn't sensed it."

"She had, though?"

"Yes."

"Why did she wait?"

"I don't know. Sheila is unpredictable. She probably waited for that reason alone-unpredictability-to catch me when I'd finally let my guard down and stopped worrying about it."

"And now neither you nor Carver nor Claire can return to the pack."

"And you don't want to be our alpha."

"I didn't say I didn't want to, Rosalin. You're making it sound like I don't want to be your friend. Just because I don't want to pin a sticker on my shirt that says, 'Hello, my name is Alpha,' doesn't mean I don't care about you, any of you."

"It's the title?"

"And the responsibilities," I said. "As I said, if I'm supposed to be your alpha, I failed miserably last night."

"Kassandra," she said, and I looked at her.

"What?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes. Doesn't mean I'll have an answer though."

"Take out the title, and if the same thing happened to me last night, would you still feel the same?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're beating yourself up for not protecting me, though you did protect me. Hell," she said, "you knocked Sheila halfway across the clearing. If I was just your friend and you hadn't marked me, would you still have done that?"

I licked my lips.

"You would've killed her, wouldn't you? If you weren't a lycanthrope and didn't have to play by our rules, what would you have done? Lied to the cops, tell them I'd been attacked? Figure out a way to set it up so that the execution was done cleanly? What lengths would you have gone to to protect me, as a friend?"

"I don't understand whatever point you're trying to make," I said, "and murder is illegal. Being a lycanthrope isn't the only thing that stopped me last night."

"The rest of the pack?"

"That certainly crossed my mind."

"Well, aside from that. The point I'm trying to make is this, lycanthrope or no, metaphysical binding or no, would you still have protected me? Would you still have thought to avenge a wrong that was done to me just because I'm your friend?"

"Yes."

"How different is that from being an alpha?"

"I…I don't know," I said.

"Obviously, you get my drift," she said. "So stop questioning it."

I scoffed. "That's easier said than done."

"Kassandra Lyall, you can turn into a fucking bird. If you can accept that," she said, "I am pretty sure you can accept this."

I laughed.

"And," she said, "if it's any consolation, I don't think you'll botch the job as badly as Sheila."

"Thanks, Ros. I guess that's supposed to be comforting."

"I can make it more comforting," she said, raising the blanket between us. "Wanna come in and cuddle?"

"Um, no."

"Why?"

"I don't trust you."

"Why don't you trust me? I promise not to grope."

"Yeah, you say that now. You'll probably let a little werewolf biscuit slip and try to cover my head with the blankets."

Rosalin laughed then, the first genuine laugh I'd heard from her since I stepped into the room. I smiled hearing it.

"Oh my God," she said.

"You're considering it now, aren't you?"

"Well, now that you said something…yeah, a little bit."

I patted the blanket. "I think I'll stay out here then."

"So," she said, "did you feed Lenorre?"

I crossed my legs at the ankles, folding my hands over my stomach. "Actually, I did."

"And?"

"And what?"

"How was it?"

"It was…different," I said.

"Yeah, but did you enjoy it?"

I remembered the dark and intimate look on Lenorre's face, remembered her licking and biting down my body. Apparently, something showed on my face because Rosalin bolted upright.

"Oh my God," she said again. "You
totally
enjoyed it. You got all hot and bothered, didn't you?"

"Okay, how the hell did we end up having
this
conversation?" I asked, blinking.

"Don't you dare try and change the subject. I want details."