The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (3 page)

Sons. I almost say sons. I would never have put my
sons
in this situation. My eldest boy, Lachlan. Abducted and missing. And another child, my unborn—

I shake my head, banishing the thought.
 

Some things are too painful to remember.

But there’s a part of me that wonders if I dreamed it all. The Doberman-faced Dog God. The Bloodless Land. Even my animal. Was it all a feverish fucking dream? Oh god, let that be it. Let me be waking up from that nightmare right now. Maybe I got shot…hurt on the job. Stabbed by a junkie. Yeah. I’ve been in hospital for weeks. Jacked on painkillers. All the deep, dark, hidden subconscious shit floating around in my unmoored dream-mind like mental sludge—
 

“You’re feasting on it,” Trish says. “It’s not helping.”

She presses a damp cloth to my forehead.

“Trish?” I ask, my voice breathless with fear.

“Yeah?”

“Have I been dreaming?”

“About?”

“Everything? All of it?”

Trish sighs. “Tell me what you think you’ve been dreaming.”

“It’s gunna sound…fucking crazy.”

“There’s no one, Lil,” Trish repeats. “No one at all. And even if there was…I wouldn’t hand you over to the head doctors.”

Like they did with my father?
I almost say.
 

But for some reason I don’t. Something in how Trish keeps saying there’s no one. Like she means not only in this room, but…
anywhere
.

“Did I dream about animals? Monsters hidden beneath our skins? Did I dream about…Al Kusch? A man…a wolf…I’m not sure? And an animal inside me? A creature that wants me killed? That wants everything killed? Please tell me I was dreaming. About having to fight something evil…and the moon rising red?” I reach out and grip Trish’s hand, squeeze it hard. “Please tell me! Tell me I was dreaming.”

Trish’s voice is grim. She’s fighting back tears. “That’s all real, Lil. All of it. You’re not dreaming.”

I nod and turn away.
 

It was worth a shot.
 

But I’m a little relieved it’s not a nightmare. Because if it was…that would mean I dreamed my bloodmate as well. I want him to be real.
Need
him to be real. Because…I don’t think I’m finished with him.
 

Not yet.

My gut’s telling me he’s still alive.

I shiver, sweating but suddenly ice cold, then tug a blanket up under my chin and say: “I remember riding with Aaron through the mountains. It’s a ridiculous memory. Total sappy bullshit. But it was
real
. For a moment it was real. That’s what kills me, Trish. Even though he’s a douchebag, and even though I’m a fucking emotional infant…what we had was real. That’s what makes it so hard. If he was just a fuck, a one-nighter, I’d have already forgotten him. I wouldn’t feel this—”

“Guilt.”

“Yeah. Guilt. And regret. And…fucking
loss
, right? And the question. The fucking question! Over and over in my head. What if things had been different? What if…none of that other horrible shit happened? What if it was just me and him? Would we have had…you know…a future together?”

“You’re a cop. What’s your gut say?”

“That I’m about to vomit.”

Trish laughs. “Bucket?”

I shake my head no and think on Trish’s question. After a while I say: “My gut says yes. In spite of me not even knowing him. In spite of
everything
. My gut says yeah, we might’ve had a future.”

Trish whistles through her teeth. “I’m sorry, Lil. That must make it harder. To forget.”

Forget
.
 

I know I’m going to have to forget. Or at least try damn hard to. Because otherwise this’ll eat me up from the inside. But the trouble is: “I don’t want to forget,” I say, my voice cool and hard. “I want to remember everything. Forever. No matter how much it hurts.”

“Torturing yourself, girl.”

“No. Learning from my mistakes. Trying to find out who I really am. What’s the point of having your heart broke if you don’t learn from it?”

My hand slips across my belly.

“What makes you think that, Lil?” Trish asks.

Damn. I’d forgotten how observant she is.
 

“What always does?” I answer.

“Could be the stress.”

“Stress,” I say, managing a sarcastic shrug. “What stress?”

Trish laughs, and the sound makes me yearn for a time—less than two weeks ago, unless I’ve been unconscious for days—when my biggest worry was not pissing off Detective Sandra Bernard and passing my homicide exams.
 

Fuck.
 

Life changes in a hurry when you fall in love with a wolfman and discover you have an ancient apex predator living inside you.

Someone knocks on a door. Loud. Insistent.

“What?” Trish yells. Then to me: “It all right if they come in?”

I can’t quite remember who ‘they’ is, but I nod and Trish yells for whoever it is to come inside.
 

A heavy door opens and closes. A few people shuffle into the room.
 

No one says a word.

I push thoughts of Aaron ‘One-Eight-Seven’ Arud to the back of my mind.

Lesson fucking learned, thank you very much.
 

I got other shit to focus on.
 

“Star?” I ask, remembering her beautiful red-gold hair and the eagle she truly was. And her father, August Lerrick, feeding on his daughter’s beating black heart.

“Gone,” Trish says.

Sadness sweeps over me. I didn’t know Star well. Didn’t even really like her. But this senseless death: “When will it stop?” I whisper out loud, without meaning to.

“When the First Fallen is vanquished,” a male voice answers. Haughty. Arrogant. But now hollow and exhausted and subdued by grief.
 

Connor Lerrick. Star’s brother.

My on-again off-again.
 

“I’m sorry, Connor,” I say, remembering a terrible image of Star’s black heart cupped in her father’s crystal claws. “She wasn’t…the Bloodless Land? I couldn’t save her.”

“Can you feel her, Lil?” Connor asks from somewhere in the darkness. “Your…creature?”

I turn my attention inward.
 

She’s there. Restless. Hungry.
 

But all I tell him is yes, I feel her.

Connor sighs with an odd mix of relief and fear.

Then I remember the others. My Risen packmates. My brother and sister. “Anik? Shiori?”

“We’re here,” Anik’s soft voice answers.

“I’m glad,” I say. And it’s the truth.
 

“I’m here too!”
 

A young girl’s voice.
 

“Pimniq?” I say, a smile spreading across my face. I try to sit up, but a sharp pain in my belly makes me wince and settle back down. Whatever I’m lying on is cold and hard. “Would you mind holding my hand, Pimniq?”

A child’s hand slips into mine, and in my mind’s eye I see ocean tides swelling over stone seawalls, swamping cities and leaving piles of dead fish and kelp and seaweed in their wake. I see desperate, wide-eyed people crowding the interstates, fleeing the swelling oceans, only to be caught by whirling firestorms sweeping down from the mountains with unnatural speed and intensity.
 

I let Pimniq’s hand go and say, “Where are we?”

“In the basement of Seattle General Hospital,” Trish says quietly.
 

“The basement? Why?”

“We took you here when…after you brought us back…and—”

“Did you burn him?” I interrupt, my voice hardening. “Did you make sure?”

“He fell into the ocean, Lil,” Trish says. “Disappeared.”
 

My throat tightens. “Not Aaron. August. Your fucking father, Connor? Did you burn him?”

“Yes,” Connor says. “My father is dead.”

I nod, then reach out, grip Trish’s hand and say, “Tell me.”

“You were bleeding, Lil. From—”

“My womb.”

“Yes,” Trish whispers.

I remember. And fuck sakes I wish I didn’t.
 

The Dog God. Opiyelguabiran. My creature’s betrothed.
 

In exchange for bringing my packmates back from the Bloodless Land he stole my unborn child.
Aaron’s
unborn child.
 

Grief and regret and self-loathing rip through me. Tears slip down my cheeks as I fight the urge to shriek, and when I’ve held it all in, when I’m sure I’m not going to explode in a violent, hysterical rage I say, “I have a child born before this madness. A nine year old boy. His name is Lachlan. He was abducted by the Guardians of the Gate—by your
father
, Connor—on the same night I was. I intend to find him.”

There’s a long silence, then Connor says, “Lily, we need to find your fourth packmate. Your brother. I know what city he’s in. Star and I were—”

“You know an awful lot, for a guy who didn’t even know his father was a fucking butcher,” Trish snarls.

Connor ignores her and says, “His name is Rodas, Lily. He’s in Mexico City. I swear it. I’ve seen him. He was a…cage fighter. He’s employed by the Collazo Cartel now, but that won’t last long. He’s powerful, Lil. And dangerous. We have to travel there…find him…then…”

“Then what?” I say, half expecting him to have an answer.

“I don’t know,” Connor says, the defeat clear in his voice. “I don’t know what happens then. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe the Stricken have already grown too strong. But we have to do something. Can you walk? We can’t stay here much longer. Soon either the Stricken or hordes of panicked Skins are going to burst through these doors. We need to leave. Now.”

“Leave?” I ask. “You mean…travel to Mexico City?”

“Yes,” Connor says.
 

“I’m not leaving Seattle without my one living son,” I say in a tone to close the matter.

“Lil, we—”

“Enough!” I shriek, finally losing my cool. “You want to find Rodas? Then fucking find him. Bring him to me. If he’s so important. I don’t even trust you, Connor. You were wrong about your father being the First Fallen. Wrong! We almost…he…oh my god! You have no idea. And where are we now? In a fucking basement while the world dies. Do you know where Vuk is? Do you know
who
he is? Huh? Answer me! Do you know who the First Fallen is? Do you know
anything
of any use at all?”

“Only that we need Rodas to defeat the Fallen.”

“Then fuck you. I’m finished listening to you. My pack will find my son. Then at least I can go to my grave…” the tears begin again, and this time there’s no stopping them, they slam into me with hurricane force, and then I’m sobbing, chest shuddering and voice cracking, because my sons are gone, one abducted and one stolen from my womb, and I murdered my bloodmate and now there’s no one to turn to, no one who knows—

Which is when I remember my father again.

Wil Thompson the lunatic.
 

His mad, paranoid ravings and delusions after my mother was murdered. Monsters hiding beneath human skins. Preying on the living.
 

The crazy asshole was right all along.
 

I’m one of the monsters.

His little girl. The very thing he feared most.
 

Wil used to visit Lachlan before his delusions won him a pink padded cell in the Monroe Correctional Complex. He’d meet my son outside school. Said he just wanted to say hi.
 

He did it against my wishes. Against the social worker’s and Lachlan’s adoptive parent’s wishes. That was my dad. Didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought, especially people in positions of authority.
 

I visited him a short while after deciding I wanted to be a cop. It was part of a confront-your-past phase I was going through. Just trying to own up to some shit, right? Wipe the slate clean? Start fresh?

What a joke. There are no clean slates. No fresh starts.
 

Only a past that won’t come clean no matter how hard you scrub it.

 
Dad could’ve taken the moral high road. Let the past be the past. I’d
almost
forgiven him for losing it after my mother was murdered and leaving me to fend for myself. In fact I’d visited hoping to offer an olive branch. Say sorry about not coming to visit sooner. Maybe…I dunno. Start a fucking conversation with him? Rebuild a relationship? Instead Wil stared at me stone-faced for a full five minutes, then said, “Guess I deserve this. Shoulda seen it comin’. My baby girl growing up to be a cop. Makes me wanna laugh ’til I puke.”

I told him I didn’t see anything funny about it.

Wil looked me straight in the eye and said, “Nah. On second thought neither do I.”

But something he said after that. About a cloud of carrion birds. I’d dismissed it back then, of course. Now it doesn’t sit right. My father knew things he shouldn’t have. About the animals. Maybe even about the Fallen—
 

It’s not a great place to begin searching for Lachlan, but it’s better than no place at all. “Trish? Are you coming with me?”

“Shit, yes.”

“Then please help me up,” I say, lifting both arms.

“Lil you sure? You need rest—”

“Yes I’m sure,” I snap, too harshly, then try and apologize by saying, “Please, Trish. Help me up. Connor’s right. We need to get moving. I scent them around us. The Stricken. I’m sure they’re tracking us. How long have I been out?”

“Seventy hours,” Connor says, and even though I’m blind I can almost see him studying his sparkling gold Rolex.
 

“Nearly three days? Shit,” I say, draping an arm across Trish’s shoulders. “No wonder I’m so hungry.”

“Where are we going, Lily?” Anik asks.

“To listen to a man who’s been ignored for a long time.”

Trish settles against me. I hear a sharp click as she checks her Glock to make sure it’s loaded, then steel sliding into a leather holster. A few weeks ago Trish’s prowess with a gun would’ve given me comfort. But I’ve made bullets evaporate in super-heated air, and the only thing in the world that would give me comfort right now is the man I once loved.