The Tempering (The Mackenzie Duncan Series) (25 page)

“Someone showed up here from my past. From Massachusetts.”

“Okay, and you don’t want them to know your here. I get that. Why not just tell Margret to have them leave? Why the cloak and dagger?”

“Because he was a park ranger and caught me leaving the woods after my first cycle. I don’t know. Do park rangers investigate shit? Or are they more or less like mall cops?”

“I don’t know. What happened that night that has you freaking out?” Liam’s voice trembled and she knew that he was afraid of what she was going to tell him. He knew that she had no control, and that it wasn’t her, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t see her differently. Hell, she saw herself differently.

“Not that night. That night it was just animals. But if he was able to track me here, maybe he tracked me to the place where Geoff and Margret found me. And helped me clean up the next morning.” Mackenzie could no longer look Liam in the eye. She didn’t want to see him look at her as a monster again. She had quite enough of the month before and if he looked at her that way, she wouldn’t be able to keep her own feelings of self-loathing at bay.

“Clean up?”

“Please, don’t make me say it.”

“Okay. Do you want me to see what I can find out?”

Mackenzie looked back up slowly, hoping she had really heard him correctly. He hadn’t moved away or worse, left her sitting there by herself, but offered to help her. “Are you sure?”

“Until the day comes that I have more control than you in wolf form, I can’t judge you. And as far as I’m concerned, until you have full control of the wolf, you weren’t even there.”

Closing the distance between them on the bed, Mackenzie wrapped her arms around him and relished in the warmth he provided both physically and in her heart. He kissed her forehead before standing up to dig into his pocket.

“Okay, call my cell phone and then you can hear whatever I do. I will go walk around a bit until I can find them. Sound like a plan?”

“You are a genius! Yes, that’s a plan.” Hoping off the bed to grab the little cell phone she had picked up just for emergencies and dialed Liam’s number. The phone rang in his hand and he pushed the button to answer it.

“Okay, let’s see what we can find out.” He leaned in and pecked her cheek before slipping out the door. With her phone to her ear, Mackenzie sat on the bed and waited.

~*~

Mackenzie could hear Liam’s footsteps and the background chatter that was almost always present during the day in the house. Closing her eyes to try and picture everything she was hearing, she lay back on her bed as her heart pound furiously in anticipation.

The loud creak that sounded through the phone told her he was on the stairs and the door opening followed by a whistle of wind into the receiver let her know that he had just passed the front door.

“Mack, I think they are in her office. I didn’t see them in the living room or the den.” He was whispering so she wasn’t sure if the phone was up to his ear or just in his hand. Either way, she heard him and was instantly disappointed because if they were in the office, there would be no way to hear a thing.

When she started to hear a faint wisp of Margret’s voice, she knew that luck was on her side that day. “The door isn’t closed all the way. I’ll head to the bookshelves close to the office but I don’t know how much we can hear from there.”

Mackenzie could see exactly where he was in her mind. He was right, unless they were both talking at normal levels and were close to the door, the chance of hearing much of anything was next to nothing.

“That doesn’t explain why you are here, Donald!” Margret yelled at him. Apparently arguing was good at making others forget little details like closing doors.

“Your Majesty, I...” Donald, the park ranger, was apparently not so bold as to yell back and she couldn’t really hear him. Mackenzie couldn’t help but wonder what the whole majesty thing was about. “wanted to be with...”

“I understand that, but I told you, you are no longer in this house. You can’t be! What if you had been seen?” Mackenzie sat up at that point. With her legs crossed, she held the phone to one ear and blocked the other with her fingers to keep out any other sounds. She needed to focus on what was being said. What on earth was going on?

“I wasn’t. She wasn’t anywhere around. I did as you asked. You said...” Damn it. Mackenzie stood and began pacing the room. If only the park ranger would stop doing the same. At least, that’s how she pictured it, because he would be clear one moment then she couldn’t hear him the next.

“A position? Never once did I say that. I hate to remind you again, but you are bitten. My mother would have had my head if I allowed a bitten on council. You know that.”

“Your mother would have been proud of...” What did Margret’s mother have to do with anything? The more she listened, the more she knew she herself wasn’t in any kind of trouble. It sounded more as if the ranger was. Why hadn’t she known he was one of the pack? Why hadn’t Margret told her? But she did mention she had members all over and had been tipped off about a new pup in the area. God, she hated that term. She wasn’t a goddamn puppy. She might have been a bitch at times, but she was no dog.

The creak of a door sounded and she knew they were coming out. All of a sudden, the phone filled with clunking sounds and coughing.

“Liam, what on earth are you doing out here? Did you need to speak to me?” Margret asked.

“Nope, just looking for a book.”

“All right. I need to ask you a favor if you don’t mind. Go on into my office, I will be right there. I just need to walk my guest out.” Footsteps followed as did the sound of a chair scraping across a floor.

“Mack, I’m in the office. How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough to confuse the hell out of me. Please tell me you heard the whole thing?”

“Yeah, but it won’t make it anything less confusing. I’ll fill you in after talking to Margret. Oh shit, she’s coming.” The line went dead after that and with more questions than answers, Mackenzie moved to the large window and watched Donald the park ranger climb into his car and drive off.

After an hour of waiting to hear from Liam, her phone buzzed in her palm. When she looked at the screen, she saw an incoming text message.

She sent me to the airport to get Geoff. Snowing its ass off and hope to fuck I don’t get stuck. See u soon.

Chapter 27

Mackenzie took the entire day of the full moon to center herself. She needed to stay focused on everything she loved about being human, all day long, instead of just before turning. She thought that just maybe it would help her.

The pack was just as joyous as always heading into the cycle and still she couldn’t understand it. Liam didn’t speak to anyone and Geoff stayed as close to her as she allowed. She could see he was back to trying to keep things platonic with a hint of something more, but she was actually okay with that. That was exactly what she had asked for, and while she and Liam grew closer, she still couldn’t get Geoff out of her head.

Sitting in front of the bon fire, the flames danced about, reminding her of the burning pain that emanated from her wound the night she was bitten. The flame before her warmed her hands in a comforting way, much tamer than the fire that burned her from the inside out just four months prior.

“Geoff?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did it burn? When I was bitten, the bite burned. I felt like I was dying in a big ball of fire.”

“I’ve only heard about the burn, but as far as I know, it’s the Werewolf DNA penetrating your blood stream. It’s the first step in the transformation. What made you think of that now?”

“No reason.”

Mackenzie went back to watching the fire reliving her most powerful memories in her mind. Joy and sadness, anger and love. Love for her mother and grandmother, and love for Geoff and Liam. How was it possible to feel so strongly for two people? Could she be in love with two people at once? She never believed that was possible before, why now? She could have love for them both, care about them tremendously, but she still honestly believed that when she was in love with one, there would be no question as to whom she should be with.

“Two minutes, everyone! Get ready to allow the moon to guide you!” Margret yelled out joyously. She ran over to stand next to Mackenzie and smiled at her. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Mackenzie nodded as she removed her clothing and began running through her memories again and again. Watching the clouds shift away from the moon, it reached its peak and bathed the pack in its light. Within moments, the humans no longer existed, in their place large wolves running off into the night.

~*~

The trees blurred as she ran. The howls and heartbeats of so many other wolves resonated in her ears. Bounding between bare trees and launching herself over ravines and boulders, her paws thudded against the frozen earth beneath her.

“RUN MORE!” a voice echoed into the wolf’s mind, so it did. It ran and ran until the scent of something delicious wafted on the air. Whipping its head in the direction the delectable smell came from, she sprinted toward the aroma.

A crack of a branch behind her alerted her to the presence of another. Looking back, while still pushing forward, a large gray wolf and a smaller brown one followed behind. Growling loudly, she bared her teeth at the intruders. The gray wolf slowed and nipped at the brown one with it, giving her room. That was all she needed to complete her hunt.

“DON’T!” The voice tried to convince her to stop, to leave the magnificent meal untouched. Hesitating for just a second, the wolf shook her whole body violently, her head more than the rest of her. Standing completely still for a moment more, the growling returned and the large buck never stood a chance.

With her meal complete, the wolf meandered about. Only when the water came into view did she show any signs of excitement. Bounding toward the giant boulder that acted like a dock, extending from the land and out half way into the lake, she jumped off the edge and into the water. The fish swam by, completely unaware of the danger lurking around them. One-by-one they were caught between her sharp teeth. Swimming to the surface, the wolf would gobble them down and return to the depths of the water yet again to repeat the process.

“ENOUGH!” The voice boomed into her head. She couldn’t ignore the command. Dropping the fish from her jaws, she resurfaced. Swimming back toward land, the wolf calmed. When she reached the shore, her body shook, ridding it of excess water before padding out onto the rock and falling asleep under the lightening sky.

~*~

The bright sunlight penetrated Mackenzie’s eyelids, forcing her to wake. Taking in her surroundings, she found that once again she ended up at the lake, on the rock. At least her wolf was becoming predictable. Glancing around her, she realized that she was alone. Either she had lost Margret in the night at some point, or the pack’s leader had already left her.

Climbing down from her perch, she tried to remember everything from the night before, but she was disappointed. It was a giant black hole in her mind. Trying to think of a different way to jog her memory, something her father had said to her once, long ago, popped into her mind. Strange really, that he would have given her any kind of advice worth remembering, but she was willing to try anything.

“Trace your steps, Mackenzie. If you can’t remember where you put it, start with the last time you remember having it.” She spoke the words out loud, but even the fact that her father had said those to her on a good day, where they weren’t running or fighting with one another, didn’t make her smile. Not one memory of her father made her smile.

Thinking back to the night before, she remembered speaking with Geoff about the fire and Margret announcing the impending change. The rest was fuzzy. Like watching a VHS tape that hadn’t been played in a long time and having to press the tracking buttons until pictures slowly were discernible from the static.

She could see the trees and remember feeling anxious over someone telling her to run, the anger and annoyance when they tried to tell her not to hunt that poor deer, and how she couldn’t refuse the voice telling her to stop fishing. Had that been her? Had she had any kind of control over the wolf?

And who had the wolves been that were following her? She knew Margret was supposed to be following her, but the other one. He was so familiar.

Breaking through the trees to the clearing, Mackenzie found her bag and began to dress. She didn’t need to wash off as her wolf had gone swimming the night before. Her mind began furiously trying to place the brown wolf. She had thought she knew what most of her pack brothers and sisters looked like when they turned, but the more she thought about it, the more unease she felt.

When she spotted Margret across the way with the park ranger, everything clicked into place. The confusing conversation with the park ranger who never was after her to begin with, the damn cloak and dagger Margret wanted Donald to pull, and the oh-so-familiar brown wolf. Mackenzie instinctively reached up and rubbed along her arm where it had been torn apart and changed her life forever.

Anger boiled inside of her and when she could no longer hold it in, she screamed out, attracting the attention of everyone around her. Liam had just made it to the clearing, running directly to her side. Her rage so prevalent in her mind that she could do nothing but focus on the man in front of her who had destroyed any chance she ever had at a normal life. She could hear Liam dressing quickly, but she wasn’t going to wait for him. This was her fight and she was damn well going to have it.

Her feet felt like lead as she tried to walk toward them. She could see they were arguing with one another in hushed tones and she knew she would be interrupting but who gave a fuck. She would be heard and she would not be dismissed. Margret may be the pack leader, but that did not make her all powerful.