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Curran turned to the small group of shapeshifters that had trailed us. “Leave.”
I blinked and the stairs were deserted. Our escort had vanished at a record speed.
Curran picked me up.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Nobody is going to see you. Your reputation is intact. It’s just you and me.”
I looked at Derek.
“He didn’t see anything,” Curran said, carrying me through the door.
“I saw nothing,” Derek confirmed and bolted the door shut.
I put my arms around Curran’s neck and let him carry me past his gym and bimbo room up another staircase all the way to his rooms.
“Where to?” he asked.
On the left a living room waited with a large gray sectional sofa. Up ahead was the door to the bedroom. On the right was another door.
“Bathroom,” I said.
He carried me through the door on the right. An enormous bathtub took up most of the room.
Hot water. Heaven.
“Do you mind if I take a bath?”
He lowered me to the floor gently. “Can I get you anything?”
I shook my head and began to strip. He waited to make sure I made it into the tub and left.
I sat and ran the water so hot it was near boiling. Even with the water up to my collarbone, the tub still had a foot and a half of space left.
Sometime later Curran walked in, carrying a glass of water with ice. He sat by the bathtub and put his hand on my forehead.
“You have a fever.”
I shook my head. “Brenna bit me.”
Venom’s poison must’ve been very potent. The Lyc-V virus would’ve multiplied in record numbers trying to counteract it, making the shapeshifters go from zero to complete loup. Loups were contagious as hell and I’d got a walloping dose of Lyc-V from Brenna’s saliva.
“It’s nothing major. My body will burn through it in an hour or two.”
Curran nodded.
I probably shouldn’t have said that.
I took the water and sipped. “Why is everything so large?”
“The tub is sized for my beast form.”
I smiled. “Do you take baths as a lion?”
“Sometimes. The wolves found one of their own in the basement of the Wolf House. He attacked them on sight. Did Jennifer tell you that?”
He was trying to help me with my guilt. “She was a bit busy. I’d killed her little sister and she was trying to hold it together.”
I did what I had to do. I had no choice. We both knew it. Even Jennifer knew it. But knowing that didn’t make any of us feel better.
“Do you need to be somewhere?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I scooted over to the side. He stripped his clothes off and slid into the tub with me. I leaned against his chest, with his arm around me, and we sank into the hot water.
“Where is the old lady?” I asked.
“In a loup cage downstairs. Any idea who she is?”
“Nope.”
I closed my eyes. I’d dumped some foaming stuff into the tub from one of the bottles I found sitting on the edge and now it smelled clean and soapy, like Irish Spring. For all I knew, he used this stuff for his mane and I had just exhausted a month’s worth of his shampoo.
Of course, with my luck, we were sitting in a tub full of his flea dip.
Curran’s skin was warm under my cheek. I could sit like that forever.
“It won’t last.” The words escaped before I had a chance to think about it.
“What won’t last?”
“You and me. Us. Even if we win this time, something else will come along and ruin our lives. Eventually I’ll lose a fight or you will, and it will be over.”
He pulled me closer to him. “Something else will come along. When it does, we’ll kill it. Later, something else will show up. We’ll kill it, too, and then we’ll go home.”
I grimaced. “And climb a million stairs trying not to collapse.”
“I don’t do collapsing.”
“Of course not. What was I thinking . . .”
His voice was rock-steady. “We don’t live in a safe world. I can’t give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you’d set it on fire.”
True. “Only if I ran out of kindling.”
“Or needed some hardened wooden shards to drive into someone’s eye.”
I stretched my legs. “You don’t actually burn wood to harden it. You turn it over the fire, so it soaks up the heat but doesn’t char.”
He growled low in his throat. “Thank you for that little nugget of wisdom.”
“You’re welcome.”
His arm stroked my back. “There are only two things that can screw this up for us: you and me.”
“Then we’re doomed for sure.”
I had to tell him about my aunt. I just couldn’t get myself together to do it.
“My father was the best fighter I ever knew,” Curran said. “Even now, I’m not sure I could take him.”
“We have that in common,” I murmured.
“We lived on the edge of the Smoky National Park, in the mountains. I don’t know if it was North Carolina or Tennessee. Just mountains and the four of us. My dad, my mom, my younger sister, and me. My parents didn’t want to deal with any shapeshifter politics. We’re older than most shapeshifters. Different.”
Worry crawled up my spine. The First were there first, Erra said in my head. “What happened?”
“Loups,” Curran said. His voice was devoid of any emotion. “Eight of them. They caught my sister first. She was seven and she liked to climb trees. One day she was late for lunch. I went looking for her. Found her up in a maple about a mile from the house. I thought she fell asleep and called out. She didn’t answer, so I climbed up, right into their trap. They strung a silver wire and it caught my throat, like a noose.”
He leaned back, exposing his neck, and I saw a pale hair-thin line across his throat.
“As I flailed, trying to keep from suffocating, they wrapped me in silver mesh. I remember hanging off the tree, burning up from silver poisoning my skin, and I could finally see Alice. They had eaten her stomach and her eyes and her face, all the soft parts, and leaned what was left on the branch to snare us.”
Oh, God. “How old were you?”
“Twelve. My dad was next. He’d tracked me down by scent and he came into the clearing roaring.”
The loups were stronger and faster than People of the Code. Eight against one, even Curran would have no chance.
