“Liam! Hey! You had to work late?”
She looked absolutely adorable, in purple flannel pajama pants dotted with fluffy white sheep, and a loose white tank with a purple bow. On her feet were matching sheep slippers. Opening the door wider, she reached for the plate of cookies, her eyes gleaming.
“Oh! For me?”
“Yes, and the cider, too,” he said holding it out to her.
She took it, and crossed the room to put it on her desk, inviting him to follow with a tilt of her chin. He closed the door behind him, and sat in one of the armchairs, watching her take a bite of a cookie. A few crumbs fell into her cleavage, and amusement had his lips curving, despite the solemn news he carried.
“I got a call from Maroulla just now,” he began.
She came to sit cross-legged on the end of her bed, facing him, a cookie in one hand, the mug of cider in the other.
“Oh? What about?”
Should he blurt it out, or lead up to it in degrees? This was bound to upset her.
“I have to go to Ohio tomorrow. To the Shifter Sanctuary.”
It took her a minute to realize what he meant.
“Oh.”
She set down the plate of cookies, and clutched the mug with both hands. Her eyes looked haunted as she met his gaze.
“Who is it?”
“It’s your sister… Beth,” he clarified. “She’s not doing well. She’s stopped eating, stopped responding. Like you, when I first came to see you in the zoo. She’s in the same enclosure with the rest of your family, Maroulla said they were attempting to be humane, keeping the family together. But the others are apparently hostile to Beth.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Naomi said, bitterly. “They got what they wanted, after all.”
“Could you tell me more about what happened? I know the basics, that, like you, she hadn’t wanted to be Rogue, but then she had killed her boyfriend. But could you tell me more about that? The more I know, the better chance I have to help her.”
Naomi nodded, taking a sip of her cider before setting the mug aside, linking her fingers tightly before her.
“It started after our grandparents died. We’d all lived together in their home, a big two-story house. Grandma and Granda were devoted to each other. He died of a blood clot... It was very sudden, in the night, and no one knew until we all woke up, and he was gone. Grandma was devastated, and she just sort of… faded away. A year later, she was gone too. She simply didn’t wake up one morning.”
Liam nodded. “That can happen, with shifters who are happily mated over a long period of time. Often, when one dies, the other follows shortly after.”
“Really?” She stared at him in surprise. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. It happened with my grandparents, as well. So, what happened then?”
Naomi’s head dipped, and it seemed to him like she turned a little pale. “Beatrice moved in with us after the funeral. That’s when she told us… she and Mother, together, they told us… what they were. What they did.”
“What, they sat you down for a family meeting and said, ‘Hey all, we’re Rogues, we go out and kill?’”
Despite the doubt clear in his voice, Naomi nodded.
“Yes, that’s exactly what they did. And they made it clear they expected us to do the same. Of course, they didn’t use the word Rogue, we learned about that later, over time. But they went on and on about the hunt, the kill. Stalking. About luring men to have their ‘play’ with.”
He was aghast. “How old were you?”
“We were eleven, Beth and me. Our next oldest sister was seventeen, then, and the oldest was twenty.” She paused, shivering. “They didn’t hesitate to jump right on board with the whole thing. But Beth and I, we were horrified. We were too young, too inexperienced, to hide our reaction. Our sisters didn’t pay us too much attention, they were too busy going out finding men to stalk. But Mom and Beatrice… they made our life hell from then on.”
Naomi’s face fell, looking immeasurably sad. “Beth and I were close before our grandparents died, but after that, we clung to each other. It was the two of us together against the rest of them. Neither of us ever wanted to hurt anyone, much less lure, stalk, hunt, kill. We shared a bedroom, and we used to lie awake at night and talk about it in whispers so none of them could hear. It was our own personal nightmare, you know? And it went on for years, until we were in college.”
She looked down at the mug in her hands, the cider cooling rapidly by now, but she took a sip anyway, then set the mug on the side table.
