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“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said, pressing his chest forward as he kept his arms braced arms in the doorway.He had gotten larger in just the last minute, I was sure of it.“What if I told you I made the greatest scientific discovery of the generation?The century.The millennia,” he crowed.
“You figured out how to dull Melinda’s wolf?”
“Trykill,“ he said.“It’s got to be done slow, an accumulation of toxin so that the system doesn’t have a response.Melinda’s symptoms—her exhaustion, her weakness—that’s her wolf dying.”
Behind me, Melinda sucked in a trembling breath.I said, “You were adding it to her tea.But…why?You can’t challenge her.”
He dropped his arms and stepped into the light.“Do I look like the old rules apply to me?”
He looked like Melinda had in the middle of her shift, as if wolf bones were pressing against his human skin.Though his hips had pressed backward, he was still up on two feet.He spread his arms, grinning.Then he squealed in pain as his body suddenly expanded.His shirt ripped as his chest got bigger and his shoulders got broader.The sharp nails on his fingers sharpened and lengthened to claws.His jaw jutted out as more teeth crowded his mouth.When he howled, the sound bounced off the walls of the small room.
My mother screamed.
When he spoke again, his voice was garbled by garbled and strained.“Scared, Edie?”He licked his lips, as if he could taste my fear.
I was terrified.And terrified twice over knowing that my mother was here, with this monster.I needed to distract him, buy some time.“I’m impressed, actually,” I said, putting on my best clinical voice.“I thought you couldn’t shift.”
“I couldn’t,” he said, then gestured toward Melinda with a snarl.“No thanks to her.She made me stop trying after the fifth stone.I bet if her precious sons hadn’t been able to shift, she would have tried with them a thousand times, but not for me.She said I had to accept that I was different,” he sneered.“That I could still have a purpose and a place in the community.As if that would ever be enough.“
Melinda started to speak, but I put my hand on her leg to stop her.“No, I can see how it would be difficult,” I said.“So is the formula for your change the same as Melinda’s?”
“No,” he chuckled.“As if I’d give her this kind of power.I could have,” he said, moving so he could keep his eyes on Melinda.“But you don’t deserve it.When you challenged Victoria, you set shifterkind back decades.So I gave you something else.I poisoned the wolf inside you, and you didn’t even notice.You are a pathetic, weak Alpha.”
“I built this clan up from nothing,” Melinda said.“I gave us comfort and stability.”
“You gave us servitude to the humans who should be our slaves!”
I had to calm him down.I had no plan except to keep him talking.“So how are you doing this, Ethan?You don’t have a stone.”
He glared at Melinda.“The stones are nothing.The stones are a crutch.The stones are a way to control the power that should belong to each of us.”
“But you don’t need a crutch.”Furtively, I looked around for a weapon.There was nothing in the room that looked small enough for me to wield and strong enough to do some damage to him.My eyes kept skipping over his distorted features and his bulging muscles, as if my brain was refusing to accept what it was seeing.
“No.I’m something entirely new.Well, not entirely,” he said.“Grandpa did plenty of experiments, back in the old days.But I’m the one who figured out how to give this gift to the world.”
My blood ran cold.“Are there…more of you?”
He licked his lips with an obscenely long pink tongue.His bulging eyes were wheeling.He shuddered, as if there was too much energy inside him to stay still.“There’re plenty of people out there who’ve been shortchanged by their Alpha.Not just people like me, who never got activated.You know who is really scary?The guys whose stones were broken.Those guys are pissed.All they ever talk about is getting revenge on the bitches who took their rightful power.They’re really looking forward to killing your sons, Melinda,” he said gleefully.“They’re hunting them right now.”
“I will kill you,” Melinda said coldly.“I will taste your blood.”
“Yeah, right,” Ethan laughed.“Do you have any idea how many times I could have killed you?I was planning on doing it this past weekend, when everyone else was on the backcountry trip, but then Dominic stayed and I couldn’t get you alone.But now, I’m going to kill you all, and then I’m going to join mynewclan.Who wants to die first?”
