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“He gave his permission.”
“We can’t trust him! We turn around once, and he’ll stab us in the back!”
Clay nodded. “I agree, Taylee. This isn’t smart. We have kids. I’m never going to sleep again, knowing this prick is roaming free around them.”
“He won’t be free,” Taylee said. She tilted her face again, away from Kier. “Clarence suggested that you would both be great guards, of sorts. You could help him acclimate to our clan. Not by beating him into the ground every day, but by truly helping. We’d all be accountable, but he did say it would be a good job for you both. Clay, you’ve been looking for something since we left Texas. At least this would fill up some of those empty hours. Neither of you are at peace inside. I think Sebastian knows what that’s like. He might be a wolf, but that just makes him a shifter, and if we’re going to survive in the world, then we need to stick it out together. Enemies are only enemies until they’re friends. It’s just a term. It’s just the way we see things. Maybe we can see it differently.”
“Until he gets out and kills one of us. Or kidnaps one of our children. Or burns something down. Takes off with more evidence.”
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t hesitate to do it.”
Taylee sighed. “I know you’ll change your mind.” She touched her chest. “Finding peace, that stillness, that goodness and freedom in our souls—once a person has that, they don’t want to lose it. You can just lay it down, Sebastian. All the bad. All the struggles. All the fighting and the pain. With us, you can lay it down and move past it. You might be angry now. You might have to be under a sort of house arrest until you can be trusted, and I’m sorry about that, but eventually, you’ll find that forgiveness and that freedom.”
“Oh my fucking god!” Jem exploded. Instead of going for Sebastian, though, who was still fucking smirking, he turned and launched himself through the house in the other direction. His thudding steps could be heard plodding through debris.
Clay just stood there with a shocked expression. He was all resistance, giving off some seriously pissed off vibes, but he said nothing. His alpha had decreed that he had a new job and he wasn’t going to fight it, as much as he didn’t like it.
As for this man, this twisted, dark, horrible being, Kier would just have to trust that his mate and her alpha knew what they were doing. He didn’t know Clarence well enough to trust him, but Taylee? He trusted her with all of his being.
He was standing there, swelling up with pride and love for his mate. One second, Sebastian was tied to the chair, and the next? Kier had never seen anything like it. A wolf didn’t shift like a bear. There was no great big stretching of skin and knitting of bone. It was like the molecules that held Sebastian together simply vanished and reformed as something with long silver-grey hair, flashing teeth, and cold ice-blue eyes.
The wolf was huge, and it moved even faster than Kier could. His heart stopped, but the rest of his body was in motion. He had to get in front of Taylee. He had to protect her from that open maw springing at her. There was a shout as Clay leapt forward as well, but they both stopped at Taylee’s hard command.
“No!”
The room was frozen. The air was frozen. It burned in Kier’s lungs like ice shards.
He blinked because he couldn’t be seeing right.
Clay had the same reaction.
Sebastian as a wolf hadn’t gone for Taylee’s throat. He was sitting at her feet and her outstretched hand was between his teeth, but he hadn’t bitten down.
In a motion so slow it was as if she wasn’t moving at all, she removed her hand and set it on top of the wolf’s head. The thing looked like Sebastian did. Half-starved, mangy, shaggy, and unhealthy in every way.
“You’ll go with my brothers now,” Tay whispered, stroking the unkept fur. “This isn’t the end of everything, it’s the start of it.”
Clay was already there with the rope he’d untied from the chair and Jem came crashing into the room. “Come here, you bast—”
“Gently,” Taylee urged. “Jem. Gently. He didn’t hurt me. You know how sometimes we shift in order to protect ourselves? The wolf had to come out, but even it hasn’t hurt me.”
“He’ll probably tear our throats out, or try on the way out, if we don’t restrain it.”
“Just a tie around the neck, please. He’ll go with you.”
“He’ll go trussed up or not at all,” Clay responded with a growl.
The wolf gave one back.
“Around the neck,” Taylee urged. She knelt down in front of the wolf, who looked back at her with the most soulless set of eyes Kier had ever seen.
“Around the neck, then. And Clay sits back there with him while I drive. If he shifts again, he can subdue him in human form—make sure he doesn’t try anything funny.”
“He won’t. All anyone wants is a place to belong. A family. To know love.”
Jem slipped the noose over the wolf’s neck and pulled tight, but not tight enough to hurt or even begin to restrict airflow. The beast sat there stoically. He didn’t even look real anymore, he was so still. It freaked Kier out. “Some people aren’t capable of that.”
“That’s not for us to decide. It’s for Clarence, the rest of the clan, and time.”
