I jerked my gaze away from our twined hands. “What?”
“Please pledge yourself.”
I bit on my bottom lip. I would be lying if I said last night, running with a group of men who were like me in every way, except anatomically, hadn’t been magical. Because it had been. But how much of that magic was due to Liam?
If he’d been the one to become Alpha…
“Does the offer come with an expiration date?” I asked.
“Of course not, but I want you with me, Ness.” He slowed to a stop at a traffic light. The last one before the winding path that led to the headquarters. “Wasn’t last night incredible?”
“It was.”
“Then why are you hesitating?”
Keeping my gaze fixed on the windshield, I said softly, “It was incredible because of you.”
He tugged on my hand, dragging me nearer. “Look at me.”
I looked. At his swept-back hair, his dark eyes, his full upper lip, his slightly thinner lower one.
“I once told you about my oldest memory, but I never told you about the memory that’s marked me the most. The one that’s been playing on a loop in my mind for the past six years. You, tiny, skinny, fragile you, coming into the headquarters and asking us to train you, to accept you.”
The memory crimped the edges of my heart. “You all said no. Well, all of you except August, Nelson, and Everest.” I tried to snatch my hand from Liam’s, but he tightened his grip. “I let you go once-welet you go-and it was a mistake. I would love to blame it all on my father, but that would be unfair. Truth is, we were cowards. Almost all of us. We were a brotherhood. We thought having a girl in our midst would change us, would change everything. And it does change everything, Ness, but the Boulders are ready for change.
“A new Alpha will rise tonight. A new era will begin. Be part of it. You are as strong, as cunning, as resilient as the rest of us. And a hell of a lot better to look at.”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what? Telling you the truth?”
“You already won me over, Liam.”
A smile tipped his lips. “And you won over the pack.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m serious. Matt still talks about how you saved his paw. And then Frank told us about your life in L. A., how you cared for your mother until the end, and for Evelyn. And then I caught some of the elders discussing how smart and strong you’d turned out, just like your father, but with your mother’s fiery temper.”
“Seriously, stop it.” I knuckled a tear from the corner of my eye but smiled at the mention of my mother’s temper. My mother had always blazed brighter and hotter than most women.
“Ness, you’ve earned their respect. You’ve earned everyone’s respect.”
“Except Lucas’s.”
Not that Lucas’s respect mattered. Lucas didn’t matter to me.
“Babe, last night, you let me stay out with them. When I insisted on going back with you, you insisted I stay with them. Lucas’s greatest fear is that a girl comes between us.”
“That’s not seriously his greatest fear…?”
“It sort of is. Lucas lost his parents young.”
Lucas had been involved in a car crash a couple years after I was born. A shard of glass had sliced through his eyebrow, leaving behind the nasty scar he still bore. He’d survived because he’d forgotten to wear his seatbelt. His father and mother hadn’t been as lucky, and when the car tumbled down into Coot Lake, they hadn’t managed to unstrap themselves.
“And then, when his granddad died,” Liam continued, “we were all he had left. He doesn’t hate you.”
I blinked wet eyelashes at Liam. The air shimmered around his face. I blinked again, and the shimmer was gone, but his face remained.
Solid.
Real.
I reached out and touched his jaw. “I’ll think about it.”
He stopped the car on the side of the road. “You’re not still worried about not being a Boulder, are you?”
I bit my lip.
Giving his head a little shake, he leaned over his gearshift and closed the distance between our mouths, forcing my lips to open. The kiss dimmed my gnawing anxiety.
When we pulled apart, the sky was a rosy lavender, and the pines a gilded green.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking about, too concentrated on all I was thinking about. How I longed to tell my mother about Liam, about the trials, about Frank’s invitation to join the pack. I closed my eyes and saw her eyes glitter with a smile. The memory flickered behind my lids like birthday candles. I thought about my father next. About how he’d taught me about constellations and crafted stories of strong, alien, warrior princesses sprinting through clusters of stars. His princesses were always blonde, always had dimples, and always had wide blue eyes, like me. Each night, thanks to his boundless imagination, I would live a new life, on a new planet, face new challenges, new enemies. I wouldn’t always be victorious, though. A loss will teach you more than a win, Dad would tell me on the nights my alter-ego alien-self returned home to her parents, defeated
I no longer had parents to run home to when I lost.
But I did have Evelyn.
And now I also had Liam.
He stroked the top of my hand. “We’re here.”
We rolled through the open rusty fence and parked next to a long row of cars. I smoothed my hair into a knot at the nape of my neck, then tucked my mother’s ring into my sky-blue camisole so the gold band rested against my heart.
Liam walked around the front bumper of his car and then collected my hand in his. We strode slowly toward the stone building that glowed with yellow light. Bodies milled inside. Excitement rippled through the glass windows that had been propped open to let the warm July evening in.
When we entered the spacious room, gazes fell on our twined fingers. Liam let go of my hand, snaked his hand around my waist, and tucked me closer.
Matt stepped in front of us, holding out a wicker basket full of razor blades. “Less pain than claws.” Liam took one, but I didn’t-even though Matt waited a long time for me to change my mind.
“The Alpha will slash the skin over his heart, and the rest of us will slash our wrists then touch them to his chest,” Frank was telling the younger ones. I felt him glance my way, and then I felt him glance beyond me, and something shifted in his expression.
A new scent layered itself over the ones rising from the broad bodies around us. One I hadn’t smelled in weeks-sawdust and Old Spice. It suddenly nulled all the other smells. My heartbeat fluttered as I glanced over my shoulder, daring to hope August was back.
There he stood, in a dusky corner, body steeped in shadows. When our gazes met, a smile broke over my face. He didn’t smile; he froze.
I swiveled back. “You didn’t tell me August was coming home.”