Everyone turned to stare at him, and I mean, everyone.
“Excuse me?” Cassandra said.
Lucas had his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Shift. Back.”
“Why, Mr. Mason?” I was impressed she knew his name. Then again, she must’ve spent decades studying all the files her cousin had sent her.
Her cousin, who was standing next to her, looking like the cat who ate the canary. How I despised Aidan Michaels.
“To satisfy my curiosity,” he said.
“I bet you, she won’t do it,” Sarah whispered.
“Very well,” Cassandra said.
Keeping her gaze locked on Lucas, brown fur poured from her pores, and then her eyes flashed with an inhuman glow, and she landed on all fours, trampling our Sillin-theory the same way she trampled the broken blades of grass underneath her paws.
A whoosh of breath lurched from Lucas’s mouth. “How?” he whispered.
Sarah blinked hard at the wolf that was slowly turning back into a woman.
Once Cassandra was in skin, she craned her neck to look up at us, pulling the bandage that had slid down her thigh back up. “Have I satisfied your curiosity, Mr. Mason?”
Lucas’s lips were still parted, but no sound came out of him.
Could she have applied a cream to her body that would’ve made Julian sick?
“Was Julian allergic to anything?” I asked Sarah.
She shook her head, eyes so wide there was white around her irises.
“Fuck,” Lucas finally said, just as heavy footsteps pounded the terrace floor.
We all turned toward the disturbance.
Gripped between August and Cole stood a boy no older than I was. Was this the infamous Alex Morgan? Everest’s killer?
Alex had the blond curls of a cherub, a boyish jaw that had yet to be chiseled by life even though it was riddled with fading bruises that matched the violet shade of his eyes. He was more pretty-boy than cold-blooded killer.
“Damn, she’s way hotter in real,” he said, gaze raking over me.
August smacked his elbow into the side of Alex’s head.
“Ow. What was that for?” Alex carped, trying to raise his hand to cradle his head, but both Cole and August clamped down on his wrists, pinning them behind his lanky body.
Alex really didn’t look like he needed two mammoth shifters to keep him in check. Then again, there was something slippery about him, as though he were more eel than wolf.
“He killed Everest?” Sarah asked.
“I know, right,” Lucas grumbled.
Alex smirked at Sarah, or rather at her rack. “The region’s good to its females.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Lucas growled.
Alex grinned, seemingly getting off on irritating everyone. He stared beyond us then, at the lawn. “Hey, Ma, I’m home!”
A couple muffled laughs rose from the Creek pack.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt him,” Cassandra snarled at Liam.
“No. We said we wouldn’t kill him. And we didn’t.” Liam sounded chillingly calm.
Cassandra gave him a hard stare. “Your terms. What are they?”
“You take your pack and leave Boulder immediately.”
Sarah gasped.
I put a hand on her arm. “He surely doesn’t mean you,” I murmured reassuringly.
“I doubt my new pledges-” Cassandra began.
“Pledges?” Sarah’s fingers curled into fists. “We didn’t pledge ourselves to you. We would never!”
Cassandra flicked her gray gaze onto my friend. “My new compatriots… Does the term suit you better, Miss Matz?”
Sarah scowled.
“I doubt they want to abandon their land,” Cassandra continued, returning her attention to Liam. “Technically, my land.”
“So you don’t accept my terms?”
“I do not accept your terms,” Cassandra said calmly.
I snuck a glance over my shoulder at Alex. He was no longer grinning, but he was also not peeing his pants.
“Technically, Kolane, Everest was already a dead man, was he not?” she continued.
“We’re not in a court of law. Your son isn’t getting off on a technicality. This is pack law, and pack law forbids inter-pack murders,” Liam said, a pointed edge to his voice. “We have proof your son deliberately ran him off the road. We found yellow paint on Everest’s Jeep. Yellow paint that rubbed off from your son’s Hummer.”
“Paint? That’s your proof?” Cassandra’s lips puckered. “When Everest took off from our property, he back-ended my son’s car. That’s why-”
“Just before the crash, he called me!” My voice fired across the field, leaving a trail of billowing silence. “He said he was being chased.” I swallowed hard. “So don’t you dare claim he crashed into that ditch by accident!”
Cassandra’s eyebrows quirked in surprise. She licked the blood off her lips that seemed bluer in the sunlight.
Fingers twined with my own. Slender fingers. Sarah’s. She squeezed my palm tight.