“I understand,” Max replied . . . still smiling.
The Alpha leaned over, patted Max’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell Charlie myself. And I promise, we will not just send you out into the world alone. We’ll arrange something for you. Something safe. Okay?” With a soft, sincere smile, she turned to go, but Max’s voice stopped her.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t giving you permission to tell my big sister that our baby sister is too much of a freak to stay here among your boring, useless, stable pups.” Max was still smiling and Betsey knew that wasn’t a good sign. Not a good sign at all. “She’s under enough stress and I don’t want to add to it. And other than snarling at your pups every once in a while, Stevie isn’t a threat to anyone here. She just needs quiet sometimes. The howling wears on her nerves, which isn’t exactly surprising when you understand that she is almost positive that she knows when the world will end—during our lifetime due to climate change and a coalition of dictators turning on each other.”
The Alpha faced her again, attempted to remain calm. “I don’t see how that’s our—”
“Both my sisters need to be here right now. It keeps them calm. It keeps them . . . I won’t say ‘happy’ since neither is what you’d call happy. But they’re not hysterical either, which is great. I mean, the reality is that the three of us won’t be here much longer. Any day now I’m expecting Stevie to get a call from one of these big universities with an invitation to work at some fancy lab where she can get some more degrees and hopefully prevent the end of the earth as we know it. You just have to wait a little longer.”
“I’m sorry, Max”—and the Alpha did seem truly sad—“but that’s just not going to work for our Pack. I’m sure you and Charlie will understand that.”
Still smiling and with a sweet laugh, Max said, “Oh, you misunderstand again. This isn’t a discussion. I’m actually telling you that if you upset either or both of my sisters, I’ll kill you and, possibly, anything you might remotely love.”
And still she smiled.
As with most wolves under threat, the Alpha’s softness disappeared in a blink, replaced by hard, animalistic rage. “What . . . what the fuck did you say to me?”
“I know I was clear and concise. Because I don’t have to beat around the bush. You see, I’m trained. Trained to kill. Not maim. Not harm. Not disable enough to give me time to get away. But to kill. And, quite honestly . . . I’m really fucking good at it. I have to be, because it’s up to me and Charlie to protect Stevie. She has great work to do. She has a world to save and she can’t do that if she’s making meth for a Peruvian drug lord. And Charlie . . .” Max let out a long sigh before her smile returned. “She has the weight of the world on her shoulders. All she cares about is keeping Stevie from being captured and used by the government or drug lords or whoever else my father has tried to sell her to. She has had so much stress in her young life that it shocks me she has not gotten an ulcer. Yet. So we trained, Charlie and me. To protect our sister—our family. Because the three of us and our grandfather are all we’ve got. Which is why, of course, we couldn’t join the military. Great training but a little too limited and restrictive for our needs. And me getting up at five a.m. every day with some dude yelling at me? Yeah. That wouldn’t last long. So our neighbor . . . a few farms over . . . former Marine, former Navy SEAL, former Black Ops. He taught us everything he knows. All we had to do was take care of his cats when he did mercenary jobs. And I fucking hate cats. But I did it.” She stepped closer to the Alpha female and, based on the expression the wolf shifter now wore, she finally understood what she was truly facing. Not some poor girls with no one to care for them. No, she was dealing with something else. Something brutal and untamed, with no feeling for anyone they didn’t consider “family.”
“So let me be clear that when I say I’ll kill you . . . I mean it.” Her grin widened. “I’ll kill you and have you buried before the sun rises. It’ll be like you never existed,” she added with a laugh. “So, yeahhhhh. You’re going to let us stay here. You’re not going to bother Charlie. You’re definitely not going to say anything to Stevie. And if you even hint to my baby sister that she’s in any way unstable or mentally unwell . . . I’ll dismember you while you’re still breathing. And, in case you’re concerned, because it seems like you’d be concerned—you’re clearly very caring—I won’t miss a lick of sleep or have any PTSD over it. Your screams will mean nothing to me, because I won’t give a fuck. Why? Because I’m a cunt. I’m a raving, raging cunt. At least that’s how my last boyfriend described me as the EMT guys were shoving him into that ambulance.” She clapped her hands together. “So we understand each other, right? We never have to have this conversation again?”
Without meeting Max’s eyes, the Alpha shook her head. “No. We won’t have to discuss this again.”
Max let out a relieved sigh. “That’s great. Really. But don’t worry. I promise you, we’re going to be out of here in another month or two. As soon as we hear from one of the many universities trying to woo Stevie to their campus but definitely after I graduate since Charlie’s made it a personal goal for herself that I get my high school diploma. The things she worries about, I swear!”
Betsey scrambled back to her spot against the wall. She couldn’t hear Max moving, but her scent became stronger as she neared the stairs that led to the hallway.
Max came up the stairs, entered the hallway, and headed down toward the kitchen. But when she was right in front of Betsey, she stopped. Slowly Max turned her head toward Betsey, then raised her forefinger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she said, as she had the first time Betsey had met her.
“Max!” Charlie barked, coming down the hallway toward them. “If you want to eat, you better get to the kitchen. That ravening horde of yours is devouring everything I made.”
“Do you mean my basketball team?”
“Whatever,” Charlie tossed over her shoulder as she headed up the main stairs toward the second floor.
Smiling, Max walked off, leaving Betsey to slide down to the floor, resting her chin on her raised knees and staring blindly ahead at the wall in front of her.
After a few minutes, her mother stepped in front of her. “Honey? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m fine.” She licked her lips and added, “But your next birthday . . . you’re coming to Chicago to visit me.”
chapter ONE
Nine years later . . .
Max MacKilligan didn’t see it coming. For once. But how could she when she’d been so focused on the white kid nap van and her ice cream cone? It wasn’t until her psychotic cousin grabbed her from behind and yanked her deep into the alley that she realized the bitch had been standing behind her.
Flung to the ground, her ice cream tossed off somewhere, Max didn’t even have time to put her arms up to protect her face before she was hit again and again. First with a fist and then . . . ? A crowbar?