But right now what she needed was one person in her life who wouldn’t force her to choose, and I was going to be that person. Even if it tore my fucking heart in two. Without a word, I kissed the tip of her nose and watched her drive away.
“You, uh, need a ride?” Simon slowly approached. No doubt he’d heard the whole thing. “If not, I’ll just take off—"
“Sure you don’t mind? Kind of a long drive. I can call one of my brothers.”
“Nah. Least I can do. Get the feeling this whole sitch is sort of my fault.”
As it turned out, Simon’s Audi was totally sweet. He offered to let me pick the tunes. Kind of hated to tell the guy our bromance was never going to work out.
“Thought maybe Juliet knew,” he said somewhere north of the city, as I tried and failed for the tenth time to get Lacey to pick up her phone. “About me, I mean. Our kind.”
“She really had no idea you weren’t human? And not to throw a wrench in this whole Romeo and Juliet thing you two have going on, but pretty sure she’s subscribed to like every anti-supernatural group on the internet. I’d start tasting your food.”
He laughed. “We met at a charity fundraiser through work last month. We’ve been talking ever since.”
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a trauma surgeon over at the new hospital that just opened up in north Austin.”
“And were you planning on telling her?”
“I swear, I know how this looks. But … you know how sometimes you meet someone and there’s this instant connection? I couldn’t get Juliet out of my head. And the more we texted, talked when I was getting off my shifts, the more I knew I wanted to see her again. I knew she was human, obviously, but the scent of werewolf was all over her. I guess I convinced myself that somehow she must know about our kind, that maybe there could be a chance for us.”
Knowing Lacey would probably burn The Spoke to the ground when she found out what I’d done, I made the split-second decision to let Simon in on the details of our long and sordid history.
“So you see,” I said at last. “I’m pretty much the last guy in the world with the right to be passing judgement. But they’ve both been through hell, and after what the Tracers did to Juliet, she can’t take anything else.”
“Has she been seen by one of our doctors?”
“Don’t think so. You know the Council. If they got wind of it—”
“Sure.” He paused. “But the thing is, our pack has a neurologist on staff. I might be able to pull some strings. Get something scheduled off the books.”
“That would be great. Might need a few days to work on Lacey, but she’ll come around. She’d kill for her mom.”
“I can tell.” He chuckled. “I have a sister just like her. You know, I could have sworn in the confusion back there that I saw my former Alpha.”
“Wouldn’t know anything about that.”
We crested a long hill, the exit sign for Blood Moon coming into view.
A thin smile graced his lips. “I won’t say anything. You know, you might find it hard to believe, but most of the pack has shifted, moved away from the hard-liners. London’s father was a traditionalist. Segments within the pack, ones who support the current Alpha, want a ruler who will stick to the old ways. London was more like her mother. She wanted change. Many were sorry when the Council removed her. And for what it’s worth, I’ve never believed the charges against her for a second.”
* * *
“Okay, you ready for the breakdown?” Brody drained the last of his beer.
Over at the edge of the patio, a haggard, brindle-colored werewolf sulked in timeout, glaring out at our dad’s herb garden so hard it was a wonder he hadn’t set the thing on fire. Alan Jackson’s Honky Tonk Christmas blared over the sound system. Over the past two days, I’d texted Lacey nineteen times and gotten two replies. Every time my phone vibrated and it wasn’t from her, my pulse went into freefall. This brotherly bonding sesh? Any other time I would have been down for it. Today it felt like my personal version of hell.
“I had River go over the flash drive. On the surface, everything checks out. According to,” my brother’s eyes flicked to Topher, “Goldilocks, the vampires hit Lacey with a biological weapon that targets the lycan virus.”
“We knew all that two days ago.” Shutting the lid on the smoker, I checked the temperature gauge. Every year around the holidays, I smoked gouda and cheddar for my entire family. Pretty sure if the stuff didn’t show up in their stockings Christmas morning, someone would hunt me down.
“Maybe so. But we’re still not asking the right questions. The lycan virus mutates rapidly. It’s why our scientists have never been able to develop an effective therapy to help control our Feral population, or treat people like August with autoimmune disorders linked back to lycanthropy.”
I took a pull off my beer, barely resisting the urge to check my phone for the fifth time since I’d gotten here. And then what my brother was saying hit me. “Why go to the trouble of developing a biologic weapon that has to cost millions—”
“Hundreds of millions. Maybe more.”
“—when you could just use silver?”
“Or wolfsbane.” Brody reached down to rub Major’s ears. “We can keep up this song and dance as long as you like, Topher. But we both know the vamps aren’t targeting Blood Moon because our Whataburger makes the best fries in the state.”
The wolf flattened its ears.
I stewed on his answer, staring up at the sky, where high wispy clouds drifted overhead. “Wolfsbane found in the wild won’t hurt one of us. It’s only when it’s compounded and aerosolized that it becomes a deadly paralytic.”
“And the Council’s been tight-lipped about that formulation ever since Tracers started using it roughly thirty years ago.”
“My guess is they’re still in the early stages of testing,” Brody said. “Weapons-grade wolfsbane is expensive and hard to come by. It’s an effective paralytic, but only for short-term use. And silver comes with its own set of problems. An aerosol that could be deployed during a fight, one that weakened every shifter who breathed it in, reverted them back to human status for days, maybe even weeks, but left the vamps untouched… that would be a game changer.”
“And we still don’t know why they’re targeting mostly females.”
“Lot of unanswered questions about Project Eclipse.” Brody’s eyes flicked to the wolf-gargoyle at the edge of the slate flagstones, who seemed to hunch further into himself with every word. “That’s an hour. Back in the house.”
Glowering, the brindle wolf performed a quick three-sixty of the back yard, like he was picking out burial plots for both of us, then turned and skulked inside.
I was just about to ask if one of us should go with him when West came out.
“Kill me now.”
He sagged into one of the patio chairs. Major bounded over and dropped a grayish chewed-up tennis ball next to his Saturday afternoon bowl of organic vanilla ice cream (now licked clean), tail waving hopefully.
Brody threw it out into the field and the golden took off through the grass in a blur of pale fur. “Topher secure?”