“Nothing good. A few of those bastards are into pain and tears. Enchanted blades and leaving their victims scarred up. Shit like that.”
“Damn it.” Jay had seen some of Zack’s scars, but what others did he bear? And what about the rest of them? “It’ll mean a fight. Are you up for it?”
“Sure. It’ll take me a day or so to get on the road, but I owe you.”
“Thanks, man.” Jay ended the call with a deep breath and ticked one more thing off his mental list of things to do.
One down, way too many to go.
Eden opened the box marked GG’s china and smiled as she lifted out a plate with a pattern of whimsical blue flowers encircling the rim. “Grandma Green’s china. It would be nice to see it put to some use instead of gathering dust.”
Lorelei peered over her shoulder. “Are you sure you want us using your grandmother’s dishes? Wouldn’t you rather take them home?”
“I have plenty crowding the house from the other side of the family already.” Eden traced her finger over a flower. “I never knew Grandma Green, but Dad always said she was a practical sort of lady. No-nonsense. I bet she’d approve.”
“Then we’ll certainly put it to use.” Lorelei dragged a hair elastic off her wrist and twisted her hair up into a high, sloppy ponytail. “We’ll probably end up cooking in shifts just to feed everyone.”
Easy to believe. Jay had shoveled three meals’ worth of eggs and bacon onto Eden’s plate that morning, and she was hungry again. “So wanting to eat everything in sight isn’t a temporary condition?”
“Not hardly. It’s an enduring trait of your average werewolf.”
“Damn.” She put the plate back and lifted the box. Carefully. The first time she’d braced her weight to heft a box, she’d almost thrown it into her own face. “I guess I’ll have to get used to it. And everything else.”
Lorelei pulled open the folded flaps of another box. “I remember. It’s crazy at first, but you acclimate faster than you might expect.”
“Yeah?” Eden straightened and rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t remember changing. I remember being in Jay’s car, and I think I remember trying to bite him. I woke up under his bed.”
The other woman regarded her thoughtfully. “What do you remember most? Like, what feeling? Fear?”
Everything after the attack had melted into a disjointed blur, but one thing stood out. She brushed her fingers over the base of her neck and remembered Jay’s teeth closing there, sending desire throbbing through her body.
Her cheeks heated. “No, not fear.”
Lorelei shrugged. “Then it sounds like it could have been worse. You’ll be all right.”
She must sound spoiled and ungrateful to a woman who’d endured the sort of things Lorelei had. Eden bit back a self-conscious apology and turned to the next box. “I know I will. What I’m worried about is helping the rest of you be all right.”
“You may as well pack it in right now, because the only thing that can do that is time.”
“Then that’s what we’ll work for. Time.” The next box held linens, each sheet individually folded and packed in its own plastic bag. Eden remembered folding them, remembered drowning her guilt over her lack of sorrow for her dead uncle in meticulous care for his belongings.
Fitted sheets had been a lot easier to care about than Zack’s father.
Eden lifted one of the bags. “Sheets and blankets, though we’ll need to round up some more furniture. But if Jay’s willing to make a trip with me tonight, I can at least bring over a couple of twin beds and a futon mattress.”
Lorelei caught her arm. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.”
“No. God, no.” Eden covered Lorelei’s hand with her own. “This is hard. And awkward. It’s the most confusing day of my life, and I wish I knew how to handle all of it better.”
The woman stared down at the bagged sheet in Eden’s hand. “One of them was going to rape her. Kaley. But he screwed up, started taunting her about how maybe he should do it in front of Zack instead. We all thought he was dead, and when Kaley heard that…she lost it.”
Zack couldn’t stand to listen. Eden had to. “What did she do?”
“She ripped his throat out,” Lorelei whispered. “With her bare hands.”
Eden was unprepared for the surge of brutal satisfaction. “Good,” she rasped, her voice holding an edge of a snarl that shocked her out of the moment. “Oh hell, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Why not?” Lorelei’s smile was a little vicious, almost feral. “He was trying to hurt her. Worse, he was going to use her to hurt someone she cares about.”
“Zack.” Eden had heard his heart rate soar every time someone mentioned Kaley’s name. She’d felt the deception, had almost been able to taste the lie in the air. No wonder she’d never been able to fool him during their childhood. “He was lying about her, wasn’t he? Are they involved?”
“No, he wouldn’t bring her down like that.” Lorelei hesitated. “They hurt him, Eden. I mean, Zack had shit going on before—we all knew it—but this thing in Memphis? It almost broke him.”
“This wasn’t a happy place for him,” Eden said carefully. Even brushing those memories kindled fierce anxiety in her gut, the terrifying pressure that made her feel like she no longer fit inside her own skin. “I can’t imagine what he went through, but it must have been bad to drive him back here.”
“Now you know. As much as I do, anyway. I figured you deserve that.”
“Thank you.” Eden shifted the box of linens to the stack going downstairs. “I need to get my dad out here. He was always the only person Zack would talk to.”
Lorelei leaned back on her heels. “He knows, right? About the werewolf thing?”
“About Zack? Yeah.” Eden smiled wanly. “About me? No, not yet.”
“But you can tell him.” The other woman’s smile matched hers. “I’m a little jealous.”
Yet another way she was lucky. “Once he gets done shaking me, he’ll probably spend his free time over here feeding you all until you hate the sight of food.”
“It’d take a while.” Lorelei’s smile faded slowly. “Jay. How long have you known him?”
“Four—no, five years?” Eden narrowed her eyes and tried to remember. Jay had arrived in town a few years after she’d come back from college, replacing the old Chief of Police at his retirement. “I haven’t known him well for that whole time, but he’s in my dad’s diner pretty much every day.”
“You trust him.”
It wasn’t a question, but Eden still answered it without hesitation. “With my life.”
“Okay.” Lorelei looked away. “I don’t want to have to worry about his friends, but…it’s exactly the way the alphas in Memphis took over, you know? None of them were strong enough to stand alone, so they banded together. I don’t think I can help being a little nervous.”
A different sort of pressure built inside Eden. An ache just below her breastbone, one that blossomed in reaction to Lorelei’s slumped shoulders and tired eyes. She took a step forward, then another, watching Lorelei for any sign that the woman was about to retreat.
She started to raise her arm, but froze when she caught the slight stiffening in the other woman’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, letting her arm fall back to her side. The pressure became pain, glass shards in her throat, and she had to force each word out carefully. “If there’s anything I can do to make it easier for you and your friends, tell me. I’ll tell Jay to keep his friends away from the farm for a while, if that’s easier.”
“No,” Lorelei said forcefully. “I just wanted you to know. So you could understand. But we’ll all deal with it, I promise.”
She wanted to snarl that none of them should have to deal with anything right now. But if Eden pressed the issue, Lorelei might not be as ready to confess to other worries and fears. “Okay,” she said instead, trying to silence her newly awakened wolf’s agitation. “What about the others? Are there any in particular who need to be given some space?”
“Mae. Without question.”
The one who’d been stalked. Eden rubbed a hand over her arm as a chill shivered through her. “The man who hurt her. He was one of the ones who came here last night?”
“He was.” Lorelei turned back to the box and began unpacking the rest of it, then continued matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry. He’s dead now.”
The pressure intensified into a nagging tickle, and Eden scratched at her arm, wondering how the inside of her skin could itch. “Does she need attention? I have a friend in the next town over, someone with counseling training.”
“That’s nice of you to think of, but I don’t think it would help. There’s so much—” Lorelei’s voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. “There’s a lot she couldn’t talk about. The worst things, in some ways.”
The memory rose in spite of Eden’s best efforts to hold it at bay, vivid in the way it replayed itself in her nightmares. Zack, seventeen and shirtless, with the height of a man but the build of an underfed teen. She could still smell the rain, hear the thunder that accompanied each flash of lightning.
She would never forget the sight of him, shirtless and bleeding, his back torn up by his father’s belt but already healing. The rain washed away the blood, and by morning there was no proof of the way Albus Green beat the hell out of his kid. No marks, no witnesses.
No one but her. Gawkish, terrified Eden, nine years old and rendered mute by the promise he’d extracted from her so many years ago she couldn’t remember not having made it. The defining rule of her childhood, the Green Rule. Don’t tell anyone.