Page 49 of Junk Magic

“Oh, you were thinking. Just not with the human mind.”

“You weren’t even there!” I wasn’t sure when Cyrus had joined the party at HQ, but it sure as hell hadn’t been before the challenge was decided. Or else the red wolf would have had someone else’s fangs in his throat.

“No, just missed it,” he agreed.

“Then how can you—”

“I saw you,” he said, and then moved so fast that his hands were cupping my face before I could twitch. “I don’t claim to understand what happened back there, but I saw you—Accalia of Arnou, Laurentia of Lobizon’s daughter. For the first time, I saw the wolf.”

I stared up at him for a moment, until the room went swimmy and I couldn’t see his face anymore. “I don’t have a wolf. You know that—”

“I thought I knew that, just as you did. Thought you’d been denied that part of yourself. But it seems we were both wrong.”

In a moment, I was going to cry, and I didn’t want to cry. So, I wrenched away. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

He sighed. “No. Didn’t think so.”

“I want to talk about Jace!” I rounded on him. “I know you think you’re helping him—”

“I am helping him.”

“—but have you thought about where this goes? Sebastian already said no—he’s not going to adopt those boys into Arnou. And if you think you can change his mind—”

“I don’t. I know my brother.”

“Then where does this lead, Cyrus?” I spread my arms. “You’re going back to Arnou someday, and they can’t follow you. And they’re not likely to be welcomed by any other clan. If you get them used to this—”

“To what? Having full bellies and sleeping protected?”

“—to belonging, to being part of something again.”

The idea of Cyrus making a little vargulf clan had seemed cute at one point. It didn’t anymore. Not after what I’d seen, not after how vulnerable those boys were, how willing to die for a clan they didn’t even have!

They were already clinging to him, craving the same thing I was, so I knew how badly it hurt. Because they might be able to Change, but that was only half of the equation for Weres. The other half was clan, and all the words that went with it—home, love, belonging, acceptance—all the things that he was dangling in front of their noses, but which they could never have.

He might think he was helping them; I knew differently.

“What happens when that’s no longer true?” I demanded. “When the rug gets pulled out from under them again?”

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“How?” I stared at him. “How does that not happen? They’re outcastes—

“Stop calling them that!”

The change was immediate and mercurial, as it often was with Weres. One second, Cyrus was calm and relaxed, as loose limbed as a cowboy leaning on a bar. The next, his eyes were flashing with a light that had nothing to do with the sun striping the room. And the small bones of his face, usually as still as anyone else’s, were moving under the skin.

He caught it; his control was far too good to change when he didn’t want to. But the fact that he’d had to stop himself, that he’d had to exert that much control, told me everything I needed to know. And then he confirmed it.

“I can’t, Lia.”

“Can’t what?” I asked carefully.

“Abandon them. If Arnou won’t take them, I’ll make my own clan. But those boys need protection. You saw what almost happened today, and for no more reason than Jace existing—”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Yes, it did. And the same thing will happen to you if you keep this up. Cyrus, you can’t—”

I stopped, because a muscle in his jawbone had just come out, the one that said that his wolf wasn’t the only stubborn one. And because I didn’t know how to get through to him. He’d spent so many years in Arnou, as a virtual prince of the Were world, that he didn’t know how to be anything else.

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