Page 57 of The Awakened Wolf

“Easy,” Sebastian warned, so I easily pushed him aside and squared up with my twin, wishing she were nothing more than a mirror I could break. What were seven years of back luck after the life I’d already been forced to live?

“How dare you talk about the twenty-first century,” I snarled, “after the things you said to me last night.”

“And how dare you act like you’re above every other female in this pack.” Kiana’s fangs flashed. “Above our mother? Above Sebastian’s mother? Above every mother since Leto who has kept our kind going in a world that has always wanted us gone?”

“Why do I think I’m above it?!” My voice cracked. “Why do you?”

“Because I am.” Kiana stretched her imposing Alpha frame so she could look down her nose at me. “Why should I be expected to do anything no other Alpha before me has been expected to do, simply because I theoretically can?”

I rocked back on my heels. That might have been a fair point if her solution to the problem wasn’t using me like her own personal set of spare parts. Sebastian’s warm hand settled on my back, filling me with more confusion than comfort. Was I just as haughty as my sister but without an equally valid excuse? I had found my fated mate, and this has caused not one but two dramatic scenes at our unwanted mating ceremonies. How entitled we would look if—

Kiana’s cellphone rang, and I took some small pleasure in the fact that she also startled. She snatched it up, and a moment later, I heard Cerys’ muffled voice come over the line. Kiana’s lips curved into a fanged grin. “Send them right up.”

“Send who up?” I asked as she swiped the call away. “What’s going on?”

Her smile twisted into a triumphant smirk. “Cody’s home.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Say what?!” Jayla yelped, and before I could process this news for myself, her bones started popping like firecrackers, and she crumpled to the floor like a dying spider.

Evan fell to his knees and pulled her flailing head into his lap. Her front legs paddled the air as they turned back into arms, and her snarling muzzle shrank into a human grimace of pain as the last of the black fur receded into her flesh.

“Oh, shit!” I pointed. “Evan!”

He was already on it, yanking his T-shirt over his head, but still my father coughed with dismay. Kiana swiveled his chair toward the wall, politely averting her own eyes as well. Evan spread his shirt over Jayla, but let’s be honest—his penchant for picking clothes that showed off every ripple and bulge of his wolf-enhanced torso was not going to cover Jayla’s entirely different set of hills and valleys.

“Bash,” I dropped the nickname without thinking, and his lips twitched with pleasure beneath the hands covering his eyes. I started unbuttoning his shirt without asking, assuming I would find a rubbery shiftskin underneath, but that was not the case. His breath hitched as my fingertips brushed his bare skin, and I made a mental note to do this again before we died at the hands of demigod and his angry human mob.

By the time I tossed the shirt over the table to Evan, Jayla was sitting up with her knees clasped together as she wriggled into Evan’s T-shirt. She shot him a look of disbelief over how snug it was, and he handed her Sebastian’s button-down with a sheepish cringe. She took it and tied the sleeves around her waist so that when she used Evan’s shoulder to push herself onto her feet, she appeared to be wearing the world’s most badly designed sarong.

The elevator dinged in the foyer outside the war room.

“Nope,” Jayla said, and lunged back to her chair, landing so hard it spun around twice before she got it pointed at the wall. “I am not here.”

The elevator whooshed open, and Kiana turned to me, her triumphant smirk untouched by my friend’s dilemma. “Open the door, Elyse. Welcome our guests.”

My fists curled with indignation. “I’m not your help—”

The door flew inward as if blown by a gust of wind, and a tall, powerfully built female strode into the room I’d only just been allowed to enter this week as if she’d been breezing into every day for the last twenty years. She wore massive Old Hollywood sunglasses, and a patterned scarf hid all but a few silver-laced tendrils of her dark brown curls. I felt my face contorting with confusion; why had Cody Chism come back as a Hedy Lamarr impersonator? Was that why he left? To get his wig?

But then the real Cody came skulking through the door in a fresh hoodie, its hood drawn tight around his scruffy jaw and million-dollar scowl. The wannabe Hedy raked her shaded eyes up and down the lean muscles of Evan’s bare chest where he stood in front of the table before taking the same liberty with Sebastian’s greater but equally shirtless mass beside me. The strange female snorted and turned to Cody with a withering smirk. “Got it all wrong, did I?”

Evan gasped, and the sudden contraction of his abs was probably the greatest audition he’d ever given. I gripped Sebastian’s arm as I realized exactly who had decided to grace us with her presence. Not a government official looking for explanations, or a mad scientist looking for experiments, but the creator of Alma Mater Animalis.

Holy shift.

Kiana pushed me forward as she barreled around the table to greet our visitor. But once we were in the open space, I hung back as my sister forged ahead with one hand outstretched. The creator—I couldn’t remember my own name much less hers in the moment—removed her sunglasses in a theatrical swoop and handed them over her shoulder to Cody as if he were nothing more than a lowly set gopher. She then proceeded to ignore Kiana’s offered handshake, studying her face instead.

My sister glanced at me as if to ask whether or not she was doing the human custom wrong, and I forced my feet to move me to her side. The older woman’s gaze snapped to me, searching my features as if she’d lost something there. I shrank ever so slightly behind Kiana’s nearest bicep, thoroughly freaked out.

A strange expression ghosted the woman’s face as she turned her attention back to Kiana. “Moon above, you look just like her.”

“Yes. Well.” Kiana lowered the hand the woman clearly wasn’t going to take. “We are identical twins, but I hardly think that’s what you came here to see.”

The creator’s red lips twitched upward, but the smile never reached her hazel eyes. She placed a hand on Kiana’s cheek, and I flinched, waiting for the bloodshed. But as the seconds ticked by, and the woman’s thumb brazenly stroked my sister’s sharp cheekbone, Kiana seemed to be… relaxing.

I grasped Kiana’s elbow to tug her away from whatever spell this stranger was weaving—there had been witches in the show’s second season—but the movement caught the woman’s attention like an oddly affectionate T-Rex. Only her arm was long enough to reach over and place her free hand on my cheek. Her touch didn’t have the same transcendent effect on me as it appeared to be having on Kiana, but there was a certain warmth in the way her palm cupped my face that kept me from flinching away.

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