Gunmetal Magic(16)

“Go outside and wait until I come to get you.”

Ascanio opened his mouth.

“Outside. Stay in the back lot. Don’t speak to Rebecca.”

He clamped his jaw shut and took off. A moment later the back door closed.

Raphael had shattered my heart into tiny little shards and they were hurting me. Never in all of our time together had he so much as mentioned engagement. And now he had found a pretty, empty-headed idiot and he was going to marry her. Why her? What was she giving him that I hadn’t?

The answer came to me in a painful burst. She was there for him. I hadn’t been. I’d shut him out. I’d thought he would wait while I sorted myself out. My own damn fault.

I leaned forward, my voice steady. “Are you high?”

“What?”

“Did you smoke something before you decided it was a good idea to flaunt her in front of me? Maybe you ate some weird-looking mushrooms?”

He smiled at me. It was a brilliant Raphael grin, sharp like the edge of his knives.

“You know I could kill her before you could stop me.”

“No danger of that,” he said. “That would mean you’d act like a shapeshifter and we all know that’s not going to happen.”

Ouch. “My memory must be malfunctioning. I don’t remember your being this cruel.”

“People change,” he said. “Did you expect everyone to pause their lives while you were having your little pity party? Was I supposed to sit there and wait like a good boy, until you were ‘in a good place’?”

It hurt so much, I was beginning to go numb. “I didn’t bar my door. My phone still worked. If you wanted to get in touch, you could have.”

“Please! You think I have no pride? I loved you, I cared for you, I offered you a place in the Pack beside me, and you betrayed everything that was important to me. How did that turn out for you, Andrea? Was it worth it?”

I winced. “No. It wasn’t.”

“My door wasn’t barred either.”

He had saved it all up since the night we’d fought. Now everything was coming out.

“You betrayed me, you let the Order treat you like shit, and then you hid in your apartment. That wasn’t the Andrea I knew. I thought I could count on you. I thought you had my back.” His face was a furious mask. “I would’ve done anything for you.”

I would have done anything for him, too. If it had been him in that Wolf House, I would’ve run there so fast, the entire Order wouldn’t have been able to stop me. My other self was howling in my ears, loud, so, so loud…

“You spat on everything I am. You picked the knights over my people, which means you picked your precious Order over me.”

I was shaking, straining to contain myself. My body struggled to counteract the stress, betraying me.

“Anything to say?”

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Too little, too late. I’m tired of waiting for you to stop running away from who you are. You want to know what the best thing about Rebecca is?”

His eyes were pure ruby and they burned. I was hanging on by a thread.

“She isn’t you.”

My humanity tore and the other me spilled out.

Raphael stared at me, suddenly silent.

The shreds of my clothes fluttered around me. I had this curious feeling that I was watching it all from some point above my head. My arms still rested on the table, but now soft sandy fur with a scattering of brown spots covered the hard muscle. I knew what my face looked like: a meld of human and hyena, with a dark muzzle and my blue, human eyes above it.

Most shapeshifters had two shapes, human and animal. The more talented of us could maintain a warrior form, halfway between animal and beast. I didn’t have an animal form. There were only two choices: my human self and my other me, neither human nor hyena, but an odd creature in between. I was beastkin. My father had started his life as a hyena, caught the Lyc-V virus, and turned into a human. For that, other shapeshifters hated me and some tried to kill me on sight.

I examined myself sitting there. I’d held back for so long. I’d been good for so long. I always did as expected. I followed rules and regulations. Look where it got me. Being good hurt.

“I didn’t mean that,” Raphael said.

Why had I wasted all my time pretending to be someone I wasn’t? I was tired, so very, very tired of standing on my own brakes. I felt…right. I felt free. I hadn’t felt like this since I’d lost control and slapped Aunt B. She had backhanded me right down two flights of stairs, but it was worth it. It was so worth it.

What did I have to lose anyway?

I took a deep breath and let the old good Andrea go. Magic coursed through me, making me stronger, sharper. Scents filled my nose, stole through my mouth, and expanded my lungs.