Time Mends(9)
“Does everyone already know?” I asked Talley quietly, although whispering was pretty pointless. They were all Shifters, and it was the morning after a full moon. Supernatural hearing was working at full force, a fact driven home by my pounding headache.
Talley nodded, head held high as she kept walking towards the mob. “Be strong,” she muttered so softly I knew it carried only the ears of those of us who walked alongside her.
Badass Scout. I could do that, right?
I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin, looking at the cluster of guys about my age who sat on the front steps making zero effort to hide the fact they were trying to ease-drop in on our conversation. One of the younger ones, whose name I couldn’t remember for the life of me, made a big show of dragging his eyes down my body, pausing dramatically at the place where the orange gauzy material stopped mid-thigh, before giving me a grin and thumbs-up. I offered up a hand signal of my own in response.
I marched up to the steps and waited for someone to move so we could go inside. No one did.
“Makya,” I said to the largest of the group, “I’m going to need you to move out of my way.”
Makya is, as best as I can remember, Jase’s third-cousin. Apparently whatever genes that make Jase attractive in that adorable teddy-bear kind of way and Charlie sexier than should be allowed didn’t run through his part of the family tree. Makya sports a pug nose, a protruding forehead, and zero evidence a chin ever had an inclination to exist. The only thing he has going for him is the mossy green eyes which mark him as a Hagan.
“And what if I don’t feel like moving out of your way, baby?”
I shrugged with affected nonchalance. “I’ll let you decide. Either I can break your nose like I did at the state Mixed Martial Arts Tournament five years ago, or I can see if I can make you run crying to your mommy like the one and only time you showed up at Uncle Charles’s dojo. What will it be?”
“You think you can take me?”
A smirk played on my lips. “I know I can, moron.”
In all honesty, I wasn’t so sure. I spent the last month bed-ridden and just went through an extremely physically taxing evening without any sleep. Not exactly the best fighting conditions one could hope for, but Talley and Jase were right. For Christmas I received a surprise gift from Alex - one of the few factual books on werewolves in existence. Alex understood my need for scientific facts and reasoning when faced with the impossible magic of Shifters. In my multiple readings I picked up on a few of the basics of Shifter culture. Pack structure is based on physical strength. It’s the one place where being a bully is not only encouraged, but exalted and necessary. I needed to fight Makya and win, but at the very least I had to fight. Getting my butt kicked would be bad, but being a coward simply wasn’t acceptable.
Makya slowly rose and began to move towards me. Almost instantly, Charlie and Jase were in front of me, snarls in their throats.
“Boys, enough.” At the sound of Toby’s voice, Charlie and Jase went silent and dropped their heads, which allowed me to see the fear in Makya’s eyes. “Get off the steps, you idiots. Let her by.”
It was like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, bodies moved out of the way giving me a path to the front door where Toby stood waiting.
“How are you doing, Scout?” he asked when I was standing in front of him.
How am I doing? Every single bone in my body has been broken multiple times in the past twelve hours. I’ve had muscles rip themselves into shreds and then reform. My skin feels like I laid in the tropical sun for hours upon hours without sunscreen and then poured acid over it. My brother almost killed me a month ago. My boyfriend was murdered by your brother, the only boy I’ve ever loved besides Alex. And now I’m a Shifter. How the Hell do you think I am?!?!
“Fine.”
To Toby’s credit, he obviously didn’t believe me.
“Hungry?”
My stomach answered for me.
“Come on, then. We’ve got plenty to eat.”
Toby moved back and held the screen door for me. Everyone inside the house, who tended to be in the Toby-to-parent age spectrum, stood perfectly still, except for one tiny old woman.
“There you are.” Gramma Hagan wrapped her pudgy arms around me and squeezed with more strength than I would have believed a woman of her size and age possessed. “Oh sweetie, you’re so thin. I should have brought you more food. I meant to, of course, time just got away from me with Phyllis’s hip-replacement surgery.”
Gramma Hagan is one of those grandmothers everyone wishes they had. She bakes, knits, and holds to the firm belief her grandchildren are the most perfect creatures to have ever lived. I was included in that bundle of perfection, even though she was the mother of Jase’s father and, therefore, no relation to me whatsoever. After I was finally released from the hospital, Gramma Hagan came to our house with what can only be described as a sampler of casseroles. There were seven different pans of food, each enough to feed our family of five for multiple days, and they all operated under the instructions of, “Take out of freezer and place in a 350-degree oven. Bake until bubbly.”