Trust a shapeshifter to take their side, she thinks angrily.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“All right. I’ll help you. I’ve always helped you, don’t you forget that.”
“And I you.” She bridles. “How many times have I healed you when no one else could?”
He holds his hands up from the wheel. “All right, all right. We’re even. So what do you want me to do?”
THE DUEL
The drive to the Chatterly is fraught with argument and indecision.
“So what have you decided to do, dear sister?”
“I’ll simply confront him,” she decides. “I’ll beg him to stop this.”
“You failed with Kirk. What makes you think you’ll succeed with Lucien? I don’t particularly like him, but I do respect his values and ideals, from what you tell me about him. And it takes guts to stand up to his family like that. What makes you think he will listen to you?”
“Because he loves me.”
Jared chortles.
“And that is exactly why he won’t listen to you. He has to destroy his rival in more ways than one. It’s a legitimate duel, Shannon. He threw the gauntlet in front of a room full of witnesses, so that the one left standing will face little persecution in this town where everyone seems content to cover up for one another. How do you think those ‘murders’ went unsolved by the police? This town has been bought by the witch and shapeshifter clans, and any unfortunate souls who get in their way will be brushed aside and forgotten.”
He eyes her meaningfully.
“You don’t want to be a statistic, Shannon.”
“I am not a statistic. I am involved. Look, Jared, if you don’t want to get involved, I’ll understand. Just leave me at the Chatterly’s and lend me your car.”
“My car? No way!”
Her glare cuts short his protest.
“I’m only kidding, sis. There’s no way I’m not behind you in all this. But I think you should just let the boys deck it out and sit down and wait for the last one standing.”
She says softly, “How can I be with someone who killed someone else I loved?”
Jared’s expression is one of amused understanding.
“You’re taking bets now on the victor?”
“No. I love both of them. I don’t know who I love more. I have come to understand the two of them in ways that no one else possibly can.”
“Of course.” He barks a short laugh. “You’ve slept with both of them.”
“No. It’s more than physical. I understand their minds intimately and why they choose to do the things they do. In many ways, both of them are victims of their birthrights. Neither of them particularly relishes the roles they have been thrust in, and yet they do what they must to keep the equilibrium. Both of them are good men in their own right, and I can’t help but love both of them equally.”
“You can’t love people equally, sis. Just as parents don’t really love their children equally, you can’t do the same. You think you do, but you really don’t. There’s going to be one of them you marginally prefer over the other. One you will be subconsciously rooting for to win.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Do you even know who that is right now?”
His question takes her aback.
Who does she love more? Does she even know it herself?
Is it the passionate and volatile Lucien, who is giving up everything for her – his family, his fortune, the world he has known and lived in for so long?
Or is it the measured and matured do-gooder Kirk, who rebels against his shapeshifter nature but does what he does admirably to keep the peace, and who loves her just as fiercely in his own right?
They draw up to the parking lot of the Chatterly – just in time to see Lucien’s Mustang exit and go down the other direction.
“Oh, no. It’s started,” she says. She looks at Jared mutely.
“OK, OK, I’ll follow him. He doesn’t know this car. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Please, she prays,
Jared is a good tracker. It comes with being a shapeshifter. On the hunt, he has to tread carefully after small animals, many which are swift of foot and sensitive in hearing. So if he wants a kill, he has to be even quieter than they are. He keeps the Ford a distance away, sandwiched behind two or three cars, but never losing sight of his quarry.
Besides, Lucien seems to be in too much of a hurry to notice anyone behind him. Or maybe he is not expecting anyone. Or so Shannon hopes.
Lucien finally veers off the main road into a lane leading to the forest. Jared hangs back, not wanting his tracking to be too obvious to Lucien.