Page 23 of Hunted

I eyed the coffee suspiciously. “Did he let Hayden poison it?” When Cal raised an eyebrow, I grunted. “Sorry.”

Cal was a psychiatrist and Brody’s fraternal twin. They looked nothing alike. Brody was a carbon copy of our dad, with blond hair he buzzed short every week and a hard set to his jaw. Cal was the quietest one in the family, the one we all went to when something was bothering us, the one who could be trusted to keep secrets. The running family joke was that if his blood pressure was any lower, we’d have to classify him as a zombie.

For years, Cal had worked with patients at one of the state residential schools until the government had enacted the National Database Act, allowing for the forced blood testing of all federal and state employees in an effort to identify shapeshifters. Cal had refused to be tested and had been fired on the spot. Now he was providing trauma counseling and rehabilitation services for the vampires and shifters we had rescued from a vampire prison.

Cal scratched the edge of his jaw, the closest I would ever get to an admission that yeah, he thought I was being a prick. I was pretty sure they made all shrinks take years of classes in the whole wall of silence thing in order to convince patients to open up enough to confess their deep dark secrets.

“And no,” I said dryly, even though he hadn’t asked. “Hayden and I haven’t talked and things aren’t any better on that front.”

He nodded, face impassive. “You ever think about starting that conversation, trying to clear the air? Things got off to a challenging start because of what happened with Ellie, but both of you care about her deeply. That could form a foundation for the relationship to improve, provided you want it to.”

“Did Ellie say something?” I started, but Cal shook his head.

“You know I can’t talk to you about Ellie. She’s my patient. Anything we discuss in our sessions is confidential.”

“Sorry.” I finished the second breakfast taco, crumpling the foil. I knew better. Hell, I couldn’t believe I’d even asked. I was so careful to stay out of Ellie’s head. Asking my brother to betray her confidence wasn’t any different. I glanced towards the living room, making sure we wouldn’t be overheard. “When do you have to go back to Dallas?”

Cal sighed, running a hand over his dark beard. He’d lost weight the past few months, his thin frame leaner than ever. “Within the next few days.”

“How long this time?”

“At least a week.”

I rotated the coffee cup. “Have you said anything to West?”

Cal’s eyes grew hard. “You, Mom and Brody are the only ones who know what’s really going on, about the deal I made with Guillermo. And it has to stay that way.”

West had a rare form of Omega magic that allowed him to manipulate pack bonds, binding other wolves to him. Because Omegas could force loyalties and potentially coerce entire packs into following a single Alpha against their will, they were highly sought after and often exploited. Our parents had hidden West’s gift from Guillermo in the hopes he could have a normal life.

Until recently we’d believed that no one in our family had inherited the Montemayor projectionist gift that Guillermo and our mother Sofia were infamous for using on the battlefield against scores of vampires. But Cal had revealed that he, too, had manifested as a projectionist in his teens during a vampire attack where all our brothers had nearly been killed. He’d stopped the hearts of two dozen vampires who’d come to the ranch to kill us, an event that had been highly traumatic for him at thirteen. Our mother, who’d arrived moments later, had allowed us all to believe it had been her responsible for the projectionist deaths. But in the Caldwell family, secrets had a way of coming out at the worst possible time.

“You agreed to be trained by Guillermo in exchange for him leaving West alone.”

“It was the only way.” Cal glanced back towards the living room. “West and Topher have been through enough. They’re so happy together. Just look at the way West’s face lights up every time Topher walks into a room. They spend every Friday night going out for cheeseburgers then browsing for secondhand books at Zombie Books. That would all be taken away if Uncle G found out what he could do.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “No way would he leave West alone. Not with how much power West could potentially wield. I hate that you’re having to do this, but it’s the only way. He gets two of us. West gets left alone.”

Cal hesitated. “I would never say this to Guillermo’s face, but the difference between him and Mom is that to her, it didn’t matter if any of us had been born with talent or not. She could have had her choice of mates from powerful werewolf bloodlines, being who she is. She chose Dad, the son of a feral and a Bitten wolf. She adopted Ethan and August from foster care, knowing their parents had no magic in their bloodline. Guillermo loves us, don’t get me wrong. But he’s had to ensure the survival of werewolves as a society by thinking of every person who comes through his door as an asset, and somewhere along the way, that thinking crossed over to us, too.” When I said nothing, he added, “You know I’m right.”

“I get it.” I let my head thump back against the wall. “If Guillermo recruited West, he’d be forced to use his Omega powers to manipulate the pack bonds, coerce other wolves into bonding with him against their will.” Even using his powers fractionally in that way would feel like a betrayal to Topher’s wolf, to their mated bond, which was one of the strongest I’d ever felt. Topher was fiercely protective of my brother and loved the hell out of him.

Cal shrugged. “Besides, I’ll be fine. It’s… not that bad.”

I flicked a glance his way, hearing the lie beneath his words, but not challenging it.

My brother rose. “We should get back in there.”

“Thanks,” I said softly. “For checking up on me.”

He clapped me on the back as we headed back into the living room. “Sometimes we all forget you’re not invincible. I think sometimes you forget it, too.”

“The research Ellie is doing is going to have broader implications for the shifter community,” Brody was saying to the room when we came back in, an edge to his tone. “There are lots of people who don’t like what she’s trying to do and it isn’t just the human community. We’re facing blowback on this from shifters, too.”

West frowned. “Why?”

“The feds are against the research because anything that could end ALDD eliminates the leverage they have over the Vampire Nation. Shifters hate it because if werewolf blood suddenly becomes safe to drink, even if there are safeguards put in place, there’s the fear rogue covens will fill their basements with blood slaves.”

“So we’ll hunt them down just like we always have,” I shot back. “There are risks to not acting, too. The feds want to keep fang-heads and shifters at war because as long as we’re fighting each other, we’re an easy target for them to take out. They hate the idea of an alliance and that’s why they’ve sent Rossi to target the research project.”