Page 32 of A Pack of Lies and a Big Bad Wolf

Every cabinet door blows open at once. The dishes inside launch themselves into the walls. The table flips. The windows crack, not shatter, but crack, spiderwebbing from the center outward. A glass of water on the counter detonates into a spray of shards, and the chairs hit the far wall and splinter, and I am on my knees on the kitchen floor holding my unconscious twin sister while my power destroys everything within thirty feet of me.

"KIERAN!" Olivia's voice, sharp, cutting through the roar. "KIERAN, STOP!"

I can't stop. My sister is dying in front of me. The house is shaking.

Olivia grabs my face. Both hands, hard, forcing me to look at her. Glass is still settling around us and Rose is pressed against the far wall with Stephen's wolf cowering in front of her. Olivia is kneeling in the wreckage in front of me, inches from my face, unafraid.

"She's breathing," Olivia says. "Look at me. She's breathing. Feel her chest. She's breathing."

I look down. Amaryllis is breathing. Shallow, thin, but there. Her heartbeat flutters under my hand, fast and light.

The cabinets settle. The last piece of glass tinkles to the floor. The house goes quiet.

"She's alive," Olivia says.

I can't speak. I'm holding my sister and my power has destroyed my kitchen and everyone in this room is looking at me, and I can feel all of it — the fear, the damage, the silence — and I can't speak.

"You knew," I say. My voice comes from a long way away. "You knew she was treating him."

"I didn't."

"You’re lying! You knew!" I'm looking at her and I'm thinking about all the meals they've shared, all the afternoons together, Olivia and my sisters thick as thieves for weeks while my twin was burning herself alive. "You've been with her every day. You watched her get worse and you said nothing because you were in on it."

"Kieran, that's not true—"

"You sat on my couch and talked to me about trust and walls, and the whole time you were helping her hide this from me." I lay Amaryllis down gently. Rose rushes over to her and puts her hands on her. “Olivia, call Gemma!” she yells, and Olivia rushes to the phone.

“You knew! You lied to me!” I shout. My wolf is howling with rage, with hurt, and it explodes from inside of me. My fangs are descended, claws out, I’m on all fours, and I run out the back door before I do something I can never, ever take back.

Chapter 14

Kieran

I used to eat dinner alone. I used to know where everyone in my pack was at all times. I used to have a kitchen.

None of these things are true anymore.

It's been two days since I shifted and ran out my own back door, which is not a sentence I ever expected to apply to me, and my wolf has been howling nonstop since, which is giving me a headache on top of everything else. Olivia is gone. I don't know where. Not the guest cabin — I checked, twice, at hours I'm not willing to admit to — and her bookbinding tools are still set up in the library with the bone folder squared to the edge the way she leaves everything, which either means she's coming back or she's left a shrine to my idiocy. Could go either way.

Stephen knows where she is. Rose knows. Bram definitely knows, because Bram knows where everyone on Shadowpine land is at all times, and when I asked him on the first day he said, "She's safe," and looked at a point six inches to the left of my face, and that was the end of that conversation.

Rose has been leaving dinner plates on my porch without knocking, which is her way of saying "I love you and you're an idiot" without using words. Teresa rescheduled all my meetings and left a covered plate with a note that said "Eat something. That's an order. Yes, I know I can't order you. Eat it anyway." Stephen has been practicing his shift in the clearing every morning, in and out, his wolf a little steadier each time. Rose reported this to me with a look on her face that dared me to comment.

I didn't.

On the morning of the third day, Amaryllis opens her eyes.

She's been on the couch for two days, eating and sleeping in roughly equal measure, getting color back. I've been on the floor next to her when I'm not out running the ridges, which accounts for most of my time. The pack has heard the howling. Nobody has brought it up. Smart pack.

"You look terrible," she says.

"Thank you."

"You smell worse. Have you been sleeping outside?"

"Intermittently."

"Have you apologized to Olivia?"