Deacon was running a comb through his tangled hair and getting ready to go after Manda when there was a soft knock on Daci’s open bedroom door. An absolutely gorgeous blonde Daci’d never seen in her life stuck her head around the corner and smiled.
Daci frowned and glanced back at Deacon. He grinned at her and shrugged his shoulders.
“Who are…?”
“I didn’t think you’d recognize me, but I know you, Daci. I’m Manda.”
“Manda? From the lab? But…” She grabbed Deacon’s hand and held on for dear life. “You were…you can’t be the same…you were…” Speechless, she just stared.
Manda laughed. “Oh, honey, you have no idea.” She walked into Daci’s room and leaned over to give her a hug.
Daci burst into totally unexpected tears. “But you’re beautiful.” She grabbed the tissue Deacon shoved into her hand, wiped her eyes, and thought about crawling under the bed to hide. “I’m sorry…it’s just that, I remember you from when I was little, and you looked…you were…” She shook her head and tried to clear her mind of the old images of Manda. “Now you’re absolutely gorgeous.”
“Thank you. So are you.” Manda sat down on the edge of the bed and held on to both of Daci’s hands. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again, after your mom died and Bosworth wouldn’t let you come back anymore. I’ve wondered about you for years.”
“Me too. I mean I was so afraid you were still trapped in that horrible cage and they were still doing awful things to you.” Daci’s voice cracked as old memories flashed into her mind. “I hated him for that. When he wouldn’t let you go free, I hated him, but I was just a little kid. There was nothing I could do.”
“I know. I did get away from the lab, finally. Not until after your father died, but I was still a freak. Then Bay rescued me.” She glanced over her shoulder at the tall, dark-haired man waiting in the doorway. “Sweetheart, come and meet Daci. She knew me before, and we were friends.”
“Manda’s mentioned you, Daci. It’s good to meet you.” He nodded at her, but his smile was for Manda. He stood beside her, his entire demeanor protective, with his hand placed firmly on her slim shoulder.
Deacon seemed fascinated by their hands, by the obvious intimacy between Manda and her mate. He turned back toward Daci and caught her watching him. There was a serious gleam in his amber eyes.
She smiled, felt the color rise in her face and looked away.
Then she slipped her hands free of Manda’s gentle grasp and rubbed at her arms. “I’m sorry. They’ve been so itchy. It must be the dry air, or something I’m allergic to.”
Manda glanced at Deacon, and than leaned back against Bay’s solid thigh. She tilted her head up and smiled at him. “Sweetheart? Why don’t you go and get Anton? Maybe Logan and Adam, too.”
Her mate left without saying a word.
Daci scratched a red streak on her arm. “Is something wrong?”
Manda shook her head. “No, Daci. Things are all wonderful. It’s just that I want Anton here when I explain what happened to me. Why I was so deformed when you knew me, and why I’m not anymore.”
Logan was actually sort of surprised when Adam trailed after him as he followed Anton down the hallway to Daci’s room. Adam had avoided the girl as much as possible since her fall. Logan figured it was only Adam’s curiosity about her medical condition that brought him back to her room.
That, and his desire to protect his sister. Adam would probably never get past the guilt he felt over not being able to help Manda for all those years when Bosworth held her prisoner, which Logan thought was pretty stupid. Adam hadn’t even known if Manda was real, much less that she was his twin.
Keisha remained in the kitchen. She hadn’t made an issue of it, but it was more than obvious she disagreed with Anton’s decision to give Daci the nutrients without telling the girl what was going on. The other women agreed with Keisha, but they hadn’t hesitated to speak their minds. Hopefully, it would all blow over soon, because the tension wasn’t helping anyone’s mood. Only Eve had kept quiet, but then she was with Daci every day and probably didn’t want to get involved.
Logan’s ears still burned after Jazzy had let him have it. She was barely civil to Anton, even though they were all guests in his house. The women didn’t seem to understand the need for secrecy, all hung up the way they were on personal choice and control issues.
He wondered if he’d ever figure them out.
“Probably not.” Anton chuckled and slapped him on the shoulder. “Just be thankful they love us in spite of our blundering methods.”
Logan paused outside Daci’s closed door. “Why didn’t you tell Daci what you were doing? What she is?”
Anton shrugged. “I didn’t trust her. I still don’t, really. She is, for all intents and purposes, her father’s daughter. We caught her spying on us, and I’m still not sure why. There was nothing to stop her from going to the press and disclosing our existence, if, for no other reason, than revenge, but at the same time, I had to make sure. Without the nutrients, we’d never know if she was Chanku or not.”
“So what’s changed now?” Adam obviously still didn’t trust Daci one bit.
“Deacon.”
“I don’t get it.” Anton could be so cryptic at times. Logan reached for the door. “What’s Deacon got to do with it?”
“Daci loves him. He loves her. She won’t betray the man she loves.”
With that, Anton grabbed the handle and pushed the door open. Logan stared at him for a minute. The man could be so damned arrogant, as if he never made a mistake. What would it be like, to have that kind of confidence?
Shaking his head, Logan followed Adam and Anton into Daci’s room.
She’d been so focused on Manda, Daci hadn’t realized her bedroom was filling up. Deacon was still there, and Manda sat on the edge of the bed. Bay, her mate, had returned. Eve and Jazzy had slipped in quietly at some point, and even Mei and Oliver were in the room.
Another couple she’d never met leaned against the wall, and when Adam walked in with Logan and Anton right behind him, there was hardly room for anyone else.
Daci gripped Deacon’s hand and stared beyond Manda at all the others. “What’s going on? Why is everyone here?” She scratched at her itchy arms and scooted closer to Deacon. There was the oddest sensation, as if she could actually hear the heartbeats of the people around her, as if her hearing had gone ultrasensitive.
Her nose definitely had. She picked up the various scents of men and women in what seemed to be a collective state of arousal. What was it with these people?
At least she could be thankful they weren’t naked.
Deacon squeezed her fingers. Anton stepped forward. The easygoing smile he generally wore was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he looked serious, almost angry for some reason.
“Manda was going to tell her story,” he said. “We all wanted to hear it.” His hand stroked Manda’s long, blond hair and she turned and smiled at him. Adam stepped up and took her hand, raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them.
“It’s ultimately your choice,” he said.
Manda smiled at Adam and then at Daci. “I know.”
None of this made sense. Daci bit her lips and kept her mouth shut.
“No one knew my whole story, until recently, and that includes me.” Manda still clung to Adam’s hand, but her other hand was securely wrapped in her mate’s, as if she needed both men for their strength.
“Adam and I are twins. We were taken from our mother at birth and adopted out to two different families. We never even knew the other existed, though each of us had always had a strong sense of loss we could never really define. I ended up in Tibet with missionary parents. For the first years of my life, things were pretty normal. Then my mother and father were brutally murdered when I was twelve. My entire life changed that night.”
She glanced over her shoulder at her husband. He nodded. Manda took a deep breath and looked directly at Daci. The gleam in her amber eyes was unsettling, to say the least. “The morning after my parents were killed, the people of the village who found me were terrified. I was no longer a pretty little girl with long, blond hair. Somehow, overnight, I had changed into a monster. I had patches of dark fur and twisted legs, horrible, sharp teeth and a stubby tail. They thought I was a demon, cursed by God. I believed them. There was no other explanation.”
Daci nodded. “I remember you that way, but you weren’t scary. Not really. You were sad.”
Manda nodded and brushed tears out of her eyes. “I was very sad when you knew me.” She sighed and stared blankly over Daci’s head as she spoke. “A congressman from America was visiting the area and took me home with him. I called him Papa B, but I had no idea who he really was. He kept me for twenty-five years at various secret labs, but I spent most of that time in a cage in the laboratory where you saw me. I thought he was going to rescue me, but I was treated as nothing more than a lab animal with privileges.” She shrugged and her sigh was audible in the silent room. “I had a television and they would give me paper and crayons. My hands were so misshapen I couldn’t hold anything smaller, like a pen or pencil, but that’s how I learned to read and write and do math. Watching children’s shows on TV and writing with crayons. My whole connection to the world outside was through the TV…that and the times I got to spend playing with you.”
Daci nodded and glanced at Deacon. “They never let her out when my father was around, but if my mother was working, Manda could come out of her cage and we’d play.” She turned back to Manda. “I remember you calling him Papa B. What happened? Why did you turn into that creature? Did it have something to do with my father’s obsession with shapeshifters?”
“Yes, it did. He had heard reports of creatures able to shift from human to wolf. When he found me, he figured I was proof of the rumors, but he could never make me shift one way or the other, despite putting me through all kinds of horrible experiments. His goal was to breed an army of shapeshifters and I was a huge disappointment.” Manda’s voice cracked.
“Sweetheart, you don’t need to…” Even Bay’s voice sounded ragged.
“Yes. I do.” Manda smiled up at her mate, then looked directly at Daci. “He tried mating me with both men and wolves. I was still a child, but he didn’t care. Obviously, I didn’t get pregnant despite his attempts. It became an obsession for him. He searched for more shapeshifters for the rest of his life.”
Daci knew her father was obsessed, that he had done bad things, but rape? Rape a child? That would make him a monster. She couldn’t accept that. She wouldn’t.
She forced Manda’s horrible accusations out of her thoughts, wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “But you? What happened to you?”
Manda glanced at Anton. “I was…I am, a shapeshifter. I’m part of an ancient race called Chanku that we believe originated somewhere on the Himalayan steppes. With the proper nutrition, a small gland in our brains matures and gives us the ability to change into wolves.”
A direct lightning strike couldn’t have shocked her more. Daci stared at Manda. Her words seemed to reverberate in her mind. Shapeshifter…change into wolves.
For some reason, Manda looked over at Mei and Oliver, standing quietly across the room. “Or, sometimes into other creatures besides wolves. I shifted as a result of fear when I saw my parents murdered, but I wasn’t old enough, or possibly hadn’t had enough of the right nutrients, to shift completely. When you knew me, I was trapped, halfway between human and wolf. I remained that way, caught in a freakish hell for all those years your father kept me prisoner.”
Manda’s soft voice faded into the roar of blood rushing in her ears. A lifetime of questions in search of answers spooled across Daci’s brain. Trembling, she looked around the room, no longer seeing the new friends she’d made, the young man who had cared for her.
Shapeshifters. All of them…So many things her father had said finally made sense. His obsession wasn’t because he was crazy…it was because he was right, but no one believed him. She wasn’t crazy, either, out there watching these people for so many cold and lonely nights. She’d wasn’t!
“Everything my father believed…it was all true. He was right!” She twisted around, her eyes flashing from one face to the next before focusing once again on Manda. “All those years when people told him he was crazy, he wasn’t. It’s not just you, is it? It’s you, too.” She looked at Anton. “And you, Adam. And Logan.” Her head spun as her eyes blazed from one person to the other. People she’d begun to think of as friends. How stupid she’d been! What a fool, to trust any of them. “All of you? Are all of you the same?”
She turned to Deacon and saw the hurt in his eyes when she tugged her hand free, but it didn’t matter. He’d lied to her and suddenly her world was spinning, all that she’d known and believed whirling and twisting out of control. “You, too? You’re one of them? Did one of you kill him?” She scooted away, back toward the head of the bed and her mind spun as she looked at each and every person crowded into her room. Her nostrils were filled with their scent, her ears vibrated with the sound of their hearts beating, their lungs working. “Did one of you kill my father? Why won’t anyone answer me?”
All those years she’d tried to win her father’s love and now, now when she’d finally proved he was right, it was too late…much too late.
“Stop it, Daciana. Stop now!” Anton stepped forward and touched Manda’s shoulder. She trembled visibly, shaking like a leaf in the wind. “Your father was not murdered. He died of a stroke. As I told you before, we do not mourn him. The bastard deserved to die, for his cruelty toward Manda, for the attempts he made on the lives of our packmates, for the threat he posed to every single one of us.”
His words cut into her like a knife. She’d hated Bosworth a lot of the time herself, but that was her right. He was her father. Anton had no right to feel that way. None of them did. “I knew it,” she cried. “You’re all the same.”
“Yeah, Daci, we are.” Disgust dripped from every word as Deacon shoved himself away from the bed. Away from her. “But, ya know what’s funny? So are you, Daci. And so was your mother.”
She sat back as if she’d been slapped. He was lying. He had to be lying.
Without a backward glance, Deacon pushed his long frame away from the bed and stormed out of the room. The rest of them quietly followed. No one would meet her gaze. Not one of them looked at her on their way out, until only Adam and Anton remained. Even Manda had gone without another word, wrapped in her mate’s protective arms, sobbing quietly. So what? Manda was one of them, too.
“Well, Anton. That went well, don’t you think?” Adam glared at Daciana with a look of pure contempt. Then he, too, spun around and stalked out of the room.
“I’m not wrong about people very often.” Anton spoke very quietly, without any inflection at all. His dark amber eyes seemed to bore through flesh and bone as he stared at her. “But when I am, I really fuck things up royally.” He turned his back on her and wrapped his fingers around the door handle. “We shall have to decide what to do with you. It’s obvious you can’t be set free, not with the information you have. Certainly not with your abilities, or your immense reservoir of hatred.”
Just before he shut the door behind him, Anton glanced back at her one more time. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the windows on this room are barred. The door will be locked and your meals brought to you. You’ll have plenty of time to think about your birthright, about your mother and your father—one of whom lived honorably, the other who was dishonorable in all ways possible. You have a choice of the one whose footsteps you follow. I would suggest you choose the more honorable path.”
Daci couldn’t speak. If she could have, she had no idea what she’d say in the face of such overwhelming disgust. He looked her over with utter contempt. Daci shivered, frightened and ashamed beneath the full brunt of his scorn.
“While you’re choosing your path,” he said, speaking so softly she had to strain to hear him, “think of the young man who loves you. At least, he was beginning to love you. I imagine that’s all changed now.”
He closed the door quietly but his anger remained. It filled the room, a seething, living entity fueled by disdain and disappointment. Daci heard the sharp clang of the bolt sliding into position. Heard the hollow sound of herself swallowing.
For the first time in days, she was entirely alone.
Well…not exactly. Memories of her mother and father filled the room. And memories of Manda, of the pathetic creature her father systematically tortured for twenty-five long years.
“Yet I defended him. Why?” She stared at the wall opposite her bed, but saw only Deacon’s disappointment. His disgust.
Well, she’d earned it, hadn’t she? What did Anton mean by that? The young man who loves you. Obviously, he didn’t know what he was talking about. Deacon didn’t love her. He couldn’t.
She wasn’t worth loving. Her father had proved that much.
When she closed her eyes, Anton’s words filled her head. Choose the more honorable path. Not her father’s. She’d been so alone when her mother died. The lab technician who raised her provided a bed and meals and made sure she went to school, but there’d been no love lost between them. She’d tried so hard to win her father’s love before he died.
He was all she’d had, but she’d never really had him. He certainly hadn’t wanted her.
Of course, if he’d known his only daughter was a shapeshifter, he might have cared.
Would she have ended up in a cage, just like Manda?
Had her mother truly been a shapeshifter? Had she been able to turn into a wolf? Was that why she’d cared so much about Manda…because she’d understood the young girl’s plight?
Questions beat at Daci’s brain. Questions without answers, until her head hurt from the pressure. Did Deacon really love her, or had she totally destroyed his feelings for her? Was he one of them? Was she really one of them? And what of Manda?
She’d never thought of herself as a cruel person. Never, yet she’d terribly hurt the people who had only been good to her. Better, more loving, than her own father. Why? How could she have been so mean?
The hours passed and light faded. The shadows crossed her room and eventually filled it up, until Daci sat alone in the semidarkness, her mind still seething with recriminations, lost in a mounting tide of despair.
Anton had been right about one thing. She had more than enough time to think, locked alone in her room. No matter how she looked at what she’d done, what she’d said, there was no way to excuse her behavior.
She’d been wrong. Dead wrong. And there was absolutely no way she could see to make things right, ever again.
A sharp click snapped her gaze toward the door. The knob turned and she felt the shift in air currents as the door slowly opened. Manda slipped into the room and quietly shut the door behind her. She raised her head and glared at Daci. Gone was the timid blonde, the woman who’d been a victim for so many years. She wasn’t crying anymore. Now she just looked pissed.
“Manda? I’m so sorry. I…” Daci swallowed back her apology. It was much too late for that. “Why are you here?”