Leland nodded. “On one arm. It bled a little, but it was nothing fatal. For a while, we stared out the window, trying to see if the cat was still out there. We thought Corey was dead, but we were scared to go check, and he wasn’t answering his phone.” He bent to wipe the dirt from his bare legs, without pausing in his story. “When we were finally sure the cat had left, we took a couple of knives from the kitchen and went to look for him. We found his phone, but Corey was gone. So was the car. He just…left us out here.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, gutted by the look on Leland’s face. “Corey got scratched pretty good, and he drove himself to the emergency room. But you should know that he had no idea you and Ivy were hurt.”
“Not that it matters now.” Leland wiped the last of the visible dirt from the top of his right foot, then tossed the second dirty rag into the sink. “Walking through the woods in the dark seemed stupid, with a wild cat on the loose, so we decided to stay in the cabin for the night. But by then, we were both running a fever. I tried to take care of Ivy. I brought her water from the sink and gave her some ibuprofen from her purse. But then I passed out.” Leland closed his eyes. “When I woke up, she was dead.”
“That wasn’t your fault.” Titus unzipped his backpack and pulled out a spare shirt and pair of jeans. They’d be big on Leland, but better than nothing. “Women never survive the infection. Well, almost never,” he said with a glance at me. “There’s nothing you could have done for her.”
Leland accepted the pants Titus held out. “I could have not eaten her.”
“You were terrified and in shock,” I said as he stepped into the jeans. “And probably ravenous after your first shift.” I remembered that blind hunger. But when I’d gone through it, I’d known who and where I was. I’d known what was happening, because Abby was there to explain everything. I couldn’t imagine suffering through what Leland had.
“Yeah.” He buttoned the jeans, then took the shirt Titus gave him. “That, and I was locked in here. The front door was closed, and once I turned into a cat—I thought I was losing my mind—I couldn’t get it open. And after a while, nothing felt real. I couldn’t really be a cat, and if I wasn’t really a cat, I thought maybe Ivy wasn’t really dead. I mean, maybe her body was a hallucination. And I was starving.”
“How did you get the door open?” I asked.
“I kept trying. Like, fifty thousand times. Pushing down on one side of the knob with one paw. Eventually, it turned enough for the latch to disengage. That was last night, I think.”
“So, you’ve been in the woods since then?” Titus asked, digging through his bag for more clothing.
“Yeah. I ate some squirrels. A rabbit. I slept under a tree. Then I heard a car engine. I watched you guys go into the cabin. Then you came out with Ivy, and…” He shrugged and pulled Titus’s shirt over his head. Then he frowned and pulled the hem of the material up to his nose. He inhaled deeply. Then he fixed an accusing gaze on the Alpha. “Is this your shirt?”
“Yes.” Titus put the bag down and gave Leland his full attention. “But it’s not what you think.”
“I don’t know what I think.” Leland frowned. “I know this scent. Why do I know your scent?”
I watched Titus, waiting for some hint about how to proceed.
He exhaled and gestured toward the couch. “Leland, why don’t you sit down, and I’ll explain.”
“I think I’ll stand.” The new stray’s fist clenched around a handful of Titus’s shirt, and I realized he was seconds from coming to the same erroneous conclusion Corey Morris had come to. That Titus had infected him.
“That’s fine.” Titus kept his voice low and even. “My scent is similar to my brother’s. And you probably recognize his scent, at least subconsciously, because my brother, Justus, is the cat who infected you.”
“Your brother?” Leland demanded. “Your brother turned me into this? And killed Ivy?”
“We think that was an accident.” I stood, careful to give him some space. “If Justus had wanted either of you dead, he could have killed you. And he probably had no idea that scratching you would infect you.”
“Probably?” Leland turned to Titus, but kept me visible in his periphery.
“Justus is newly infected, himself. We’re still trying to find out what he knows,” Titus said. “The last time I saw my brother, he was human. I have no idea who infected him, or how much he understands of what he is, and I won’t know any of that until we find him. That’s why we’re here. Looking for my brother. I don’t suppose you know a student at Millsaps named Justus Alexander…?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I think I’d remember if I met someone named Justus. It sounds like it came from a superhero name generator. You know, ‘He defends truth, Justus, and the American way!’”
I pretended to scratch my nose, disguising a smile. And the fact that I’d had a very similar thought, earlier in the evening.
“I mean seriously,” Leland said. “Whose name is Justus?”
“My brother is the only one I’ve ever met,” Titus admitted.
“Okay, so now what?” I said. But what I truly wanted to ask was, “What do we do with this new stray?”
And the answer was no simpler than the question. We couldn’t just let Leland Blum go. He needed to know what to expect in his new life. He needed to know there was a support system in place for him. He needed to know the rules. But we couldn’t take him Titus’s house.
No one could know that Justus Alexander had created two strays and accidentally killed a woman. At least not until Titus and I could find him, find out exactly what had happened, and come up with a reasonable defense.
Titus shrugged, glancing from me to Leland Blum. “Now…we’ll have to take him with us.”
“So, what?” I whispered, when the sound of running water from the bathroom told me that Leland was in the shower. “We’re going to put him up in your brother’s apartment? What happens if Justus comes home?”
“We count ourselves lucky to have found him,” Titus said as he pressed buttons on a fancy built-in coffee maker I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
“True, but Justus won’t be happy to see his girlfriend’s other boyfriend.” I rubbed my forehead, fending off a headache from hunger, lack of sleep, and contemplating the consequences of a shifter love triangle gone wrong. “Do you think he knew Ivy was cheating with him, or you think she kept both men unaware of the other?”
“I have no idea,” Titus said. “We don’t even know for sure that she and Justus were more than friends.”
“He must have thought they were,” I said. “Otherwise, why would he follow her to the cabin in the first place?”
Titus exhaled slowly. I could see his reluctance to think ill of his brother, but the evidence was not in Justus’s favor. “Either way, we can’t leave Leland alone so soon after being infected, and we can’t turn him over to Drew without incriminating my brother. So he has to stay with us, and we have to stay here, at least for the rest of the night, in case Justus comes home.” He glanced around the kitchen with a confused, frustrated expression.
“I get that.” I handed Titus the mug he seemed to have forgotten he’d taken down from an upper cabinet. “But this seems like a bad idea, considering how territorial some shifters are.”
“Well, if you come across a better idea, let me know. In the meantime, there’s another shower.” He pointed over my shoulder to Justus’s bedroom, which had a small bathroom of its own. “Why don’t you get cleaned up while I make us all something to eat?”
That was the best idea I’d heard in days.
I turned on the shower in Justus’s spotless bathroom—his tantrum hadn’t extended that far—and while I waited for the water to warm, I ventured into his trashed bedroom out of curiosity, and the overwhelming urge to straighten up.
I turned his laundry hamper right-side up and began collecting the clothes strewn all over the floor. The
hamper was nearly full, but the room looked much better, when I picked up a shirt discarded in the corner near the closet, and my fingers brushed something stiff. Dried blood, surrounding several three-inch long claw-shaped rips in the fabric.
A quick sniff confirmed that the blood was Justus’s, and that he’d still been human when he’d shed it. He’d been wearing the shirt when he was infected. But I could detect no ribbon-scent of an infector. Surely he’d been wearing more than just the shirt when he was attacked…
Steam rolled into the bedroom through the bathroom doorway, but I ignored it as I sat on my knees in the middle of the newly tidied floor and dumped the hamper out.
“Robyn?” Titus opened the bedroom door in time to catch me sniffing a pair of his brother’s pants.
“Hi.” I dropped the jeans onto the pile. “This isn’t what it looks like. Though I’m not really sure what this looks like.”
He glanced into the living room, then stepped into his brother’s room and closed the door, his brows arched in amusement. “I’m going to need a little more information than that.”
“Okay. I thought I’d do some detective-slash-cleaning work while the shower warmed up, and I found this shirt with your brother’s dried blood on it.” I tossed him the shirt, and Titus caught it in one hand. “I think that’s what he was wearing when he was infected, but you can’t tell anything from his blood, because he hadn’t shifted yet. Then I thought that his attacker might have left a scent on whatever else Justus was wearing…”
“Which is why you’re sniffing the crotch of my brother’s jeans?”
“Yes. No.” My cheeks flamed, but Titus only laughed. “I wasn’t sniffing his crotch specifically. Would you like to join me?”
He laughed again. “That is the single most bizarre invitation I’ve ever received from a woman, but yes. I’ll join you in sniffing my brother’s jeans.”
We went through Justus’s dirty pants systematically, and after the eighth pair, I decided he had much too large a wardrobe. But finally, Titus held up a faded pair of jeans in triumph. “More blood.” He held the stain beneath his nose and inhaled, then frowned. “It’s Justus’s. If there was ever a trace of his attacker, it’s faded too much for me to detect. Which probably means he wasn’t infected in the past week.”
“I’m sorry. I was hopeful.” I grabbed an armload of his brother’s dirty clothes and stuffed them into the hamper.
“It was worth a shot.” Titus stood and headed for the door. “Go ahead and shower, then you can join me and Leland for a three am snack and a quick rundown on shifter dos and don’ts.”
“Give me five minutes.”
Only once I stood wrapped in a towel, dripping shower water on the bath mat, did I realize I had nothing to wear that wasn’t covered in dirt and leaves.
I tightened the towel around my chest, then ventured into the living room. Though I had no modesty issues with nudity associated with a shift, I wasn’t going to walk around naked all night in a stranger’s apartment. Especially considering that our new stray hadn’t yet been truly introduced to the ways of life as a shifter.
“So Alpha is a job?” Leland said from the leather arm chair as I stepped out of the bedroom. “Or more like a rank?”
“It’s both.” Titus’s hair was damp, and I could smell his shampoo from across the room. Somehow, he’d beaten me out of the shower. “And those usually go hand in hand. Shifters with the most strength and leadership potential typically rise organically to the position of Alpha. Though there are exceptions. For instance, until this evening, I was an Alpha.”
“You’re still an Alpha,” I said, and they both turned to look at me. “You’re just not currently in charge of anyone.”
Titus’s brows rose again with a glance at my towel. “Oh.” I shrugged. “Yeah, we forgot to go shopping.”
“I’m sure I have something you can wear.” He stood and disappeared into the spare bedroom, then returned with a clean T-shirt and a pair of jogging pants. “They’ll be big, but they’ll work until we can wash your clothes again. And in the morning, we’ll go shopping.”
“Thanks.” I took the clothes back into Justus’s room to change. The jogging pants had a functioning drawstring, thank goodness, but the shirt would swallow me whole. It was clean, but not unworn. Or maybe it had simply mingled with other clothes that held his scent in his suitcase. Either way, I pulled the shirt over my head, and the next breath I took was like inhaling Titus. Like how you can walk by a lotion and soap store in the mall, and for a second, the whole world smells like vanilla and lavender. Except my world now smelled like him.
Fascinated, I pulled the collar of his shirt up over my nose and inhaled again. A bolt of warmth trailed down my stomach to settle into lower, more sensitive places. Every inhalation I took reminded me that he was there. That he was close. That I wanted to touch him.
I towel-dried my hair, then rejoined Titus and Leland in the living room, just in time to hear the Alpha explain exactly why the new stray couldn’t tell anyone about what had happened to him. “I swear to you there’s a network in place to help you. People you can talk to, who can teach you everything you need to know. As soon as I get this situation with my brother figured out, I’ll take you to them. Until then, it’s just me. But you can ask me anything.”
“Me too.” I squeezed between Titus’s knees and the coffee table, then plopped down on the couch next to him. From the chair across from us, Leland offered me a tray of pita chips and hummus, and I gladly accepted. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Is there a cure?” Leland asked without hesitation. “Or will I be stuck like this?”
“There’s no cure,” Titus said. “Your body has been changed on a genetic level. But you’re not stuck. With practice, you’ll gain total control of the shifting process, and I promise you that after that, being a shifter has more advantages than disadvantages.”
“Unless you want marriage and kids,” I said around a mouthful of pita and hummus. When Leland gave me a horrified look, I realized my mistake. “I’m sorry.” I swallowed my bite. “I don’t want marriage and kids, and most of the men I’ve dated have claimed to feel the same, so I assumed…” Which made an ass out of me, as the saying goes.
“Ivy and I were going to get married,” Leland said. “I hadn’t asked her, or anything, but we’d talked about it. I always assumed that after college…” His voice trailed off as his gaze lost focus.
“I’m sorry. And I wasn’t clear,” I admitted. “It’s not that you can’t get married or have kids. It’s just that because of the gender imbalance, that’s very difficult to do without exposing yourself as a shifter. Which is completely off limits.”
Leland frowned. “What if someone who’s already married gets infected?”
We both looked to Titus for the answer to that.
“So far, that hasn’t happened, that we know of. But the potential for situations like that is one of the reasons we’re working so hard to get our Pride recognized by the larger shifter social and political structure. For guidance. And support. And resources.”
Leland’s eyes had glazed over again.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” I turned to Titus. “We should give him the guest room.” Because if Justus came home and found his dead lover’s boyfriend on his couch…
“Of course.” Titus stood with Leland’s empty glass. “The bed is freshly made. Help yourself to whatever you need from the closet and the dresser. Though, fair warning, everything in there carries my scent.”
“Thank you.” Leland stood, and I watched him shuffle into the bedroom and close the door. He looked tired and unsteady enough to fall over.
“I’ll make up the other bed for you,” Titus said, as I bit into another pita chip.
“You can have it.” I patted the soft leather couch. “This thing seems pretty comfy.”
Titus backed into his brother’s room without breaking eye contact. “Justus shouldn’t find you on the couc
h for the same reason he shouldn’t find Leland there.”
I glanced at him in amusement. “Because I slept with his girlfriend too?”
He rolled his eyes. “Because you’re a stranger. I’ll stay in the living room.”
“Fine.” I set the tray on the coffee table and followed him into his brother’s room. “But let me help with the bed.”
While he pulled the used bedding from his brother’s mattress, I set the laundry hamper against one wall. As I lifted the bloody pair of pants to set them inside, a folded sheet of paper fell from one of the pockets.
I dropped the pants into the hamper, then picked up the paper and unfolded it. “Um…Titus?”
“Yeah?” He pulled a pillow from its case, then dropped them both on the floor.
“Did you know your brother went to the ER two weeks ago? The paperwork says he had lacerations consistent with an animal attack, and an infection.” I scanned the paper. “I guess now we know when he was infected.”
He let go of the second pillow he’d picked up and took the receipt I held out to him. “He went to Baptist. Spencer must not have been working that night.”
“Would he have recognized Justus?”
“Probably, from the pictures in my house. And he definitely would have recognized the symptoms of scratch fever.” He frowned, reading silently from the discharge page. “Two weeks. He’s been dealing with this for two weeks, and I had no idea.”
“This really isn’t your fault.”
Titus folded the paperwork and slid it into his back pocket. “We have to find him.”
“We will.” I circled the bed and pulled the fitted sheet free from the top left corner of the mattress. The sheets smelled like Titus, and I—
No, the sheets smelled like Justus. Not Titus. This is not Titus’s bed.
“I can do that.” He tried to take the sheet from me, but I stepped past him and unhooked another corner, then pulled the sheet completely off the bed. “Just throw it in the hamper,” he said, pulling the top sheet free from a tangle with the comforter.