Half an hour later, I pushed through the front door of the LaSalles’ house and dropped my car keys in the brass bowl by the door. I’d quickly changed out of my biker clothes and washed most of the magic dye out, so my hair was almost back to its normal color.
My sweaty hands were practically shaking, and I wiped them on my jeans as I reevaluated my plan. Maybe I’d wait to ask Aunt Laurel about being a werewolf until after we’d sorted things out with Dragan. And although I wanted to know what she knew about my mom, the potential fallout could be catastrophic.
Things were too up in the air. It was best to wait.
Better to rip the band-aid off, Wolfie murmured in my mind.
Easy for you to say. You don’t have to look her in the eyes.
“Savannah, is that you?” My aunt whipped her head out of the kitchen and smiled. The smell of cinnamon and butter wafted down the hall. Cinnamon cookies.
At times, she could be positively warm and domestic. But I’d seen her other side—one as hard as iron. A woman who could command demons and disintegrate monsters with a single flick of her wrist.
“Welcome home,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
“It’s good to be home.” My aunt pulled me into a warm embrace, and I awkwardly wrapped my arms around her.
A part of me wanted to just get it done with, to scream, I’m a werewolf! Did you know?
I knew she was hiding something from me, but I couldn’t believe she knew the truth. She’d welcomed me into her home—why would she have done that if she knew what I was? Any time someone mentioned werewolves or the Laurents, I could feel the heat of her hatred, like standing next to an open fire.
The odds were fifty-fifty that she’d lose her shit and kick me to the curb or chain me in silver.
We’ll claw her eyes out first, my wolf said defiantly.
Laurel handed me a heaping plate of warm cookies. “Take these into the drawing room. I’ll be right there. We should talk.”
Oh, yes, we should.
I set the cookies on the coffee table and took a seat on the antique couch. Laurel swept in with two steaming mugs of milky tea. She handed one to me and sat. “Casey tells me that you didn’t come home last night.”
I nearly choked out my half-eaten cookie. That snitch!
Not that it mattered. I was going to have to tell her. I wiped my mouth. “I was attacked, and I stayed the night with a friend.”
The mug froze halfway to her lips, and I could see the fire in her eyes. “Attacked? By whom? Are you okay? Should I call in Uncle Pete? And why, for the sake of the gods, didn’t you come back here where it was safe?”
I reeled from the impact of the rapid-fire questions, though I recovered quickly. I had answers to all of them except the last.
“I’m okay. It was a bunch of werewolf bikers.”
She leapt to her feet, and magic crackled around her. “Werewolves? The Dockside pack? I told you not to get involved with them or Jaxson Laurent.”
“No!” I snapped—more harshly than I should have, seeing as all she wanted was to protect me. “Jaxson and his people chased them off. The jerks who jumped me were part of a biker gang, and I think they work for Dragan.”
My aunt went ashen as she slowly sat. “Dragan…”
“The bikers were supposed to hand me over to the leader of one of the Michigan packs, who’s suddenly calling himself the Dragon or Dragan. I think he’s possessed, just like Kahanov was. And he’s up to something.”
Her eyes were wide. “What?”
“We don’t know,” I said matter-of-factly between overflowing mouthfuls of cookie. “Whatever it is, it involves me and a bunch of cultists with tattoos of a two-headed wolf. So my question is, what did you and Uncle Pete find out on your trip, and what was Dragan up to before you disintegrated him?”
My aunt let out a sigh and ran her hands through her hair. “This is very bad. Dragan…Dragan was a monster. Part sorcerer and part wolf. He had access to forbidden magic—and it seems he has unfinished business.”
“Why did you hunt him down?”
“I was called in to help solve a string of murders. He left his victims in the middle of pentagrams inscribed with sorcerous runes. It was all part of a ritual we didn’t understand, but the werewolves seemed to know about it. Something about releasing an ancient evil, though they wouldn’t tell us what.”
The Dark Wolf God.
My skin prickled as a cold draft moved through the room.
Laurel looked me in the eyes and continued, “Your uncle and I are afraid he’s trying to do so again—except this time, he intends to use you as a sacrifice.”
“What about the cultists? Or the two-headed wolf tattoo? What do you know about those?”
“Little. Dragan had cultists to help with his rituals back then, which scaled up and became more elaborate with time. Your uncle and I returned to the place we killed him, an ancient graveyard in what was Czechoslovakia. He’d collected a dozen people to sacrifice and murdered six by the time we killed him.”
“Why go there?”
“I wanted to know why he was able to come back and possess Kahanov. Ghosts are rare, and with the spell I used to disintegrate him, returning shouldn’t have been possible.” She looked down at her hands. “I still don’t know why or how he came back.”
"You and the Laurents worked together to bring him down?”
Laurel tensed and snapped her head up. “Yes, but it was a mistake. If that’s what you have in mind, hanging out with Jaxson Laurent, you can forget it. He’ll betray you the same way they betrayed us in the end.”
I sat on my hands to pin them in place. “What happened?”
My aunt’s eyes burned, and iron replaced the bitterness in her voice. “Nothing that can ever be changed.”
Her words were final, and silence filled the space. A silence that begged for a question and was leading me there, step by step.
I took in a shaky breath. “So why is Dragan after me?”
Laurel shuddered, and the fire in her eyes disappeared, dowsed with sorrow. “To inflict revenge on our family for killing him, I suspect.”
My voice approached a whisper. “But Casey hasn’t been attacked. Your own son. Wouldn’t Dragan attack him first?”
She looked away, toward the hall and stairs that led to Casey’s room. “Perhaps he thought you were an easier target—though thankfully, you’ve proven him wrong on that.”
I dug my fingers into my jeans and fought down my trepidation.
“Do you think that maybe it’s not because of who I am, but what I am? What my mother was?”
Her pupils shrank to laser points, though a fake smile hung on her face. “What do you mean, dear?”
Before I knew her, I would have been fooled. But not now. I’d lived with Laurel for weeks, and I’d learned a few of her tells and tics. I could smell the fear that her lie would be uncovered.
I knew that she knew.
Narrowing my eyes, I slowly set my mug down. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Laurel. Tell me the truth, starting with my mother. I know what she was.”
Way to rip the band-aid off.