Chapter 38:
“Shit.”
It was the only word that could describe this situation and it was the only thing I could think to say for almost fifteen minutes after the Alpha had left the apartment.
After I had told him that my cousin who lived thousands of miles away was his mate.
After I lied right to his face.
Just….shit.
As soon as that sadistic bastard pointed at Chey’s six year old chubby cheeks I didn’t even hesitate to lie. The lie flowed out of my lips without me even processing it or thinking about it. My brain somehow had gone into ultimate survival mode and had picked out the falsehood before I could even think through the entire ramifications of the lie.
It was the only way I could fathom of keeping my sister safe.
It was the only thing that I could come up with to keep that…thing away from my sister.
But what the freaking hell was I supposed to do now?
He would figure out that I had lied….he would figure that part out pretty damn quickly. What the hell was I supposed to do when he found out? What would happen to Chey if he found out? How much time did I have until he found out?
Just thinking about what that monster could do to my sister…thinking of what had happened to me, happening to my baby sister made me have to bite my own hand to keep from screaming out loud.
That couldn’t happen. I couldn’t let something like that happen to her…not to anyone else.
What was I supposed to do?
There was only one thing I could think to do.
I shakily got up and made my way to the kitchen, picking up the phone and calling the first number that I could think of. I had to redial twice with how bad my hands were shaking.
“Hello?” Ile’s voice picked up, sounding chipper on the other end of the line.
“This is Juniper….could you send Kyrie over here…I fell and hit my head on the coffee table and I don’t feel so good.” I lied.
Again.
Apparently my shaking voice backed me up on this one.
“Oh my gosh. Are you bleeding anywhere?” she asked, her voice sounding shocked.
“No….I’m just having trouble seeing straight.” I told her. At least that part was true. After the two blows I had taken to the face my vision was still not completely normal. I heard her speaking away from the phone for a moment before she returned to the call telling me that Kyrie should be over at the apartment shortly.
By the time that I hung up the phone, got up and managed to make myself walk into the living room there was a knock on the door. I walked toward it hesitantly this time, making sure to look through the peep hole before opening the door and allowing Kyrie to come into the apartment. He looked a little disheveled, a t-shirt on instead of his usual grey sweater and his face worried.
“Juni, Ile said that you-Oh my God your face Juni.” He blurted when I turned to face him after shutting the door. Immediately his hands were on my cheeks, gently turning my numb face toward the light.
“Who did this to you Juniper because you sure as hell didn’t fall down.” He commanded, looking stern.
“The Alpha was here and-“
Kyrie’s body shuttered and he looked at me with an expression that was the most horrified that I had ever seen him look.
“Why the hell was that bastard here?” he asked, pulling me into the living room and forcing me down into a chair so he could look at my face better.
“H-he was asking about what was going on with….him. Kyrie I need to-“
“For God’s sake your eye is trying to swell shut Juni.” Kyrie cursed in anger as he searched through his bag for something.
“Kyrie he-“
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he hit you Juni.” Kyrie interrupted me. “I need to go find an ice pack.”
He moved to get up and I grabbed his arm and ripped him back to the ground with an amount of strength that I didn’t know I had.
“Kyrie forget my face.” I commanded. “Listen to me damn it.”
That finally got his complete attention and he really looked at me for the first time since he had stepped into the apartment, looking over my terrified eyes with growing unease.
“What happened?” he asked.
“He saw a photo while he was….” I trailed off, not able to describe exactly what that monster had been doing to me before he had happened upon my family photos.
“What photo?” Kyrie asked.
I raised my gaze and pointed at the abandoned picture frame that lay on the ground next to where I had collapsed when the monster left. Kyrie got up and went to retrieve it, looking down at the picture with a confused expression.
“You and your sister were cute when you were little but what does this have to do with anything?” he asked.
“His mate’s in the photo…he saw her eyes.” I finally was able to explain after a moment of just letting him stare at the photograph. At those words he froze and looked up at me with an expression on his face that was somewhere between horror and pain.
“I told him it was my cousin who lives in Nevada…”
My hands had started shaking again and by the expression that crossed his face as he looked down at the picture one more time I knew that I didn’t have to say another word of explanation to him. Kyrie and I had always seemed to be on the same wavelength and in this instance was not an exception. I could see that he understood me just by looking into his eyes.
He knew that I had lied.
He knew that Cheyenne was the Alpha’s mate.
“Shit.”
Again we were on the same wavelength as he muttered the curse a couple more times, standing up jerkily to put the picture back in place on the bookshelf. He paced the room for a minute, forcibly trying to get the wheels in his head to turn before returning to my side.
“And he believed you? He has been to the western pack before looking for his mate.” He asked.
I shook my head.
“He didn’t look at humans. Not in the low sector.” I mumbled to myself. Kyrie took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose slowly.
“And he didn’t smell her? He didn’t smell Cheyenne’s scent here?” he asked in bemusement. My mind flashed back to when the Monster told me that he knew that he would find me with Cheyenne because he smelled my scent on Chey’s hand-me-down clothes. And the Alpha hadn’t smelled Chey? I took a deep breath almost if I was trying to smell her out myself and realization dawned in my head.
“The baking…he said he couldn’t smell anything other than derby pie.” I remembered. So my manic baking obsession had actually served a purpose.
I had never been so thankful for baked goods in my entire life. Kyrie sighed again and ran his hands over his head while thinking.
“If he believed you….he wouldn’t have wasted any time before going to find her.” He concluded. “Even if he flew it could take days to go through all the humans of West Pack…we only have three days left. We might be able to escape before he realizes that he was lied to.”
I nodded and tried to steady myself before I asked the question that had been plaguing my mind.
“What will happen when he finds out?” I asked.
Kyrie took a sharp breath and looked back at me with an expression that told me everything I need to know.
If the Alpha monster found out he had been lied to and his mate had been taken away…he would kill anything in his path to get to her. He would kill everything that had stood in his way in the first place. By lying to the Alpha to protect my sister I had done something that would come to haunt me for the rest of my life.
I had signed my own death warrant.
“Let’s not worry about that. Let’s worry about getting out….it’s more important now than ever.” Kyrie pleaded me, trying to bring me back from the chilling realization of the consequences of my actions so I could focus on the only option that there was left to save both Chey and me.
Escape.
Escape and then run like bats out of hell.
I nodded.
“Ok.” I mumbled, trying to get to my feet. I needed to get cleaned up; I needed to stop shaking all over. I needed to get a grip.
“What time is it?” I asked Kyrie as he moved to steady me. He looked up at the clock.
“2:15” he answered. I nodded and moved my arm out of his hand so that I could go to the bookshelf.
“I need to get this cleaned up before they come back.” I muttered, moving to pick up the books that had fallen to the ground when the Alpha had slammed me into it.
“Juniper I need to treat your face.” Kyrie said, coming up behind me and helping me pick up the last of the books. I shook my head.
“No.” I muttered. “I’m sure that all the werewolves will know what happened anyway. It may…distract him from asking questions.”
Kyrie sighed and pulled me to my feet to look over my face again.
“At least let me make it less swollen. You don’t have to not be able to see out of one eye to make it distracting.” He concluded, pulling me to the couch to couch to begin working. I sighed and let him treat my stinging shiner.
At 2:45 Kyrie left the apartment. We had discussed what we were going to do while he treated my face. He would tell Carlos what had happened and Carlos would decide what we would tell the others. Chey would obviously have to be told…I wasn’t going to keep this from her. But I had to tell her at a time that the Monster was not here and that she would not still be freaked out when he would return…the only time to do it was two days from now. The night before we escape and the night all the monsters left for the tribunal.
We didn’t discuss any other options.
Because if we were not lucky and I was caught in the lie before the tribunal…none of us wanted to think about that.
It was 3:05 when the Monster and Chey came back into the apartment. I was standing in the kitchen washing dishes from the newest batch of brownies that I had put in the oven just before they came in. My baking obsession had not waned. Now it just had a more practical purpose in hiding Chey’s scent. I glanced over my shoulder at Chey when she walked into the kitchen, my hand shaking so hard under the hot water that I was surprised that it wasn’t making noise. I wanted to go and hug her. I wanted to grab her drag her into the back closet and lock her in there until the danger had past but I knew that the Monster was still in the apartment…any unusual action I took toward my sister could be suspicious. I had to act normal…whatever the hell that was anymore.
“How was school?” I asked afraid to really turn around and look at her. First of all I didn’t want her to see the bruise that was still marring my face until it was a little less wicked looking and secondly I was terrified that if I turned to look at her she would have a huge bite mark on her shoulder and a pissed off demented monster standing behind her.
“Boring as usual.” Chey droned out in reply, plopping her rear end down into a seat at the island. “Are you still baking?” Chey asked with a little disbelief in her tone.
I almost instantly relaxed when I heard the normal range of her voice.
If the Alpha had found her she would not be so calm. She had had a boring uneventful day and that was the best damn thing I had ever heard.
“Brownies.” I forced myself to reply, my voice only straining slightly with tension. Chey was silent for a second.
“Juniper…I haven’t seen you bake so much since…” she broke off. If I had been any less stressed the hell out I probably would have started to tear up at what she had tried to assert. I hadn’t baked so much since our father had been murdered.
Fortunately she didn’t finish her sentence though because a deep clearing of a throat cut her off. My back stiffened as I looked up into the reflection of the room in the window above the sink. The Monster was standing in the doorframe separating the kitchen from the dining room, his back was toward me and only half of his body was visible but his presence still made me feel like a rabbit stuck in a trap.
“Cheyenne go wait in your room. I need to speak to Juniper.” The Monster said in a tone of voice that left no room for argument. “Alone.”