Another Half

Hawthorne Pack

North Atlantic Coast

August 2011

Time was not on her side this time. Blade was trying hard to keep one eye on the clock while keeping the other eye on the road, but it was pretty evident that she was already late. Her mother had already called her twice to say that Abuelo refused to start his birthday party without her. He didn’t even want to drink water. Damn. And Blade knew Señor Felix Zamora better than he knew himself. He was capable of postponing or even canceling his birthday party until it was convenient for Blade to show up.

“A birthday party without you wouldn’t be a party at all,” Abuelo would say. He would then shrug it off as if he had just canceled an annoying online subscription and not the momentous occasion Connie Zamora, his mate of many years and Blade’s grandmother, had made it out to be for the past two months. Maybe that’s why Abuela could barely stand Blade. Abuelo never did anything without his granddaughter, and he didn’t care who knew it.

Unfortunately, her grandmother had scheduled Abuelo’s party on the evening of Blade’s summer school final exam. She couldn’t miss that final even if she died. And so here they were. Blade had rushed through her final and then drove to her family’s event as fast as she could.

“You must remind Abuelo of an old girlfriend of his,” Joaquin had said the previous week. Blade and Joaquin had been out to dinner on their weekly The Fabulous Zamora Twins Date Night, as Joaquin called it, a custom they adopted when each found their respective mates and Blade moved an hour away from Joaquin and her family to be with Nick.

Blade’s twin looked like her, except his features were masculine and his warm brown eyes had purple furrows instead of violet spots. He usually kept his purple-tinted black hair in a short low braid like Blade, too. Joaquin had always loved being a twin, and even as kids he had never minded when their mother dressed them alike.

“Dude, that’s just gross,” Blade told Joaquin while rolling her eyes at him. She was doing her best to cut her medium-rare steak with the restaurant’s table knife, but the knife was too blunt. “He’s our grandfather, not some dirty old man. I promise he’s never said or done anything to make me feel uncomfortable. And has it occurred to you that maybe I earned being the favorite because I was the only one of us actually paying attention to his toxicology lectures?”

Joaquin was studying his own table knife. He ran his thumb along the blunt edge and he shook his head sadly at it before he grunted. “You mean his two-hour-long sermons on how to kill people? Don’t fucking remind me. I’m still traumatized.” He snickered and set his table knife down. “Amalia told me this morning that I was reciting some recipe in my sleep last night. She asked me to make it for dinner sometime since I know it so well, and I’m like, ‘Babe, you don’t want me to make that or any other recipe I know for dinner.’”

Joaquin laughed hysterically as he reached down and took a small Bowie knife from each of his boots. He passed one to Blade and started to cut his steak with the other. “Can you imagine? Poisoning your own mate with dinner? What the hell would I do with a newborn son by myself?”

Blade laughed as she took the knife her brother gave her and started cutting her steak easily.

“Have you learned to change Andy’s diapers yet?”

Joaquin looked up with mock indignation. “Excuse you! I’m a pro at it! In fact, I bet I do it better than Amalia! I can do anything Amalia does to take care of my son. Well, I mean, I’m missing the plumbing to feed him properly, but I know how to—stop laughing! I don’t need boobs to feed him!”

“You’re just jealous ’cuz, of the two of us, I’m the one that got the boobs,” she said, laughing harder when he gave her a look of disgust.

Once they had settled down and after a long silence, while they ate, Joaquin whispered, “I love Amalia, worship her even, but if things ever went to shit, I’d use a dry wine. A dry would hide anything, right?”

Blade winked at him. “Done right, one could use any beverage of their choosing.” She took a sip of her Pinot Noir. Blade liked Amalia because she made Joaquin happy, but if that ever changed and Joaquin said anything—

“Ride or die, baby,” she said, raising her wine glass.

He raised his wine glass and clinked it with hers.

“Ride or die."

Joaquin grinned at her and it was this, his signature mischievous grin, Blade always remembered her twin by.

Blade was still driving when her cell phone rang again.

“Are you close?” her mother Rosalía asked.

“¡Ay, Mamá!”

“Don’t you ‘Ay, Mamá’ me!” her mother said. “Your grandmother is livid because the catering people want to start serving right now, you’re not here, and your abuelo is thinking about calling the whole damn thing off. Connie’s thinking about serving the champagne and doing the toast right now.”

“Fine. Tell her to go for it. Tell Abuelo I’ll do a special toast with him afterward. Just him and me. I’ll be there as soon as possible. I’m about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes away.”

Her mother hung up, and the phone started to ring again.

Nick.

It was already dark outside, but Blade pulled off along the side of the lonely highway.

“Hello? Nick? Is everything alright? Are you okay?”

“Where are you?”

She frowned. “I told you I was going to my grandfather’s birthday party tonight,” she said gently. “I was hoping you didn’t forget.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said with an edge to his voice. “I meant, are you there yet? Your fucking brother or cousin or whatever called me asking where you were.”

That’s strange, Talon said. Joaquin can’t stand him and I don’t think any of our cousins have his number.

“Yes, I just got here. I’ve parked and I’m getting out,” she said opening the door and allowing it to ding. “See? Will I see you when I get home? I can prepare—”

“Unlikely.” Nick hung up.

Blade shut the car door and kept driving as she did her best to assuage the pain and loneliness she felt by thinking of her twin and what he would do in her place. The twins had found their mates the same night, during the same Mating Festival. And while Joaquin Marked Amalia right away and they already had a pup, here Blade was, un-Marked, un-Mated, and without anything but her mate’s girlfriend practically living with them.

Despite her fear of what her family would do to Nick, perhaps it was time to talk to someone about her situation, although Blade had a feeling Joaquin already knew. Hell, she had a feeling everyone in her family already knew, including her grandfather. Especially Abuelo. Still, she didn’t want Nick to die, either by one of Joaquin’s knives or by Abuelo’s poisons. Not that anyone would kill him without clearing it with her first.

The Zamora Family lived in a compound several miles away, on the distant outskirts of the Scarlet Flame Pack through which she was driving. Abuelo liked to say that it was a hidden little pack within a Pack. It was long considered the safest place in the pack’s territory, so much so that their Alpha was more than happy to let his daughter Amalia move in with them when Joaquin turned out to be her mate.

On this day, however, a smoky deep orange blaze lit up the sky in the general area of the compound. Blade drove faster as her heart rate accelerated, fearing the absolute worst.

She heard the fire trucks in the distance before she saw them in her rearview mirror. She parked to the side and stopped, hoping they weren’t going toward her family’s compound.

As soon as all three trucks passed her, she took off behind them, following them to her family’s place.

Blade’s stomach sank and she screamed as she got out of the car. She sank to her knees in front of the house and cried as the flames that consumed her family home went up higher and higher into the smoky, black sky. A firefighter tried to lengthen the distance between Blade and the blaze, but she fought them until she passed out.

The final report determined that the fire was the work of an arsonist, but the rest was inconclusive. The whole case baffled investigators. The fire had apparently started in the main dining room, where everyone had gathered. The arsonist used a generous amount of gasoline, started the fire, and left. But the puzzling part was that no one present—not Joaquin, not Rosalía, not Abuelo, nobody—resisted the atrocity committed against them. This was not like them.

But all were gone now, all were silenced. Joaquin, her twin and best friend. Abuelo, who had loved her most until the very end. Uncle Danny and his mate, their two sons, and their mates, and Constanza, Abuela’s namesake and Blade’s only female cousin whose mate would now never find her. Rosalía, Blade’s mother who never lost hope Emilio would come back to her despite hard evidence of his death, and even Abuela, her bitter old grandmother who simply never liked her. They had all died where they sat, forever waiting for Blade’s arrival. The only empty chair was the one at Abuelo’s left, the one Blade would now never occupy again.

But it did not take long for Blade to understand why her family showed no resistance. They were already dead by the time the fire started.

The catering company had disappeared. If there had been one, the main investigator said, they left without a trace.

And it was true. There had been no scent or trace of anyone but her family in what was left of the main house when Blade walked theough it the next day or the subsequent three weeks. She had looked everywhere for something, anything, but there was nothing.

Unfortunately, all the glassware and everything in the main house had been incinerated. The evidence of mass murder had been burnt into oblivion. Blade knew no one would have believed her, not without revealing herself and Joaquin as spies for her grandfather, the pack’s spymaster. Not only would that put the pack in considerable danger, but who would she accuse?

Who did this?! It was the question that ate Blade alive the following days, weeks, and even months.

Fortunately, Andy had been battling the sniffles that day, and Amalia had asked her family to babysit him for that night. Blade found it ironic that the one day an otherwise healthy baby fell sick would be the thing that saved his life. Amalia’s mother had died the previous year, and none of Amalia’s brothers’ mates was interested in raising a motherless three-month-old pup as their own. Blade was beyond grateful for that, and she immediately took him as her own.

“Get rid of it,” Nick said the first night Andy went home with Blade. “That fucking kid ain’t yours and people are gonna start thinking he’s mine, that he’s my heir as beta. Fuck that.”

“No. He’s my twin’s orphaned son,” Blade said. “I’m all he has left. And his name is Andrés or Andy, not kid and certainly not fucking kid.”

Nick shoved her against the wall, grabbed her by the throat, and squeezed until she started choking. She tightened her fists into a hard little balls to keep from retaliating.

“Don’t fuck with me, Blade,” Nick said harshly. “You don’t want to know what I’d do if you piss me off bad enough. So, I’m going to tell you this once, so we both fucking understand each other. The little fucker should have died in that fire with its momma,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that. Obviously, it’s what the Moon Goddess had wanted, to keep that family together, but his stupid momma farmed him out so as not to be bothered by him. Selfish bitch. She should’ve taken her spawn with her to the pyre. You should either help that fucking kid unite with his parents so they’ll live happily ever after or give him up to a nice wolf family that needs another mouth to feed.” Nick let her go and got ready to leave again, even though he had just arrived. “And don’t you dare spend my money to feed that little bastard.”

“My grandfather left me enough money for that,” Blade said, still trying to appease him, but she soon regretted her thoughtless reply.

“Really?” Nick said slowly as he came back and stood in front of her, the sudden interest in his eyes scared her like the choking never could. She could stop the choking at any time, but there was nothing she could do against his hunger for her family’s money.

“Everything they all fucking had is ours now, isn’t it? It’s all ours,” he whispered. “Everyone knows your grandpappy was flushed. The old bastard probably had more money than all our pack. How much did they leave us?”

“Not much,” she said coldly. “Just enough to raise Andy.”

“I don’t fucking believe it. Get yourself whatever you want and put the rest in our name,” he said.

“It’s Andy’s inheritance, too. I have to share with him.”

“Not if he doesn’t live long enough to claim it,” Nick said and turned to leave. “I’ll take care of it if you want. Accidents happen all the time,” he said before shutting the door behind him.

That was a threat, Talon whispered in her mind space.

No, Talon. That was a promise, Blade said as she approached the window and watched through narrowed eyes as her mate drove off, presumably to see his girlfriend in the Pack House.

We can’t let anything happen to our baby, Talon said. He’s ours now, and he’s the last of our line.

Blade nodded.

“Nothing will happen to him. Andy is all I have left.”