“Except you know it is real. You’ve seen how strong we are, how fast. You heard me talking to my brother just now. You didn’t have a word for what we are before, but you knew something was wrong, didn’t you?”

Jax nodded, his eyes shining in the dim room. He didn’t seem capable of saying anything more, so Cade tried to fill the strained silence. “What do you want to ask me? I know you must have questions.”

“W-what do you mean you’re a w-werewolf?”

“I mean I am.I’m a wolf shapeshifter. Do you know what that means?”

“A monster.”

Cade shrugged. “I know it seems that way, but we aren’t vicious and out of control. Our minds remain partially human, at least, and we don’t kill people. It’s not like in the movies.”

“What do you want with m-me?”

“How much did you hear of what I said to Connor?”

“Everything.”

Cadewinced. “I didn’t want you to find out that way, Jax. I thought you were sleeping.”

“I learned to sleep light.” Jax fixed him with a steady, implacable gaze. “I’ve been fighting monsters for a long time now.”

Cade narrowed his eyes at that, but only nodded. He needed to find out what Jax was hiding in his past, and find out where those scars came from, but he’d wait until later. One crisis at a time.

“Like I said, we’re not like what you’ve probably seen in movies or on TV. We mostly want to be left alone, and we try to stay away from humans.”

“From h-humans…” Jax said, his voice shaky. “Oh, shit.”

“We don’t randomly attack people. We’ll defend ourselves if we have to, but that’s it. I’m telling you the truth. And we don’t eat people, or any of that crap Hollywood puts out.”

“You-you told your brother you needed to d-drink my blood. Like a-a vampire.” His voice had risen on each word until he was almost shouting at the end. Mason stirred next to him, but Jax rose up on his knees, his body tensed and ready to run, to fight if he had to.

Cade held up a hand. “Calm down, please. You misunderstood. Let me explain…”

“No. You tell me what that meant. How did I misunderstand? You said I’d be a blood whore. Are you going to kill us? Suck us dry of blood?”

Cade closed his eyes and sighed. Fuck. “No. Please settle down and give me a chance to explain. We’ll work this out. Okay? I promise.”

“What do you mean, we’ll work it out? I want to take my brother and leave. Right now. If you’re really not a monster, then you let me go!”

Mason sat up and rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Jax?” he said. Jax reached around and put a hand on him, but never took his eyes off Cade.

Cade spoke quietly, keeping his tone level. Jax was about to freak out big time, and Cade could feel it building. “I don’t think I can let you go any more, Jax. Earlier today, I told you I would, but I don’t know if I could have gone through with it, even then. Every hour more I spend with you, it gets harder, compels me more. I know you don’t understand, but if you’ll let me explain…”

Jax’s nerve finally broke, and he scooped Mason up in his arms and lunged for the door. He blanched in horror to find that Cade made it there before him and stood blocking the exit. Backing violently away, he stumbled over furniture in his way but made it over to the far corner of the room, pulling a chair over in front of them. He screamed in abject terror as Cade walked slowly toward him, his hands held out to the sides.

AsJax’s fear increased, Cade knew he had to stop walking toward the boys, so he slowly began to back away. Rayce and Connor must have heard the shouting through the thin walls, because they were now outside the room, pounding frantically. He opened the door and saw both of them looking alarmed and panicky.

“It’s okay,” he said to them. “Rayce, come in and take Mason. This could get out of hand. Jax has discovered our true nature.”

“Jax,” he said, walking back toward him slowly and holding out his hand. “Let Rayce take Mason. He won’t hurt him.”

“No! Stay back! Both of you.” Jax yelled, backing away, looking around wildly. He turned to make a break for the bathroom and screamed in horror to find that Cade somehow made it there before him. Cade plucked Mason from his arms and handed the crying, frightened child off to Rayce, catching Jax’s wrists and holding him when he would have attacked Rayce.

“Cade? Should I…” Connor asked, nervously standing behind where Cade wrestled with Jax.

“No,” Cade said over his shoulder. “Go back to your room. Help Rayce settle Mason down—he’s scared to death. Jax overheard our conversation and he’s upset, but I’ll calm him down.”

Jax screamed in outrage. “Calm me down? Calm me down? Are you crazy? Let me go, you monster!”

Cade picked him up and threw him on the bed. When Jax started to jump back up, he pointed a long finger at him. “No! Sit down. I’ll explain everything, but you have to calm down.”

Jax subsided but glared furiously up at Cade. Cade turned to go to the door and lock it behind his retreating brother. Before he could turn back around, a glass lamp exploded on the wall next to his head, missing him by inches.

“Damn it, Jax, I’ll have to pay for that.”

Jax wasn’t listening, because he had jumped from the bed and was busy trying to pick up the television to hurl it at him too. Cade crossed the room in two strides and jerked it out of Jax’s grip. “Cut it out, damn it.”

He put the television back and whirled around to catch the chair that was about to land on his head. After wrenching it from Jax’s hands, he set it down carefully and advanced on the boy, who was trying to leap over the beds to get away. He caught him in his arms in mid-leap and sat down with him, his arms tightly wrapped around him as he struggled and screamed for help. Keeping one hand around his arms, he put the other over his mouth, cupping his hand so Jax couldn’t sink his teeth into it.

“Shut up or you’ll have security in here.”

Rather than quiet him, that remark only served to intensify his screams and struggles. Cade laid him down on his back and stretched out over him, holding his hands over his head with one hand and keeping a hand over his mouth with the other. Trying his best not to hurt him, he simply held him down as Jax slowly exhausted himself. It took almost twenty minutes with Cade waiting for the police to pound on the door at any moment, before Jax finally sagged into the mattress, breathing hard through his nose.

“If I move my hand off your mouth, will you behave? Because if you yell, it goes right back and then I’ll have to gag you.”

Jax glared at him for a long moment and then nodded. Cade eased his hand away, staring warily down at him. “Better?”

Again, Jax glared, but though his breathing was still really rapid, with his chest heaving up and down, he’d lost the wild-eyed look of sheer panic.“D-don’t kill me,” he whispered.

Cade sagged down on top of him. “Damn it, I’m not going to kill you.”

“B-but you said you’d d-drink my blood.”

“What you heard was…out of context. Sort of. Jax, I promise I won’t touch you until you give me permission, okay?”

“Permission? To kill me?”

“No. Damn it, I’d never harm you, Jax. You’re the most important person in the world to me. I won’t touch you until you say it’s okay.”

“You’re touching me now,” he said accusingly, his eyes flashing with hurt and anger.

“So I am. I’m going to let you up, okay? Do you promise not to run or throw things at me?”

Jax hesitated, seeming to think it over, then gave him a quick nod in response, his eyes wary.

Gingerly, ready to catch him if he made any sudden moves. Cade got off him and sat beside him on the bed. He turned toward him, blowing out a long breath. “Are you ready to listen?”

Jax gave another quick, sullennod, and Cade nodded back. “Just let me tell it in my own way. Please. I’ve never explained this to anyone before, and I probably won’t be very good at it, but just listen to me.”

After a long moment, Jax shrugged. “I’ll play along for a minute, but you better get to the truth pretty damn quick.”

“Nobody really knows how this all started. The shape-shifting thing. We’ve just always been here, co-existing rightalongside humans. You just never knew it. The pack we’re trying to reach—it’s called the Dark Hollow Pack—they think it started with Indian tribes a long, long time ago. But my pack originated in Europe, so who really knows how it began over there? When I was about your age, I got really curious and tried to do research on the whole idea. There’s actually a theory called the Cain connection—you know, like from the Bible? It says that Cain killed his brother Abel and drank his blood. God punished him by banishing him and He also told him that from that moment on Cain would wear a mark to show everyone what he was, and what he’d done. It was the mark of Cain. Now nobody knows for sure what that is. It’s all a mystery. But the mark extended to all of his descendants. Some people think the ability to turn into a wolf—a beast—could be the mark of Cain. There’s an ancient tradition that says some of Cain’s descendants were monsters. In the Viking epic Beowulf, for example, Grendel was descended from Cain.”

“This is crazy.”

“Crazier than me being a shape-shifter? In the ancient text of Beowulf, it says …from Cain came down all kinds of misbegotten – demons, ogres, elves, beasts and evil shades. Once we reach puberty, some of my people can turn into a wolf if we need to, or even if we just want to run with the moon. We can call up our wolf at any time, but we usually do it on our own land, in our own time.”

“I thought you were a motorcycle gang.”

Cade raised his eyebrows. “Really?” He grinned. “No, my friends and I just like to ride. We rode together at home, long before we started on this trip.”