Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(83)

“Oh, how wonderful.” Petting hands in his hair, across his shoulders, his E trying to assuage his hurt. “Tell me more about Brodie.”

“Damn adrenaline junkie could make anyone laugh.” Alexei’s chest squeezed. “It was his way of dealing with life, with the world. The day we buried our parents, he came to the funeral in wolf form with a big green ribbon tied around his neck. Our aunt tied the ribbon for him.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman.”

“She’s the best.” A tough-as-nails soldier, but one with endless heart. “The ribbon was for our mom, who loved the color green.” Alexei swallowed the thickness in his throat. “I was always the angry one. I didn’t want to go to the funeral, but Brodie used his teeth to grab the cuff of my pants and literally dragged me there.”

“All your people have left you.” She kissed his cheeks, his lips. “That’s why you’re so angry.”

He exhaled a shuddering breath, took in her warmth and life on the inhale. “My family is cursed.” There was no other way to put it. “You need to know about it if you’re determined to be with me.”

A narrowing of her eyes. “No, I get into the lap of every wolf who asks.”

Growling low in his throat, he sat up. “Who’s been asking?”

“Men,” she said primly. “Leopards keep leaving tiny, shiny gifts at my door, and before the Arrows withdrew, several of the single males asked if I’d be interested in a private dinner, or an evening stroll.”

Alexei bared his teeth. “Any man who asks now is going to get an education on the sharpness of wolf claws. As for the damn cats, I’m going to scalp their spotty fur.”

She cupped his face in her hands, her smile unrepentant and her kiss tender. “What’s the curse and why does it make you so angry and sad at the same time?”

Alexei’s wolf lay down inside him, its head on its paws and its heart desolate. “Changelings have a single major vulnerability.” It was a topic on which he’d maintained his silence with even his closest friends, the wound too close to the surface. “At times, our animal halves threaten to overwhelm our human selves.” His fingers clenched on her hips. “That’s not always bad. When I run as the wolf, the wolf should be ascendant. It’s his time. The problem comes when a changeling gives up the human side of their nature forever and becomes the animal. We call them rogues.”

It was so fucking hard to speak, to lay his family’s pain wide open. He held on to Memory, leaned on her warmth, her affection. “My grandfather went rogue when my father was two years of age.” Alexei had only ever known his grandfather as images caught on camera, a tall blond man with features startlingly similar to his own—the similarity had fascinated him as a child, but as an adult, it was a constant reminder of his ugly future. “My father went rogue when I was seven.”

“Does this mean they are wolves in the wild, lost to you?”

Alexei blinked back the burning in his eyes. “I could deal with that. If I knew they lived, I could handle it.” He’d have found them during his times as a wolf, run with them, been a family with them. “But rogues are so feared because they don’t simply become wild wolves. They’re drawn to those they used to love before they lost their humanity, and rather than just being with them—because that would be more than fine, their wolf selves welcomed—the rogues are violent. Rogues track, attack, and kill the people they once loved.”

Memory’s cheekbones pushed up against her skin, her expression stark. “As if they’re angry at what they’ve lost and want to destroy it?”

Alexei shrugged. “Maybe. No one knows. I’ve heard rumors of rogues who made a return to being changeling, but I think they’re fairy tales we tell ourselves to find hope in a hopeless situation.”

For the Vasiliev family, the pain rolled down the decades in an endless chain. “To be a rogue is to be under an automatic execution order.” The packs had no other choice. “Brodie attacked his mate when he went rogue. I found Etta’s mauled body when I went looking for my brother. She was still alive, died a minute later in my arms.” She’d been so light in his hold, a sweet, loving woman forever gone, her family devastated, their dreams for her buried in the earth with her body.

“You should’ve seen Brodie with her before. He loved her.” Alexei didn’t want Memory to know his brother only as the violent killer he’d become; he needed to show her the generous and devoted mate Brodie had been before it all went horribly wrong. “Idiot once dived out of a plane above the territory with a parachute that opened out to say, ‘Etta, I’m sorry,’ after they’d had a fight.”

Memory’s smile trembled. “I wish I could’ve known him. Known her.” She brushed back his hair, stroked his shoulder, his upper arm.

Accepting the way she touched him, comforted him, he told her the rest. “I tracked him, but when the time came, I couldn’t hurt him. I would’ve allowed him to shred me to pieces.” He’d collapsed onto his knees at seeing his adventurous, funny big brother’s bloody muzzle and mad eyes, his heart broken. “Hawke knew. He’d followed me. He did what needed to be done.”

“I’m so sorry, Alexei.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, Memory pressed her cheek to his. The salt of her tears was wet against him, the tremor in her voice potent with emotion.