Chapter 5 The Enemy Is Your Friend

Liora

His eyes were like lightening when they landed on me. He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face as he turned to glance at the other man still standing outside his window. “Its just the cat,” he said. “Zane thought I needed one for some reason.”

The man said something but I couldn’t hear from where I was. What I did hear though was his fading footsteps a minute later. He was leaving. 

“And why are you still here?” Cassius said, returning his gaze to me and not minding to hide the contempt in his eyes. “Get out!”

If I had a face, I was sure he’d see the look of shock on my face. Maybe my mouth would have fallen open as well. Thankfully though, I recovered quickly. My paws moved first and before I knew it, I was flying down the corridors.

Cassius was – he really wasn’t Kael. 

How could he? In that face – how could he taint the memory of my best friend like that? It was like saying, “Ignorance is bliss.” I would have loved to stay ignorant about who he really was. It was better when I saw the changes in him, expected it even. 

But him being the one to kill the Alpha King? I never expected that. Zane was his best friend for crying out loud. Why would he ever think of something like that? Against a person who was like a brother to him?

I was still spinning in my thoughts when I heard Dax's voice. “What are you doing out here?” 

I snapped my head up at breakneck speed to see that Dax was walking towards me. How the hell did I end up in front of his door? He crouched and brushed his fingers through my fur then glanced behind me as though expecting someone to be there. 

My mind was still back at that window, still hearing Cassius’s voice promise that Alpha Zane was going to be a dead man by midnight, and my body hadn’t quite caught up to the fact that I was now sitting outside Dax’s door instead.

“Hey.” Dax’s voice gentled, the way it did with everyone, the way that had made half the pack fall a little in love with him without meaning to. He crouched lower, closer to my eye level, with his forearms braced on his knees. “You look spooked. Cassius ran you off?”

If only that was all this was.

I opened my mouth to meow  that was the only language I had, the only thing my body knew how to do and instead a whimper came out, small and human-shaped even though it shouldn’t have been. Dax’s brows pulled together. My heart jumped. 

Did I just – did I just fucking whimper? 

“Star?”

I hated that name. 

But the way it fell out of his mouth made it sound so… right. So mine. Like I actually belonged in this strange world where people could turn to wolves. Where wolves in sheep’s clothing actually existed. 

Still, right now I didn’t have the luxury of hating anything except the ticking clock in my chest, the minutes bleeding away toward midnight while I crouched here, mute and useless, in front of the one person who might actually listen.

“Echo,” I thought. Hoping somehow the show would come to my rescue. If there was something she could do  Anything. After all, either everything I’d seen in the past two weeks, I was now more open to the fact that anything was possible. “Echo, I have to tell him. I have to say something. How do I –”

There was no answer from her. Just a strange, electric hum low in my throat, like something coiling to spring.

Dax reached for me again, his fingers brushing my ear, and something about the gentleness of it – after Cassius’s revulsion, after the ice in his voice – cracked something open in me. I felt it before I understood it: heat rose up through my chest, into my throat, my jaw, until it didn’t feel like my jaw anymore.

“I need to let Dax know what’s happening.”

The words burst out of me, startling both me and Dax who suddenly looked like he’d send a ghost. 

He went very, very still.

For a second neither of us moved. His hand was still resting against the side of my face, frozen there, his eyes locked on mine like he was waiting for me to prove he’d imagined it.

“Dax, you have to listen to me.”

He snatched his hand back so fast he nearly toppled backward off his heels. “What –” His voice cracked clean in half. “What did you just –”

I just spoke! I just fucking talked. How fucking freakish was that? I was a talking cat! 

“I know how this sounds.” I continued, trying to sound calmer than I felt inside. 

My own voice startled me every time it left my mouth. I was really going this? “I know. But I need you to listen to me right now, because we don’t have much time.”

Dax was on his feet the next instant, backing toward the wall, one hand braced against it like he needed something solid to hold onto. His eyes never left me. 

“You’re talking.” He muttered, shaking his head as if that would pull him back to reality. “You’re a cat!” 

I would have rolled my eyes if I didn’t know the gravity of the fuck up we were in. I know I’m a cat, thank you, Dax. But I need you to listen to me. 

“I don’t have an explanation for you. Not one you’d believe, anyway, and not one we have time for.” I rattled on. 

My heart  or the frantic thing hammering where a heart should be – was going so fast I thought it might give out before I even got the words out. “I happened to hear Cassius just now. He was outside his window, and there was a man, and Cassius –” 

The words wanted to come out in a rush, all at once, and I made myself slow down, made myself say it clearly, because this was the only chance I might get. “Cassius is planning to kill Zane. Tonight. He said midnight.”

Dax didn’t move or blink. For a moment I actually let myself hope – hope that the shock of me talking had opened some door in him wide enough for the rest of it to walk through too.

Then his face shut like a fist closing.

“No,” he said.

“Dax –”

“No.” He repeated and pushed off the wall at the same time. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what just happened here, or what kind of trick this is, but I am not going to stand in my own hallway and listen to a  cat. Goddess, I must be going crazy.”

“You’re not going crazy, and I’m not lying to you, I swear.” As crazy as that sounded, that was all I had to say. 

“You’re not even supposed to be able to talk!” His hands came up and dragged through his hair. “Fuck! I’m talking to a cat now.” His eyes shut down to me. “Is this Hawthorne’s doing? Did he plant you here to break us apart? The one night we actually have something good to celebrate.”

“Jesus, No!” Help me, Echo. Where the hell are you when I need you? “Look, we don’t have time for this. Cassius is about to kill Alpha Zane and you need to stop him. I heard them and he knows and he told me to get out –”

“Cassius has always hated cats,” Dax snapped. “That doesn’t make him a killer.”

“You think I’m doing this because I hate him?”

“Then what are you talking about?” His voice rose, cracking the careful calm he always wore like armor. “Cassius is going to kill Zane?” He laughed, a stupid maniacal sound that didn’t sound like him at all. “Do you know how insane that sounds?”

He shook his head again. “What’s even more insane is that you can talk. And I’m fucking talking to a cat!”

“I know how it sounds.” My throat hurts. Everything hurt, this new body, this borrowed voice, the useless minutes slipping away while he stood there laughing at me. “But I’m not lying, and Zane doesn’t have until morning to find out I was right.”

Dax looked at me for a long time. I would give everything to find out what was going on behind the damning look he gave me. What was he thinking? Did he believe me? Would he – 

“I’m not doing this,” he said finally. “I’m not taking the words of a cat who could as well be a spy for shit.”

“Dax, please –”

“I have to go.” He was already moving, already reaching for the door. “Stay here. Don’t – don’t do anything stupid. I need to think.”

“There’s no time to think!” I shouted, surprising even myself.

He didn’t answer. He crossed the corridor and scooped me up before I could dart past him and set me down inside his bedroom with a gentleness that felt almost crueler than if he’d been rough about it.

“I’ll figure this out,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “After the banquet.”

The door clicked shut.

I threw myself against it anyway, my claws scraping uselessly against the wood, screaming his name until my new voice gave out entirely. 

“Well, there goes our only hope.” Echo said helplessly inside my head.