Caught Forever Between Read Online Free PDF

for the wall.
    Cass blinked until the image cleared from her mind and from her sight. Helena didn’t glance at her, didn’t even blink. Maybe she believed her steady gaze kept the beast in his place.
    “What’s going on?” Raleigh stopped beside Cass. He fell silent, his narrowed gaze dropping from Helena’s face to her white-knuckled hands gripping the counter behind her. He took a step back.
    Cass gripped his arm. “I made a mistake,” she said, her voice low and level. She knew the loup garou ’s pointed ears would hear her even if she whispered. “I gave the wrong name.”
    Raleigh stared at her, his muscles tensing beneath her tight-fingered grip. “Who are you — ”
    In a blur of snarling movement, Devlin sprang around the corner and onto Raleigh, hitting him so hard that Cass was knocked away. Her head thudded into the wall. Bursts of color starred her vision. Nausea knotted her belly. She slid to the floor.
    As her vision cleared, she saw Raleigh on the floor, his right arm up and over his throat, his blond hair spilled across the floor like honey, his eyes wide as he struggled to escape the creature on top of him.
    Devlin, still mostly in two-legged form, eyes silvered and gleaming, black claws extending from human fingers, crouched on Raleigh, knee to chest.
    Cass glanced up as a hand latched around her arm and hauled her to her feet. Helena clutched a steak knife. Cass sucked in her breath.
    A low growl, building in intensity, froze them both. Cass looked at the loup garou. Devlin’s claws pierced Raleigh’s shoulders. The smell of blood and musk filled the room. The loup garou watched Cass through a wild tangle of hair, curving canines revealed as he growled.
    “I gave you the wrong name,” Cass said, heart pounding. She wondered if Devlin was still human enough to reason with. Wondered if he’d ever been. What had Gabrielle called him? Coeur sauvage. Wild heart.
    “Raleigh shot Alex,” Cass said. “I’ll still walk the road with you, loup garou, but let my sister walk away.”
    “No,” Devlin said, voice thick. “You had it right. She a kinslayer, for true.” His burning gaze fixed on Helena.
    Helena held his gaze for only a heartbeat or two before she lunged, jaw clenched, knife slashing like claws through the air, arcing down toward Devlin’s chest.
    “No! Don’t!” Cass cried, uncertain of who her words were meant for.
    The loup garou yanked one hand from Raleigh’s shoulder and slapped the knife from Helena’s hand. The blade tunk-tunked across the stone tiles. Helena’s wrist snapped beneath Devlin’s black-clawed grip, the sound sharp and sickening. Gasping, she dropped to her knees.
    “Kinslayer,” Devlin snarled.
    “It was an accident, but I’d do it again,” she whispered. Sweat beaded her forehead. “I’ve got no regrets.”
    Helena looked at Cass, and Cass felt herself drawn into her pained, defiant eyes like smoke into a fan. Thoughts and images whirled through her mind, leaving her dazed.
    Tiger. Sleeping cub. Black silhouette.
    She’d been right. And wrong.
    Cass knew in that moment, knew it with the clarity of a polished mirror, a mirror aimed behind her, that her treasured and puzzling memory of her mother bending over her was a memory of Helena; long red curls, dark eyes, smoky-sweet smell of tobacco and vanilla. The glitter sparkling on her face hadn’t been fairy sprinkles or magic dust or even tears — it’d been droplets of blood, their mother’s blood.
    Closing her eyes, Cass turned her face away.
    “She was doing meth again. Neglecting you,” Helena said. “Her life revolved around meth. I asked her to give you to me, since she had no time for you. I was eighteen, Cass, and I’d been on my own since you were born. Because she had no time for me, either. And I asked . . . we argued . . . she hit me . . . one thing led to another.”
    Helena laughed, a low, throaty sound full of irony. “When I found out you were an Intuitive, I was afraid