Bloodlines Read Free Page A

afraid, will take much longer than five minutes to explain.”
    Jed hesitated before heaving a sigh. He already knew how this was going to end. Some wolf, some bright-eyed kid, comes to Redford claiming he needs help saving a dying brother? Yeah, they weren’t going fishing. Maybe he’d known that since they opened the door. All his bitching and moaning, all his talk of leaving, he’d hoped that Victor and Randall would give their polite excuses and be gone.
    It never worked out that way.
    Jed scooped up Knievel, unbuckled the life vest, and set it aside. “Okay,” he said, the cat prancing off his lap over to Randall, sniffing him curiously before sneezing at him and heading back to Redford. “So talk. Apparently we’ve got all day.”
    Randall sagged back a bit. Even Jed hadn’t noticed how tightly wound the guy was until his shoulders eased and some of that tense worry lining his face relaxed. Randall nodded at him, glancing again at Victor. If it was for reassurance, Jed was pretty sure he was looking in the wrong place. Victor just looked satisfied that they hadn’t gotten kicked out.
    “In order to understand what’s happening, you have to know why my family is rather unique among the wolf world,” Randall started, taking off his glasses to clean them. “Most wolves, true wolves, are parts of a pack.”
    “And you’re a true wolf?” Jed asked, frowning. He was standing next to the wall, leaning against it, arms folded, looking almost lazy and half-asleep. His gaze, though, kept cutting between the three other men, trying to figure this out. It hit him then, all at once—he was the only human being in the room. Now that was a goddamn trip. “Which is different from a werewolf… how, exactly?” He knew the basics, but Jed figured more information couldn’t hurt.
    Randall gave him a slight smile, shrugging. “How is a Homo erectus different from Homo sapiens?”
    Jed burst out with a laugh, rubbing a hand across his mouth in a very failed attempt to hide his smirk. “One of them sounds like a very personal problem?” he guessed, grinning. “Or a porn title. I’ve got a little homo erection going on right here.”
    Randall just gave him a vaguely bemused look. “I was more referring to the fact one of them shat in caves and drew on walls, and the other created the Louvre.”
    “The former sounds exactly like Jed,” Victor mused idly. “Perhaps we have history standing across the room from us.”
    Randall laughed at that, low and husky, grin crinkling up the corners of his eyes. Jed had no fucking idea what was so funny, but he glowered at them both anyway. “Okay, homo nerd-us,” he shot back. Even Redford had a small smile on his face. “How about you use non-prissy-professor language for ten minutes.”
    “My apologies,” Randall said. He didn’t look sorry, though. “My point was that the werewolves are a decidedly less evolved version of a true wolf, or Cano, as named in the old Gaelic. They are the result of the Cano mixing our blood with humans.”
    “But Fil was trying to fix that,” Jed said, eyes going to Redford. “Shooting them up with his blood.” Turning werewolves, who were probably lesser in the eyes of someone like Fil, constrained by the moon cycles, unable to hold their own minds, into wolves that could turn when they wanted to. And Redford, without the full dose of whatever freaky mojo, was stuck in between. He could shift to furry form when he liked, but not without pain. And his instincts were all haywire. Hell, even a shrink couldn’t seem to make that part of it better.
    “That is what I gather from what Victor has told me, yes.” Randall nodded. He turned back to Redford. “And that is why you can help. My parents left their pack when my mother found out she was pregnant with my eldest brother, Anthony. They never told us exactly why, but my father talked about disagreeing with the direction the pack leaders were going in. The Gray Lady is the mother of us