"They're here," she told Merlin. Trusting her keen senses, he just nodded.

"Sit, girl," Merlin said, snapping his fingers at the Siberian husky. "These are folks we're expecting."

The growling stopped, but the dog remained on alert. Ears pricked forward.

"Definitely got a mind of her own," Merlin said, voice amused.

"Hmm. So do you. Seems like I was right about that Siberian husky bloodline."

"Hush, woman."

Angelique snorted. "Like that's ever going to happen."

Hearing the door creak open in the living room, then snick shut again, Angelique counted three sets of quiet footsteps as Rene and the Alphas-her sister and brother-in-law-crossed to the back room in urgent strides.

"You sure it's him, traiteur?" Ambrose Bonaparte asked as he entered the room, his whiskey-smooth voice pitched low and tight.

"After all this time?" January added, following on his heels, and glancing at her sister with vivid jade-green eyes. Her glossy, snow-white hair had been twisted into a French plait that hung with precision between her shoulder blades.

"Positive," Angelique replied. "Take a look yourself." She stepped back from the table.

Ambrose stepped up beside Jackson in one long-legged stride, his six-foot frame dressed in rain-spattered black jeans and a faded blue workshirt whose rolled-up sleeves revealed sun-browned and muscle-corded arms. His intent amber eyes swept his nephew from head to foot. Studied the cuts. Lingered on the tattoo inked into his arm.

"Mon Dieu," Ambrose breathed, raking a hand through his shoulder-length chestnut waves. "It is him." Old grief shadowed his face. "He looks so much like Nicolas ..."

"He was conscious for a little bit," Angelique said. "But he didn't know me."

"How could he?" January asked. "He was little more than a toddler the last time Nicolas brought him here." She joined Ambrose at the table. Their mingled scents-juniper, ripe apples, and damp cotton-washed over Angelique.

Rene lingered in the doorway, one hand touching the threshold, as if uncertain whether he should stay or not. Or, Angelique reflected, if he wanted to. She felt a twinge of understanding and sympathy. He knows what's coming.

"Moss is in the playroom with the twins," she said. "He might need a hand."

A smile brushed Rene's lips, but he shook his head, refusing the out she offered him, pretty much as Angelique had figured he would. He'd found Jackson and felt responsible for him.

Decision made, Rene leaned his shoulder against the threshold and folded his arms over his hard-muscled chest.

A muscle flexed in Ambrose's jaw. "Rene told me where and how Jackson was found. Do you know what was done to him?"

"It looks like someone went to a lot of trouble to make him a true zombie," Merlin replied. "Ain't exactly sure why the trick failed, but we're gonna fix him with an uncrossing to make sure no trace of the hex remains."

"Before you send him to the cage," Angelique added quietly, "he needs all the help he can get."

Ambrose lifted his eyes to hers, looked at her from beneath his dark lashes. His nostrils flared. "That's wise," he said. "But I suggest you hurry. Your potions ain't gonna hold him long. See how he's twitching? He reeks of impending Change."

Angelique didn't need to look. She knew. Ambrose was right-time was running out and they needed to get Jackson over to the solid stone cottage they called the cage and shackle him in steel chains before it was too late.

Turning to her husband, Angelique instructed him to prepare an uncrossing bath while she readied her spell. Merlin nodded, then silently went to his worktable and set to work with his mortar and pestle. Just as Angelique started for her own worktable, her sister spoke.

"He's too old. He'll never survive. We should spare him the agony."

Angelique froze, not sure she'd heard right, then hoping she hadn't. Slowly, she swiveled back around. "You don't mean that. You can't. He deserves the chance."

"Thanks to his mother's binding, Jackson would've been better off if Gaspard had taken him along with the rest of his family." An odd blend of despair and icy fury washed across January's pale face. "He's finally returned to us and we're going to lose him again, just as quickly. Lucia murdered her own son."

"That remains to be seen," Ambrose growled. "Your sister's right-the boy deserves the chance his mama stole from him. No one's giving him the coup de grace unless he fails. No one."

As Ambrose locked into a stare-down with his wife-amber eyes versus jade-Angelique felt the Alpha's powerful aura-primal and commanding and rooted in the deep, dark earth-sweep over her like an invisible wave. Tension stretched between the Alphas, thickened like cold molasses.

January finally ended it when she looked away. "A chance he'll have, then." Her cold gaze landed on Angelique. "Where is it?"

Angelique frowned. "Where's what?"

"The binding his mother marked him with."

"I didn't notice anything ..."

January leaned over Jackson, sliding her hands over his nearly nude body, her fingertips searching for the scars that had chained him into one form and denied him the other. Ambrose's long, callused fingers searched alongside his wife's until he tugged down the waistband of Jackson's boxer-briefs and revealed a tiny series of crisscrossing scars on his left hip.

Angelique joined them in studying the age-whitened scars-a seemingly random arrangement that wasn't, but nothing that Jackson would've ever realized carried meaning beyond an old injury he no longer remembered.

Angelique noticed that her sister's thick, black claws now curved from the tips of her fingers, and before she could even blink, January slashed her claws across the scars, severing their pattern. Dark blood welled up on Jackson's skin.

"Great Mother," Angelique muttered, glaring at her sister. "I don't think that was necessary. He's been cut more than enough already and lost more blood than he can afford. Obviously, the binding no longer works."

"Now it won't for true," January replied unapologetically.

Angelique's pulse sped through her veins when Jackson's eyes flickered open and he looked around, his dilated honey-colored eyes glassy. He squinted against the light, then his attention locked onto Ambrose, expression puzzled. After a moment, his face smoothed, and he whispered, "Hey, Nonc. ca va bien? Comment les zaricos?"

TWENTY-NINE.

STRENGTH, SOUTH, FIERCE ANIMALS.

Cielo let out a happy but anxious string of whoo-whoos.

Daddy!

Still here, girl.

But given the familiar face above him, Jackson was pretty sure he was still dreaming, caught up in the fever's blistering and thought-warping heat, pain chewing on his bones with sharp little rat teeth.

For a moment, he thought he was back in the hurricane-rocked pickup, Jeanette clutched against his chest, his papa yanking open the door and reaching for Mama-and a different kind of pain pierced his heart.

No, ain't going there. No.

Then a rusty cog of a memory slipped into place and an image rolled through his mind: amber eyes. Chestnut hair falling in waves to his broad shoulders. The sharp smell of juniper and ashes. Teeth flashing white in a quick grin. Strong hands hoisting him into the air. Tossing him up into the sky.

"Ah, there he is, mon neveu prefere. Comment les zaricos, eh?"

"Les zaricos est sales, Nonc Ambro. I wanna keep flying. Throw me again!"

The memory faded and Jackson closed his eyes again, tasted honey and bitter herbs on his tongue and at the back of his throat, felt himself drifting above the fire while distant teeth nibbled on his muscles and bones.

Ice-cold fingers brushed against his forehead and Jackson sucked in a breath, inhaling the earthy and familiar scents of juniper and ashes, ripe apples and cinnamon. A husky voice-one from long-ago dreams-said, "Les zaricos est sales, cher. Jackson. Can you hear me?"

Jackson forced his eyes open again, squinting against the light. His uncle Ambrose still stood over him. Persistent dream, this. But-no harm in double-checking. "You real?" he croaked.

A sad smile brushed Ambrose's lips instead of the joyous grin that Jackson remembered. "Oui, boy, I'm real. Your tante January is here, so is Tante Angelique. You finally found your way home."

"Home?" Jackson looked past his uncle to the woman with the ivory hair standing beside him in a tight purple T-shirt over jeans. Remembered her mesmerizing eyes, the lullabies she would sing in Cajun. Remembered her white fur and fast paws. Tante January.

"I'm in Le Nique?" he whispered, feeling like he'd slipped in time. He saw shelves behind his uncle, stocked with jars and bottles of potions, powders, and salves like at his tante's botanica, then realized he lay on a sheet-draped and padded examination table.

"Yes," a woman's voice said. "Rene and the others followed your dog and found you where you'd been buried. Do you remember any of that?"

"Cielo ..." Jackson began, alarmed. A cold, wet nose nuzzled his hand, reassuring him.

Daddy.

"That her name?" the woman said. "She's fine. She's been fed and watered and she's refused to leave your side."

"Good girl, you," Jackson murmured, giving his fingers to Cielo's warm tongue. He felt himself falling toward the bonfire raging just beneath him. And shook himself.

Stay awake. You need to get a grip and figure out what's going on.

"Do you remember what happened to you?" the woman asked again.

Images flashed behind Jackson's eyes, stabbed at his thoughts-a desperate and brutal fight, an oily potion, a knife slicing into him, shovels, dirt. No air and bad memories and a woman's voice-all silver sea tones.

Might be too late for this little chien de maison.

Lache pas, lache pas.

"Musta pissed someone off royal, me," Jackson whispered. "Zombie-hex and a fucking grave."

"The hex didn't take, near as we can tell," the woman said. "But we plan to follow up with a cleansing, make sure you're uncrossed for true."

"C'est ca bon. Merci," Jackson rasped. Despite the potion he still tasted on his tongue, pain throbbed at his temples. Fire smoldered beneath his skin.

"Here's some water."

Jackson felt an arm slide beneath his shoulders and ease him up so he could drink from the glass someone pressed against his lips. He drank the cold water down in long, grateful gulps, icing his aching throat and cooling-for a moment-the fevered heat behind his eyes. When he finished the water, he was laid down again.

"Better?" the woman asked.

Jackson turned his head, following the sound of her voice to the other side of the table. A woman with warm, emerald-green eyes met his gaze. Her long hair was tied back, but a single auburn ringlet had escaped to frame her pretty face. He didn't recognize her at first, not until her lips curved into an encouraging smile. She'd been a freckle-faced teen when he'd last seen her-a lifetime ago.

"Tante Ange," he breathed.

She nodded, her smile widening, only to fade as concern flickered in her eyes. "Do you know what's happening to you? What comes next?"

Fear iced Jackson's spine. "'Next'? I thought you said the hex didn't take."

"It didn't," Angelique assured him. "That's not why you're hurting, not why you're fevered. Did your papa ever talk to you about your First Change?"

Jackson stared at her. "First Change?" he repeated, pulse racing through his veins. "Just that I ain't ..."

The words turned to ash in Jackson's throat as the bonfire blaze snapped up from below and engulfed him. Pain wrenched at him as his muscles spasmed. His eyes snapped shut. Hands as cold as Arctic icebergs grasped his shoulders, pinned him down. His body twitched and thrummed-a live wire.

The spasm ended as abruptly as it had begun and Jackson gasped in relief. But the freezing hands remained on his shoulders, heavy as steel.

"We're running out of time," he heard his uncle say, voice wire-tight. "Jackson, can you hear me, boy?"

Light needled Jackson's eyes as he forced them open and met Ambrose's grim gaze. Realized the hands holding him belonged to his uncle. "Oui, Nonc."

"Bon. Then I need you to listen close," Ambrose said. "I don't know what-all you remember, but you need to understand what's happening to you. Your papa was a loup-garou and you're a half blood. And you're going through your First Change."

Jackson's heart pounded wildly in his chest. "Change? No. I was told that some half bloods never Change and that I was one of those."

January stirred beside Ambrose. "Who told you that?" she asked. "Your mama? She lied to you, Jackson-"

"That doesn't matter," Ambrose cut in, slanting a dark look at his wife. "Not now. This ain't the time."

January shook her head, but said nothing more, her lips compressing into a thin, bitter line.

Fury shook Jackson. He aimed his heated gaze at his snowy-haired but youthful tante. "You ain't got no business saying my mother lied to me or to anyone else," he said, voice strained. "No business. None."

January met his furious regard, a wolfish and powerful light gleaming in her jade eyes, but no regret. Her lips parted, but before she could say anything, Ambrose spoke, his words sliding like a butter knife between them.

"Nicolas was just as responsible as Lucia in what happened to you and your sisters."

Jackson's heart clenched. He remembered Jeanette snuggled in his arms, Junalee's smile. Tried not to think of how they'd looked in the end. "My sisters?" He shifted his attention from January to his uncle. "No disrespect, Nonc, but what the hell are you talking about?"

Releasing Jackson's shoulders, Ambrose said, "Your papa never told your mama what a half blood faces during First Change until after Junalee had been born." He paused, trailing a long-fingered hand through his hair, his expression pensive. "I don't know whether it just never occurred to Nicolas that Lucia might want to know before they had kids or if he deliberately 'forgot' to tell her. He never told me."

Jackson felt sick as he remembered the late-night arguments between his folks when they thought the kids were sleeping. Over us. The fights were over us.

"In any case," Ambrose said, "your mama was so worried about what might happen to y'all during First Change that, after she learned the truth, she used her hoodoo to bind all you kids to one form-your human one. And she forbade your papa to ever bring you here again." He shook his head. "Nicolas was hurt and furious."

Jackson looked away from his uncle and stared at the timbered ceiling. He didn't want to believe what he was hearing, didn't want to believe that his mother had lied to him and buried a part of who he was.