Free Redeeming Rue AP4 by R. E. Butler Page B

dresser and walked into the bathroom.  When they were alone, he looked at John.
    “This is all kinds of fucked up,” John said.
    “She has to be wrong.  What kind of person would kill someone for having white fur or forbid her from having a kid?”
    “Panthers are different.  Dag will help sort things out.”
    “What if he believes in the same stuff as her clan?  They’re related.”
    “No way.  He’s the kind of guy who would never hurt anyone in his family.  Besides, you’re the one who called him to meet with us.”
    True.
    “It was a gut reaction.”  And he did trust the male who had been spending a lot of time at the boarding house helping with the ceremony.  The panthers were very protective of their own kind, but he knew they didn’t know Rue’s entire story.  Things were rotten in her former clan.  They wanted her and her son to die, but he wasn’t going to let her pay for whatever sins they believed she had committed with her blood.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Rue scrubbed at her skin with the bar of soap provided by the hotel and a scratchy washcloth.  She washed her hair twice, using up the entire bottle of miniature shampoo.  As she lathered her skin a second time, she pondered her future.  The two males outside were talking about her.  She could hear their low voices but didn’t know what they were saying.  They were probably thinking like cops and planning to say she wouldn’t be going to her death if she met with her clan.  She wanted to believe that, but she didn’t see a way out of her predicament.  If she didn’t go to her clan, they would torture Dom, and she absolutely wouldn’t allow that.
    She felt like a failure.  Since the moment she took a pregnancy test and discovered she was carrying a forbidden child, she had taken every precaution she could think of to keep them both safe.  Staying to the north, never shifting outside, never sharing their secret.  Her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and now they were as good as dead.
    Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes and rinsed the soap from her body.  Dawn would be here soon enough.
    After dressing, she rubbed her hair vigorously with one of the extra towels and braided it.  She hadn’t ever willingly let anyone see her hair except for Dom.  It had been a source of shame, the reason for her banishment.  But as James had said, her secret was out now and there was no more reason to hide.
    She took a long look at herself in the mirror and walked out into the room.  James and John turned to her, and they both held out their hands.
    “Let’s go meet your cousin and see what we can do about this situation,” James said.
    She didn’t take their hands.  “Do you always try to fix everything, James?”
    He smiled wryly.  “Yeah.”
    “I wish I’d met you a long time ago.”
    “Us, too, sweetness,” John said.
    She took their hands and they escorted her out of the room and to her rental car.  She looked at the note from Gerarli that James tucked into his shirt pocket.  There was a small map drawn on the bottom.  The clan hadn’t been in Ashland long enough to know the street names, but she knew that the big square was the boarding house where the mountain lions lived, the trees were the woods, and the big X in the center of the empty space was the field where the clans had gathered for the bonding ceremony.
    She hadn’t seen her cousin Dag since she was a young teen, before her shift.  She had no idea why James had called him, but maybe Dag could speak on her behalf.  Maybe if she gave herself up willingly, Dag could promise to raise Dom for her and let him live.  A little flare of hope filled her.  Not hope for herself; she didn’t think she had an ice cube’s chance in hell of seeing another sunset, but she hoped that Dom would make it through this.  She could plead his case, and maybe they would show him mercy.  It wasn’t his fault that she’d broken the law.  He was innocent.
    James