She fills a glass with water and hands it to me.
“Drink. You look like you might pass out.”
I hadn’t realized how dry my mouth was until the cool liquid touched my lips. I drain the glass in one go, guzzling it down like I’ve ran a marathon in a desert. The emotional strain of the last half hour feels equal to the experience, anyway.
“You’re so calm,”
I mutter as Lyre takes my empty glass.
“Is it normal for you to have werewolves crash at your place?”
“Nothing about my life qualifies as normal, but I’ve had stranger guests.”
She refills my glass and hands it over, but my belly’s already sloshing, so I shake my head. She pours it into a bowl instead, setting it on the ground by Fenris’s head.
Fenris peeks an eye open, his ear flicking one way, then the other.
“Don’t you dare tattle. If you do, you’re out. I will drag you out by your tail. Got it?”
Said tail thumps against the floor.
“You’ve verbally agreed to our contract,”
I warn him.
“If you break it…”
Another tail thump.
“I’m not helping you,”
Lyre announces, taking the wind out of my sails.
“I don’t think even I can manhandle that beast through the door if he doesn’t want to go.”
She has a point. Fenris must weigh three hundred pounds, at least. If he decides to stay, we don’t have many options.
Ugh.
“Fine. But you are notsleeping in my bed. Stay on the floor. I don’t want fur all over my sheets.”
Fenris lifts his head with a sudden whine, his ears going flat.
“No arguing. Don’t even think of getting on the bed.”
Lyre leans back against the sink and crosses her arms, staring at Fenris without any expression.
“You know he’s just going to sneak onto the bed when you fall asleep.”
Jabbing my finger at the wolf, I warn,
“Don’t you dare. I mean it. If I wake up with you on that bed, you’re out. Not just off the bed, but out of this camper. Forever.”
Fenris blinks at me, his expression impossibly innocent in the way only animals can do. He lowers his massive head back onto his paws, but the twitch of his ear tells me he heard every word.
“I’ll know,”
I tell him, narrowing my eyes.
“I always know when someone’s lying to me.”
That’s a blatant lie. I’m terrible at knowing when people lie to me. I believed Rafe for years, after all. Believed Alpha when he said he loved me like his own daughter. Believed the pack when they said they accepted me.
Fenris huffs, his breath stirring some dust on the floor.
Three sharp knocks on the door cut through the silence, making me groan so loudly it borders on a scream. I bury my face in my hands.
“Can’t they just leave us alone?”
“Apparently not,”
Lyre says, her tone dry as she moves to the door. She throws it open with more force than necessary, the hinges squeaking in protest.
“What now?”
Jack-Eye stands on the top step, his tall frame filling the doorway. His gaze skips past Lyre to lock onto me.
“Sorry to bother you ladies again, but I just had one question.”
“And?”
Lyre prompts when he doesn’t continue.
He clears his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“I need the answer. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor even answering it at all.”
“A favor?”
I echo, confused.
“Yes,”
he says firmly.
“The charity of allowing me a night of peaceful rest, if you will.”
Lyre sighs.
“Cut the sob story and ask your question. Some of us would also like a night of peaceful rest.”
Jack-Eye’s shoulders slump, and a sheepish grin spreads across his face as he continues to stare at me.
“Why were you so happy to see Andrew was still alive?”
Lyre was right.
Fenris hides under the dinette table as I vacuum black fur off the daybed comforter. I’d tried to kick him out when I woke up to a furry, dead weight on my feet, but he’s ultimately too heavy to drag out the door.
The vacuum roars as I attack another patch of black fur. Every swipe feels like a tiny rebellion against the wolf-against Caine-against this whole ridiculous situation. If I can’t control anything else in my life, at least I can eliminate this evidence of unwanted company.
A pathetic whimper sounds from behind me, followed by the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a tail against the camper’s floor. I refuse to turn around. Fenris might look like an oversized puppy right now, but he’s not. He’s a full-grown wolf, and he knows exactly what he did wrong.
I shut off the vacuum with more force than necessary. The sudden silence feels accusatory.
“You should get dressed.”
Lyre doesn’t look up from her phone, just sips her coffee, her rainbow hair catching the morning light through the windows.
“They’ll be here soon.”
My stomach drops, and I groan.
“Do I have to?”
Last night’s dreams flash through my mind-fragments of nightmares where I was locked in a stone tower, my blonde hair grown long like Rapunzel’s, watching the world through a tiny window. But worse than those were the other dreams-the ones where Caine’s hands weren’t dragging me away but pulling me close, his mouth not speaking threats but…
Heat crawls up my neck.
“Unless you want to greet the Lycan King in your pajamas.”
Lyre sounds utterly unconcerned.
“Which, honestly, might be a power move.”
I’m not sure how pajamas equal power, but I grab one of Lyre’s old band t-shirts and a pair of stretchy shorts and take them with me to the bathroom. Five minutes later, I’m back out, second-guessing the shorts. But my jeans are dirty, and Lyre’s don’t fit.
“Weren’t we supposed to go to-“
I stop, frowning at Fenris.
“You know, away?”
Lyre finally looks up, her slitted eyes unreadable.
“It would just be a waste of money at this point.”
“What?”
“Gas. Food. Lodging.”
She ticks off each item on her fingers.
“All expensive. And for what? He’s not going to let you go so easily.”
Ugh.
I’m not sure why Caine’s even hunting me down, but after last night, it’s pretty clear he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Maybe he thinks I’m trying to take over the Blue Mountain Pack or something. Taint it with half-human, half-shifter babies? He seems pretty obsessed with bringing up my relationship to Rafe, and now he’s worried about Andrew, too.
“That makes sense,”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.