“No, honestly.” Sera sobered up. “It’s not that bad. Chocolate won’t kill us. We just all have a serious dislike of it.” She shrugged. “I suppose in large enough quantities, it could make us sick or something, but it’d have to be abnormally large amounts.” She gave me a look.
“Really? You’re not just trying to make me feel better, are you?” I’d feel horrible if I knew I had been asking or complaining about the lack of something that could kill everyone in that commune.
She shook her head. “Relax. We can eat and handle chocolate. But most of us choose not to because it tastes incredibly disgusting to us.” She shrugged. “Probably has something to do with nature and evolution or whatever. You know, to keep us from eating something that once threatened an ancestor of ours.”
I peered over at her as I took a bite of my second peanut butter cup, feeling less guilty.
“Is it true dogs evolved from wolves? Or vice versa?”
Sera shook her head. “We had a common ancestor, though. We’re like really distant cousins.”
“Interesting.” I chuckled. “No wonder Henry loves it so much at the commune.” I frowned at the idea of taking him back home to Texas soon.
“He’s a cool dog,” Sera said, granting me a smile. Not for the first time, I noted how pretty she was, and I wondered why she didn’t smile more often. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
I sat up, startled that she caught me watching her. “I forget how keen all of your senses are.”
She snorted. “Some more than others,” she mumbled.
There was something deeper beneath that comment, but I chose not to prod at it right then.
“In Colorado…” I let those two words hang in the air. Her hands visibly tightened around the steering wheel, and I decided to press on. “I overheard a conversation between Chael and his cousins.”
Sera cleared her throat, her body as stiff as a board.
“They’re angry with him for keeping their mate away from them.” The pieces started to add up in my head. Sera’s reaction when Ms. Elsie first suggested she should come with us to Colorado.
“Are you—”
“No,” she said sharply. “I’m nobody’s mate.” Her voice was firm, but I didn’t believe it. Her reaction was too strong for the conclusion I’d drawn not to be true. Sera had two mates. This was like one of those shifter romances.
Something didn’t sit quite right, however. At Chael’s grandfather’s home, there were pictures of Noah and Ronan around the house. AnneMarie showed me a picture of the boys when they were very young. But there were three of them, not only two.
“That’s Rory.” She’d pointed to the little boy with red hair. “They lost him,” AnneMarie commented with a sad shake of the head before moving on.
Something in my gut twisted as I looked at the picture and then at the two brothers that lived long enough to grow into men. I dreamed that night of three men and a woman, but I hadn’t mentioned that to anyone.
I wondered…
“We should be there in another four hours,” Sera said, interrupting my musings. “Do you want to drive?”
“Sure, I’ll give you a break.” It was only fair on this nearly ten-hour trip. Right as Sera pulled over at one of the road stops to fill up on gas and to switch, my phone buzzed. It was Chael calling.
I hit the ignore button and stuffed the phone back into my bag.
“He’s going to be pissed,” Sera said as she took her seat on the passenger side.
“Let him be,” I answered, not bothering to deny who it was that called. “Will I get you in trouble with the pack?” I wasn’t worried about how Chael would feel toward me, I told myself. But I did care whether or not Sera would have to pay for accompanying me on this trip.
She shrugged. “Probably.” She didn’t sound worried.
“I’m sorry. The last thing I wanted was to cause trouble between you and the rest of your pack.”
“Let me worry about that. You still haven’t explained why we’re making this drive in the first place.”
For the remainder of our ride, I drove and explained the entire situation to Sera.
“This sounds like something big is about to go down,” she replied.
