“I’m not taking chances with Cassie at risk!” I exclaimed, rushing to the window. But there truly was nothing there. No flame, scorch marks, or energy that I’d felt back at my cottage.There wasnothing. An eerie nothing, something having been there, and gone again.
I needed to tell June about my visions. I’d already had a few since arriving at Honeycreek, and maybe she could tell me if their frequency was heightening due to this leyline information. But I bit my lip. We had to deal with one issue at a time.
Instead, I focused on the empty front lawn and the wolf complex beyond. There wasn’t a soul there, but I couldn’t relax. Djinn or wolf, they were all evil in my eyes.
Chapter 8 - Mason
At the voices coming from beyond the window on the upper floor of Jackson’s house, I retreated.
Shit, I thought. I’d scared Bryce.
Moving backward, I let myself melt back into the shadows, my attention still on the guest room. I couldn’t help it; asking myself to keep my distance from Bryce wasn’t something I could do, even if I ought to.
Ever since she came to Honeycreek, I’d found myself patrolling the house while she was alone, and even when Jackson was downstairs. My protectiveness for her wasn’t abating, even when I saw that she was only sleeping or fixing her hair. My old habits were hard to kill, and at that point, I was giving in to them. It kept the twitch inside me at bay. Whenever I was away from her, my thoughts went to her. I felt my body ache whenever I was near the border of town, as if my distance from her was something tangible, digging into my bones.
So far, Bryce hadn’t noticed, but she had just now, and I could tell by the panic in her voice that she thought an ifrit, another demon crawling out of some portal or other to come for her.
Old habits die hard, huh, Mason? I thought, with a wry smile. Usually, I kept myself in my wolf form, but there was something about being human that let me keep a harder grip on my thoughts, and I deserved to stay with them. My wolf helped me to forget enough, and had almost vanished Bryce’s name since she’d left.
But now she was back, and my wolf roared for her. It roared not only for the woman who stood at the window, hereyes scanning the space outside of the house, but it called for the wolf she had buried deep in herself.
Had she even shifted once since moving to White Bay? I couldn’t tell, but the alpha in me needed to know. Part of me willed her eyes to lift to the treeline, to spot me. The other part was scared of what she would think, but I couldn’t stay put. Ever since Jackson and I had picked Bryce up, I hadn’t been able to quell the persistent need to be around her. That night and last, all I’d thought about was her being here, her protection over her daughter, and the new light in her eyes that I had never seen but wanted to.
I wanted that fire in Bryce to spark, and I wanted it to come for me, for all I deserved it—but mostly because she deserved to snap.
But for now, I slunk back into the shadows, content that she was with June Leone, the girl who worked at the museum. I liked her and had recalled that she and Bryce had been friends in high school. Ever since the pack had begun to meet at the museum, she’d hung out with us more over the months. She was a good person, and I trusted her around Bryce.
I snorted at my own concept of trust. I was the last person to judge anyone. I was the one who couldn’t be trusted around her, had failed her years ago, but I wanted to change that. It was just unfortunate that Bryce wouldn’t give me the time of day. But that would change. It had to. She had to stop avoiding me sometime, and I’d make her speak to me soon enough.
I told myself to just walk away, but I couldn’t.
At least, the human version of myself couldn’t.
The wolf—the alpha—in me could, especially when I thought of my pack. I had work to do, patrols to run, and locations to check out that Jackson had told me about. Theywere potential djinn entry portals, and I had originally been out to look at those, not to purposefully check on Bryce.
Seven years really hadn’t changed a whole lot in that sense.
I had no business following her to the very few places she’d already been—the grocery store to get her daughter some candy while she only bought herself a bottle of water while looking around herself, her brow pinched; she’d ventured to the coastline that was just outside of Honeycreek, and I hadn’t retreated until Bryce had been back in her house; and then there had been the woods that she had only taken a few paces into before hurrying back, as if it had called to her and she’d been too afraid to answer—but I couldn’t resist. I was becoming obsessed with Bryce, and I wondered if I had ever truly stopped.
And over my observation of her since returning to Honeycreek, I realized that somebody could change yet stay the same. It made me smile to see that she couldn’t function without her black tea first thing in the morning, and her alarms were still set between eight and eight-thirty, but she often snoozed it until ten. Her perfume was still the same, and she’d applied it that morning. And I was envious of June, who’d been welcomed back into Bryce’s life with a hug. Now June wasthere, with Bryce, and I was pushed out.
I could see her face scrunched into the cutest scowl as she stayed at the window, still convinced something had been there, even when June had walked away. Next to her, Cassie—Cassandra, I reminded myself—popped her head up, her eyes alight. She pointed at the shadows of the trees where I was. I stiffened before smoothly moving further back.
Bryce’s eyes swept over where I was, but I knew she couldn’t see me. Her expression was far too devoid of anger.
Once she left the window, I moved closer again. And when June left the house twenty minutes later, tossing burger wrappers into a sidewalk trashcan—something I found strange—I got closer.
As June walked past, I let a twig snap beneath my shoe. Her eyes shot to me, and I saw a beat of fear before she recognized me.
“Mason?” she asked, coming over to me.
“Hey,” I said. “I was… I was on my way to see Bryce but didn’t want to interrupt.”
“It was you outside the window?”
“Well, I wasn’t directly outside, but yeah. I figured I’d hang back and make sure the area’s safe while I waited.” It was a flimsy excuse, but June didn’t voice her doubt; she only raised a brow at me, unconvinced. “Did Jackson not empty his trash again?”
“Hm?”
