“Rowan,” I hedged again, and the fear I hadn’t felt with my brother suddenly inundated every part of me. I’d finally pushed away my family because of the happiness and joy that the manin front of me had so easily inserted into my life; I didn’t think I could lose that now. Not so quickly and not when I had just essentially cut myself off from my family.
“Look, I know this is a lot, but I really can explain. The important thing is that you’re safe, and nobody is gonna?—”
He burst into laughter—loud and bright and filling the entire parking lot. It seemed it was my turn at the bat to be shocked and confused, and I watched as he nearly doubled over with the sheer force of his amusement.
“Wolves!” Rowan blurted between peals of mirth. “You’re awolf shifter!”
What the hell was going on!?
TWELVE
NAOMI
Two of a Not-Kind
I was still staring in bewilderment when Rowan finally calmed down, panting slightly from the exertion. While I loved sharing jokes with the guy, I didn’t have a clue what had gotten his goat so much. Besides, ya know, a giant wolf shifter out of nowhere.
And for that matter…
“How do you know what a shifter is?” I asked, more than a bit concerned. A human, upon seeing one of us, would accuse us of being a werewolf before using that particular vernacular. Yes, we shared many similarities to werewolves, but in our mythos we were the original wolves, and we were bigger and more hulking than the monsters of human legend.
Rowan straightened, and despite how confused I was, I was relieved that his expression was definitely on the positive side rather than horrified. “I know what a shifter is,” he said slowly, becoming more and more serious by the moment. “Because...”
He trailed off, and the mood shifted. Maybe I was crazy, but it felt a lot like when he’d first confessed to having albinism. But what else did he have left to admit?
“Because?” I prompted after the silence went on for far too long.
“Because...” Another deep breath. Yep, it definitely felt the same as his first confession. “Because I am a vampire.”
“V-Vam…pire?” I repeated, like he had suddenly started talking in tongues. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t, right? Abruptly, there were about a hundred different questions in my head, and they were all fighting to get out of my mouth at the same time. I sputtered a bit, a habit I absolutely hated, but I was sure no one could blame me under the circumstances. “You’re not a human?”
“Afraid not.” Although his expression was still gentle and his eyes still kind, the levity that had been there before had vanished.
“What were you doing on a human dating app?” Perhaps a bit of a hypocritical question, but like I said, the queue for queries in my head was overwhelmed, and my mouth was running the show. Always a bad situation, really.
“Looking for a connection I was denied by my own community. I’ve been at this a long time, and believe it or not, I’ve never been able to land a relationship with another vampire.”
Oh wow. I found that hard to believe. He was such a catch. Surely it couldn’t just be the albinism thing, right? I knew vampires had a reputation for being shallow and caring a whole lot about how they were perceived, but that was taking it a bit far.
“Why were you on the app?”
I suppose I could have dodged the question, or come up with a vague answer, but Rowan had already made himself vulnerableby admitting that he had used what was essentially a disguise on our first date, and then that he was a vampire, so perhaps I could also be brave and admit the secret I had been keeping so close to my chest.
“Because I am onlytechnicallya shifter.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I have no wolf form. I can’t shift. That was why my brothers called me Otto.”
“I… I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“It’s a play on words. I can’t shift, so I’m like an automatic car. And automatic is often shortened to auto which sounds pretty much exactly like the name Otto, so there ya go.”
Rowan’s eyebrows slammed into a scowl so fast, I was surprised I didn’t hear an audible click. I could almost see him recontextualizing everything in his mind, adding together the different pieces of what I had told him, hadn’t told him, and how my brothers had acted at the restaurant.
“Wait,that’swhy they’re dicks to you?”
Perhaps it was strange that I wanted to laugh, but the way he said it tickled something in me.
