“We swapped babysitting duties.” Someone honked in the street behind her and she scowled. “Getin, Jono.”
Jono climbed into the SUV and buckled up. Emma took her foot off the brake and stepped on the gas. She didn’t look at him.
“Leon and I were supposed to go to Queens,” Jono said.
“We swapped that duty, too.”
Jono stretched out his legs and stared straight ahead. He knew why Emma was angry, that the row he could feel building was inevitable, but he figured the place to start was “I’m sorry.”
Emma gripped the steering wheel so tight her knuckles went white. She clenched her jaw, muscles standing out in her slim throat. “I hate how your secrets keep getting doled out when we least expect it.”
“They aren’t just my secrets, Em.”
“This one is.” Emma flicked the turn signal before the next light, waiting to turn left. “Sage said she found out in December when you were all past the veil in Tír na nÓg and you told her not to tell us.”
“You can’t be mad at her for keeping my secret.”
“You’ve had an animal-god patron guiding you since you were infected. Do you know how fucking rare that is? More than half the packs in the United States have stopped believing in them. The power they bring is just myths these days.”
“Did it look like I was carrying a myth?” Jono asked quietly.
Emma snorted. “I’m assuming Patrick knows?”
“He’s known since last summer.” Jono leaned his head back against the headrest and grimaced. “Ethan knows because he saw what was in my soul in preparation for his sacrifice. Lucien and Carmen found out when I left to get Patrick after he’d stayed at the Crimson Diamond to save Kennedy in August. Gerard and Keith know because they were there with us in the Spring Queen’s Court when I reinforced our bargain with the fae. Now you and Leon know.”
“Ethan knows?” Emma asked after half a minute of silence.
Jono closed his eyes and tried not to think about that time spent in Ethan’s hands. “He knew, somehow, about Fenrir, or that the gods were going to give me to Patrick. Either way, it made me a target at the time.”
Emma didn’t speak again until they were driving north on the FDR, heading for Queensboro Bridge. “It kind of feels like you don’t want us to know anything.”
“I…” Jono’s voice trailed off, and he opened his eyes, staring blankly at the red taillights stretched out before them. Evening rush-hour traffic was fucking terrible no matter the city. “Fenrir didn’t speak to me until after I got infected with the werevirus. I was making a right mess of things in London at the time. Then I woke up one day with his voice in my head and his claws in my soul and he wouldn’t leave.”
“Did Marek know? When he went to London to bring you here?”
Jono turned his head, staring at Emma’s profile limned in the faint shine of headlights and taillights. “No. He never mentioned Fenrir when he made his offer.”
“Maybe he knew and just never said anything. Like you.”
“Em.” Jono rubbed tiredly at his face. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“You lying?”
“Me obeying the gods because I had no bloody choice.”
Some of the anger seemed to dissipate in her scent, her slim shoulders slumping. “I just don’t know why you couldn’t trust us.”
Jono reached over and slid his hand beneath the thick fall of her hair to curl his fingers around the back of her neck. “I’ve trusted you since the day you picked me up from the airport when I first arrived. That’s never going to change. This wasn’t about trusting you, but about keeping you and the rest of your pack safe.”
He took a breath, catching when the rest of her anger drained away into frustrated sadness, the sting of it making Jono swallow. Emma took her eyes off the road for a split second to glance his way, huffing out a sigh.
“We told you for years we’d follow you.”
Jono tapped his fingers against her spine before pulling back. “I know, but Patrick wasn’t here yet.”
“Have you told him about what’s happened this week?”
“No.”
