“What if they really are like wolves, preying on weak ones, and what if he’s easy pickings? What if he’s a runt to them? What if they’re all like eight feet tall and—and Quinn—” The tears rose from her throat and filled her eyes.
“Okay, a few things.” Claire’s voice had gentled. She tipped her chair forward onto four legs, pushed back her hood, and set her palm on the table again. “I’ve never seen anybody eight feet tall, no matter what their genetic code looks like. Also, zoology lesson. Wolves—the real ones—do not prey on each other. They’re social and very attached to others in their pack. As a rule they nurture and care for the weaker ones—pups, the wounded, or the sick. And listen, Em. Really listen to me.”
Ember blinked and swiped at her cheeks. She looked up from her clenching hands in her lap. “Yeah?”
“Quinn is one of the pack now. They’re going to care for him. He’ll be okay there. He’ll be better there than he ever could be in the vanilla world.”
She couldn’t trust that, not sight unseen. But Claire’s wrap-up tone had been identifiable since high school. She was done with this conversation. Ember had only one card left to play—the one she loathed, the one that wasn’t fair, the one she would play anyway to ensure Quinn was safe.
“Either I go there and see for myself,” she said quietly, “or I go public. Police, news media, social media. All of it.”
Claire withdrew—first her hands into her lap, then her entire lithe frame against the back of her chair, then the warmth in her eyes. Her violet-blue irises shifted—not to silver but to dark gray. Not hungry. Threatened. Ember could do very few things to turn Claire’s eyes the color of charcoal. Her gut burned with the shame of knowing how to coerce her friend and choosing to do it. Her pulse thrummed, an automatic physical response to her position as a mere human sitting across from a now agitated vampire.
“Ember.”
“I know. It’s inexcusable of me.”
“Anything could happen. The right muckraker could expose…”
Could expose Quinn or anyone connected to him whose genetic code was one of the two apex types. And unlike many of her kind, for reasons she had never shared with Ember, Claire kept her apex status off social media.
“I’m sorry,” Ember said.
“But you’ll do it anyway.”
“Not if you get me in to see him.”
Claire struck the edge of the table with only her fingers, a sound so sharp she must have cracked the wood—but no, of course not. Their cups wobbled, but the table was fine. For the last decade she’d been too self-controlled to break things by accident.
“It’s not that simple. There’s no club where we get together and exchange trade secrets. I don’t actually personally know any werewolves.”
“Tai does.”
Claire’s eyes widened with the annoyance that, on her, always looked predatory. Probably because it was. “Were you working up to this the whole time?”
“Actually, no, it just came to me.” Ember spread her hands. “He could find Quinn. And he could get me safe passage or whatever.”
“I refuse to owe Tai Kristiansen a favor, Ember.”
“Oh, come on, don’t you already? Or doesn’t he owe you? Or something?”
“Thank Olympus, no I don’t, and no he doesn’t.”
Despite everything Ember rolled her eyes. “You’re the only woman on the planet who wouldn’t want him in her debt. In fact quite a few women would be thrilled to owe him.”
“I’ll figure out another way to do it.”
She fought the hope that rose in her chest. “You will?”
Not a flicker of warmth returned, though Claire’s eyes were violet-blue again. She simply looked at Ember for a long moment that felt like a year. She couldn’t hypnotize with her gaze despite urban legend, but she could pierce her bestie of fifteen years with paralyzing guilt. Ember ducked her head, the coward’s way out, and Claire sighed.
“This could get dangerous.”
“I can’t let Quinn believe his entire family rejected him and gave him up.”
“Okay, that’s enough, Em. Quinn isn’t you. His parents are not your parents.”
That stung. Ember stared past Claire at her wall art, a square canvas streaked with plum, silver, and black. “I’m not saying they are.”
