A few minutes later, when Zane’s comparison list ran out of items, Lucy said to Aaron, “You shouldn’t have been the one to deal with the bleach.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Is there any act of service youdomind?”
He grinned. “Roof maintenance.”
That got laughs from Sydney and Cassius as well as Lucy. Then she said, “In other news, there’s a woman staying with you, and Malachi agreed to it.”
“Wait, what?” Sydney said.
For a moment his gut burned at the thought of exposing Ember’s predicament. She ought to be here to speak for herself. He looked down at his hands, on which the smell of bleach still lingered. The pack needed to know who she was, why she’d come. He hoped her threat would never materialize, but he didn’t know her well enough to assume.
“You heard her,” he said to Jeremy, an obvious stall but one he needed. Ember’s scream…
“Yeah. I intercepted Mal when he left your place.”
So the Freemans knew the basics at least, but Cassius and Sydney did not. Aaron gave himself another couple seconds, then said, “She’s Quinn’s aunt. She thought we were holding him prisoner and came to take him back.”
“Knowing he’s a wolf, she was going to take him?” Sydney leaned forward from her place on the couch next to her mate. “She’s either crazy or uneducated.”
“Yeah. Well. She’s about to be educated. Mal gave her permission to stay at my place through the full moon and see for herself Quinn is fine afterward.”
The scents of shock and offense so overflowed the room, Aaron was grateful Quinn wasn’t here. The pup would have had an instant migraine.
He put up a hand. “I said my place. Not the paddock.”
“Why? Why allow her here at all, for that long?”
He had to tell all of it, and when he did, their body language shifted in seconds to threatened, defensive.
“This is my fault,” Lucy said. “I gave your information to someone who said Quinn’s family was searching for what had happened to him. I thought there had been some miscommunication, that they’d call you and it would all be fixed.”
“So it was a human you talked to?”
“Yeah. I don’t know him well, but he knows how to get people in touch with each other for all sorts of reasons. That’s all I thought it was.”
“Well, somehow it came to Ember”—no way he’d tell them about her connection to a vampire—“and she showed up here with her ultimatum.”
Cassius gave a low growl.
An answering growl ripped from Aaron’s throat, and reflex took over. Without conscious decision, Aaron was on his feet. So was Cassius.
Jeremy sprang into the middle of the room between them, thrusting out his hands. “Whoa, step back. Stand down. Both of you.”
“That was uncalled for, man.” Cassius jabbed a finger at Aaron.
Crap. Aaron turned his palms up and took a few steps back. Had he really just growled at Cassius because Cassius quite reasonably growled at the threat Ember had made against the pack? He shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “Overreacted.”
Jeremy grinned. “Cut the wolf some slack. We all know what this is.”
“Um, no,” Cassius said as he returned to his seat on the couch. “No, we don’t.”
“Come on, Cassius. You can smell it on him as well as I can.”
Aaron folded his arms and glared at both of them. “Enlighten me then.”
