Ember nodded.
Sydney said, “When someone says he can’t talk about it, he’s not inviting you to snoop and see for yourself. He’s telling you to leave it alone.”
“I had to know my nephew was—”
“Knowing people takes longer than ten days, Ember. You showed up here, and he let you stay in his freaking guestroom. You asked questions, and we tried to answer them.”
Ember drew up her knees, the heels of her shoes resting on the seat of her chair. “I know.”
Sydney continued as if Ember hadn’t spoken. “You don’t get private things handed to you. You earn them by sticking around, by respecting privacy. You want us to prove we’re trustworthy, but that goes both ways.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Save it.”
“Enough,” Nicole said. “She gets it, Syd. She screwed up.”
“Massively.” Sydney glared down at her. “You screwed up massively.”
“I didn’t know what was happening to Quinn out there,” Ember blurted, straightening in her chair though she kept her knees drawn up. “It’s my responsibility as his aunt to know what’s happening to him, whether he’s in danger or in pain or hungry, and do something about it, doubly so when his parents aren’t here for him.”
“Not the way you did it.”
“I didn’t know another way!” Ember lowered her face to her hands, spoke into her fingers. “What can I do to make it right?”
“Wow, and there you go again, assuming youcanmake it right. All the assumptions all the time with you.”
But Quinn. And Aaron. There had to be something she could do. She lifted her head. All three women looked at her as though they’d caught her breaking into a house. Which…wasn’t far off.
Lucy leaned forward to speak quietly. “This isn’t only about Aaron and Quinn, Ember. This is about the whole pack.”
Ember didn’t apologize again. Instead she listened.
“Among the pack, some traditions are sacred. Things that might seem dated or…well, unneeded…are still important to us. To the alpha, to the elders like Arlo and, in a decade or two, Patrick.” Lucy nodded to Nicole, and Nicole nodded confirmation.
“Like the pack being fed first,” Ember said. “The alpha choosing to eat after the rest of you.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Lucy’s eyes brightened, and a bit of warmth flickered from behind her guardedness. “The privacy of the full moon is the most significant custom we have. I think, a long time ago, they had reason to fear the horror of humans. Maybe even their own mates, I don’t know. That someone might tell the world, or find some other way to turn on them.”
“But your mates know you’d never do that.”
Sydney gave her a less heated glare.
Ember held up her hands. “I’m not arguing. I’m trying to understand. Really.”
“Inherited fear is only part of it,” Nicole said. “Hundreds of years ago, many werewolves believed themselves soulless, damned by nature. The secrecy custom was born mainly of their shame. Even today, one of the words for their wolf form iscurse. Some of them occasionally refer to it that way—often when they’re being mischievous, but still. It’s a piece of their history.”
“But…” Ember pressed her palms to her forehead, where a headache had begun to build. “You’re saying they’re ashamed? Quinn is ashamed?”
“Not in the old way,” Nicole said. “These young ones are proud of their pack, proud of their senses and strength as they ought to be. But now I need you to think through what happened tonight. Were you bleeding when you got to them? They sounded so agitated.”
She shut her eyes as the images came back. Magnificent, deadly. She nodded. “They rushed me. They were going to kill me.”
Sydney snorted. “Oh, please.”
Panicked words cascaded out of her, unstoppable. “They were—they were snarling and they charged the fence and—and the alpha got between one of them and me so he could—could be the one to hunt me down because they all wanted to kill me and eat me and—”
Sydney leaned over the table and yelled into Ember’s face. “That’s enough out of your stupid mouth. They’re not monsters, my Cassius is not amonster, you stupid—”
