Before taking off, he added, “We can’t make you unbreakable, but we can make you strong enough to break JustinSummix.”
When he put it thatway. . .
He shot me a quick grin and a wave as he droveoff.
I watched his taillights become mere pinpricks and then vanish altogether. Before heading inside, I checked my phone, hoping I’d gotten a textmessage.
I sighed when I saw that I had, but not from the rightwolf.
Liam had sent me the address of a gym I was to meet him at after lunch. At least I had the morning off. It would give me time to deposit his check and pay Evelyn a visit. Two things that made mehappy.
I’d have to find a lot more to keep myself sane in the comingweeks.
4
After a delicious homemadebreakfast at Evelyn’s and plenty of bone-crushing hugs to last me throughout the day, Frank McNamara insisted on walking me out to the Boulder Innminivan.
“I didn’t tell her about the duel,” he said as I set the container filled with cinnamon rolls on the passenger seat. “I suggest you don’teither.”
“I don’t plan to, Frank. She’s already so worried about . . .everything.” Evelyn had only recently learned of the existence of werewolves. I’d been so afraid she would stop loving me and start fearing me, but she hadn’t. “Did you tell her about Aidan? About what heis?”
“I did.” He rubbed the white stubble coating his jaw. “Said she wasn’tsurprised.”
“Really?”
“Apparently he had this room in the basement that locks from the inside. A bunker of sorts. And it had all these scratch marks on the walls. When she asked him about it, he said it was where he kept the dogs that weren’t housebroken yet. She didn’t believe him of course—I mean the lock was on the inside of the room—but back then, she thought he used it as a torturechamber.”
My heart clenched with horror. “You think”—I lowered my voice—“he torturespeople?”
Frank shook his head, and his mass of white hair fluttered around his face. “I think he used that room when he needed to shift. Even with Sillin in his system, in his prime, the full moon would’ve brought on a change. Perhaps not a complete shift, but parts of his body would’ve taken on a different form ortexture.”
“When I was in LA, full moons didn’t affectme.”
“You were a thousand miles away. His pack was only a hundred miles away. He’d have felt their influence. Anyway”—he tapped the hood of the car—“I’m sure you have places tobe.”
I drew my door open, but before climbing in, I asked, “You think I’m right, Frank? About Cassandracheating?”
“I hope you are. But if you aren’t, I hope Liam will have the strength to defeat her, because the alternative—” He shuddered. “I’d rather not consider thealternative.”
After Liamchallenged Cassandra, I’d told him he was impulsive and insane, but wasn’t I the same? Thinking I could save him was insane. Truth was, I didn’t even wish Cassandra Morgan dead, but since only one leader could walk out of the duel with their heart intact, I’d do everything in my power for that person to beLiam.
I turned the volume of the car stereo louder to drown out the incessant chatter in my brain. Not to mention my stomach was cramping from the stress of all the thinking I wasdoing.
I pressed a hand against my navel as I stopped at a red traffic light, then scanned the street for a parking spot, but then I forgot all about parking and all about the cramping and all about Cassandra Morgan. Stopped opposite me at the intersection was a black pickup, and at its wheel was the man who still hadn’t answered my textmessage.
His gaze banged into mine. The impact was so tremendous it knocked the breath from my lungs and made my heartrattle.
Only a day had gone by since I’d seen him, and yet the hours we’d spent apart stretched further than all the years we’d beenseparated.
I watched him watch me, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if he’d pull over so we could talk. I imagined myself getting out of the van and striding over to his car. I imagined myself knocking on hiswindow—
A loud honk had me jerking on the gas pedal. I lurched into the intersection before even checking if the light had turned green, and then I was driving past him, and he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring straight ahead as though I wasn’t even there. I swerved a little, and the car behind August’s honked. I spun my steering wheel and gunned the van back into its rightful lane before turning on my blinker and sidling in next to the curb to catch mybreath.
Breaths tinted with the fragrance of Old Spice and sawdust that always clung to hisskin.
Surely I was imagining his smell—my windows were shut. Nonetheless, I inhaled long and deep, as though if I managed to pull his scent into my lungs, I could reel in theman.
Didn’t work like thatunfortunately.
