He smiled at me, and my heart did a little flip in my chest. “Yeah. Something cold.”
He got up to go back to the room we’d been staying in, and I looked around.
Minori was already gone. I pulled out my phone to text her when someone clicked their tongue right beside me.
I jerked. Wasn’t often somebody could sneak up on me like that, but Dakota’s grandmother was right there, two whole feet shorter than me, with an amused twist to her mouth.
“You are worried about him.” Dakota’s grandmother wasn’t exactly accusatory, but the way her sharp eyes read me made my hair stand on end anyway. She saw too much. Could she readminds? Would she read mine if she could? I didn’t have anything to hide, but the idea still made me shiver.
“Why?” she pressed when all I managed to do was stand there blinking at her.
My tongue slipped between my lips as I pressed them into a thin line. “I, uh?—”
This was sensitive, and though she’d been more accepting than most of her family, she was still a stranger to me. I wasn’t sure what Dakota would be comfortable with me telling her.
I also wasn’t sure I had much choice.
“The shift—Dakota’s first shift. It—it seems like it’s coming sooner than later.”
“You mean at the full moon?” Her tone was dry, like I was the most obvious, pitiful alpha to ever bear the title. She knew when the change happened. I wouldn’t even be surprised to learn that she knew it affected new wolves more strongly than those of us who were born to it.
I’d been such an idiot.
I grimaced. “I do.”
She didn’t scoff or roll her eyes, but I thought if she’d been American, she might have. “I’m aware. There should be a few days left, shouldn’t there?”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to tell the first time. It takes a while to figure out a wolf’s cycle, and Dakota’s—he’s strong in his magic, and maybe in this too. It might come sooner than I expected.”
“Ah.” The lines around her eyes softened as she smiled, and if I weren’t mistaken, she was... proud? Not just of his magic, but of this too. My heart gave another little jump. Damn, I wanted her to see Dakota like I saw him, like hewas. He was fucking incredible. The idea that she might realize that too warmed something in my chest.
“Well,” she said, “I’d meant to keep you a few more days, but if it’s urgent, I’ll ask Yoshido to drive you out to the old estatetomorrow. It’s... private. Secluded. Will he require anything special?”
For the first time, I could take a full breath. Even if I was a doofus extraordinaire, I wasn’t the only one looking out for Dakota. While other alphas might’ve been jealous of anyone interloping, me? I just wanted my mate cared for.
“Food,” I said. “Lotsof food.”
She smiled, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “I’ll see to it, then.”
2
Dakota
Something was definitely wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on what, but whatever it was, it felt like my skin was trying to crawl right off my body.
Maybe it was the extended stay in Japan, which was lovely, but not home.
It was a little odd. I’d spent all of college majoring in Japanese, trying to connect with a home I’d never known. My parents had never treated me like family, which I now knew was because they’d been paid to take care of me, rather than actually wanting a child. In the end, the result had been disconnection.
No family, no home, no one and nothing that had ever wanted me.
Part of me had studied Japanese, the language and culture, hoping to find somewhere to belong, someone to belong with.
But I’d already found that with the Crescent pack. None of them looked like me. None of them spoke Japanese—that was why they’d hired me, after all. But they’d taken me without question or hesitation. Without the stilted awkwardness I dealt with from most members of the Igarashi family.
Igarashi Kosuke.
The name I’d been born with, that the parents I didn’t remember had given me. My cousin, Igarashi Jiro, was dead now. Privately executed by his own family for killing my parents. Apparently that was how mages worked, and they’d all seemed confused when I’d been horrified by the lack of due process. He’d killed my parents, after all. He’d confessed to it.
