He sighs silently.The blonde lady is Emily, and the brunette is Louisa.
I inhale a quick breath as my eyes soften at his help.
“Good,” Emily exhales apprehensively. “It’s a lovely day.”
“You’re right, it’s a good day to get out.”
“Mummy,” the kid says as he comes running over. “Look at this chain Evan helped me make. It’s the longest one I’ve ever made!”
Louisa glances at him and grins. “Oh, wow. Look at that!”
Evan stands up and dusts himself off. “He did it mostly by himself. I just taught him the best way to do it.”
“I want to make a crown,” the little girl says as she follows him.
“Then we’ll make you a crown, Izzie.”
Izzie glances at me and blinks. “Caleb, do you want to help?”
Everyone turns silent, and I stare down at the girl with rosy cheeks. She looks up at me with big brown eyes, and despite never making a daisy chain in my life, I don’t have it in me to decline her offer.
“Izzie, Alpha Caleb is probably very busy, he?—”
“Let’s do it.”
The women blink at me in surprise. Evan looks even more shocked.
Izzie claps. “Yay!”
Then she takes my hand, guiding me to the grass. Evan sits beside me, watching me with stunned eyes. He almost looks scared.
After a few minutes, he shows me how to make chains because I’m clueless, but with my thick fingers, I destroy most of them by ripping the stems.
“I’m not very good at this,” I murmur heavily.
“You don’t need to do it so forcefully,” Evan says as I pluck a fresh daisy. “Do it like this.”
My chest constricts when he places his hands over mine, and I’m sure I get some kind of electric shock. We both feel it because he raises his eyes to mine, and we’re frozen still.
He clears his throat, quickly breaking the trance, and gets back to the task at hand. “Use the corner of your nail,” he says as I watch him do it to the stem, his fingers still over mine. I study them for a long moment. “Sometimes, the skinnier stems will rip, so try to pick ones with thicker stems.”
“Okay,” I rasp.
We sit there for another twenty minutes making daisy chains until they’re coming out of my ears. I almost laugh to myself because if my father saw me now, he’d be rioting.
But he’s not here, and I know this is a good way to get myself involved. I could easily tuck myself away in my office and not show my face, but that’s not going to help my situation.
When the kids run off to show their mothers their creation, I’m left with Evan. I remain seated as neither of us says anything until I have to break the silence.
“How are you healing?” I ask.
“Fine.”
“We caught the rest of them,” I blurt, subconsciously wanting him to know I did something about it.
Evan blinks at me blankly.
“The wolf hunters,” I clarify. “They were camping out at the old derelict house near the district centre, off the radar. They’re gone now.”
