“When?” I demand, horrified.
He doesn’t answer the question directly, just meets my eyes again with the same burning intensity. “It’ll fuse back together in a few minutes; I just have to hold it together in the meantime.”
“Brilliant,” I breathe, feeling slightly light-headed. I turn my back on him and walk a few paces aimlessly back toward the river. “That’s just…brilliant.”
“Aurelia?” Fox’s voice sounds slightly concerned, and I hear him getting to his feet. “Are you alright?”
“No. No, not really,” I mutter, my mind racing faster than I can put into words.
My stomach lurches, and I finally can’t hold back the nausea anymore. I double over, dry-heaving into the bushes.
“Is it the wine?” Fox asks.
“The…what?”
It takes a second to piece together what he’s implying. “Do you think I’m sick from overindulging after the wedding? My Gods, no, of course it couldn’t possibly be because I just saw the exposed bone of your arm, moments after I made that wound byattacking what I thought was a viciouswolf.No, that’s way too obvious.”
He blinks, his expression unreadable. “What do you want me to do?”
“You can start by putting some damn clothes on.”
He raises his eyebrows, eyes widening as if to say,“What exactly am I supposed to wear?”
I reach up to my throat, fingers fumbling with the clasp of my crimson cloak, then throw the bundle of fabric at him. He catches the cloak over his injured arm and lets out a harsh breath through his nose.
I turn my back, waiting for him to cover himself up. I glance quickly back to make sure everything important is covered, and see that he’s still holding his shoulder with his uninjured hand, but has managed to wrap my cloak around his waist like a towel. It’s almost exactly the same color as the blood oozing between his fingers.
“Better?” he asks.
“No, not really.” I suck in another deep breath, and then it’s as if the floodgates open and my voice comes out shrill, somewhere between a hiss and a shriek. “How did I not know about this?’’
To his credit, Fox doesn’t bother to pretend he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “No one knows.”
“No one?” I echo, still reeling from my shock. “No one knowsthat you’re awolf.”
“Only sometimes,” he says, as if that matters. His brow furrows as if he’s thinking, and he adds. “Jett knows, but he’s the only one. No one else.”
My stomach lurches, and I bite back the urge to ask: “Why did you tell him and not me?”
That’s an insane question. Anyway, I know why. Why would he tell me a secret like that when what we had wasn’t serious?
“Why?” I demand instead.
“He figured it out. It doesn’t matter,” Fox grumbles.
“It absolutely matters!”
“Why should it?” Fox asks sharply. There’s a sudden wariness in his tone I’ve never heard before. It sounds almost defensive, as if he’s expecting a fight.
My brow furrows. “I don’t know, it just does. Wouldn’t it be odd if Odessa never told anyone she was a siren?”
His eyes shift. “I suppose.”
“See? It just seems like you would have told us that you’re a…werewolf? Is that the right word?”
“Shifter,” he corrects, still looking guarded. “A werewolf is a human or Fae who contacts an unrelated virus. There are all sorts of shifters, not just wolves, and we’re born this way. I’m half shifter. Fae mother, wolf father.”
“Right.” I flush. “Sorry, I should have known that, I’ve read about shifters before…but I still don’t understand. Maybe you didn’t think you had to tell me, which is your prerogative, but you’ve been friends with Daemon and Kastian for decades. I just don’t understand how something like this would never have come up.”
