I walked away, and I didn’t look back.
It wasn’t until I stood alone outside my cottage door that I crumbled, let myself grieve the loss of what could have been.
Chapter 4
Valens
Istared at the empty doorway long after she’d left, the room seeming colder, emptier without her fire. My bones ached with it.
“Yo, V.” Lucien came around the corner, brows furrowed as he squinted at a tattered piece of paper, not even noticing the way I stood like a shadow in the other doorway. “This mean anything to you?”
“Vee’s my sister,” I grumbled as I turned and took the paper, the jumble of numbers on the financial statement making less than no sense to me. It had a ragged edge, as if he’d torn it from a book. “No. The pack used to have an accountant who handled all this, but I’m pretty sure Kane stole him away at the elder Varga’s trial.”
Lucien sighed. “Yep. You’re right. I’ll see if Reed can get me his contact info. These transactions seem to go nowhere, which means they probably go somewhere they shouldn’t.”
“Fantastic.” I dropped back down in the chair, ignoring the flimsy wood’s groans of protest.
“You tired? We should probably call it quits. It was a late night and an early morning.” His grin told me he wanted to get back to his mate, not necessarily his bed.
“I’ve had longer days, but I’ll take any excuse to get out of this hellhole.”
He laughed. “Come on. I’m starving.”
My stomach rumbled approval at the idea of dinner, and I followed him happily out of the pack archives.
When I opened the door to my house, the scent of burnt toast and something unpleasantly sour hit me immediately.
“Savvy, are you cooking?”
An angry slam of some kind of metal cooking implement rang out as the only response. I laughed, because that was my sister. She was a tornado in high heels, and she had a temper.
But if I didn’t get her out of that kitchen soon, I wouldn’t have one left. She also had the wolf’s strength to destroy my poor cookware.
“I’m coming,” I called, quickly shucking my boots and striding across the carpet. I paused in the doorway, aghast at the amount of mess one small she-wolf had managed to make in a formerly pristine room.
“Don’t stare like that, you jerk. Come help me!” She glared, hands on her hips and red sauce splattered over her… apron? Her hair was darker than mine, and her olive-toned skin reminded me fondly of my mother, just like her eyes. But she didn’t like to hear that, so I kept the memories to myself so they couldn’t hurt her.
“Care to tell me why you’ve suddenly turned into Hungarian Ina Garten, when the closest I’ve ever seen you come to making dinner is ordering delivery?” I asked, shoving a bubbling cauldron of pungently sour red sauce off the burner and clicking it off. I turned to study her, from her long, dark hair to her guilt-ridden expression, and I knew something was up. Not that she was keen to chat. My sister kept things close to the vest most of the time.
She shrugged, looking away. “You’ve had a long day. I just wanted to do something nice for my big brother.”
I bit back a grin. She would not appreciate it if I laughed. “By making…”
“Spaghetti and garlic bread. Your favorite.”
“Ahh. Well, it looks… intriguing.” That was all I could think of. Besides, it could definitely be studied as a science experiment on E. coli.
“You can just say it looks like shit. I know I fucked it up.”
Wow, something wasreallyriding her.
“Language, Savvy. How are you going to ever catch a man like that?” I mimicked our aunt’s shrill tone, and she threw a rubber spoon at my head. After that, we both laughed and started cleaning up the disastrous attempt at dinner. She’d share when she was ready, and pushing wasn’t our dynamic.
When we were elbow-deep in the sink, me washing and her rinsing, it seemed like as good a time as any to tell her the news.
“I think I found my mate.”
My sister went still, whatever was eating her shoved to the side. “What? Really?”
