“Start with the monster attack,” Emma suggested.
Reed nodded, then filled everyone in on how it had gone down the night before. He told them how I had found him, glossing over our argument, and then how the creature had attacked, its paralytic powers, and how it had vanished after I shot it.
“Well, the paralysis explains why the hiker sat still long enough for this thing to inflict the kind of wounds Hattie described,” Emma said thoughtfully, when he was done. She turned to me. “And you managed to injure it with a gun? Most creatures from the Otherworld aren’t susceptible to regular bullets.”
I cleared my throat. “Err, they’re silver.”
“Silver?” Reed demanded sharply.
“Yeah?”
Everyone in the room went silent. Sarah closed her laptop and set down her pen with a clatter onto the legal pad, without taking her eyes off me. Daniel’s jaw dropped. Reed’s brows drew together and he studied me carefully, as if seeing me in a new light.
“Are you a hunter?” Sarah demanded, breaking the silence.
“What’s a hunter?” I asked, confused. “I’m from Los Angeles. We don’t hunt.”
“Notthattype of hunter,” Sarah countered.
“Silver is lethal to werewolves,” Emma explained, her voice even. There was a strange glint in her eyes as she studied me.
Oh. Well, that explained the sudden tension in the room.
“I thought that was just in the movies?” I paused, meeting Reed’s gaze. “Silver bullets actually kill werewolves?”
“You didn’t know?”
I shook my head. “Cole gave them to me before he left town. He said they work on most supernatural creatures. But on vampires, they just make them weaker—giving humans a chance to fight back.”
“Who the hell is Cole?” Sarah demanded, the suspicion in her voice palpable. “And why would he give this guy silver bullets?”
“He’s Thierry’s brother, Nicolas,” Reed explained. “He goes by Cole. And he’s friends with Harris.”
Sarah blinked rapidly at me, her eyebrows shooting up. “Oh. Well, it’s a small world after all, I guess.”
“Reed and I met at Thierry’s wedding,” I offered. “And Cole was worried about me when he moved up to Seattle, so he made sure I had a stash of silver bullets. He said they’d protect me. And they work on humans, too. So I figured, why not?”
“Why not?” Sarah repeated, shaking her head. “And you’re actually friends with a vampire?” She sounded incredulous.“Aren’t you worried he’s going to chomp on you when he gets hungry?”
“I don’t scare easily,” I replied. “I’m a detective and I’ve had a badge and a gun for about a decade now. Hell, I’m a certified firearms safety instructor on the force. I promise I’m not going to shoot one of you by mistake.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Emma said, arching an eyebrow at me. She considered me for a long moment. “And it’s also good that you were able to escape Daniel’s boundary spell. If not for you, it’s hard to say what might’ve happened.”
“But what are you evendoinghere?” Sarah demanded. “You just drop in out of nowhere and—”
“Hush, child,” Emma said.
“But gran, this is insane! We don’t just let randos into the—”
“Harris is Reed’s fated mate.”
That bombshell was met with total silence.
Reed’s lips pursed into a thin, tight line, but he said nothing to contradict Emma’s words. Sarah’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. Daniel’s face was unreadable, giving nothing away. He’d already known and was probably trying hard to control his expression. For myself, I wasn’t sure how I felt about her laying our relationship out in the open. It was probably easier this way. But it still felt private. Something we ought to have told them ourselves.
There was a flash of sensation from my connection to Reed—half emotion, half inner knowingness. He felt suddenlyvulnerable. Emma’s bald admission had stripped away his feeling of agency, as if he was the child and she the all-powerful adult in the situation. It was almost exactly what I had felt, but far more intense.
A wave of seething anger rolled through me that she had made him feel like anything less than what he was.
