I was actually terrified I’d waste away into nothing. I was eating six huge meals a day, packed with meat, cheese, and carbs, and I still couldn’t keep the weight on. Clearly my fox had been hiding for a reason. She was killing me. I tried not to look in the mirror anymore, because what I saw there freaked me out to no end.
Brock frowned. “Your grandmother must have known something about this, right?”
A second punch to the gut. The question I’d been asking myself for the past seven days. Did Gran know and not tell me?
“She couldn’t have,” I defended her automatically. “She definitely would have told me if she’d known.” All those nights I came home from school, and cried myself to sleep for being a dud… she wouldn’t keep this from me, would she?
Sabine appeared in the open doorway. “Evie? I’ve got an idea. Just one more test for today, okay?”
We’d become frenemies who tolerated each other. She poked me to death while also trying to help me. Beneath her stiff clinical nature, she was actually quite caring, though I suspected she’d slept with Brock at some point in her life.
I hobbled past Brock while he looked at me longingly. As if… I don’t know, I was probably imagining it, but it felt as if he wanted to reach out and touch me. We hadn’t yelled at each other in at least forty eight hours, so maybe something was shifting between us. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me.
“When you’re done with the test, come find me. I want to take you somewhere,” Brock called after me.
My nod was the only answer. Where the hell did Brock the Cock want to take me? I was too weak to care.
I barely registered the needle as Sabine took her blood sample. “I’ll have this ready in a couple of hours.”
With another nod, I hobbled back out onto the porch, where Brock was waiting.
“Ready?” he asked.
I gestured to my crutches. “Kind of. I’m quite tired, so how far is this place you’re taking me to?” I’d grown accustomed to two naps a day to deal with the overwhelming fatigue.
He frowned, worry clouding his amber eyes. “Just to your Gran’s cabin. I’ll drive.”
Gran’s cabin. Those words coming from his mouth usually annoyed me.
“Can you make it down the porch or—?”
“I’ll be fine,” I cut him off harshly. I was a badass bounty hunter who took down full-grown vampires. There was no way I was letting the wolf carry me to the car.
I took it slow, step-by-step, until my crutches landed on the soft-packed earth at the bottom of the stairs. I was pulling my leg forward when my knee gave out suddenly.
Brock reached out, lightning-quick, to hook his hands beneath my armpits. He hauled me up quickly until I was smashed against his chest.
“Are you okay?” he asked, nearly panting. With each inhale, his belly pushed against mine, awakening a warm throb between my legs.
“Fine. Just tired,” I squeaked.
We both stood there, breathing heavily, not taking our eyes off each other’s lips.
It was difficult to be sure about much since I’d shifted into an animal, when it shouldn’t have been possible. But at that moment I was certain we both wanted a replay of that first night we met—even if we also wanted to strangle each other.
I felt him grow hard between us… and then he was pushing me away, taking deep cleansing breaths. With one hand he held on to me, and with the other he picked up my crutches, and helped me into his big-ass truck. I was waif thin, weak, with dark circles under my eyes, and still he wanted me. How about that?
He cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything as he drove the short three minutes to Gran’s cabin. We passed his bulldozer, parked on the far outer road as promised, and I glanced at the heavy machine. “Is it expensive? I almost blew it up one night, but thought better of it in case you sued me for the cost.”
A slow grin crept across his face. “Very. That one set me back about a hundred-and-sixty grand.”
I nearly choked on my spit. “Good thing Cass talked me out of it. That’s more than my Gran’s house costs.”
Brock pulled up to my childhood home, and turned to face me. “Do you know why my family has fought so hard for so long to get your grandmother off our land?”
We never talked about it, at least not in the past few days, it only led to fights, but something in him had changed. Maybe because it was obvious I was dying, or maybe because I’d just fallen and smashed my boobs into his chest, giving him a hard-on. But if he was finally going to be forthcoming, I’d take advantage of that no matter what the reason.
“Because werewolves hate witches,” I blurted out my theory. “Hate what we smell like. Hate our magic. Hate, hate, hate.”
