He’d accepted me as a reformed hunter, didn’t hold my past against me even when he knew my heritage. But my history with Rys? Would he accept that?
Max nudged me hard enough I almost fell over. “It can’t be that bad, or he’d have gone for the throat.”
I gaped at him.
“I’m kidding!” He held up his hands after steadying me first. “But honestly, I know my cousin. And if you were a threat to any of us, he’d have warned me the second he laid eyes on you. Since he only grumbled and bared his teeth a little, I’m going to assume whatever happened between you was personal.”
“You could say that.”
We’d reached the side of the road where Max had pulled over onto the verge earlier. He waited until we were inside with the engine running to turn in his seat and face me. “Look, I don’t need to know details of what happened between the two of you.” At my raised eyebrow, he grinned. “Obviously I’m nosy as fuck and would love to know everything, but that’s just me. You don’t owe me an explanation about your past personal life.” His expression turned serious. “But I do need to know if your history with Rys is going to affect our investigation in any way.”
“It shouldn’t.” We didn’t part on good terms, but from what I remembered, Rys wasn’t the type to be petty. “I’m sure we can be civil if needs be.”
Max snorted. “This is Rys we’re talking about.”
“You know him better than me.” I didn’t know him at all anymore. Didn’t have the right to.
“I love my cousin, don’t get me wrong. He can be a little hot-headed at times, but then, he’s an alpha now and that kinda comes with the territory. Did you threaten his pack?”
I shook my head. “No.” Max knew I used to run with Tombs’ group. Knew what I used to do for a living.
“Threaten him?”
“No.” That’s the last thing I’d wanted to do.
“Seeing as those are about the only two things I care about, whatever it is, you can keep your secret.”
“You could always ask Rys.” Not that his side of the story would paint me in a good light, but a part of me thought I probably deserved that.
“I could,” Max said, gaze boring into me. His eyes were almost the same shade of brown as Rys’s. I remembered those eyes looking at me with want and need, instead of the contempt I’d seen in them tonight. “And I’ve no doubt I’ll be getting a call from him later. But if he doesn’t offer to tell me, I won’t ask. I hope you can trust me enough to tell me if you want to. But I don’t want you to think that youhaveto. The past is the past as far as I’m concerned.” His eyes narrowed a touch. “Unless you give me reason to think otherwise.”
“Thank you.” I liked to think I’d tell him the whole truth at some point, but if he wasn’t going to ask right now, I wasn’t about to spill my guts if I didn’t have to. Not yet anyway. “And I might not be Rys’s favourite person.” Far fucking from it. “But I’d never put him or his pack in danger.”
“That’s good enough for me.” He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the road.
I sat back in my seat. By all rights, I should’ve been relieved that he hadn’t pressed me to tell him the truth, but I wasn’t. A little bit of me was, maybe, but for the most part, it felt like a missed opportunity. One I hoped I wouldn’t come to regret.
GABRIEL
The Nottinghamshire branchof the paranormal police department had two main offices, neither of them in the city centre. What was the point when virtually all of the non-human population had migrated out to the surrounding areas?
The office Max and I worked at was based out of Ravensdale. In an old, converted school that backed onto fields. As I’d discovered when I’d joined, department regulations stipulated that each work pairing had to have at least one non-human. As a result, more than two-thirds of the department were non-humans and having open space available during the working day was a must. Shifters, especially, couldn’t cope with spending a whole day inside.
Once Max pulled into an available parking space, he turned off the engine and faced me. “I’m not going to mention to anyone that you and Rys have history. It’s not relevant to the case, and I trust that you’ve told me the truth in that it won’t affect our job.”
“It won’t.”
He nodded once. “Okay, then. Let’s go get this evidence logged. I want to know what they used to take him down, and if his blood matches the other cases.”
Max hefted the plastic crate containing our evidence, and I fell into step alongside him.
“I’ll start on the report if you take that down to the labs.”
“Yeah, okay.”
We parted ways at the stairwell, Max going down to the lower floors where the labs were. We were fortunate enough to have our own onsite. Non-human blood required specialised equipment to test it, and more often than not, our cases involved some sort of magic. Couldn’t test for that without expertise and a contained and reinforced space.
We had both.
