He scowled and gave a rumbling grunt. She had a sudden vision of lying against his chest as he made that sound, of feeling the vibrations over her body. Goosebumps broke out on her arms.
“I don’t see why you would leave,” he said. “Most of the pack doesn’t bother with human college. They stay with their people. Where they belong.”
“That’s just it,” she said, chewing her lip. “I’m not sure I do belong here.”
“That’s bullshit, of course you do.”
“Come on,” she sighed, “my parents have been gone for nearly two years now. As soon as I turned eighteen, the pack stopped having any legal power over me, and I’m not exactly what you’d call popular amongst them. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“You’re my oldest friend,” he shot back. “You belong here. At my side. Where you’ve always been.”
Dani swallowed, heat flaring low in her stomach at the wordsat my side.He said it so easily. So casually. As if those words meant the same thing to him as they did to her.
As if he understood what they did to her.
A memory flashed. Him walking past her in the hallway with his pack friends. He hadn’t even looked at her.
She forced a small laugh. “Right. By your side. Except when we’re in public, of course.”
Arthur’s brows drew together. The shift in him was immediate, shoulders squaring, jaw tightening, that familiar flash of irritation crossing his features. “Dani…”
“No, really,” she said lightly, though her fingers dug crescent marks into her palms. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the rules. No talking during lunch. No sitting together on pack nights. No acknowledging me in the hallways.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s true.”
He pushed off the desk, boots thudding softly against the floor. “You know it’s not like that.”
She barked a humorless laugh. “Really? Because it feelsexactlylike that. When am I ever ‘at your side?’”
Arthur exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. “Dani, I’m trying to protect you. You know what the others say. What they’d think if they—”
“What? If they thought we were friends?” Her voice cracked, high and thin. “Arthur, they already think the worst. They always have.”
“That’s why I can’t—”
“Can’t what?” Her chest squeezed painfully. It hit her then. The utter unfairness of it all. Hishypocrisy. He had never seen it. The looks she was given, the jeers, the taunts.
The cruelty of his friends when he wasn’t there to temper them.
And she’d never let him see. She’d rather die than confirm to him what he already thought.
That she wasweak.
He wasn’t protecting her at all. If he stood proudly beside her, nobody would dare torture her. They wouldrespecther, or at least respect him too much to carry on their vitriol towards her.
Another thought followed, as heavy and suffocating as a tidal wave.
Maybe he did know that. And he didn’t want to pay the price of openly associating with someone likeher.
Anger bubbled in her chest, hot and red and rising. “What, can’t be seen with the pathetic, broken wolf who can’t shift? Don’t pretend this is about protecting me, Arthur, that’sbullshit.”
His nostrils flared. “Itisabout protecting you.”
“Liar.”
He flinched as though she’d struck him.
