Page 32 of Brock’s Mate

There was another silence, and then she said, “Are they cute? Baby werewolves, I mean.”

He gave a half-laugh. “They’re cute as fuck. Want to see?”

He didn’t want to turn his phone on, because he didn’t want the crew to find him yet, but he put his plate down and fished a couple of hard-copy photos out of his wallet. He went over and showed them to her.

“This is a picture of me and my family, when I was little. And this one is of a friend of mine, from my home pack. They’re old photos, obviously, but I like to keep them around.”

She took the pictures, one in each hand, looking back and forth. The picture of his family had been taken not long after he and his mom and stepdad had joined the Silverlake wolf pack, just before he turned five. His mom was holding him, in wolf form, and he was reaching his head up to lick Noah’s face.

They’d been so happy. Looking at it always made him smile.

The other one was taken a few years later when Michelangela Connors, Brock’s honorary little sister, had Changed for the first time. Her mom had caught the shocked look on her little wolf face, and her dad Rafe crouched next to her, laughing, his expression full of love and pride.

Brock watched Desi’s face. She was an expert at hiding her feelings, and the emotions he was sensing from her were such a complicated mix he couldn’t get a read on them.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She looked up, her eyes cool and guarded. “Sure,” she said. “I’m always okay. I adapt.”

It sounded sad, though. And lonely.

He said gently, “That’s probably why you’re still alive.”

“Because I roll with the shit life hands me? What choice do I have?”

There were plenty of other choices. Terror. Insanity. Refusal to accept what was right in front of a person. Total collapse, or looking for anyone or anything to cling to.

He didn’t say that though. He just said, “Because your mind is flexible. You couldn’t totally accept the wolf, but you didn’t keep fighting her either.”

“What happens when people fight?”

Brock didn’t want to go back to those memories. “The wolf takes control,” he said shortly. “It goes rogue, and if it can’t come back, then they have to be caged up.” He hesitated, but she had to know. “Or put down.”

She put the pictures slowly down on the counter, staring at him. “They kill them? They can get away with that?”

“If you’re a shifter.” He said quietly, “It’s a violent life. Not what you’re used to.”

He heard her mutter softly, “Don’t bet on that.”

Hell. He didn’t know what kind of background she came from, but at least it seemed to have prepared her to be a shifter.

She might be one of the ones who made it.

He said, “The first thing we need is for me to do a preliminary assessment of your wolf. I have… I guess you’d call it a kind of psychic ability that lets me communicate with people’s shifter animals, even if they’re not manifested. I have to come inside your mind to do it, though.”

She smirked, folding her arms. “Really? Can’t you use a condom in there? Or just pull out before you come?”

He laughed. “You’d fit right in with my crew.” At her questioning look, he said, “The group of shifters I live with.”

He began to move toward her, and stopped. “Before I try it, though, I need to know how you did that crazy pain-zapper thing you did to me last night, to get out of the car.”

She shrugged, looking away from him. “It’s just a thing I can do.”

There was more to it than that, but he clearly had to go slow with this one. “Since you turned wolf?”

She shook her head. “Since always.”

Huh. A latent psychic ability? Or maybe witch blood in her family?