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I leaned into the canoe, making it wobble. “No shit.”

“That’s why she did it, apparently,” he said. “Because if she mated with a cyning, his blood would be strong enough to make sure that her children didn’t inherit it.”

I sputtered. That was some kind of magical old wives tale— “That can’t be true.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Neither of them test positive.”

Easlings was a disease that only affected werewolves. Basically, the human body would start to reject the wolf inside, and the disease was always deadly. The immune system would attack the wolf parts of the shifter, and eventually, kill the wolf. When that happened, though, the human part would die, too, soon after. There had been lots of interest in Easlings, as a weird disease that affected the weird werewolves, but there hadn’t been much progress in actually curing it.

“Your nephews,” I said softly.

He eyed me. “She wanted you here.”

“But?”

“No buts.”

“You said you were conflicted.”

“Yeah, but only because of you and Damian,” he said. “I felt like I should do her bidding. When a woman asks you something on her deathbed, you do it. But, hell, Leo. Just because you and my brother have a mystical bond or something, it doesn’t mean you’re actually destined to be together.”

“No, I know,” I said. “I’m not here for him. I’m going to leave tomorrow, right after the funeral.”

“About that,” he said. “You might want to stay a couple extra days. You’re in Opal’s will. The reading is on Friday.”

I let go of the canoe, swimming backwards. “Why would she put me in her will?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Hey, where are you going?”

I felt overwhelmed. I shook my head at him and then turned onto my belly and swam for the dock to my house.

He rowed behind me. “I’m not going to tell him that you’re here. You know if I did, he’d be here in five minutes. You’re staying with your dad?”

I only swam.

“It’s because I think you deserve better than that, really. Damian fucked you over, Leo. He always took you for granted, just like he took everything for granted. He had everything handed to him, and he could not handle it.”

I kept swimming.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN I WAS thirteen, Damian came to my cabin that evening before dinner. He was dressed, not wearing only a pair of swimming trunks like he’d been in the canoe earlier. I could see that he was tall and lanky and that he had a smile that lit up his face. His green eyes danced when he smiled.

He came by and knocked, and my sister Angela opened the door. I wasn’t in the room, but in the kitchen, perched on one of the stools there, the ones that surrounded the little breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room. Every vacation house in the world seems to be set up like that. I was eating chips that my mother had set out for us, dipping them in salsa.

“Leona!” yelled my sister. “You have company.”

My mother turned from the stove, furrowing her brow. “How do you know anyone yet?”

“I don’t!” I hopped off the stool and went out to meet him, and that was when it got crazy. First, I noticed everything about him—his smile, his dancing eyes, his wavy light brown sunkissed hair that hung over his forehead—and then we scented each other for the first time.

People always used to ask me what a scent match smelled like, and I could never explain it. He didn’t smell like anything. He didn’t smell like chocolate or bourbon or pine. He smelled like himself. He smelled like a teenage boy. He smelled like sweat and laundry detergent and the river and a mint he’d been chewing on.

But the part of him that smelled like him, it engulfed me. I wavered on my feet there, in the living room of the cabin, gazing at him.

His pupils dilated, large and wide, the black overtaking almost all of the green of his eyes. He staggered forward towards me.

I lurched at him.