The Thing About Weres

perspiration, patchy with a rough beard. My gaze dipped. His neck was ringed by something that looked like a heavy callus and—I squinted—underneath that, a few vertebrae were moving.

He wanted the truth?

“Because it was easier to throw me under the bus,” I said slowly. “Because it was simpler to let the NAW think I killed Mannus, and Dawn, and Stuart, and…” I gave him my own bitter smile. “You—the lost heir to the Alpha crown. Because they found me wanting as an Alpha-by-proxy. Because I don’t carry your scent. Because I can’t change into a wolf. Because I fucking well eat cookies.”

Trowbridge’s hands—look at that, they’re tipped with curved talons—tightened at his hips, and he took a deep breath, like he was afraid he was going to bust apart and both of us would be drenched in an explosion of afterbirth, and gore, and all that other flying crap that just might hurt, like anger, disappointment, and the ugly cruds of once-perfect dreams.

“Because I’m not, nor ever will be, one of them,” I finished.

Silence greeted that prediction—a little broken quiet moment where the unexpected void between us grew and grew.

It was almost a relief when the shrubbery shivered.

A black wolf emerged from the woods. One of the Danverses, but I couldn’t be sure which. Then another wolf—this one buff and brown—slid out from the shadows. It chose a place behind the black wolf, the quality of its personal challenge made murky by the way its head was lowered. Crickets fell silent as two more Creemore wolves crept out from the cover of the forest.

“And hello, Karma,” I murmured.

“I’m waiting to see your pack greet you, Alpha of Creemore,” taunted Bowler-hat.

Trouble-making poseur. I hated the Fae’s clothing: his pants were indecently tight and his high boots spoke of guys that really, really like their laced cuffs and duchesses. Plus, I loathed how he’d angled his bowler over his left ear, convinced he’d done it to highlight the long fall of yellow hair that spilled over his other shoulder. And finally, I totally despised the way he appeared prosperous, while my guy looked like he’d been rolled in a dark alley by a hooker named Bess.

“Piss off,” I mouthed to the Fae, and then felt taken aback when his wide mouth stretched into an approving smile.

Trowbridge studied the wolves quietly, then turned back to me.

When I didn’t volunteer to step up toward him, he moved close to me, obliterating my personal space, until all I could see was a broad expanse of well-muscled chest, half covered by ugly dead ropes of hair. I heard him sigh over my head. Then he bent his neck until we were relatively nose to nose.

Do not roll into a ball of boo-hoo.

“I have to make this short—” he began.

“Why?” I said with admirable coolness. “What is so pressing that—”

Trowbridge covered my mouth. Not hard. But gently—surprisingly so—two knuckles on the top of the swell of my upper lip, fingers curled so that the points of his talons were sheathed. “Don’t talk,” he said in a rough whisper. “For once, Tink, please don’t talk.”

For a second, everything in me tensed, ready to pull back a fist and hit him, because there was a savage ache inside my breast and I wanted him to hurt as much as I, and then—thank you, Goddess—my wits registered the tremble of his fingers. And with that, my heart started slamming inside my chest—fast, like an ocean-skimming bird who’s finally found land.

This is not the touch of a detached man.

Silently, his knuckles brushed the contour of my upper lip in a way that was familiar and unsettling. His gaze was fixed on my mouth as if it were something he yearned to possess.

Damn him.

For half a year, I’d watched him die over and over again. For 196 days I’d hated myself for my inability to bring him home. Never had I felt so incompetent, so guilty, so tightly caught in the grip of Karma’s curse. I’d rethought every moment of that terrible night and wondered how I could have changed the outcome.

Spring had melted away. Summer had flared and died.

And I had longed for him.

“Trowbridge?” I whispered.

His brows pulled together again—but this time the way a hard man does when he’s trying to hold back his emotions. So very briefly, the shutters rose. For a heartbeat, I saw yearning in his eyes. The awful type. The sort of pain that had been given enough time to erode from an intense burn into a worn, chronic ache. Past grief, past resentment, past bargaining. Resigned. Unwilling to believe or hope.

“Life keeps kicking us in the ass, doesn’t it?” he murmured, shaking his head. “Don’t run, Hedi. Whatever you think you understand tonight—I can explain. Just promise me you’ll wait. Give me time to tell you things you need to know. All the other stuff, we’ll figure out, somehow.” A rueful smile. “We’ve come this far.”

Oh Trowbridge.

The shutters slammed shut, and his expression became hard again. “The Fae is known as the Black Mage’s Shadow,” he said. “He has no morals, no ethics. He is responsible for the near genocide of a race of Weres. He’ll lie and charm and steal to get what he wants. He will try to play to your emotions. Don’t listen. He will ask you to help him escape. Don’t do it. He has to stay here—I’ll leave you some guards. Say nothing, agree to nothing, do nothing he asks—” He sent an angry look up at the moon. “I wish I had more time. Promise me. No matter what is revealed tonight, promise you won’t leave with him.”

“Why would I—”

Another pressure of fingers sent a shudder of sensation straight down my spine. “Lives depend on you. Vow to me that you won’t do anything to ease his escape. He must not be allowed to reopen the gates. Your word. I want you to give me your word.”

And there it was. The one thing guaranteed to Super Glue Hedi’s heels to the ground. Give me your word. No other man would ask me for it and actually believe I could be held accountable to it.

Redemption.

“You have it,” I said, feeling tears well.

He rubbed a talon-tipped thumb along the line of my jaw. “I never thought I’d see you again,” he said roughly, his eyes soft. “Go to my house, Tink, and wait, okay?”

His hand drifted to the back of my head, a prelude to the soft kiss he placed, just beneath my ear, right where my skin was tenderest, and my blood surged.

Kiss me. Make us whole.

My One True Thing whispered, “Don’t get mad.” Then he swiped Ralph right off my neck. Snatched him off me, that fast. Before I could splutter, “You thieving swine!,” he’d turned, and placed the Royal Amulet around the little brown wolf from Merenwyn.

Chapter Ten

“Hedi—stop,” Trowbridge said, capturing my fist in his. “I can’t go face the pack with a Fae amulet dangling from my neck, and I can’t leave the Royal Amulet in your care.”

Unspeakable fury. “I have taken care of that—”

“The Shadow will try to charm it off you,” he said grimly. “He knows the words to summon the portal and with the amulet—”

“I am not some—”

“I have no time!” he said through his teeth.

Which was true, because Ralph was done. Totally fed up with being jerked around. He began to slowly shorten his noose—taking more time than required, because His Royal Nastiness was all about the big statement, and he not only wanted to choke something, he wanted the mortals who insulted him to note his intent.

Quickly Trowbridge inserted his mitt inside the narrowing gap. “Can this amulet understand language?”