“Okay,” she replied, not sure she really understood.
“Everything is heightened for me, Eva. Like the fact you knew Katalina was upset. How did you know?”
“Well, she didn’t look as happy as she normally does, but it was more than that. I just knew.”
“Humans call it gut instinct. The churning in your stomach when you know something is wrong, the sense that someone is bad. You have the same abilities as me. They’re just not as strong as mine.”
“When you put it like that, I guess you’re right.”
“Have you met Anna before?” he asked.
“Yeah, a couple of times.” She’d never had the chance to get to know the redheaded woman though. Katalina had told her she was psychic, which seemed just as unbelievable as there being shifters in the world.
“Cage, Anna, how are you?” John said as they approached.
“Tired,” Cage replied. “I’ve just pulled a double shift.”
“And I told him we should go home, but will he listen?” Anna grumbled.
“I’m an enforcer, Anna. I need to at least show my face.” Cage sighed.
Eva watched the interaction with the sense they’d had the same argument several times.
“We have,” Anna said, focusing on her. “He’s pushing himself so others who are less experienced can rest.”
Eva glanced at John, heart hammering. Did I say that out loud?
John laughed. “Anna, I brought her over here thinking it would do Eva good to interact with a fellow human, and you’re acting all scary psychic.”
Anna glanced between them guiltily. “Sorry, I was never a very good human. People always thought I was weird.”
“You are not weird, babe,” Cage murmured.
“Not any weirder than anyone else here anyway.” Anna smiled. “You’ll get used to it, Eva. I was a little overwhelmed when I first arrived too.”
“How did you come to be here?” Eva asked.
Cage smiled the kind of smile Eva had seen lots of men giving their mates. It was hard not to yearn for such a thing. The devotion and love in their eyes was something far more intense then she’d ever seen anywhere else. Her father had loved her mom. She’d often caught them looking adoringly at each other, but this was so much more. She’d heard mates could sense each other’s emotions when connected by a love that could never end. For an outsider looking in, it was a concept hard to grasp.
“She walked right into the heart of wolf territory like a crazy person,” Cage answered.
“Only because you wouldn’t listen to me when I found you in Canada,” Anna retorted.
“Canada?” Eva frowned.
“It began with visions of Toby—his younger brother—he was going to die. Eventually, I couldn’t ignore it anymore and set off to find him.”
“Which led her to me,” Cage continued. “Only I wasn’t in the mood to listen.”
“How did you find him?” Eva asked. “Did you know what he was?”
“No, I dreamed of wolves, but I didn’t understand it until I met the packs. And I found him by following my gift. It’s like an internal compass,” Anna explained. “To cut a long, complicated story short, Cage wouldn’t listen to me when I told him his brother was going to die if he didn’t return home, so I set off to find Toby myself. Luckily, Cage did listen in the end and saved everyone.”
“Got shot in the process too.” Cage rolled his eyes.
“That seems to be a thing here,” Eva noted. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was one thing to be told they were at war, but apart from the attempted kidnapping and the incident with her brother, Eva didn’t have much of an understanding of what that might mean. She’d studied wars in school, seen terrible things on the TV, but half of the time, Eva found the wolf world around her an unimaginable dream.
John and Cage shrugged.
“You’ll get used to it,” Anna answered in a tone Eva thought was meant to be reassuring, yet she wasn’t sure she wanted to get used to people being shot. “If you stay, that is,” Anna added.
Eva’s cheeks heated as John’s gaze bored into the side of her head. She refused to meet his eyes. She owed him nothing. He wasn’t her boyfriend. She wasn’t sure what he was, but she was sure that the life around her seemed just as daunting as the prospect of returning to college.
“Sorry, I’ve put my foot in it again, haven’t I?” Anna’s expression saddened, and Cage kissed her cheek softly.
“It’s all right,” Eva replied. “I deferred for a year after it was clear my mom wasn’t going to recover from cancer. “I’ve got two years left of studying to do. I need to go back and finish it.”
“What were you studying?” Cage asked.
“Biology. I want to be a vet. After my bachelor’s degree, it’s four years of vet school,” she explained.
Cage whistled. “That’s a long time in school. I dropped out as soon as possible.” He laughed.
“Yeah, but you’re kinda in wolf school, aren’t you?” Eva pointed out.
“True. A vet around here might come in handy.” He laughed.
John had grown even stiller beside her, his hand in hers like stone. Tension seemed to radiate off him, and it was clear Anna and Cage felt it too. They excused themselves moments later, and after they left, Eva worked up the nerve to look him in the eye.
“Want to get out of here?” she asked gently, squeezing his hand.
“Yeah, okay. Wait here. I’ll go tell Bass we’re going home.” As the word home left his mouth, his face seemed to twist with pain, and Eva’s stomach sank uncomfortably.
She’d asked him what he’d wanted from her and while he hadn’t answered directly, but had made it clear what was
