My knuckles crack and a sting pricks along my eyes. I hate this. All of it.
“Em?”
“Yes, Bren?”
“I don’t think you’ll see me tonight.”
She nods, quickly, trying to be braver than I can scent she feels. “All right,” she says.
Emme takes a step back when I try to kiss her, and I swear it’s the last punch in the gut I need. I try to tell her how sorry I am, but then the door swings open and I know I’m in trouble.
I jolt. There, as clear as day, is the head of the Wird Family.
Celia prowls through the door, her big mane of waves fluttering as she moves and the green eyes of her tigress flashing. Emme never quite understood how wickedly terrifying Celia can be.
“All right, maybe she’s killed demons, vampires, weres, and a couple of humans, but otherwise she’s really sweet,” Emme always asserted.
No. Celia isn’t sweet. Not when I just banged her little sister like a drummer at the Fourth of July parade.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey, Ceel.” I clutch Emme by the shoulders and shove her into Celia’s arms. “Well, here she is. Safe and sound.”
Celia shoots me a look, it’s similar to the one Emme and Dan gave me earlier. Still, she embraces Emme. “I would expect no less,” she replies. “You were together, weren’t you?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I snap.
Celia releases Emme slowly. She turns to me, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. Oh, and look, there’s that killer predator poking through again. “What do you think it means, Bren?”
“Nothing.” I back away, my hands up in surrender. “Well, gotta go.”
I peel out of that neighborhood like Celia already knows. More than once I look back to see if she’s following. I’m a dead man. Jesus God, I am dead.
Chapter Twenty
Bren
It’s official: Dan has transformed me into a nerd. I might as well tear up my alpha male card in exchange for a library card.
I arrive back at my apartment to find Dan waiting like the mother hen that he is.
He stands, his eyes peering at the paper grocery bag in my grip. “What did you buy?”
I shrug. “Just a couple of magazines.”
We wrestle for the bag when he dives for it. The bag tears and the contents spill all over the floor.
Dan blinks back at me like I’m some damn stranger. “You bought Women’s World.”
“Yeah,” I say, like it’s no biggie.
“And Redbook. And Glamour an-and Better Homes and Garden.”
“So what?” I snap. “Why don’t you go masturbate to women’s golf and leave me the hell alone.”
“I don’t do that.” He scowls. “Anymore.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever.” I bend to swipe the magazines off the floor.
“Bren,” he says, keeping me in place. “We have to talk about this morning.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I don’t know why I was so pissed. Emme, I don’t know, Dan. She wants to be my girlfriend and you know how I feel about that shit.”
Dan blows out a breath that makes his lips motorboat. “Bren, Emme can’t be your girlfriend.”
This is why Dan is my best friend. I throw up my hands. “That’s exactly what I was trying to tell her—”
“She’s your mate,” he says, cutting me off.
Complete silence fills the room. I let it, then absolutely lose my shit.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you talking about?!”
Instead of running for the hills like he damn well should, he flops onto the couch. “Bren, take a look at the way you acted this morning. You had her wrapped up in bed like she was your possession.”
“I didn’t want her to get cold,” I say, like a moron.
“When we sat down to eat, you fed her meat,” he tells me. “Just like a wolf would in the wild.”
“It’s like I told you, she doesn’t eat enough.”
Even if Dan couldn’t sniff out the truth, he knows me enough to know I’m grasping at straws. “You told me she was yours, and when she tried to hug me, you all but ripped out my jugular.”
“I was just tired,” I mutter. “Males are cranky and unreasonable when sleep deprived.”
“Face it, Bren. Your wolf has found his mate.”
“No, no. Don’t go there, Dan. Not you. Not when you know all the shit I’ve been through.”
Dan’s features grow solemn. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Bren. I know you think of matehood as more of a curse than something sacred.”
“That’s because it is,” I bite out. “Seen Celia and Aric lately? How are they doing there, Dan?”
Dan expressions steels. “Better now that they have each other.”
It was easier to shift the conversation away from my folks and onto Celia and Aric. But Dan has always been too smart for his own good.
“What about me?” I ask. “Do you know me at all? All I’ve done since the day we met is sleep around.”
Dan shrugs, unfazed. “Maybe that was your wolf’s desperate search for his other half.”
I mutter a swear. “None of this makes sense. I’ve known Emme for years. If she was really my mate, I would have known before last night.”
Dan gives it some thought, not that it slows him down. “Not necessarily. Sometimes it takes an intimate moment to trigger a wolf’s recognition. Did anything different happen last night? I mean, before you actually slept together?”
“She kissed me like she always does,” I reply.
“On the cheek?” he asks.
“Well, she tried. But then she accidently touched my lips with hers and then I…”
Oh shit.
Chapter Twenty-One
Emme
I place the last plate in the dishwasher and hit start. It’s almost midnight and Bren never showed.
I walk into the family room, glancing toward Taran and Gemini’s bedroom and then to the stairs where Celia and Shayna are likely asleep beside their mates.
Dinner was nice, as nice as it could be. As usual Shayna did most of the talking, and while my family sensed something was wrong, they gave me
