me? didn’t constitute a warning. They’d been here a few hours, and already a door had been slammed in her face. Acting on impulse, rather than planning and forethought, led to blunders like this.
She heard the front door open and knew it was him; she could already identify his scent. He ambled over to the swing set with a loose, sinuous gait.
Embarrassed at the way she’d lost her temper inside, she concentrated on scratching Dylan and ignored Cade looming above her.
“Dylan, I still need to talk to Ally. Go run.”
Dylan ambled off.
“I think your cousin is an honorable wolf.”
“He is that. Absolutely,” she agreed quietly, staring at the ground.
“If an honorable wolf is willing to kill and lie for you, I suppose you aren’t a bad person, no matter how much you annoy me.”
Condescending creep.
Cade smoked.
Ally swung.
Time passed.
“Seth just told me one hell of a story.” Now he spoke gently, no mockery in his voice.
She looked up. “You believe him?”
“I believe people who aren’t lying to me.”
“So you’re telepathic.”
He grinned around the cigarillo. “I’m a wolf of much power.”
“Good for you.” Bullshit. Wolves didn’t possess Fae talents. Wolves and Fae couldn’t even produce children together. She tucked her hair behind her ear and put her head back down.
“Are you going to cry?” Now he sounded worried.
She started to laugh, but stopped before it turned into a sob. “No. I don’t cry in front of people.” She quit swinging for a minute. “I might throw up, though.”
“I’d prefer that to crying.”
“That’s weird.”
“Can’t help it. Female tears annoy me.”
She looked up and laughed shakily. “Me too.”
He stared at her in silence, and she looked back down at the ground. Unnerving though it was, she enjoyed being the center of his attention. She liked the way he scared her, and it scared her that she liked it.
“Why’d you do it?” His drawl had gotten more pronounced since they’d started arguing at dinner, and it sounded appallingly sexy on him.
Her heart stopped for a moment. What had Seth said? “I had to.”
“No, Ally, you didn’t. That’s just the point. You didn’t have to do any of it. You could have called the cops, you—”
“There wasn’t time.”
“You could’ve let Guy take Dylan.”
She gaped at him in shock, blinking back the tears suddenly pooling in her eyes. “How could I do that? How could I ever do something like that?”
“I’m just trying to understand how an eighteen-year-old girl faces down a wolf drunk on moonshine. Not many young girls would risk their lives like that, not even for family.”
The wave of relief nearly knocked her over. Seth had told MacDougall what he needed to know and nothing else, just as he had promised.
She debated for a moment over how honest to be.
“I lost my parents when I was eight. My aunt Jackie raised me, and I loved her—she was barely twenty-one when she took me in—but she died when I was sixteen and I stayed in our trailer by myself.”
“You didn’t have other family?”
“I did. I had Seth and his mom, and some others. I didn’t want to live with them. They gave me money here and there, but otherwise they left me alone. I didn’t really fit in. I read books and made good grades and didn’t drink and screw around and I wanted to go to college.” She shrugged. “I was lonely and sad, and Dylan made me feel necessary. Gracie loved him—she did, but she was weak. She would never have given him up, but she’d take all the help I gave her. And when Guy showed up that night, I thought, ‘Hell no. I won’t let you hurt him’.”
“So you faced down a drunken, rampaging wolf alone.”
“It wasn’t like I was unarmed. I had a silver-loaded shotgun.”
“You missed.”
“This is true." She paused. “I’m a much better shot now.”
He grunted in exasperation as he ground out the cigarillo. “You shouldn’t joke about
Jane Charles
Lester Dent
Carolyn G. Hart
Elen Caldecott
Graham Masterton
Hannah Howell, Deborah Raleigh, Adrienne Basso
Judy Clemens
Steven Womack
Laurie Roma
Shirley Rousseau Murphy