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You’re not explaining her right, he thought. You’re not getting across how strange and somber and sad she could be.
Kade shrugged. “She was odd, but everything seemed okay, at least until middle school. Then Papa got a new job, and we moved close to the state border with Nevada, and out there it’s mostly wolves and humans. This was right after shifters came out, so things were... uncomfortable.”
He examined a hangnail very, very closely, trying to figure out what to say next.
“She had one friend. Just this one girl, Matilda, and Matilda was a lion shifter but they got along really well, even though all the other kids bullied them really, really bad.”
“Did you get bullied?”
Kade shook his head. “I was good at sports,” he said, half-shrugging. “That kept them off me.”
He rubbed his face in his hands.
“Anyway, it went on all throughout middle school, up until high school,” he said. “Until, finally, one day Matilda was killed in a hit-and-run accident while she was crossing a street. In human form.”
Charlie gasped.
“Did they catch whoever did it?” she said.
Kade shook his head. “Nothing. We never even found out who it was, whether it was an accident or they were targeting Matilda.”
He swallowed hard.
“It pretty much broke Olivia. A week later she went out for bear time and just... never came home.”
Silence.
“I didn’t help her then, so I’m trying to help her now. I want my little sister back.”
There were tears in Charlie’s eyes, and she reached one hand across the table, covering Kade’s hand with her own much smaller one.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Charlie said gently.
Kade’s hand tensed into fist.
“You don’t know that,” he said gruffly. “You don’t know the first thing about being a shifter and going feral.”
I could have listened to Olivia more,he thought. I could have beat the hell out of anyone who teased her, I could have made my friends her friends. But no, instead, she was my weirdo sister who I pretended I wasn’t even related to.
Charlie’s eyes flashed in anger, and he could see the muscles working in her jaw.
“You don’t know the first thing about me either,” Charlie snapped back.
“Did you have a friend who was a shifter or something?” Kade said.
Stop it,he thought. She’s trying to make you feel better. You don’t have to be such as asshole.
“Most of my friends were shifters,” Charlie said. She pulled her hand back, away from his. “They didn’t go feral, but most of them climbed into a hole filled with oxy or meth and most haven’t come back out.”
Kade let his gaze flick to Charlie’s steady brown eyes with that single gold fleck.
Why do I have to be such an asshole sometimes?
“I’m sorry,” he said out loud.
Charlie shook her head.
“Me too,” she said. “I just meant that people are going to do what they’re going to do. You can’t save anyone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
