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Julian stood. “Alex may be at the lab. You want to come along?”
“I need to get back to work.” Ella ran their version of a post office, routing all deliveries through the Inuit village. “If she isn’t with Cade, let me know. Otherwise I’ll see her when I get home tonight.”
“You don’t want her out of your house?”
“What?” Ella had been heading for the door, but now she turned. “Why?”
“You said she was the enemy.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Edward would kill her just as quickly as he’d kill any one of us. He’d think she was the enemy, too.” Her lips curved. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Alex is a killer.”
“We’re all killers, Julian.”
“That’s the wolf; it’s instinct. We don’t—”
“We do,” she interrupted. “Only once, oui, for most of us, but we kill. It’s instinct, as you say. At the time we do not know any better. But wasn’t it instinct for Alex to shoot a werewolf? At the time, did she not know any better?”
“I—” Julian paused, uncertain. “I still wouldn’t think you’d want her in your house.”
Ella stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, then muttered something in French, ending with a word that sounded like an epithet: “Hommes!”
Translation: Men!
“What did I do?” Julian asked.
“I would not throw that poor girl from my home. She is the victim here.”
Julian snorted, then backed up with his hands raised when Ella’s eyes narrowed. He might be the alpha, but that also meant he had the brains to know when his interests were best served by shutting up.
“You said you had not raped and pillaged in decades, but making someone a werewolf against their will is rape.”
He opened his mouth, but she made a sharp gesture and he shut it again.
“She has had her very self stripped away.” Ella walked to the front door, opened it, then glanced back. “You need to think about that, Julian.”
Her anger caused Ella’s accent to deepen, and his name came out sounding very French indeed.
Chapter 19
Alex was ankle-deep in the lunch rush when Ella walked by the front window. She opened her mouth to call out, then shut it again when Ella backtracked, peered in through the glass, then made use of the door.
Alex had one seat left at the counter, and Ella took it. “You’re here,” she said.
“Where did you think I was?”
Ella glanced around, then lowered her voice. “Halfway to Juneau.”
Alex had leaned in so she could catch the words and in doing so caught a whiff of—
“Julian,” she murmured.
Ella’s gaze lifted, and for an instant guilt flickered in her eyes. But guilt for what? Did Ella and Julian have a thing going on? Did she think Alex would care?
Strangely, Alex did. The thought of Julian in bed with this gorgeously exotic Frenchwoman, touching her the way he’d touched Alex, made her so angry she thought she might actually shift in the daylight, too.
The thick plastic glass Alex had been holding in preparation for filling it with Pepsi for the young, Hispanic man on the other end of the counter erupted into several dozen shards. Everyone in the restaurant glanced her way.
