Instead, my pack mate shoves up from his stool, leans closer, and breathes in deeper. Then he reels back with an expression that looks a lot like horror.
“Who?”The gesture is jerky, the man’s stare boring into me.
A dark sense of foreboding twists my gut.
I start to fingerspell, “C-O-R?—”
An inarticulate roar tears from Thad’s throat, and he shoves past me, staring around the bar with frenzied eyes before facing me again, his hands wild.“Where? Where is he?”
Looks like, everything the Bear Valley wolf told me about being friends with Thad was a lie, and my anger rises in response. He wanted it to be a fucking surprise, and I’m the idiot who agreed.
“Outside,”I sign. “What’s wrong?”
But my pack mate is already out the door. I sprint after him.
He stops beside the guy’s bike, but there’s no sign of Cory.
My mind tries to make sense of the scene before me.Where would he go? Why is Thad so agitated? If they have beef, I led him to the wolf he wants to fight.
Stepping toward Thad, I’m just about to grab his shoulder for his attention when the wolf lets out another enraged sound, hefts Cory’s bike above his head, and then chucks the entire machine across the highway. Sparks fly as chrome scrapes across asphalt.
But Thad doesn’t stick around to watch the fireworks display. He lopes off toward the woods, half bent over. He’s scenting a trail, and I chase after. Just inside the tree line, I find him clutching the clothes Cory was wearing earlier.
He transformed?
I need answers.
“What the fuck is happening?”My words are growled and gestures are broad, demanding his attention.
Thad stares at me, eyes wild. Then he drops the clothes to talk back.“He wants Juliet.”
Ice encases my chest, and denials slice through my mind.
“No,”I sign.
My woman has nothing to do with this. There’s some other reason Thad looks on the edge of madness at the surprise visit of a strange wolf.
He shoves me back, growling in rage,“YES! Fucking idiot! You brought him here! He’ll take her!”
Not bothering to explain further, Thad dodges around me, sprinting back to the parking lot. I follow after, just in time to see him leap onto his bike. Other pack members have filed out of the bar, staring in shock at Cory’s bike across the road and Thad’s manic behavior.
“Mason, Moose, Raider, Sandra. With me.” I don’t know what exactly is happening, so the best route is to bring backup. On my bike almost as fast as Thad, I follow him through town.
Despite the frantic nature of the ride, I finally have a second to think.
Thad knows and dislikes Cory.
Cory lied about why he was coming to town.
Thad said that Cory is after Juliet.
A memory resurfaces from that night when I sat on the kitchen floor in the librarian’s home.
“I know about werewolves because I dated one.”
And as the cold evening air whips my face, realization comes with a terrible, horrifying clarity.
Juliet is hiding from her past. Cory is Juliet’s ex. And I brought him straight to her.
