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“Alone?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Riggs. You realize she still feels like she’s in trouble with you, right? Is that what you want?”
I appreciated the way Sylvie posed the question, even if her opinion was clear in the tone of her voice. She wasn’t commanding me to speak to my sister. She was just trying to make sure I’d given it the appropriate amount of thought.
“I’m trying to forgive her. The truth is, being here has reminded me of how important the bond with our wolf is. How real he is. I’d been neglecting him, and he was in a sort of hibernation before we came here. But that’s also reminding me how fucked up it is that Kyla chose some vampire mate over her wolf.”
“About that,” Sylvie said carefully. “Where is this guy she cared so much about that she left everything behind?”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure, to be honest.”
Sylvie folded her arms, which distractingly pressed her breasts up. As much as I wanted to dive back into her and take her again, she was right to press me on this. I got out of bed and slipped my clothes back on but turned to point at her before I left. “You stay just like that,” I said. “Don’t put any clothes on unless you want me to tear them off. With my teeth.”
Sylvie wiggled her eyebrows. “Is that supposed to be a threat? Because now I want to put on several layers and watch you try to chew through them.”
I found Kyla in the bowling alley, of all places. One of the benefits of being the Alpha of a pack was a sort of hard to define telekinesis. It didn’t come in complete sentences or clear pictures, but I developed an instinct that was based on what the werewolves in my pack knew. If someone was behind me and one of my pack knew it, I would feel the urge to spin and face them. If I was looking for something one of my pack knew where to find, I’d more often than not wind up finding it in the first place I looked.
So I wasn’t surprised when I felt drawn to the bowling alley of Silverback and found Kyla playing a game by herself on the center lane.
The smell of the place was laced with nostalgia. Waxed floors and the faint must of bowling shoes. The distant buzz of arcade machines both noisily chirping from the back room.
Kyla saw me, then set down her bowling ball and waited as I approached.
“I had completely forgotten how much we used to come here,” I said.
She nodded. “Me too. But I saw it and knew I couldn’t leave without playing a game. Looks like I’ve gotten rusty.”
I checked the score on the screen hanging above her lane. “Very rusty,” I agreed.
We both sat a comfortable distance apart on the uncomfortable sofa ringing the lane.
“Sylvie convinced you to come talk to me, didn’t she?” Kyla asked.
I grinned. “Is it that obvious?”
“She’s good for you. I think she makes you a better person.”
“She does.”
“I’m happy you found someone. Really, Riggs,” she said, smiling. “I’m so happy for you.” If she wasn’t my sister, I thought I might’ve missed the touch of sadness in her eyes.
“Where is he?” I asked. My tone made it clear who I was asking about. The vampire she’d left our pack for. The one she’d never been willing to tell me about. The one who had made her seem like a different person for those months leading up to the time she finally left.
Kyla looked down at her hands, working her lips to the side in silent thought. “I killed him.”
I stared, waiting for the punchline.
She wiped at the corner of her eye. “Three years ago. I learned what his talent was. He was a former Cleaner with a knack for mental control. I heard him bragging to an old friend one night when I wasn’t supposed to be at Blackridge. He explained how he was so good he could ‘turn a werewolf to a vamp and make her think she wanted it.’” She swallowed, then looked like she was about to be sick. “His friend called bullshit, but he insisted. Eventually, he admitted that was exactly what he’d done with me.”
I was startled by the sudden sound of popping fabric. I realized I’d clenched my hands straight through the old, cracked leather and into the padding beneath the bench. “Fuck,” was all I could manage. The word slipped between clenched teeth and was practically drenched in outrage and fury. I couldn’t believe it. Except of course I could. It was exactly the explanation I’d clung to many a dark night to explain why my sister had run off and turned vamp, even if it meant killing her wolf.
But knowing I’d been right didn’t feel vindicating like I would’ve expected. It felt like having a hole punched through my chest—like I could hear the wind howling through the emptiness in me.
