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“What else hurts?”
“I’m sore, but mostly my shoulder. I landed on it again. That’s the worst of it. Are you okay?”
“Scrapes,” he said, and worry filled his eyes. “I don’t know how he got past us. Then he sent two friends to play with me, and I couldn’t get up here fast enough.”
“Friends from the AAM?”
“Yeah. I recognized them from the Grove.”
“Assholes,” I muttered. “Are they down?”
“Down, but not dead. I left them to check on you. They may have gotten away.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking my head and leaning into him, nearly crying from the relief of it, but there’d been too much near crying these last few days. “We’re okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Don’t be. He didn’t get past you.”
Connor pulled back. “He was in here. Either he was invisible, or he got past me.”
“Neither, and both,” I said, and Connor’s brow furrowed. “He was in the loft, waiting for me. He used glamour. He’s got quite a bit of skill—can convince people they’re seeing exactly what they expect to see.”
“Like an empty apartment.”
“Like that,” I agreed. “Con, he didn’t mention Miranda. He took credit for you, for Blake. But not for her.” I didn’t mention that she’d reported me to the AAM. I’d take that up with her directly.
He was quiet for a moment. “She did it to herself, or had someone do it. To blame vampires? To get the Pack’s sympathies? Mine?”
“Possibly all of the above.”
He swore bitterly. “She put heat on you.”
“It doesn’t matter. You know the truth, and you’ll tell your family. That’s enough for me.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead, then rose. Wordlessly, he went to the kitchen, opened drawers until he found a bank of clean tea towels, filled one with ice from the freezer.
While he worked, a black cat slunk out of the hallway, padded toward the couch, sat down in front of it, and looked at me.
“You were supposed to be guarding the place,” I told her.
She just blinked.
“Did you know he was in here? Did you let him in here? Unlock the door in hopes he’d give you treats?” I shifted and accidentally tweaked my shoulder, winced at the pain.
To my great surprise, she padded toward me, bumped her head against my leg.
Connor came back, ice pack in hand, and looked down at the cat. “Well. That’s a change of mood.”
“She’s touching me voluntarily,” I whispered, afraid to move and send her scampering. “She must be relieved I’m alive to feed her.”
“She’s not the only one,” he said and sat beside me. Carefully, delicately, he pressed the towel to my cheekbone while the cat trotted off to her water bowl.
“Levi’s damaged,” I said. “Seriously deranged. He believed we were going to have some kind of romantic love affair, and you got in the way. And he seriously hates shifters.”
“Yeah, I got that from the notes. Fuck me, Elisa.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “But we’ll have to clean up first.”
