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“He didn’t,” Aria replied before taking a tentative bite of the garlic bread. She moaned, and both Johnny and I froze at the sound. “This is delicious,” she breathed around her mouthful, and gods fucking dammit if I didn’t feel another irrational spike of jealousy at the praise.
Johnny beamed as she took a bite of the pasta and sighed again. If glares could kill, he’d be dead. By me.
“So…” he started. “Why are you here, then?”
“Because she’s a hybrid,” I answered for her.
Johnny’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Huh?”
“Half-fallen, half-blessed wolf,” I said, reaching for the garlic bread.
He slowly straightened from the counter to stare at Aria, who had paused with her fork halfway to her mouth to observe his reaction. “Nice,” he grinned. “You have company.”
“No, I don’t,” I frowned, avoiding Aria’s questioning gaze.
Johnny ignored me. “How the hell did he find you, sugar? Shouldn’t you be hiding?”
I nodded. “Right? She was working for my father. Just out in the open for him to find.”
Johnny winced. “Let me guess, he found her?”
“He did,” I confirmed, ignoring Aria's gaze.
“You don’t even look like you have an ounce of fallen blood in you,” he observed. “I mean, you’re gorgeous, you haven’t snapped at me once, and you managed to stay in a car with Sariel for hours. Are you sure you’re—”
“Yes,” she replied hotly. “I’m pretty fucking positive.”
Johnny and I exchanged glances. “So, why would you risk getting caught?” he asked.
Her cheeks reddened, but she didn’t look down as I expected her to. No, she was looking Johnny in the eyes. She didn’t even blink when he increased his dominance experimentally. It was odd to watch another wolf face off against Johnny while knowing how much of an alpha he was.
“I wanted to try being normal,” she finally answered. I almost scoffed. I’d been there and done that. “I thought I could live a normal life or something, like regular blessed-blood. Have a job, a chance at a future where I don't have to hide for the rest of my life.”
My heart gave a sickening lurch at the little wobble in her voice. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the pain I could hear, the almost desperate need for us to understand and relate.
Johnny couldn’t. He’d been born to ordinary parents, raised by the most boring blessed-blood wolves, then inherited millions when they’d passed within months of each other. He’d always had normalcy.
He didn’t know the paralyzing fear that came with being even more unordinary than just being a supernatural being.
“I get it,” I started slowly, guilt clawing at my gut.
“Are you sure about that?” she smiled tightly. “Because you just got me fired.”
My stomach plummeted. “I didn’t know—”
“Wonderful. So you’d just get any fallen-blood wolf who dared to be normal fired,” she accused.
“I—”
“Yes, he would,” Johnny interrupted. It was his turn to glare at me.
My jaw snapped shut.
He was right. It’d been a knee-jerk reaction. Fallen-blood wolves didn’t come like Aria—they came in violent, mutated, red-eyed packages and stunk like all hell.
“So, are you alone, sugar?” he continued. “Do you know your parents—”
“They’re dead,” she interrupted. “Both sets.”
