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I started walking again, keeping my stoic expression although my insides flipped at the unexpected reminder. I hadn’t seen that coming.
How can it possibly hurt so much after all this time?! I need to get over myself.
“I don’t know what you’re sorry about,” I lied, but even I heard the waver in my own words.
“I meant I’m sorry about your mate,” Etta explained.
She just didn’t have the sense to leave well enough alone.
“Who rejected me and is now dead,” I concluded for her. “For two centuries now. That’s old news, Etta. Nothing new to talk about.”
Inadvertently, I’d put distance between us, my steps more akin to a jog now than a walk, and Etta rushed to keep up with me.
“Are you mad at me?” she yelled, finally giving up at reaching my side.
The last of the sunlight faded fully away to drape us in twilight blue tones. Drawing in a breath, I paused at the end of my skinny, unpaved driveway and peered back at her.
“No, Etta, of course not.”
Relief fell over her face. “Okay, good.”
She waved like a little girl before pivoting around to sprint in the direction of the house she shared with Orson, and I watched her, shaking my head at the fact that she was older than me.
I hadn’t lied to Etta. I wasn’t mad—at her. But I still harbored some mournful anger toward my lost mate, someone who had rejected me so long ago, I shouldn’t have been able to remember his face.
Never mind Elijah,I snapped at myself.It’s nothing a shower won’t fix.
Chapter2
Elijah
First, my eyes popped open, and within half a second, the rooster began to caw his evil, shrill howl that sounded nothing like a rooster should.
His shrieks echoed through the slats of the barn like a cross between a strangled goose and a horny cat, the scratch of his feet on straw rousing me from my place in the loft.
Why does he crow like that? Is there something wrong with him, or is that really the way roosters are supposed to sound?
Benny wasn’t the first rooster I’d raised, but he’d been with me so long, I’d forgotten what the others sounded like.
My jaw twitched at the reminder of all the things I’d seemed to have forsaken in my life, and I pulled myself off the makeshift straw bed, brushing the strands of hay away from the groves of my abdomen. Whatever shirt I’d been wearing was either in the main house or laying discarded on the property somewhere because it wasn’t anywhere on the ledge above the stables.
I ducked to avoid hitting the beam, several strands of hair catching against the crisscrossing wood overhead. Grimacing, I pulled up my falling pants, stopping to re-secure my belt buckle at the bone of my jutting hips. My eyes fell on the half dozen empty beer cans, littering the loft floor, the discarded leather-bound book teetering precariously on the edge.
Leaning down, I saved the ancient grimoire from falling to the dirty ground below just as the outer door swung inward.
Instantly, my teeth bared, and I released a hiss, prepared to shift into my full, wolf form, but Nate’s voice squeaked out timidly.
“Eli? Are you in here?”
My frown deepened, exacerbated by the fact that I despised the nickname. Grabbing onto the railing, I forsook the rope and leaped to the ground, directly in front of the teenager. He recoiled ten feet.
“What do you want, Nathaniel?” I growled, leaning my head toward him.
The kid shifted his weight from one foot to another, glancing toward the door as if seeking a quick escape.
Someone drew the short straw today,I thought, swallowing my amusement as I continued to bore holes in his direction with my eyes.
“I… uh… I went to the house, and you weren’t there,” he babbled, stepping back, head twisting and turning with such vigor that his glasses came askew. “I can leave if this is a bad time.”
