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He wants me to think he’s preparing to leave, but I know Kade. One look in his eyes and I know he isn’t going anywhere.
“Which would make sense,” I tell him. “If she was sharing a secure ward with a shifter.”
Kade blinks. Just once. And I know I’ve surprised him.
He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to. His gray stare is doing all the asking for him.
I continue. “It wasn’t one attempt to turn her, but several. I only caught a glimpse, but I counted five bites. The speed she hid her neck makes me think there were even more.”
I wouldn’t have known about wolf shifters or about what a turning bite would look like before Dariel and Kade. If they hadn’t been wandering down a certain street fifteen years ago, I might be wrestling with my own wolf.
Over the years, I’ve noticed things a normal human wouldn’t. When Kade offered to bite me so I’d benefit from enhanced strength, speed, faster healing, and a slower aging process that came with being a shifter, I told him hell the fuck no.
I’ve been a witness to more than enough of Dariel’s struggles to want anything to do with a beast fighting to get out of me. With all the demons I have filling my head, I don’t need one more.
“Someone tried to turn her.” Again, it’s Dariel who speaks, but I keep my focus on Kade because he’s seen her. He knows what she is to us, even if he’s not ready to admit it to himself yet.
“Tried and failed. She’s still human. Damaged.”
Kade flinches. Not enough that anyone would notice it if they didn’t know him. But I do.
“But not broken,” I continue. I lift my right hand. “She had a scar on her right wrist. Someone restrained her. With a handcuff, most likely, and it had to be for a while for it to leave a scar like the one I saw. Months.”
Kade’s expression is blank.
A long time ago, we realized that the girl who would complete us wouldn’t be someone who’d never known pain or hurt. How could she understand us if she’s never known darkness, when what lives inside us is mostly shadows?”
I lift my left hand now, never taking my eyes from Kade. “She was putting her basket of groceries on the counter in the store. I was hanging behind her, waiting to talk to her, and do you know what I saw?”
Kade doesn’t say a word.
“She has a fracture or a sprain. Bandaged well enough that a professional had to have done it. Given that she looks like she was in a hospital for at least part of today, makes sense it happened there. The bandage covered most of her wrist, but not all. Enough that I could still see the scar running down her forearm. Straight down it. The way someone would cut their wrist if they wanted to be sure—”
Kade spins on his heel and stalks out, taking his glass with him.
“That doesn’t mean she’s the one,” Dariel murmurs. “Just that she’s suffered.”
My gaze returns to his. “I know. And Kade knows. Do you think he would react like that over any random girl who wandered into the Cerberus? Do you think he would care?Kade?”
Dariel sits up in his seat. “She’s suffered, yes, I’m not disputing that. And likely has someone after her if she’s as terrified as you say. But that doesn’t mean—”
I shake my head. “I tried to help her. She wouldn’t let me, so I followed her out of the store. When it looked like the pimps were going for a gun, do you know what she did?”
“Ran.”
“She stepped between us.Shetried to saveme. We talked about this, Dariel. The woman who is ours would call so strongly toallof us as we would to her that none of us could turn away. Well, she calls to me, Dariel. She wanted to run from me at the grocery store, but she followed me back to the bar becauseshethought she was savingmefrom the pimps. And if you saw the way she struggled to keep her eyes away from the corner of the bar Kade likes to hide in, you’d know she was as drawn to Kade as he is to her. You saw him. So tell me again that this girl is no one, that I’m wrong.”
“You were wrong before.”
The moment the words leave his lips, I know he regrets them. I read that flicker of guilt. But the barb hits true, so I nod. “True.”
“Aden…”
I turn to the door. “After what she’s been through, you and Kade should probably keep your distance. I have a feeling she’s not feeling predisposed to shifters right now.” I peer over my shoulder. “One look, Dariel. One look and you’ll know I’m right.”
I make it two steps to the door before Dariel’s voice stops me. “You didn’t tell us her name.”
The need to smile hovers in my mind. True amusement isn’t far behind. Fuck, it’s been too long since I’ve felt that.
