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Shame makes me lift a palm to cover my neck. But I’m alert. I never stop being alert. The long glances, the closed door, and Harley’s fake friendliness all amount to one thing: he thinks Kade and Dariel put these bites on my neck, so things are bound to end one way.
Most fights between shifters are…
Wait.
I recall the reason Kade and Dariel positioned themselves at the door, and I can’t believe I forgot. Stupid foggy brain. “Shifter,” I whisper.
Harley’s gaze finds mine, and it’s both curious and open.
Human. Not shifter.
Then why would Kade say a shifter was coming?
I search for the wolf in Harley’s eyes I hadn’t seen before. It must be there, for Kade and Dariel to be behaving this way.
They flash from a blue-green turquoise color to a lighter ocean blue.
A wolf stares back at me.
I stumble away, whacking the back of my thighs on the seat hard enough to bite off a cry. Wincing, I rub the sore spot, knowing I’m going to be wearing yet another bruise.
“You’re a shifter,” I whisper, stunned. “But I looked. I looked, and I didn’t see…” My voice trails off because even though a wolf is staring out at me from Harley’s face, I struggle to believe it. “You’re human.”
His lips quirk in a half-smile. “I control my wolf. I don’t let him control me.”
I’m still scrabbling for a response when he cocks his head to the side. “But I’m guessing your experience of our kind has been with those more animal than man.”
I guess that’s one way to put it.
When his gaze slides to Kade and Dariel, I know what he’s asking. Or assuming. My throat is covered with wolf bites from a shifter who tried and repeatedly failed to turn me, and I’m in a room with two of them. It makes sense he’d put two and two together and get four.
I stop rubbing my sore thigh and straighten. “They didn’t… They weren’t—”
Dariel interrupts. His voice, thankfully, is normal, if you call frigid and unwelcoming normal. “You came here for a reason.”
When Dariel becomes the focus of Harley’s attention, something about their lengthy, silent stare makes me nervous. Nervous enough to inch closer.
Before I can insert myself between them, Kade flattens his palm on my belly, nudging me back.
Right over the spot where I’m most tender.
I wince.
Harley’s eyes fly to me. I don’t know how he caught my reaction with all his focus on Dariel, but he did.
He blinks, and he’s back to the turquoise-eyed, exhausted doctor likely coming to the end of a twelve-hour shift. “I was here to update Aden Shaw’s family on his condition. Since there’s no one else here, can I assume that’s you?”
His raised eyebrow communicates his doubt about us being a family when no one in this room resembles each other let alone the fair-haired, amber-eyed Aden.
“How is he?” I ask, almost too afraid to know. A nurse told us when we first arrived that Aden would be in surgery for two hours. We’ve been in this waiting room for closer to four, which can’t be a good sign, can it?
I glance at his metal clipboard. I can’t see a thing, since he’s holding it by his side with all the important notes closest to his leg.
“Let’s sit down.” Harley lifts a hand to indicate the chairs behind me.
That’s when I know it’s bad.
No doctor ever asks you to sit down to deliver good news.
