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Then again, half the stalls had things I didn’t even want to touch. Potions, poisons, animal carcasses. Wares were as easily macabre as they were beautiful.
“How’ve you been feeling with everything?” I asked Daphne softly as we went about.
My best friend shrugged. “It’s a lot, but it could be worse, right? I haven’t sensed any danger since being here. I mean, I’m being treated better here than I was by my own pack.”
The bitterness in Daphne’s words was a blade to my own heart. “What happened with your parents?”
“Disowned me.” She tried to dismiss it with another shrug, but the hurt in her words was palpable. “Not at first, but when I wouldn’t back down and apologize, they said I wasn’t fit to be their packmate, let alone their daughter.”
She paused at a stall to gather her thoughts under the guise of examining some fabrics.
“I think it was simple self-preservation more than genuine loathing. My dad’s always been quick to heel when Maddox said the word, and my mom fell in line with him. I’ve known I’ve been without a pack for half a year, so it’s not totally fresh. It’s just different now to wonder what I’ll do if I’m no longer resigned to dying in that shitty cell.”
I squeezed her hand in comfort. Daphne was never half the pessimist I was, and the loss of her family, and pack, grieved her.
“I don’t regret any of it though,” she said, pulsing my hand back. “You’re my pack, Avery.”
“Mine too, and… I mean, as long as Cole doesn’t get sick of me and kick me out, you’ll always have a place here. And even if he does, we’ll find our own palace to take over. Since they seem to grow on trees here.”
Daphne grinned. “Oh, I don’t think there’s any danger of him kicking you out. If anything, it seems like he wants to lock you away in his rooms and never let you out.”
I flushed. “He’s just protective and got used to taking care of me.”
“Sure,” Daphne said in a voice that told me she believed that lie about as much as I did. “He keeps you wearing his clothes and flips out at the mention of anyone going near you because he’s anaturally protective Alpha. That’s why everyone was terrified to go near his room while you were recovering. You know the kitchen maids were drawing straws for who would have to drop off supplies and get yelled at if the soup was a hair too hot or they lingered a second too long?”
“How do you know that?”
She tapped her ear. “Shifter hearing, remember? Besides, the nurses in the sick ward liked to gossip. I wasn’t so bad off, so I mostly laid there and listened, especially since they kept insisting I wouldn’t be allowed to see you no matter how much I pestered them.”
I hadn’t known any of that. Had Cole—cool, collected Cole—really been that temperamental about my care? Or maybe he was just naturally scary and they were exaggerating.
“Speaking of, when did you get so strong? You used to be weak as an infant, no offense, but you were holding your own against Maddox like a sentinel.”
“None taken. I don’t know, when I died… it was like something clicked. I can shift easily. I can fight. I mean, Cole trained me, like I told you. But I’m just naturally stronger now too, like a regular shifter.”
“You can shift here?” she said with interest.
I nodded. “It’s… incredible. It’s like having a part of my soul back.”
“Oh.” Daphne was silent for a second. “That’s interesting. Because I can’t feel my wolf at all.”
Chapter XVII
“What!”
“Shh,” Daphne said, casting her eyes about with suspicion at the attention my outburst had drawn.
It made sense. A shifter who couldn’t access their wolf was as good as defenseless, as I well knew from personal experience. And even though I felt safe here, it was almost certainly a false sense of security.
She tugged me farther along until the crowd lost interest in us.
“What do you mean you can’t feel your wolf?”
“I just… I don’t feel anything. I can’t shift. I have my normal shifter senses, but I can’t call on my wolf side. Can’t change shape, not even my teeth. I assumed it was the same for you.”
I shook my head. “No. If anything, I feel more in tune with my wolf here than anywhere else.” Even now, my wolf was hungry to come out and play.
Daphne shrugged it off, but it obviously bothered her. “Maybe it’s because I’m not really dead. I don’t know. There’s a magical explanation for everything here, and too much we don’t know.”
