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CHAPTER FIVE 
     
ROWAN—AGE SEVEN
“Rowan, you need to come out, please. Dad’s going to be home any minute,” my brother Brennan says as he anxiously paces in the basement of our house.
And that’s my fear. My very fear is coming out when Dad is due to come home. I want to tell Brennan that, but I know he won’t hear me when I’m in this form. Instead, I tuck myself back even tighter in the crawl space under the house. As long as Brennan is down here with me, everything will be alright. He’s so much better at it. He’s so much better at controlling it. Why can’t I be like him?
Brennan anxiously looks over his shoulder and I hear what made him look away. Desperately, he starts crawling into the crawl space connected to the basement, trying his best to reach me. “Dammit, Rowan. Come on! Shift back! You’re going to get in trouble!”
I want to. I want to more than anything, but I can’t. I can’t figure out how to get my body to calm down, to get my mind to clear so I can shift back—I can’t figure out any of it. Brennan reaches me and grabs onto my furry forearms before dragging me toward him. “Hurry, Rowan. Please, come on. Just concentrate.”
“Rowan! Brennan!” Dad yells from upstairs.
Hearing Dad’s booming voice makes me slink back down and press myself harder into the corner.
“Don’t listen to him. Just ignore it, okay? Ignore all of it. Just listen to me.” Brennan’s voice is quiet, he’s trying to be calm, but I can hear a catch in it. He’s scared, just like I am.
Bam, bam, BAM! Dad comes slamming down the stairs. He’s angry. He’s so angry.
Brennan shoves me back into the corner. “Please, Rowan.”
But I can’t, I don’t know how. I can’t control it.
Brennan presses his body hard against mine, pinning me to the wall as he sits completely still.
“Brennan? Rowan? Where the hell are you?” Dad asks.
I see a flicker of a light a moment before it splashes into the hole. I’m tucked behind Brennan so I can’t see Dad, but I can see the light invading my small haven.
“What the hell are you doing not answering me?” Dad growls.
“I was playing hide-and-seek, and you found me!” Brennan says, trying to sound cheery, but there’s a catch in his voice.
“Where’s your brother?”
“W-We’re playing hide-and-seek. I don’t know…”
Suddenly, Brennan is being dragged out and I look up to see Father staring past Brennan’s rigid form right at me.
“You dare lie to me?” he yells as he hits Brennan. I flinch and close my eyes, but I can still hear it and I know it’s my fault. “Rowan, if you want to stop being a disgusting animal, you can come out, but I think you should learn your lesson first.” Dad slides the wooden panel back over the crawl space hole, cutting away all light.
That’s when I hear him hitting something against the board.
“Dad, stop! He can’t help it when he shifts! You can’t nail him in there!”
“He can come out when he’s learned his lesson and shifted back. You get up to your room right this fucking minute.”
No… no… I don’t want to be in here alone. I want to be with Brennan. It’s so dark in here. It’s scary and there’s no light to see by. I rush to the board covering the exit and claw at it until Dad beats against it. “Knock it off.”
His voice makes me hesitate. Maybe in here is better than out there. It has to be better.
I crawl back into the corner and wrap my tail around my face. If I just close my eyes, the world’s not as scary.
There’s a noise behind me and I jump, slamming my head on the low ceiling.
It’s just water. It’s just water moving through the pipes.
I sink back down and beg for something better to come. I need Brennan. I need him more than anything.
It’s hours before I hear a noise outside the panel, but when I do, it gives me hope. “Rowan… please, please tell me you’ve shifted back,” Brennan says.
Of course it’s Brennan. He’s the only one who can protect me anymore.
      
QUINN
“Rowan?” I ask since he’s been quiet for a while. “Rowan, are you alright?”
He jerks as he looks over at me then shakes his head with a forced smile. “Perfectly fine.”
I want to reach out and squeeze his hand, but with Katalina watching, I know I shouldn’t. So I just give him an encouraging smile.
“If something’s wrong, you can talk to me.”
“Thanks. But I’m fine.”
I hate that I can’t figure out what it is, but I nod and turn my attention back to the road as my mind races.
A five-hour drive with Ari, Emery, and Katalina in the back seat sure feels more like a ten-hour drive. Ari continues to pester the hell out of everyone and after Emery grudgingly gave the book back to Katalina, he became rather anxious, which keeps distracting me. I really can’t blame the man after all he’s been put through. I can only imagine everything that’s happened to him.
When I pull into the driveway of a small house on the edge of town, Rowan looks into the back seat. “This is my house. We don’t know if Mercer might be watching it, so we’re just going to zip in, grab some money I have in the house and move on. You three can stay out here on watch. That alright with everyone?”
I find myself eager to go inside, curious what his house looks like and grateful we’re leaving the others behind.
“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” Katalina says as she smiles at us. “If you need us, you know where to find us.”
I quickly get out before she can question why I get to go and follow him inside. I’m nosy as hell as he grabs a key under a pot to unlock the garage door. Then inside the garage, he retrieves another key to unlock the house door. “Where’d you keep your horse? It doesn’t look like you have a barn.”
“Maze stayed at a boarding stable right down the road from here. If whoever Helen has watching her can’t continue, I can have her shipped back,” he says.
“I’m sure Helen has it handled, but we can let her know when we get back,” I say as he pushes the door open and I instantly nose inside. It smells just like him, which might be the greatest smell in the world. It makes me want to just breathe it in and wander around the whole house.
I quickly walk around the room, looking at every picture he has up, mostly of his horse and dog. There are some photos of people too, but I can’t tell who they are, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re important to him. Sometimes I forget I’ve only known him for a short span of his life, but it feels like we’ve known each other for years. And I find myself wanting, more than anything, to keep learning about him.
“Do you miss living here? Like… if this was all over with… would you… never mind,” I say, realizing I don’t want to know.
Of course he’d rather live here, a life filled with freedom compared to one stuck in a village in the middle of nowhere, constantly judged and controlled.
He gives me a sly look, like he can read my mind. “I would live wherever you want to. And since your pack would probably struggle to all fit in here, I think the village might have to do,” he teases. “They’d probably end up burning the house down before the first night because Ari would try making popcorn and forget about it and Logan would have to fireman carry him out. It’d be a whole big deal.”
I smile at Rowan as he steps into me and wraps his arms around my waist as he murmurs, “Finally… finally, a moment without someone breathing down our necks. I just need a moment to recharge.”
As I wrap my arms around him and feel him pressed against me, I realize how much I needed this. I’ve been so tense about Apollo and my pack and he’s tense about seeing his father that just a moment alone, a moment together with him, makes everything better. I just breathe him in and hold him close, not wanting to let go just yet.
And as I try to rub the tension out of his shoulders, I can’t help but think about his relationship with his father, seeing as before meeting me, he’d been in contact with him. It wasn’t like they were estranged. And now to find out that his father might know more about this drug and maybe even what happened to Brennan?
“Are you okay?” I ask as I rub my fingers down his back.
Rowan gives me a smile that’s a little less forced than the one he’d given me in the car. “Yeah, I’m fine. Of course. I’m just… getting in my head, you know? Stupid stuff. Let’s just forget about all of that and instead, did I ever tell you how sexy you are?”
I grin at him as he tips up my chin. “A time or two.”
“Well, you look sexy as ever.”
“Even bitten up and exhausted and flustered?” I tease.
“Honestly, you could go roll around in a mud puddle for a while and I’d be in awe. I’d be all ‘That dirty man is all mine.’ I’d proclaim it to the world.”
“Good thing too because I’m not sure who else would want me covered in mud.”
“Plenty. Literally everyone that looks at you I want to hiss at. How dare they look in your general direction when speaking to you? They should bow before you, eyes down, and only then my leopard might be pleased. Maybe… honestly, probably not. They shouldn’t even come within fifteen feet of you because you’re mine and only mine.”
I’m laughing now because even though I know Rowan was saying it more as a joke, it’s probably also quite true because I feel the same way; I can just hide it a bit better since I have more control over my wolf. But he merely smiles and kisses my lips.
“So am I allowed to run around and rub my scent on everything like you did at my house?” I ask.
“You’re more than welcome to,” he says as he grudgingly pulls back, but not before one more kiss that leaves me smiling. “There are even some squeak toys for you to play with if you want. Talon won’t mind sharing.”
“Ha. Ha. Funny.”
I help him stuff some clothes into a suitcase, since we don’t have much in the way of possessions back at Apollo’s. Then he opens up a lockbox and takes out all the cash inside. Once we have things packed that could be useful, we kiss one more time before heading back out to the car where I find Emery sitting on the hood staring straight up into the sky.
“Are you trying to communicate with your people?” I ask as I look up at the sky.
“I was. They said they didn’t want me back.”
I grin at him. “That’s alright. We’ll keep you. Now let’s go.”
We all get into the car. This time, I let Rowan drive, since he clearly knows the area. Instead of heading to another house, he surprises me by pulling into a hotel and looking back at the others. “Can you guys get two rooms for us?” he asks as he passes some money back to Ari. “We won’t be long. I just know if there’s a car full of shifters, my dad is going to refuse to even talk to me.”
Ari plucks the money out of Rowan’s hand. “Fine, fine. I get a master suite all to myself, then, where I can touch myself while thinking dirty dirty thoughts about Logan,” he says as he gets out of the car. Emery is the only one who hesitates—I really don’t blame him after Ari’s proclamation—but he follows after Ari and Katalina who is laughing at what he said.
“You realize Ari is already starting to like Katalina just because she thinks he’s funny?” Rowan asks.
“Oh yeah, we’ve already lost him,” I agree.
He takes a deep breath and starts driving. “And off to hell we go.”
I hold a hand out to him and he instantly takes it, weaving his fingers between mine before squeezing. “Do you want me to piss on his tires and bark at him?”
Rowan flashes me a grin. “He’d lose his fucking mind.”
“I can just howl every time he tries to talk.”
He gives my fingers a gentle squeeze while clearly pleased by my amazing idea. “God, I’d love that so much, but I don’t think we’d accomplish much good if that happened. He’d probably get so pissed he’d kick us out. But if he’s not giving us the info we need, let’s just say I’m open to the idea.”
I laugh as he takes a right turn onto a suburban road. The houses are a little farther apart here and still quite nice. He pulls into the driveway of a two-story house that looks well maintained but is currently dark.
“I don’t know why I’m so nervous. I was literally here a week before I left to go tracking. I don’t know why I allowed him to abuse me for so long and at what point I just thought it was natural. I think it’s because if I listened, he wasn’t a bad guy. He was nice and… and he made me really believe that my shifter side was the bad thing, not him. But I think back… I think of him… locking me up until I shifted back to human, refusing to feed me, like he could train me not to shift… and the drugs that made me so violently sick… just… It’s like I knew it was abuse, but he had a way of manipulating me into trusting him. I think it was because after my brother left, I had no one but my father, and he eventually just broke me down.”
“I’m really sorry you went through all of that,” I say, pain filling me at the thought of Rowan suffering at the hands of his father.
He shrugs, like he’s planning on brushing it off. “I was a kid. I’m fine now,” he says, even though it’s quite clear he’s not. But he gets out of the car, and I know there’ll be a better time to discuss this, so I follow him. Together, we walk up to the front door where he knocks and waits.
I listen closely. While in this form, I can’t hear as well as I can as a wolf, but I can still hear enough to tell that there’s no movement inside. “I’m not sure he’s home.”
Rowan leans back to look through the window of the garage. He goes over to it and peers inside. “His car is here. I don’t know who would have picked him up for something.”
He goes back and knocks again before turning the doorknob and pushing the door open. “Dad?” he calls as he turns the light on.
“Rowan… I don’t know your dad, but it’s clear there was someone else here. The trail isn’t very fresh, so it’s been hours,” I say as I draw in the smells of the room. I can’t pick out the scent enough to tell anything about it. “I can shift and see if I can tell more.”
Rowan shakes his head. “No, let’s make sure my dad’s not here first. I don’t want him doing something drastic if he sees you.”
He slowly walks through the house, calling for his dad on occasion, but stops suddenly when he reaches the living room.
When I step up beside him, I instantly see why. On the far wall, written in what looks like blood, is the word “Monster.”
On the floor is a small puddle of dried blood and clear marks leading away from it, like someone dragged the body.
“Fuck,” Rowan whispers as he looks over to the left, like he knows exactly where the body had been dragged off to.
It’s a door, but I’m not sure where it leads. He slows down as he reaches his hand out toward it.
“Rowan, maybe we shouldn’t,” I say. “Maybe we should just go back out and call the police and let them handle it.”
“You said it’s been a while since they were here, right?” he says. “If they were still here, we would hear them.”
I agree with him, but I still don’t like the idea of him putting himself in danger.
He turns the door handle slowly before swinging it open and flicking the light on. I follow him down the stairs, doing my best to avoid any of the blood that’s dotted on the steps. It’s like Rowan doesn’t even need to look around the cluttered basement, he knows exactly where to go as he turns to a far wall where I see a raised panel. It looks like a slab that’s covering something, maybe a hole or a crawl space. Blood is smeared across the wooden panel that’s been hammered against the wall.
“Is he dead?” Rowan asks as he grabs the hammer.
“I… I can’t tell. I don’t smell decay, but I do smell blood. I can shift and tell you,” I say, but he’s already prying the board off with the hammer. I’m not sure what he wants to find behind that wall because his expression is completely unreadable.
When he drops the panel, it clatters to the ground. Slowly, I lean down and look at the countless scratches in it. Not from a human, no, from claws. A small cat… or maybe a young one. Slowly, I trace over the marks.
“Rowan—”
“Help me get him out,” Rowan says as I realize he now has a flashlight and is halfway crawling into the hole.
“Rowan, did your father lock you or your brother in here?” I ask as my own words register in my mind.
He hesitates before pulling out of the crawl space and looking over at what I’m doing.
“My father… my father deserves whatever the hell Brennan did to him. I’m not sure I even care if he dies, but I need him to live because he has to tell me… he has to tell me if he gave them Brennan. He has to answer for what he did,” he says as he climbs back in.
This time, I help him, grabbing the man’s leg and pulling him out of the dark crawl space, but as I pull the bleeding man out, I look down into the face of a monster. Because realizing the terror a young Rowan must have felt locked in here makes me want to leave his father behind. Let him suffer and slowly die…
But Rowan’s right. His father has answers, and we need him alive.
“I’ll call the police,” I say.
“No, I will. I don’t want them questioning you,” he says as he drops his father onto the ground.
The man groans as he writhes, but he never opens his eyes. There’s a large gash along his chest and there’s enough blood that I can’t tell where else he’s hurt. I stand over him, staring down at the man as rage fills me. I’m deaf to what Rowan is saying to the person on the phone because all I can think about is this monster hurting my mate. All I can think about is how he should suffer for what he did.
“Come on,” Rowan says as he takes me in his arms and pulls me back. “I know you’re upset but come on.”
“He deserves this.”
Rowan’s expression is tight as he gives me a nod. “I know.”
“He deserves worse.”
“I know, but we need him alive,” Rowan says as he wraps me up tightly in his arms even though I should be comforting him. I should be the strong one here, but instead, I’m so overcome with rage that I want to just finish the job Brennan started.
The police come and question Rowan extensively, and when they find out I’m a shifter, the questions turn to me. Rowan finally gets them to stop harassing me and they take his father away. When they’re done with us, Rowan leads me back to the car where he drives in the direction the ambulance went.
“Why didn’t you run away?” I ask, even though it’s not fair of me. He was young and this was his father.
“I was around seven and then he got me on the drugs and things settled down for me. He wasn’t angry or abusive if I listened and took my pills.”
“He was still a monster, though.”
“There’s no denying that.”
I squeeze his hand and lift it to my lips to kiss the top. “I’m so sorry you went through all of that. I’m so sorry, Rowan.”
He looks over at me and smiles. “I promise, I’m fine. I have you now. I could never ask for anything better. I think… almost every shifter has faced hardship, but you’re doing something amazing with your village to make sure children like Addie and Sophia grow up in a safe environment where they’re loved and cared for. You’ve done so much for them.”
“I hope everything goes back to normal soon so I can do more. So I can keep at least some people from dealing with things like you have,” I say.
“That would be amazing… and I hope I get to be a part of it.”
I give his hand another squeeze. “You will. You’re stuck with me now.”
OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER SIX 
     
ROWAN
We sit in the hospital waiting room for a good two hours before we’re allowed to even go back and see my father.
When I walk in, I see him groggily lying on the bed and I find myself filled with so many emotions—all of them negative. He smiles when he sees me, and it takes me a moment to comprehend that he doesn’t realize how angry I am at him. That he still thinks everything between us is right.
“Rowan, I heard you saved me. I heard—What is that?” His smile falters as his eyes instantly find Quinn, and while Quinn’s black hair and fair complexion don’t immediately mark him as a shifter, his gorgeous amber eyes do.
“This is Quinn, my mate,” I say.
The look on Dad’s face flickers for a moment before anger settles over him.
“You see, Dad, I happened to figure a few things out while I was away. I know about you using my brother and me as test subjects for some… drug to suppress shifters. I know that Brennan is with them. That they’ve… done something to Brennan. How did he get there?”
Dad swallows hard and looks to the door, like he’s hoping the nurse will come in. I see him reaching for the call button on his remote and I snatch it up before looming over him so he can’t press the one on the bed. “Did you sell Brennan to them? You told me he ran away. You told me he left me and ran away.”
“Your brother wasn’t right, Rowan. You know that as much as I do. He was confused. He began to defy me, he started to get off the medication. He wanted to live as a freak, and he was trying to mold you into a monster like him. I drove him away. I gave him a chance to go do whatever he fucking wanted as long as he didn’t drag you or me into it. And then about five years later, he came back. He came back with these fucking ideas that I was the monster but you were already in the military and he couldn’t reach you. Then, when he heard you’d come back and he tried again, I just took care of him.”
Even though I’d begun to suspect it, hearing it from him and comprehending it is so much harder. “You sold your child to a company who tortures shifters and turns them into monsters?” I ask, questioning how I could even be right.
“They were supposed to cure him. They told me they were working on a cure. A way to remove the animal from them. You can’t blame me for trying to fix him. I didn’t know they were going to fuck him up even more!” Dad says. “You should be happy I was trying to help him.”
“Happy? He’s my brother! He was the only one who cared about me. He was the only one who tried helping me and now I find out that he didn’t run away like you told me, but you drove him off and then sold him. For years, I was so bitter about it. I was so pissed because I thought that he left me with you. That he chose to leave me with you. And then I find that even when he came back to help me, you sold your child off to be involved in a fucked-up experiment?”
Anger courses through me as I smack his tray out of my way. His small cup of water flies off and I’m not even sure I care as it leaks out onto the floor and the tray slams against the wall before clattering down.
“I want answers. I want to know who these people are. I want to know how to find them. I want you to pay for what you’ve done,” I snarl at him.
“And what the hell do you plan on doing? It’s too fucking late for your brother. But it’s not too late for you. We can get rid of the parasite,” he says as his eyes flicker over to Quinn and my rage just consumes me.
I grab the front of his gown and don’t even flinch when he cries out. No one dares to threaten my mate to my face.
“You’re a fucking monster. Give me a name. Tell me who you’re in contact with. Tell me who took Brennan,” I say.
“No matter what I do, you’re still just a dumb fucking animal,” he growls as the door swings open and the nurse looks in at us.
“What are you doing?” she says in alarm. It’s funny how from the outside, I look like the bad person just because Father is lying there. But if she knew everything he’d done, would she still think that? “You need to back away now. I need security!”
“No, you don’t. I’m almost leaving,” I say as I drop my hold on my father. “Father, give me a name or I swear to god I’ll step back and let Brennan finish what he started.”
Dad shakes his head at me. “Fuck you. I should have gotten rid of you and your brother when I found out what your mother was.”
I can hear people rushing this way, but I’m not done. I want to keep at it. I want to keep—but Quinn grabs my wrist.
“It’s not worth it. Come on,” he says as he tugs me away. He turns to the nurse. “Excuse us. We’re sorry for disrupting.” He gives her a gentle smile before pulling me after him and we escape toward the stairs before the security team reaches us.
“What a waste of fucking time,” I say, anger still coursing through me.
“No, it’s not,” Quinn says as he looks over at me. “We know your father was personally in contact with someone and has been for years. It wasn’t just that your father tossed you and your brother into a drug trial, it was that he knew them enough to have them take your brother. Now we just have to find out who that person is. Let’s go back to the hotel for the moment. I think we could get some answers off his phone or laptop, but we don’t know that the police are done there, and we don’t need to draw attention to ourselves. Things will get much worse if they figure out you’re a shifter, trust me.”
I deflate a little but his hand on mine keeps me going. “Thank you. Thank you for being there for me and being a voice of reason. Clearly, I’ve lost all sense.”
“Nah, you’re just managing to wake up after your father has spent years beating you down,” Quinn says as we reach the car without security stopping us. “Did your father not know your mother was a shifter?”
I shake my head. “No, she’d hidden it most of her life… I don’t think she ever knew just how much he hated shifters, but by the time she had me she’d had enough of my father and… I guess left him. I was so young, I don’t really know the whole story. And my father wasn’t much of a sharer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Were you ever in contact with her later?”
I grimace. “No. But if she was willing to leave us with him then I suppose that’s enough to keep me from wanting to see her.”
“I get that,” Quinn says. He gets into the driver’s seat and takes us back to the hotel, but once he’s parked, he doesn’t get out. Instead, he turns to me. “Let’s take a moment to just debrief. How about you turn into a leopard and pounce around a bit more? That’s always fun.”
I grin at him. “No. Who knows what I’d start doing. I’d probably try to climb to the top of the hotel and we both know that wouldn’t go well. Look how tall it is.”
“I’d catch you.”
“I’d squish you!”
“My love for you would catch you,” Quinn decides.
“I don’t think that’s a viable option, but you know what? It’s the thought that counts,” I say before reaching over and pulling him to me. I press my forehead against his. “I promise my next mating dance will be even more majestic than before.”
He grins before leaning in to press his lips against mine. It’s a soft and quick kiss, but there’s always so much feeling in it. So much love. “That’s far too sexy.”
I press into him as heat rises inside me and thoughts of him wash away all the stress and anger and sadness I felt in that hospital room. Quinn can make everything better for me.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you too.”
For a moment longer, we linger and enjoy each other’s presence before we decide we need to get out and face the real world… mostly to make sure Emery hasn’t eaten anyone, Ari hasn’t sassed anyone to death, and Katalina isn’t telling Apollo heinous secrets that’ll get us in deep shit.
We ride the elevator up and enjoy one last minute of quiet alone before Quinn knocks on the door. Before he even gets one knock in, the door is yanked open and an attractive young man looks out at us.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I have the wrong doo—” Quinn’s silent for a moment as he leans in and sniffs the man. I’m a bit horrified until Quinn goes, “EMERY?”
“What?” he asks, certainly sounding like Emery but the mass of hair that consumed his face and head is gone. His hair that was ratted and shoulder length has been trimmed to a neat couple of inches and the beard is completely gone, making him look shockingly attractive compared to the caveman that had been following us around. Then Emery gets an alarmed look on his face as his brown eyes start darting this way and that. “Who do I need to fuck up? What’s going on?”
“They’re in shock over seeing your face, dum-dum,” Ari says.
“Isn’t he so cute?” Katalina says as she rushes up with a pair of scissors in one hand and some trimmers in the other.
Emery looks between us then scowls. “Stop looking at me,” he says before skulking off into the back of the room.
“Aww, he’s embarrassed. How cute that the psychopath monster is embarrassed!” Ari says.
“I didn’t know there was a person under there,” Quinn says as he walks in and stalks after Emery who is doing his best to glare at everyone. Clean shaven, he looks about ten years younger.
“There isn’t,” Emery says as he tugs at his smidge of hair. “She said a trim. A trim. Does this look like a trim? Now I look like a kid and everyone will treat me like one.”
Quinn shakes his head and pats Emery’s back. “No, Ari looks like a kid.”
“Yes, and he has to use snark and bad jokes to make people realize he’s not,” Emery says.
Ari stops quite suddenly. “Excuse me? Excuse the fuck out of me?”
“You’re excused,” Emery says before slipping through the door that connects the two rooms.
Katalina tosses the scissors and clippers on the desk. “So? Did you find anything? You were definitely gone longer than an hour.”
“It was a bit of a mess,” I admit. “I’m going to get a shower. Quinn, if you want to tell them, feel free.”
I don’t know if he does or not while I take a shower, but when I get out, I see he’s in one bed with Ari and Emery’s in the other.
“Do you want to sleep with Ari?” Quinn asks as I feel a ridiculous tinge of annoyance at seeing Ari next to him. I get that we’re still trying to make it look like we’re not together, but it still annoys me.
“No, I’m fine sleeping over in the other room,” I assure him.
“I just thought that way you’d have your own bed and wouldn’t have to share with Ari since I don’t want you to share with him,” Quinn says, which makes me laugh since I felt the exact same way.
“Oh. My. God. You act like I’m going to fondle him while he sleeps!” Ari says as he stares me right in the eyes while he runs a finger down Quinn’s chest. I narrow my eyes at him, ready to kick his ass if needed. “I’ll just sleep with Emery.”
Emery suddenly turns into a starfish, taking up the whole damn bed so no one can invade his space. “I tend to eat people in my sleep,” he lies… hopefully.
I shake my head. “Honestly, I’m good. I don’t want to be fondled by Ari, I don’t want Emery to murder me in his sleep, I’m good alone,” I assure them as I head over to the other room.
“Hold on one second,” Quinn says. “I talked to them for a bit and they want to help us search your dad’s house tomorrow if that’s okay with you?”
“Yeah, the help would be appreciated.”
“Good,” he says before giving me a smile. He must have taken a shower in the other room because I notice his hair is wet and sticking up and now he’s going to stink like Ari.
“Good night,” Quinn says.
“Night,” I say as I head back into the other room where Katalina is reading her book in a dim light. She has her back to me as I crawl into the second bed, but she turns to look at me just a little.
“You trust your alpha?” she asks quietly, like she doesn’t want the others to hear.
“With my life,” I say.
“What makes you think he’s a good person?”
I watch her in the dim light of the room, unsure how I can explain to her just how good Quinn really is.
“He’s kind, caring, and always puts his pack first. He gave me a home and made me feel like I belonged. He makes me laugh and feel like I’m worth something for the first time in my life. What about you? Do you trust your alpha?”
She watches me for a long minute before giving me a smile. “Of course,” she says before pulling her blankets up and turning away.
I tug my blankets up farther and watch the ceiling as the night bleeds on and my mind races. I’m not sure sleep has ever been so slow to come for me.