“Alpha?” She rubbed at her breastbone with her fingertips, as if the ache lingered. “Is that what I am? Like you and Zack and Kaley?”
There were a hundred shades of it, a thousand ways to feel the power and responsibility of the relative position. “You need to take care of your pack.”
“I do.” She took his hand again and rested her knee on the windowsill. “I can’t hide. I have to meet Zack and my dad. Zack needs it.”
And the longer they waited to tell Austin the news, the worse he was bound to take it. “Your dad does too.”
“Yeah.” She slipped out the window to stand next to him on the narrow fire escape, so close she only had to sway forward to lean against his chest. “Will you stay close by, in case this happens again?”
It felt selfish, even if it was practical. “We should plan on staying together for the next few weeks—if you’re okay with that.”
Her fingers tightened in his shirt. “I should have gone home with you last night when you asked me. I don’t think I slept at all.”
“So now we know. Your place or mine? Or the farm?”
“Not the farm,” she said quickly. “I don’t know if I’d sleep much better out there, even with you around.”
“My house?”
“Sure.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder once and sighed as she pulled away. “Want to go over to the diner now? It’s a little early, but I’m hungry.” She made a face. “Again.”
Jay swung down onto the ladder. “May as well eat before Austin hands the grill over to Gary for the afternoon. Damn kid can’t cook.”
“He’s getting better,” Eden chided. “Papaw always said Dad was a disaster in the kitchen when he started out too. Gary will learn.”
“Uh-huh.” Jay covered the last bit of distance with a jump and reached up to steady Eden. “All the same, an early lunch sounds good to me. Then I can make myself scarce while you take care of business.”
When she had both feet on the ground, she stared back up at her window, her expression caught between amusement and awe. “Does being a werewolf make you less clumsy? I think I would have broken a leg trying to climb down that thing in my heeled boots last week.”
“It’s not all bad, especially once you get used to it.” He looped an arm around her shoulders and felt a little of his own stress melt away at her proximity. “Come on, let’s go eat.”
The diner had mostly cleared out by one-thirty. At a quarter to two, Eden slipped into the kitchen and smiled at her father. “Can Gary spare you for an hour so we can go upstairs and talk?”
Austin Green wrapped his gnarled fingers around his favorite coffee mug and leveled a stare at her. “Probably. What’s all this about?”
Gary was pretending not to listen as he scraped a spatula over the griddle, so Eden tilted her head toward the back stairs. “Family stuff.”
“You gonna tell me you and the chief are courting? Because I have eyes.”
Her cheeks flamed. Gary smirked, but wiped the expression off his face when he glanced up and caught her furious glare.
Her dad stood there watching her over his coffee mug like she was still fifteen and owed him an answer. “It’s not about that,” she ground out. “It’s about Zack.”
Austin straightened and nodded toward the back staircase. “Have you heard from him?”
“Yes. But it’s complicated.” She climbed the narrow stairs behind him, skipping the creaky fifth step out of habit. Everything was familiar and new at the same time, the memories of her childhood a ghostly echo under the sharply focused version provided by her newly honed senses.
She’d already learned that the quickest way to go crazy was by concentrating on the details, so she fought to block them out as she followed her father into the apartment over the diner. “Zack’s at the farm.”
“Since when?” he asked sharply. “And why am I hearing about it like this?”
Fast was the only way to do it. Fast and brutal, and Eden allowed herself only one terrified moment to wonder if she’d still have a father before blurting out the truth. “Because I was attacked by a wolf at the farm two nights ago. A werewolf from Memphis who was there to hurt Zack. And I—I changed. Like Zack does.”
The mug slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor. “You what?”