balloon, cool hope leaking into my blood. I nod slowly, realizing how big of a step this is for her. She doesn’t concede to fuck-all, but she just gave me a truth, and that somehow feels like a big win, even though I know there’s another side to this confession.
“But?”
“But...” she goes on. “I also can’t put the pack in jeopardy.”
“Kaazu won’t take you again.”
“You can’t promise that,” she says sternly. “Don’t underestimate him.”
“Fine,” I reply, even though my animal growls at me for even considering someone taking her. “But what if Hugo tracks down his conjurer friend and gets your collar off? What then?”
“I don’t trust conjurers.”
“And I don’t blame you, but that wasn’t what I asked.”
“Are you always this fucking nosy, Jericho?”
Her spitting words don’t even faze me, because I like the sound of her husky voice saying my name. It makes me feel like a damn teenager with a crush, mooning over a girl. I want to hear her moaning it. Or screaming. I’m not overly picky.
“Only when it comes to you,” I answer honestly.
“Conjurers are fucking elitist gossips and opportunists. Whoever Hugo tracks down will take one look at my collar, call up the shifter council, and figure out who owns me. They’ll make a deal with Kaazu, and that’ll be it for me.”
“That’s a bit prejudiced, isn’t it? Not every conjurer is like that. And I highly doubt anyone Hugo knows would do something like that.”
“I don’t trust it.”
“What about the one who broke your tracker? He wasn’t bad, was he?”
She shoots me a scathing look. “He was probably bribed up to his neck by Cliff, and the only collar he broke was mine. If he was a fucking decent person, he would’ve freed everyone, or at least Cliff, but he didn’t. That says enough about his character.”
I can’t argue with that. “Fine. But like I said, not all conjurers are bad. And it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”
She shrugs.
“Come on, Jet Plane. No harm in trying. Maybe this conjurer will surprise you.”
“I’m probably going to end up regretting it.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I blurt.
Instead of swooning like the submissive females I’m used to, Jetta rolls her eyes and shoves past me with a friendly elbow to my gut that steals the breath out of my lungs. “Oomph.”
“Fuck off. We both know I’d be the one rescuing your weak ass if a situation ever came up,” she tosses over her shoulder as she walks up the path to her warehouse.
I grin and rub my stomach. Shit, that hurt.
I think I’m in love.
14
Jetta
First, a sloth in my bed, and now, a rat in my room.
I guess it was too good to be true to have a private space in a warehouse full of room-sharing shifters. The female pack rat, Reese, is timid yet curious. From what Addie told me, she’s had a fucked up life, with someone keeping her trapped in her animal form and kept like a neglected pet. But you’d think someone with those circumstances would be less...perky.
“Oh, are we watching How to Get Away with Murder again?” she asks me, all smiles.
“Obviously,” I grumble, remote in hand as I turn up the volume. Getting used to someone being in my space is hard. I’ve grown protective of my small room here. It’s been nice to have my own space when I never got that in the troupe.
But Reese isn’t so bad, I guess. Not that I’d tell her that. I don’t want her to get any ideas. That might just lead to something horrifying. Like friendship.
We’re in our room, and she’s practically bouncing with energy. We were with Igor earlier at the fence, because someone has been sniffing around Pack Aberrant’s perimeter. The two of us are the ones who have beef with outsiders, so Igor wanted us to check it out. But I didn’t recognize any scent, and neither did Reese.
I can tell the pack rat shifter is unnerved about the idea that someone could be looking for her—a fact she bolsters by trying to ask me about my past—but I shut it down. She doesn’t get offended or turned off by my refusal to get personal. Like I said, she’s alright.
I caught her sneaking something shiny in yesterday as she walked in, but I’m no longer surprised by the things she smuggles into the room. A few days ago, I found that her animal had started building up a damn collection of things underneath my bed. Hair