golden eyes were guarded, inscrutable. “More than that, I’ve tried the relationship thing. I don’t want to get into it, because it’s long ago over and done. But you’ll have to trust me when I say I’m not cut out for that kind of thing. Some wolves never take a lifemate. I’ll be one of them.”
Mia saw the grim resolve stamped clearly on his handsome face, and felt a shiver of fear. She no longer wondered what a Lunari did. On some level, maybe she’d known all along. The connection between them was so strong, Mia couldn’t muster much surprise that there would be this sort of tie as well. It should have been a comfort, that fate had brought her to a man who hunted the things that would seek to harm her. But her gifts made her vulnerable, attractive to the darkness that lurked at the periphery of the human world. And Jeff’s bite had opened a crack through which those things had begun to whisper, somehow.
Jenner would understand about shadows after all. Just as he would understand that she was a perfect vehicle for them to destroy everything he cared about.
Mia would have shaken her fists at the heavens, if she’d thought it would do any good. As it was, all she could do was try to accept things as they were. Wretched and impossible, as usual. She sighed softly as she buckled herself back into her seat, watching Jenner put the truck back in gear and pull back onto the road. Connection or no, this wasn’t going to work. Jenner wasn’t interested—or not interested enough to cross the boundaries he’d set for himself long before she got here.
It was better to know, she told herself. It was almost always better to know.
Even if it didn’t feel that way right now.
“I’m going to assume this means you’re not going to be involved with my initiation,” Mia said, surprised to hear the words falling from her own lips. It wasn’t like her to be so blunt. But then, recent events had left her without a lot of room to dance around things. Everything right now was important.
As she’d expected, Jenner shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea. For either of us. Don’t worry, though,” he said gently. “It might be awkward, but the situation could be a lot worse. There’s a Silverback contingent that’s coming in to help us catch Gaines. You won’t lack for candidates, and trust me, any man you choose will be honored.”
The strangeness of Jenner trying to make her feel better about the situation was momentarily outweighed by her surprise.
“I thought I would be joining the Blackpaw.”
Jenner kept his eyes on the road. “Well. Since Gaines was a Silverback, they’d technically be responsible for you. But you were here when it happened, and nobody’s going to push it. It’s completely your decision.”
Very sensible. Inexplicably infuriating. Mia couldn’t think of anything to say to it, so she chose silent brooding instead. Her decision? That was a joke. She had fallen victim to one of the oldest rules in the book, best articulated by the Stones: “You can’t always get what you want.”
The solution, of course, was to stop wanting him. But that was unlikely to happen if she didn’t start thinking of him as a potential friend instead of a potential lover, and if she didn’t find some other werewolf to focus her attention on.
Mia watched, only half paying attention, as they turned onto the Hollow’s old-fashioned square. She let the prettiness of it distract her from wallowing, admiring the way even new buildings had been styled to match the old, wondering what sorts of fun little dustcatchers she might find to buy behind the gleaming windows of the little shops. Even in the truck with the windows up, she could pick up the mouthwatering scents drifting from the few mom-and-pop restaurants littering the square. She hadn’t been imagining how strong breakfast had smelled this morning, she realized. Her nose really was substantially more sensitive. Her stomach growled its agreement.
Idly, she wondered if werewolf females gained something akin to the Freshman Fifteen. God, she hoped not.
Jenner pulled into an open space in front of a squat brick expanse of the square. Directly in front of them was a scatter of wrought iron tables, and beyond those, a restaurant over which was mounted a brightly painted sign that read Jana’s Cupboard. Mia could see that the place was bustling.
“Here we are,” Jenner said. He reached