enough to make her laugh.
“You’ve been home for three days, Genie-Belle. You can’t just keep hiding in your room and coming down here to sneak food from me. At some point you need to bite the bullet and go talk to him.”
She was right. I’d been wandering around the house like a ghost, entering rooms only after I knew Callum wasn’t in them. Magnolia, ignoring the possible wrath of her king, had driven me to Baton Rouge three days earlier so I could sit by Wilder’s bedside after he went through surgery to remove the bullet from his stomach. He was lucky to have his werewolf healing, as the paramedics had told me. If not for the speedy recovery time, the doctors said he would have died.
The next day he was moved to a werewolf-only medical compound at the request of Callum’s lawyers, and I was no longer allowed to go see him. I’m not sure if that was the rule or if Callum was punishing me.
Ever since, I’d been lurking like a memory, moving around in shadow and only surfacing to eat. Now I was being denied bacon, and it looked like I was going to need to put on my big-girl panties and talk to my uncle.
But first: pants.
Fully dressed, wearing my Tulane hoodie like a suit of armor, I tapped lightly on Callum’s door. Maybe he was out, or he wouldn’t hear me. There was still a chance I might be able to—
“Come in, Eugenia.”
So much for running away.
I slunk into his office, head bowed, and immediately curled myself into one of the armchairs facing his desk. I kept my gaze locked on the carpet, my shoulders stooped. If I had a tail right now, it would be between my legs.
This was how we apologized. I was trying to show him I respected his authority and was willing to yield to him.
A bit late, now.
When he didn’t speak right away, I lifted my eyes and stared at him instead of the carpet.
Callum’s neck and ears were flushed red, his salt-and-pepper hair looking more unkempt than usual, a small growth of stubble on his chin. Where he was holding the desk, his hands were shaking slightly.
I swallowed hard.
This wasn’t going to go well.
“We have a dead church leader. A pack member in the hospital. A dead human woman, and the site of a massacre. Does that about sum things up?” he asked.
I nodded.
Don’t say anything. Just agree with whatever he says.
“To top it off, I almost lost my niece because she decided to put her life in danger with some cockamamie scheme to expose a murderer. When I explicitly told her to stay out of danger.”
The carpet became interesting to me again.
“What am I supposed to do with you, Genie?” The roar took me by surprise. He smashed his fists into the desk, the wood groaning loudly. My first instinct was to run for the door. “I try to protect you and you defy my protection. I try to give you freedom, and you use it to push yourself away from us.”
“I wasn’t trying to push myself away,” I argued. “I was trying to help.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Trying to help? Trying to help? How does it help me if you’re dead? How do I tell my pack I can protect them if I can’t even protect my own heir? Do you have any idea how difficult this has made our lives? I can’t turn on the TV without seeing news about werewolves. Seeing your face on magazine covers. What am I supposed to do with you?” he demanded again.
If he was expecting me to suggest my own punishment, he was shit out of luck.
“Look at me.” He pounded the desk again.
I lifted my chin hesitantly. Now his whole face was red, and his body trembled with barely contained rage. But there was something else there, something I hadn’t expected to see on my uncle’s face.
Fear.
I blinked in surprise, sure I had to be imagining it.
“What would I have done if something had happened to you, Genie?” His voice softened somewhat, and he was holding the edge of the desk again. “What you did was stupid. It was stupid, foolhardy, dangerous and reckless beyond measure.”
I nodded, my heart racing.
“You risked your life to save a pack member. One who has been nothing but vile to you, and who once aided in a coup that almost killed your sister.”
“I didn’t try to save Hank because I like him.”
“So why? Because of