knew that letting his anger show would only spook the girl. And that was the last thing Ophelia needed.
Her quiet acknowledgment that she was trouble and had deserved all the hateful things done to her nearly tore the wolf free and sent him on a rampage. If he could have hunted down her parents and every coven she’d crossed paths with, he would have done it in a second and damn the consequences. No wonder she was so afraid and had fallen into the clutches of some bastard like that sorcerer, who sought to use her for his own ends.
Henry’s wolf wanted to curl around her and growl at anything that disturbed her, but the man knew it would cause too many questions for her if he stayed the night. He didn’t want her to regret anything about their late-night talk and the kisses that had apparently made her uncomfortable. He padded quietly out of her room once her breathing had gone deep and even, and he passed Cricket in the doorway as the cat returned to take up his own vigil on the witch’s pillow.
He nodded to the cat, his wolf side content that the fierce little beast would protect her or at least sound the alarm if anything untoward happened, and continued on to his room on the other side of the house.
With the promise of their first interactions and the taste of her lips, he should have needed a cold shower to calm himself down after lying on her bed with her and watching her get sleepy and soft. She’d been willing and open at first, but something changed. She shut down and somehow it turned into an expectation, some kind of obligation. Henry shook himself and growled in irritation. Someone else had hurt her or demeaned her and made her think that was where her value was—that if she didn’t give in and sleep with a man, she was the one at fault. He hated it. Hated the possibility that she lumped him in with the sons of bitches who treated her so cruelly.
He didn’t know how to help her, although letting her experiment with her magic around him seemed like a good place to start. Maybe then she’d believe that he wasn’t afraid of her magic and wasn’t going to abandon her. Despite Ophelia being horrified at the potential of hurting him, Henry knew he was better able to weather the shocks of her power than any human. Shifters could survive a hell of a lot more than normal mortals. He would show her—and then they’d figure out how to help her control her magic.
Henry didn’t sleep much that night, or the one after. He paced and patrolled, uneasy with the thought of that sorcerer out there hunting Ophelia, but when he returned to the house in the early hours of the morning, her window was always dark. He didn’t take it personally, even if the wolf always listened carefully at the top of the stairs to see whether she was moving around or actually sleeping. He wanted to know more about her, to talk with her, but she was always with Deirdre during the day and Evershaw kept throwing more and more work at Henry until he suspected the alpha was doing it on purpose.
He spent the next morning at the old pack house, the massive converted warehouse where they’d all lived before Evershaw mated with Deirdre, helping Todd Evershaw, the alpha’s brother, deal with the business side of things. The pack invested in real estate and a variety of businesses to maintain the cash flow necessary to support thirty or forty people and hold their own when the ultra-rich lion brothers started throwing their weight around.
Evershaw didn’t really care about money except as a means to an end—he wanted money so he didn’t have to give a shit about what others thought of him, and he wanted money to protect his mate and his family. Henry fully supported both sides, although he wished that didn’t mean quite so many business meetings for him and Todd.
Henry stepped out of the warehouse to the parking lot, debating whether he had time to get lunch before dealing with yet another meeting downtown with a bank manager, and paused when Deirdre, Mercy, and Ophelia stepped out of a car. He hadn’t seen the witches at the old pack house at all. He frowned a touch as he approached them, wondering if maybe Deirdre was searching for her