of working magic around the shifters. She assured me they healed much faster than humans and could withstand shocks and injuries that would have killed anyone else. But she’d suggested starting small and working with someone who wasn’t so... distracting. And the way she arched her eyebrows made me suspect she knew that Henry had spent a little time in my room in the middle of the night.
Deirdre volunteered Mercy for the experiments instead, as the young woman remained fascinated by anything magical and half the time was sneaking around to see what we did anyway. The young wolf pestered me with questions enough she was quite the distraction, and her questions made me think and reconsider how I looked at the problems myself, so there was no arguing with Deirdre’s logic. We ran a few experiments in the garden and then the house, though it wasn’t nearly as successful as I’d hoped. She just didn’t put me off-balance like Henry did.
The other witch proposed a change of scenery, since I’d perhaps gotten comfortable enough in the house that I wouldn’t be surprised there, and so one morning we drove to what they called the old pack house. It turned out to be a dingy former warehouse in a questionable neighborhood. Deirdre rather dryly told the story of how she’d first ended up in the warehouse-turned-apartment building and living space, and I was laughing with shock at how she and the grumpy Evershaw seemed to build a relationship out of complete chaos and distrust as we parked next to the building and Mercy added some colorful commentary the whole time.
I was just about to ask what the hell Deirdre had been thinking the first time Evershaw kissed her and she didn’t run screaming in the other direction. But I swallowed the question when a familiar figure, dressed in nice jeans and a tailored sport coat, strode out of the warehouse. My throat went dry as his head turned and I caught a glimpse of his face—Henry.
I’d only seen him in sweats or jeans and casual clothes, so to see him in something like a suit drew my attention to his form even more. It was surprisingly disconcerting to see a man who could take a wolf’s form looking like a regular business owner or banker or something. Like he was on his way to a meeting—he even carried a satchel and looked harried and irritated. His gaze found me and something softened in his expression; all of me caught fire and I couldn’t meet his eyes.
We hadn’t really crossed paths since that disastrous night when he’d found me in my room and kissed me and then listened to me complain about my childhood. I hadn’t known what to say to him or how to approach him, and Deirdre kept me fairly busy anyway so there weren’t many opportunities to reach out. Not that I knew what to say to him. Apologize for dumping all that sad history at his feet? Ask him to sleep at the foot of my bed again?
Just the thought made me flush as I hung back and let Deirdre talk with him about some business. I hadn’t slept so well since the night he’d been in my room, and part of me wondered if he was the reason. No dreams haunted me that night, and I hadn’t even woken up in a cold sweat, expecting to be chained up or locked in. Even having Cricket sleep on my pillow wasn’t as reassuring as knowing that Henry had been there, his hand on my ankle.
I was distracted by imagining how I might ask Mercy to experiment by sleeping in my room one night, since I hoped the reassurance was just from having a shifter in the room with me instead of Henry himself, when a horrible woman confronted him and demanded he leave. It took me a long moment to catch up, but then a scared-looking girl about Mercy’s age slunk up and the awful woman said she was Henry’s mate. I was still sorting through what had happened and why Mercy kind of nudged me forward when Henry caught my wrist and drew me up to his side, pulling me close as he called me... his mate?
I was too startled to say or do anything except study the two women in front of me. The young one turned red and tried to retreat to the car to hide, but the mean one, older than Henry and