was avoiding her calls, because I didn’t want to talk about Misha. Or how I had no idea what was expected of me. How I was supposed to find and fight a creature when I didn’t know what it looked like or what its motives were, in a city that was completely unfamiliar to me. Confide in him that I was afraid my failing vision would continue to worsen to the point that I could lose my ability to fight, to survive and to be...to be independent.
Should I share with him that I was terrified that he would die because of me, like he almost had that night at the senator’s house?
Pulse racing like I’d been running a mile, I shook my head. “There’s nothing to say.”
“There’s a whole Hell of a lot to say,” he countered. “I’ve been giving you space. You needed that, but you have to talk about this. Trust me, Trin. I’ve lost people. Some to death. Some to life. I know what happens when you don’t get the grief and the rage out.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper. I turned toward him then, stomach churning. “I’m fine. You’re fine. We could be so much closer to eating a falafel, and you’re delaying the deep-fried feast.”
Something fierce flared in those pale wolf eyes, making them momentarily luminous, but then he let go of my arm and whatever it was...was gone.
A heartbeat passed and then he said, “We’re going to need to stop by my place first.”
A breath of relief punched out of me. The cabinet in my head stopped shaking. “Why? To get you another shirt?” I started walking toward the street. “We should start packing extras.”
“I need a new shirt, but we need to head back because you smell and you need a shower.”
“Wow.” I looked at him as he fell in step beside me. I could make out a half grin on his face. “Way to make me feel self-conscious.”
As we reached the sidewalk, I looked both ways before stepping out, so I didn’t get run over by someone in a hurry. I blinked rapidly, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the brighter streetlamps, headlights and lit storefronts.
Didn’t really help.
“Smelling you is making me all too conscious.”
“Jesus,” I muttered.
“What does He have to do with your stench?” he teased.
“You didn’t seem to have a problem with the way I smelled back in the alley,” I pointed out. “You know, when you picked me up and held me like I was in one of those things people use to carry babies around.”
“The smell clouded my judgment.”
A laugh burst out of me, and under the brighter streetlights, I could now see that there was definitely a grin on his face. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”
“It is.”
I pressed my lips together, deciding it was best to ignore that altogether. Zayne stuck close to me as we walked toward his apartment, him on the side closest to the road and me within arm’s reach of the buildings. Walking this way made it easier for me to keep track of people so that I didn’t walk into them. I’d never told Zayne that, but he’d seemed to pick up pretty quickly on my preference.
“By the way, what did you roll around in back there?” he asked.
“A puddle of bad life choices.”
“Huh. I always wondered what that smelled like.”
“Now you know.”
Despite the fact I smelled rank, another laugh tickled the back of my throat as I looked at him again. The black shirt he had on was a mess, but his leather pants held up under the constant shifting from human to Warden and back again, which must be why he wore them when he patrolled.
And I was not complaining about them. At all.
I imagined that, between my smell and his half-shirtless appearance, we were drawing a fair amount of attention. Then again, I was sure people had seen stranger things in this city and had definitely smelled worse. I wondered if anyone realized what he was.
“Do people recognize what you are?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Not sure, but no one’s ever seen me in my human form and asked if I was Warden,” he answered. “Why?”
“Because you don’t look like other humans.” I knew that Wardens rarely shifted in public. It was for privacy and security, since there were people out there, like those Children of God fanatics, who believed Wardens, ironically, were demons and should