Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,20
tried to do my best by Blake and Skyla, but I’d thought I was just bleakly doing my duty. I’d thought they needed me.
Now I realized how much I needed them too.
“Hey,” I said, pausing in the doorway. “Blake, I need you to go on patrol with me.”
“You want to just leave Skyla here alone?” He asked, brows arching.
Oh, here we went, another fight. Maybe he had a point, but usually it felt like he just argued with me for the sake of arguing.
“Skyla would love to be left alone,” she pronounced grandly, then added in a flat voice, “You cheat at cards.”
“I do not,” he said, scandalized. “Who would cheat at Go Fish?”
“So you would cheat at cards, you’re just saying Go Fish with your sister isn’t worth the effort?”
Blake scrubbed his hand over his face as Skyla stared at him triumphantly. “Fine,” he said. “I’d love to go on patrol. Whatever it takes to make this… mess… less messy.”
He tossed the cards down on the tray table and stood. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Chase.”
“Mm-hmm.” Skyla was already seizing his cards, shuffling through them. She yelled after him, “You know you did have a six!”
“Just picked it up!” He called back.
“I’m watching you, Freeman! I’m watching you!” she yelled.
She sounded pretty intimidating for a ten-year-old.
I took the seat next to her bed. “How’re you doing?”
“Should I be worried I’m going to be kidnapped by evil witches again?”
What a question.
“No,” I said.
She looked at me skeptically. “Odds?”
I heaved a sigh.
“Like… five percent. The academy’s warded with magic and there are several other packs headed to the academy to help us fight. The only real risk is the bad werewolves probably want to take over the academy so they can hurt Maddie and the guys when they come back, and we don’t know how many packs they can get on their side.” I hated telling her there was even a five percent chance that she was in danger, but I didn’t want to lie to her.
She nodded. I hesitated, feeling guilty once again that I was leaving her, although I’d also feel guilty if I stayed here instead of patrolling to make sure we were safe. “Are you okay? If I go?”
She raised her brows at me. “Of course I am. I can take care of myself, Chase.”
I didn’t want to argue with her, but she had just been kidnapped forty-eight hours earlier. There’s a limit to how much any kid can take care of themselves, no matter how confident and enterprising.
“If Aunt Jen had listened to me, she never would have let—” She stopped abruptly, then looked at me wild-eyed. “Is Aunt Jen—”
“She’s fine,” I assured her. “They used magic to erase her memories and sent her home.”
“So she won’t bother us anymore?” Skyla asked.
“Skyla,” I said, then struggled for words. I was so mad at Jen for trying to take Blake and Skyla away. I couldn’t judge her fairly right now; I was still too upset. But I also remembered the aunt who had always come for Christmas, who had taught me how to ride my first bike on an icy morning.
“I don’t need anyone but you and Blake,” she said firmly.
“And I don’t need anyone but you and Blake,” I said, “but maybe we can let some other people in our lives? Just because they’re nice.”
Skyla started to grin in a way that was familiar…and obnoxious. “You need Maddie.”
She managed to draw Maddie’s name out into eighteen syllables.
“I do,” I admitted. “You’re taking this well.”
“Taking what well?”
“The fact that you were bitten,” I said delicately.
“Chase,” she said, as if I were being stupid. “You’re a werewolf. It can’t be that hard.”
I laughed. Blake came back in then, so I ruffled her hair as I stood. “We’ll be back.”
“No rush,” she said, picking up the cards and beginning to shuffle. She was still a klutzy shuffler, always dropping cards; it was a nice reminder that she really was ten even if she thought she was going on twenty. “I can probably have a more satisfying game by myself.”
“Har har,” Blake said.
But as we stepped out into the hall, there was relief written across his face.
That was when I realized he felt guilty about her too, as if he were letting her down. Surprise jolted through my chest. I thought Blake saw me as the one-and-only-fuckup who was supposed to fix things and wasn’t able to, but he felt as if he failed our little family too.