raise her voice—his hearing was as good as her own, and he was close. He must’ve stayed upwind to sneak up on her.
“Why do you have to be like that?” he said, prowling out of the trees to fall into step beside her, tall and graceful and with the handsome features of a Japanese pop star. All clean angles and dramatic bones. That his slightly overlong hair was dyed a rich purple and sprayed with tiny golden stars only added to the effect.
She’d have thought it an affectation, except that he’d been doing things like that since he was a kid too young to think about being cool. As a seven-year-old, he’d once drawn “tattoos” on himself with permanent marker.
Then there was the time he’d painted his hair with house paint. She could still remember his shaved head afterward—it had been the only way his parents could strip off the toxic paint, as shifting might’ve redistributed the paint all through his wolf fur. They’d been more distressed than Kenji. He’d asked the barber to cut zigzag patterns into the resulting stubble.
She liked the way he wore it now, how it was just long enough to hint at rebellion, the strands thick and silky.
“Going to the lake?” he asked, green eyes locked on her.
Putting a half meter of distance between them because she knew it wasn’t a good idea to be alone with gorgeous, teasing Kenji Tanaka when she’d had a drink or three and her inhibitions were lowered, she said, “Going to the lake—to be alone.”
He closed the distance that separated them. His boots touched her bare toes, he was so close—and neither part of her changeling nature would allow her to give way now that he’d pushed. Not moving her feet an inch, she tipped back her head to look him in the eyes.
He frowned, stepped back. “Sorry. I keep forgetting you’re shorter than me.”
She couldn’t figure out if that was a compliment or an insult. “I’m leaving now. Don’t follow me.”
“You sure can hold on to a mad, Garnet,” he said when she would’ve turned away. “Like an elephant holds on to its memories.” His voice was playful, light, as they’d been with each other for so long now.
“Go away,” she said again, a staggering sense of loss echoing inside her. No, she ordered herself, you do not go there. Kenji’s and her time had come and gone. No second chances, not when Kenji had shown her exactly how badly he could hurt her if she opened her heart to him.
And not when the man he’d become was nothing like the smart, laughing boy with whom she’d once fallen in love. Kenji was a great lieutenant, a packmate she could rely on in a crunch and one who made her roll her eyes with his outrageous flirting, but he didn’t know the meaning of commitment when it came to women.
“Shoo,” she said when he stuck stubbornly close. “I want to be alone.”
“One of those times, huh?” Sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his black shirt sitting easily on wide shoulders, he continued to walk beside her. “You never minded me going with you before.”
“I was twelve.” And thought he hung the moon.
Reaching out, he tugged on a tendril of her hair. “We used to be friends.”
She stopped, faced him. “It was a long time ago.” More precisely, seven years and two months ago—otherwise known as the night of her twenty-first birthday. But she wasn’t about to bring up that night, a night that had devastated her tender and hopeful heart.
What she had to remember was that it had also saved her.
It would’ve been far worse had she ended up with Kenji only for him to walk away a short time later when another woman caught his eye. Because, unlike him, she’d been weaving dreams of a permanent relationship, perhaps even a mating if they were lucky. “How’s Britney?” she said instead of dwelling on the lost dreams of the girl she’d been.
“Britney?” Dull confusion in the green eyes that were a throwback to his paternal great-grandmother. Then a light sparked. “Britney Matthews?”
Claws pricking at her palms, she smiled sweetly. “You know any other Britneys you banged like a drum?”
A hot red burn on the high planes of his cheekbones. “That was a lifetime ago. I was eighteen! You’re mad about that?” He shook his head, eyebrows drawing together. “I thought you—”
Garnet cut him off before he could mention the night they’d never spoken about, never