Quickly Julian explained what had happened with the blood hopping.
“I’d like-a to see that!” Joe exclaimed.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Alex muttered. “It was creepy.”
“If you think about it,” Rose said, “that makes sense. The mate bond is part of what we are. It’s a connection in the blood.”
“So there’s no way that Cade can cure it?” Alex asked.
Rose and Joe frowned. “Why would he want to?”
Alex opened her mouth to recite a laundry list of reasons, but snapped it shut again when Cade turned from the window, one brow lifted as he waited on her reaction. She decided to save comments of a more personal nature until she had Barlow alone.
“Why didn’t you know this?” she asked instead. “You and Alana—”
Rose and Joe gasped. Cade winced. Julian’s upper lip lifted in a snarl, and he bolted from the room.
Whoops.
“What’d I say?”
“When Alana left,” Cade murmured, “he didn’t know she was gone for days.”
“What? How could that be?”
“They had a fight. He thought she went to her grandmother’s. By the time he checked on her, she was dead.”
Now Alex winced. Luckily the others believed it was in sympathy and not guilt.
Guilt? Since when?
“I don’t understand,” Alex said. “If Alana left the village, why didn’t Julian know it in his gut?”
“Because Alana wasn’t his mate.” Rose stared at the open door through which Barlow had disappeared. “You are.”
“Oh, that’s gonna go over really well,” Alex muttered.
Silence settled over the room. No one seemed to know what to say or do.
“We should get back to the café,” Rose murmured. “If that’s okay?”
It took Alex a moment to realize that Rose had directed the question at her. “I—uh—Sure.” She shrugged and looked at Cade.
He waited until the older couple left before answering. “You’re the alpha’s mate.”
“So I hear. Why are they asking me if they can leave the room?”
“That makes you the second in command.”
“Fantabulous,” she muttered.
Cade’s gaze went distant. “It explains why you could resist his commands. Mates are equals.”
Alex didn’t feel equal. She felt cursed.
“And also why you could touch Julian’s wolves and they could touch you without the inevitable headache.”
“Why?”