I bit my lip. “Well…”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Chris slammed his hand on the dash. “He didn’t let you come?”
I resented that. “No one bosses me around. We’re here to help Meredith. And I shouldn’t need his permission anyhow.”
Someone knocked on my window and I jumped.
Smooth move, Tessa. I should’ve been paying better attention.
The guy from my vision—Luciana’s son—motioned for me to roll down my window. “And you are?” He asked.
“I’m here to see Claudia and Raphael,” I said. “I’m their cousin.”
“Teresa?” He wasn’t giving anything away with his stoic face.
When I nodded, he stepped back. “Park there.” He pointed to the side of the road.
I did so quickly, then grabbed my bag and hopped down.
The guy was waiting for me in the center of the road. “I’m Daniel,” he said. His face was too empty—a perfect emotionless mask. I’d gotten used to everyone towering over my five feet and change, but Daniel was only a few inches taller than me. Even if he was a bit on the short side, he stood the way someone does when they have a lot of power. Tall, shoulders back, head held high. He looked me in the eye, and I had to fight the urge to enter into a staring contest.
My wolf started to rise. She didn’t want anyone challenging her. The itch to change and lash out at him rose in me. I fought it down, but pain ran through my limbs.
I couldn’t let this happen.
Chris growled as he stepped in front of me, cutting off Daniel’s line of sight.
Daniel grinned as he peered around Chris. His mask slid away, making him seem a little more approachable. “It’s good to finally meet you, although I wish it’d been before…”
Right. Before I’d been bitten.
He held out his hand, and I hesitated. If I was being honest with myself, I wanted to see something from him. Especially after my earlier vision. But it was an invasion of privacy.
My mental debate didn’t last long. Turned out, I wanted information more than I cared about Daniel’s privacy.
I took his hand, letting myself open to my bruja side. It took a fraction of a second for me to relax just a little more, and—
“The wolves have taken her for their own,” said a woman. She was about my mother’s age and wore a skirt that skimmed the floor. Her frizzy brown hair was braided and pinned on top of her head in a halo. “You have to bring her back.”
Great. She was talking about me.
“And how am I supposed to do that, Mom?” Daniel asked. “What’s done is done.”
“No. We can get rid of her wolf.”
Daniel was pissed. And sad. I’d made him sad when I turned. That wasn’t something I ever expected.
“You do that and the wolves will come for us. You’re starting—”
“They started it by taking our next leader. She’s a strong bruja. And now she’s one of them—”
Daniel pulled away, and I was back in the present.
This confirmed what Dastien and my mother said, but I wasn’t sure that I could fix the coven. Or if I even wanted to. It wasn’t like I could be a pack alpha and rule a coven, too. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted either.
I cleared my throat, trying to buy myself time to shake the vision. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Daniel said. “What did you see?”