He must have seen something on my face—perhaps the horrifying dread I was feeling—because his annoyance at being attacked quickly dissolved and his hands went to my cheeks, cupping my face.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I was crying.
“Genie, what happened?”
Under different circumstances it probably wouldn’t have seemed all that strange for someone to be crying after they returned from their mother’s grave. This was hardly what I would call normal circumstances, however, and Wilder knew full well that my relationship with Mercy hadn’t been a close or loving one.
Plus there was that whole being terrified thing. My heart must have been beating a hundred miles a minute, and he was close enough there was no doubt he could feel it, and that he could smell the fear coming off me.
Werewolf senses made it hard to keep stuff like that hidden.
Not that it mattered right now. I was in no state of mind to pretend everything was okay. Everything was definitely not okay.
“M-Mercy,” I stammered. “I went to get her skull for Beau, and… her grave was empty.” Beau, being Beau Cain, a man who had done me a pretty massive favor, but like all his other favors it came with a steep price tag.
“Someone took her head?”
I shuddered. “No.”
“I don’t understand.” He’d moved his hands to my shoulders, rubbing the bare skin on my arms. I was completely covered in goose bumps and no matter what Wilder did I couldn’t shake them.
“She’s alive.”
He stopped rubbing my arms.
For a moment, he was so still the only motion I saw was the wind ruffling his dark blond hair. “Sorry, what?”
Now that I’d said it out loud, it seemed to remind me she was still out there, and even though I hadn’t heard her chase me, that didn’t mean she wasn’t making her way here as we spoke. Something had brought her back, after all.
If Mercy McQueen had returned from the dead, she had a little more than haunting on her mind.