“Oh nothing,” I said, striving to sound casual as I pulled the blanket nearly up to my chin. “Just everything from my childhood I’ve been suppressing for the past ten years.”
His eyes flew wide and he sat up.
“So…you remember?”
“I remember the Spauldings,” I said. “Not just the general parts—the details. And I remember you leaving me there helpless and alone that last night.”
“I never left you,” he said evenly. “You know that animal attack the last night you were there—the one that took out Gary Spaulding so he could never hurt anyone again?”
“That was you?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “The, uh, ‘beast?’ But I saw it—it didn’t look like a wolf.”
“It is a wolf, though. It’s just…different from the others.” He looked away, not meeting my eyes. “The point is, I hung around the house and kept an eye on you. I waited until the right moment to draw Gary Spaulding out of the house.” He cupped my cheek. “I never would have let him hurt you, darlin’. Never.”
I pulled away from him, clutching the covers as though to shield myself from him.
“You hurt me, Nick. How could you leave like that and refuse to see me ever again?”
He shifted uneasily.
“If you remember everything like you say you do, you know the answer to that. I had to leave—the two of us being so close was bringing on your Heat Cycle. It was making your nectar come in! The next thing, you would have been deep in Breeding Fever and then where would we have been?”
“I don’t know, Nick,” I said, frowning. “Why don’t you tell me, since you know so much more about the ‘Were world’ than I do.”
“Fine.” He got up and started pacing, raking a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t breed you myself—I’m your brother, for God’s sake! And I didn’t want to hand you over to another, older Were to breed you. If you’d gotten pregnant with his baby, you would have belonged to him forever and then you never would have gotten out of Wolverton!”
“What?” I stared at him. “Is that another one of the ‘Pack Laws’—whoever gets a woman pregnant owns her?”
“If he chooses to claim her and the baby, yes,” Nick said grimly.
“But that’s fucking barbaric!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, it is but that’s the way the Were world works,” Nick said. “Try to understand, darlin’…” He looked at me appealingly. “I left for your own good—your body was reacting to mine and getting ripe for breeding. Leaving was the best thing I could do for you…even though it was also the hardest damn thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“But things are different now?” I raised an eyebrow at him inquiringly. “Because you were saying you’d stay with me last night—that we could be together forever. The same old bullshit you told me when we were kids.”
Nick’s face darkened.
“It’s not bullshit! Now that we’re back together, I promise not to leave again. You can come to California or I can relocate up to Massachusetts—or we can go someplace new together. Now that we’re adults, we’re in a better position to handle any kind of situation that might arise.”
He was starting to sound more like the attorney he was now and less like the old, easy-going Nick that I had known—he’d changed. Of course, I couldn’t deny that I had changed myself. I wasn’t a scared little girl anymore. I was a professor of Women’s Studies and I wasn’t willing to take crap from anyone, especially not a man.
Even a man you’re in love with? whispered a little voice in my head, but I shoved it ruthlessly aside. I hadn’t seen Nick in ten years—there was no way I was still in love with him. Especially since he was completely unattainable.
“Well—” I began but my sentence ended in an “Ouch!” instead of whatever I had been going to say. That was because I had moved the wrong way and felt a twinge in my injured ankle.
“Is it your ankle, darlin’?” Nick asked anxiously. He knelt by the side of the bed and began peeling back the blankets. “Let me see it.”
I let him pull the blankets back from my ankle, though I kept the top part of the bedspread tucked up to my chin. I didn’t know quite why, but it seemed important to keep my top half covered. Maybe it was because my breasts were aching and tender—I didn’t want to think why that might be, though. I just shoved it out of my mind. I’d gotten good at not thinking of unpleasant or frightening things in the past ten years.
Nick was carefully unwrapping the gauze bandages from around the ankle McCain had mauled the night before. But when he saw it with the bandages off, his face broke into a relieved smile.