Page 14 of Minx

“Caught up in my own shit,” I replied, feeling awful for caging myself in my head when I should’ve been more friendly. Stevie had been nothing but nice to me. “I’m sorry.”

“No sorries. Have a good walk. Maybe you’ll run into one of those fine men who are always staring at you.”

“Who?” I asked. We both cracked up. Of course I knew what men. And she knew that I knew what men. “They really stare at me?”

“Yes. I heard a girl in anatomy say that they have stuck together for years. Raised in the same pack. They’ve gone to a ton of mating gatherings and came back empty-handed every time.”

“What’s a mating gathering?” I put my shoes on but didn’t worry about a jacket. My skin was over-warm already.

“Where packs meet up to see if their mates are there.”

“Well, I’m sure one day they will find their mates.” I reached for the door handle as she gathered her things.

She giggled and shook her head but said nothing in response. I took the elevator to the roof and made my way to the training area, the same one class was held at. I stood in the middle and let myself wade through the emotions of the day.

I took in a long drag of the cold night air, hoping it would break through this never-ending fever that remained day after day since I’d arrived here. Before, the moments of overheating would come and go, but now, it died down sometimes but didn’t quite vanish.

“Minx.” The voice caught me off guard, and I jumped a bit. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, female.”

My dad called my mom female when we were at home. She would always wave him off with a giggle, and I wondered why it affected her so.

“That’s okay, Bodhi.” I knew the voice. I turned toward him, drawn to the sound. “What are you doing out here?”

Running his hand through his light-brown hair, he emerged from the shadow under a tree. “I could ask you the same.” He reached me with only a few steps and cocked his head. “Tell me why you’re crying.”

Not a question. A firm but sweet command. My brain swirled with other ways he could command me, and I knew I would obey. These men had me thinking anything was possible. Stevie adding her input to the mix didn’t do anything but encourage those thoughts. They had been staring at me?

“It’s been a long day. That’s all.”

He reached up and swiped the salty streams from my face. “Don’t lie to me, female.”

Oof. Yeah, I got it now—the female thing. My core got the message as well.

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you,” I replied, looking down. I was so damned tired of the shame. The shame of not shifting. The shame I was to my parents. The shame of maybe—probably burning my school down.

The shame of not being able to conjure my wolf when it seemed to be no problem whatsoever to everyone around me. Everyone but Stevie.

“Why? You think I would hurt you? Tease you about something causing you pain? I would never.”

I believed him. Grim had taken on all my weird. He had done nothing but comfort me through it.

Instead of answering his question, I shrugged and let new tears take the place of the ones he’d wiped away.

“Does this have anything to do with shifting class today?” he asked. “I know it must’ve been difficult for you.”

“I’m ashamed that I can’t shift,” I admitted, letting the sobs come. Holding them in seized me in a grip of pain.

Bodhi reached out and wrapped me up in his arms. His touch unraveled me. I sobbed into his chest while he stroked my hair and held me close. “There’s no reason for you to be ashamed of who you are, Minx. Wolf or no wolf. You’ve held all of this together by yourself, haven’t you? Kept yourself together. Hidden yourself from the world.”

I nodded.

“You don’t have to do that anymore, baby. You can tell me anything. Good. Bad. Horrible. Destructive. I can take all of it. You can share your pain with me and with us.”

The last sentence struck me. Grim had said something similar, when I was falling apart. He asked me to give him all my pain. Asserted he could take it.

Strange they would say similar things but, then again, they were never apart. They stuck together like their own pack.

“At this point, I doubt I’m even a shifter. I’m some kind of DNA anomaly.”

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