Page 12 of Protector

“I think I’m going to do out for a little run myself,” I say, speaking to Fallon and Fallon only. “I don’t know… it’s like I suddenly lost my appetite. Maybe a little fresh air will help me get it back.”

“Jeannie—”

I toss my hair over my shoulder. “I’m fine, Fal. And if it makes you happy, I won’t leave your pack territory.” Yet. “Good luck with the witches. Watch your back.”

“She doesn’t need to,” rumbles Lucas. “She has me.”

Of course.

And what do I have?

No Lorelei.

No Luna.

No mate…

Well, I think to myself with my tongue in my cheek, fangs cutting into the muscle, hot blood filling my mouth as I walk out the kitchen door, heading for a different exit so that I don’t have to go past Tristan…

What else should I expect when I’m the bad twin?

CHAPTER 5

THE BLAME GAME

Iwish I could blame Fallon.

When we were growing up, maturing together, I had fun doing just that to the halfling. I’m sorry. There’s that darkness inside of me again because, holy shit, it was always so much fun. I didn’t even care that she had witch-blood or that she believed she was human. She just made it so easy to screw with, and even if I was on an assignment given to me and Lorelei by the Luna herself, I was still a young she-wolf.

I needed to get my kicks while I could.

Luna-touched shifters age differently than regular wolves. It’s another gift, though Lorelei and I had many whispered arguments over whether it was a blessing or a curse. As her guardians, all thanks to a quirk of fate and our familial history, we basically get twice the lifespan. For every year on earth, we only age about six months. So when the Luna sent me and my twin to New Jersey to watch over Fallon, we looked like sixteen, but we were technically thirty-two.

Now she thinks I’m twenty-five, but I’m pushing forty—though you’d never tell from looking at me.

Thank you, supe genes. I’m a fucking knock-out, and I know it.

I thought, at first, that the age thing was freaking Tristan out. Like me, he looks like he’s in his mid-to-late twenties, but tack on the seventy years he was living in the stasis spill, and he’s closer to a hundred. I’m not as young as he probably thinks I am, and he’s not as old as the years make him.

Maybe that’s true, but when he chose to completely act like I didn’t exist instead of, you know, talking to me, I gave up on worrying about it. Especially when, after I sourly told Fallon that Tristan is my mate and she winced.

That’s how I found out that, for a couple of weeks after her arrival in Winter Creek, Tristan made a move on her. He asked her out on a date, and even after she was betrayed by her grandmother and reunited with Lucas, he tried his best to convince her to give him a shot.

My last boyfriend ended up being my twin sister’s one true mate. Why wouldn’t my mate end up having a thing for the only other close friend that I have?

Fallon calls me a shit liar. She’s the gullible one, I’m the one whose face gives her away, and Lorelei is… well, Lorelei. She told me all about her brief history with Tristan, obviously prepared for me to lie and say that it didn’t bother me, but when I did say that, I meant it—and she could tell.

It’s not her fault that, for some reason, he was drawn to her. I don’t think he actually thought she was his fated mate—not when our first meeting was as magnetic as it was—but he was an option for my old friend up until the moment she took Lucas’s bite and she was officially off the market.

I’d love to blame Fallon, but that would be ridiculous. That would be like Lorelei getting ticked off at me for fooling around with Cal before she met him and recognized he was meant for her, or my future mate being jealous that I had plenty of lovers before finding him.

Some shifters stay virgins until they find their mate. Others prefer to sow their wild oats, trying out as many partners as they can before they settle down. Because I honestly never believed I’d have a fated mate of my own, I’m firmly in the second camp.

I wonder which one Tristan falls into.

Not like it matters. Anything that happened before I got here belongs in the past.

It’s only what happened after that has my claws unleashing, digging into my palms as I tighten my hands into fists whenever I think about it...

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