Page 77 of Wolf's Chance

“Yup, shifters shifting into their wolf form.”

“So when they’re human, they’re…”

“Human,” I confirmed. Well…a little bit more than human, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her.

“It figures,” she mused. “I was always Team Jacob.”

I didn’t understand the reference. “Who’s Jacob?”

Willow huffed with amusement. “Only the best-looking werewolf ever.”

Now I was confused. “You know a shifter already?”

Willow’s peal of laughter filled the truck. “No!” she declared, delighted by my ignorance. “It’s a character from a book,” she explained. “Twilight. You’ve never heard of it? It’s about a werewolf and a vampire in love with the same girl.”

I had a dim recollection of a franchise that made traveling through the north of the state of Washington annoying. “Ah, I see. Got it.” A weird spark of curiosity lit inside of me. “So…you would be okay with this Jacob person?”

Willow looked entirely too amused by the idea. Her expression twisted into one of speculative longing. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed in the morning, that’s for sure.”

Interesting.

While Willow proceeded to tell me the entire plot of the series, I let her ramble on, pleased that the silence was broken, and relieved that she wasn’t dwelling on the events of today.

As she spoke, I let my mind drift to the heaviness of my consciousness. Willow, animated and excited, was pleasant to experience. I should have been telling her that the books she was praising sounded incredibly complicated and that none of the characters sounded endearing at all.

I didn’t. Instead, I was thinking about how she would react when she found out what I was.

It shouldn’t matter. Willow and I didn’t have the same kind of relationship as these characters in one of her books. We weren’t friends. Despite the kiss this morning, we weren’t lovers. We were two people who had come together through some weird psychic draw and circumstances.

Nothing more.

Once we got to the bottom of why she was having visions of me, or the few she had of Cannon, then she’d return to Whispering Pines, knowing more about the world than she did when she left, and I would go wherever I went next. It wouldn’t be in the same direction as Willow.

We’d separate.

I knew that. Iwantedthat. So why did my gut feel like it was in knots at the thought of her finding out my truth?

As I looked at her from the corner of my eye, she was facing the front, still telling me about the books. She’d progressed to telling me how the books differed from the films, and I let her ramble.

She was so tied up in her retelling and monologue that she was oblivious to my inner turmoil. She had no idea that she was sitting beside a real-life version of a werewolf.

That I was as dangerous as, if not more so than, the ones who hunted us. Hunted her.

It shouldn’t have mattered. Not at all.

But it did.

Was it because I’d tasted her? Had I let one kiss twist my thoughts? Was I lettingemotionget the better of me? How Willow thought of me didn’t matter to me, or it shouldn’t, becauseWillowdidn’t matter to me. I was to take her to Alpha Cannon, that was all.

A task.

A job.

I’d already fucked up when I changed my mind, and look what had happened. She knew about shifters anyway.

I didn’t care about Willow. Not in that way. She was a job. No, she wasn’t even that. She was atask.

Grunting at the term, I moved uncomfortably in my seat. That didn’t sit right with me, because that was harsh. She was more than that. Somewhere between learning of her illness, looking after her when she was sick, and protecting her when she was in danger, I could admit the line had become blurry.

---