Page 48 of Wolf Tamer

Toward the end of our time… Iknow.

We have more in common than either one of us thought.

There are more similarities between us than differences, and the differences we’ve aired are more complimentary than anything else.

In all ways but one.

I’ve renounced my coven. He doesn’t have the same luxury; there are obligations to his pack and these people he’s chosen to protect. He doesn’t have the luxury of disappearing, like I used to have.

I used to.

There’s no clean way for me to walk away now. Not with Carmen out there and the mysteries piling up, one on top of each other, tugging at me. I get the sense that I’m standing in the center of a big knot of yarn, and with each decision, the strands close in on me. Soon, my exits will be blocked.

Soon, I’ll have no choices left to make.

ChapterSixteen

Tasha

It’s time for me to blend, with a capitalB.

Blending is something I’ve done most of my life with ease, thanks to my invisibility powers and certain blend of introversion, and now both of those things seem to be nothing but a problem for me.

Except there’s the added issue here that I have to blend in with a bunch of wolves who see me as a walking battery. They see me as something to use, something that will protect them from the terrors of the world and other packs in the area.

I’m the terror waiting for them out there, and they’ve opened their doors to me under Reid’s request. Just as he’s now requested that I make friends. Easier for me to get the information I need, he assured me with a tweak on the nose, and I have to be serious this time around.

No more focusing on Emily.

I’ve never been good at the whole friend bit, not once in all my life. I can count on one hand the number of people I trusted growing up, and three of them were my immediate family members. And since my parents homeschooled us, it left me very little opportunity to socialize with anyone not connected to the coven.

One girl whose parents were also coven members tried to make friends, but she instantly preferred Carmen to me.

Another little boy had graciously allowed me to climb trees with him until my invisibility got me to the top faster than him, and after that, his tolerance for me turned to disdain.

I’m my own friend. I’ve always assured myself that I need no one else outside of Carmen, as she’s always been the one who understands me, sometimes better than I understand myself, and now I see how I always took that for granted.

I automatically assumed she’d be there.

Until the one day she just… wasn’t.

Reid tells me it isn’t enough for me to do the barest minimum now. Escorting me back to the mansion after our sexy time in the woods, he lays it all out for me. If I want answers, then I’m going to have to mingle and ally myself, which means this is set to be the greatest gig of my life. Pretending to be normal.

Ugh. I even hate the word—normal.

I hatenotknowing what the fuck is going on even more. And so I find myself in the kitchen the following morning with Liam, sitting weirdly alone at the newly purchased dining room table with a full pot of coffee in front of him growing colder by the second.

“Hey,” I say in an undertone, sidling up in what Ihopeisn’t an awkward gate. I can never be sure of myself. And ironically, I’m still wearing Emily’s castoff clothing, which makes this even more awkward for me on a whole different level. “Mind if I join you?”

Liam glances up at me long enough to shake his head before returning his attention to the bowl of cereal before him. Kind eyes. I’ve thought he has kind eyes since the moment I first saw him with the others in the pack.

He seems like the easiest place to start.

Since I’m pretty much shit around women, and Julius is just shit in general, I need to start at the bottom and work my way up, hopefully getting some answers along the way. Besides, Liam is a Holden. He went through the same garbage upbringing as Reid, so if anyone is going to know what’s going on in this place, it’s one of them.

I grab a mug from the cabinets near the stove and pour myself a cup of room-temperature coffee, wondering if I’d be judged for adding ice to it and more cream than is considered healthy.

“Reid’s decided that it’s okay for me to be alone in the mansion without him,” I remark in my most conversational tone. I sound like a strangled goose.

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