“You’re here now and want to make adult decisions, so I will tell you what you’re up against. We are werewolves. Everyone here can shift and rip you apart if you even look at them funny. Do you still think I’m crazy? Do you still think it’s a joke?”
Brit was stiff when she shook her head.
“You might have thought you were making things up just to come here, but you’re a half-blood, too, Brit. All the shit that happened to me will happen to you at one point or another.”
Brit’s head whipped up, her eyes wide. She could hear the girl’s heartbeat start to accelerate. That wasn’t how she meant to tell her, but Brit forced her hand.
“But I’m not... I lied,” Brit whispered.
“Why do you think I brought you here? You’d have started attracting attention; this would have been the only safe place for you. Now I’m stuck trying to figure out how to get you out of this before they figure out you’re still just human.”
Rebecca might have helped, but her mother hadn’t checked in since before Jackson’s birthday and the memorial. Trust their mother to do that. When they didn’t need her, she was everywhere. Now that they needed her, she’d disappeared. Again.
She heard the sound of engines and looked back out of the window. Two cars came out of the garage and came around to the front of the packhouse. The sun hadn’t risen yet; where were they going?
“So you turn into a wolf?” Britney asked.
She sighed and looked back at her sister.
“Only once. I haven’t been able to do that again.”
“What about Mum and Dad?”
She didn’t know how much her mother would want to tell Brit. For years she heard her mother’s voice in the mindlink, but the woman never reassured her about anything. She’d let her grow up thinking she had an imaginary wolf friend that could talk to her. Brit had no such obvious signs of being a wolf, so Rebecca wouldn’t want to tell her anything.
“Let’s focus on you for now. You’re supposed to be training with the others until you shift. They’re a million times stronger than you, so I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what a bad idea that is.”
Britney’s fear filled the room again.
“I can’t fight,” Britney whispered.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get you out of here, and you can go back to that useless father you love so much,” she snapped before she looked out of the window again.
Several warriors were heading to the cars, and Dylan stood next to one of the cars. She could tell by the look on his face that he was communicating with someone. Were they going on a mission? Things had been peaceful lately until the false alarm at the hotel. No one left the territory in the cars except for a few supply runs into town.
Britney sniffed. She always hated it when her sister cried, and it seemed now wasn’t an exception. She turned back to look at the girl she had raised and saw her face buried in the pillow. It was too much to take in. Any normal person would have believed she lost her mind after she chose to live in the forest. It wasn’t Brit’s fault.
She desperately wanted to go over and comfort Britney as she would have before, but she wasn’t sure that would be welcome. But the numbness started to disappear. The emotions she shoved to the back of her mind started to return. Her heart began to ache again because her sister was in pain.
She stepped forward, but Britney raised her head and flinched back again.
And it speared her right through her heart.
She had to get out of there. She walked towards the door instead but stopped when she heard footsteps in the hallway. They slowed and then stopped in front of the door.
Keys. Where did she put the keys? She hated fighting with Jax; she hated the distance growing between them. It was time she learned to trust their bond and speak to him like an adult.
When she found the keys on the window sill, the footsteps had already carried on past the door. Jax didn’t even try to speak to her.
Her shoulders slumped as her heart took another hit, and this one felt worse than the others. She shoved everything back again. There was no time to fall apart when they were in the middle of a crisis.
She saw Jackson come out of the packhouse with a bag in his hand.
Was he... Was he going somewhere without speaking to her?
‘Jax!’
He looked up at the window as Dylan took his bag from him.