Page 81 of Enslaved

It doesn’t sound like a question, but I shrug. “A little. But maybe they didn’t speak at all. It could have—”

“How did you know my name?”

I think about it.Reallythink about it, in case I was wrong about the souls having communicated with me at all.

Life before my parents died was simple and happy. I lived in a big house with a wraparound porch just outside of town, and I spent my days either in the kitchen with Mom or in the garage with Dad.

Sometimes I would visit Aunt Mel at the café when Dad helped out, but then they died and I moved in with Aunt Mel. She and Sera were the ones who told me about what had happened to the Destin pack.

But that was years ago. Ten, to be exact.

There’s no reason I would look at Keane Destin and know him by sight.

Not when I was eleven and he was seventeen. Not unless someone had told me his name.

And then there was that weird memory/vision thing with the big gray wolf with amber eyes. Was the wolf trying to tell me something, show me something, or was that just the start of the wolf souls driving me crazy?

“Okay, so there might’ve been abriefmoment of communication. So what?”

He dips his head lower and I start thinking he’s going to kiss me. “So, no one else in town can or will tell me what happened to them. No one but you. That’s why you will stay here and I will deal with the wolves out there.”

“And Diana?”

“One problem at a time. Wolves first, the elemental after.”

Because I can’t disagree with his logic, I nod. “Okay. And then?”

His gaze settles on my lips. “We survive, and then we move on to the next priority.”

My mouth goes dry, because I’m really hoping he kisses me. “Which is?”

Is his head dipping a little more, or am I just imagining things?

He doesn’t speak for so long that I clear my throat. “Keane?”

As if my voice breaks some kind of spell, he shakes his head and backs up a step. “Finding the witch who killed my pack, closely followed by getting those souls out of you and back where they belong.”

“And if I blow up before then?” My crazy powers haven’t gone away, they’re still there, and I still need to figure out what I am if I’m not a witch. Abigail might have been a stranger to me, but I don’t think she was lying.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Stay here.”

“I—”

“Stay,” he orders.

I scowl at his command. “I’m not a dog. Or a wolf.”

I’m almost positive his lips twitch, but we’re in a cave and it’s dark, so I could be wrong. “Just stay.”

As he stalks toward the cave entrance, I just stand there, my back against the wall, the cold seeping through my nightgown and chilling my skin.

He’s a wolf, which means he’s my enemy, just as I’m his.

But Abigail says you’re not a witch, so that means you’re no longer enemies.

So what does that make us, then?

At the mouth of the cave, Keane’s skin ripples, and he sinks to the ground. When he’s a tan wolf, he shakes his fur out and dashes out of the cave. No hesitation. No anything, he just darts out into an ambush he knows is waiting for him.

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