Page 37 of The Wolf's Secret Twins

I held up my hand. “Don’t.”

“No, Slater. We need to talk about it.”

Her eyes reflected my sentiments, the same fear I knew she held deep in her gut about that last conversation. Neither of us had been in our right mind. The whole betrayal thing had just exploded onto the scene. People were fleeing their homes and leaving the pack in shambles. Our own goddamn alpha had fled in the night, leaving us without so much as instructions on what the hell to do.

I dug my fingers into my palms. “We don’t need to hash it out.”

“But we do, Slater. We haven’t talked a word about it other than the facts, right?”

I looked away. “Right.”

Something about her reaching for my clenched-up fist made my muscles go slack. She offered me a small smile. “You called me Satan’s harlot, remember?”

I cackled briefly and then shook my head. “Son of a bitch.”

“You called me that too.”

“And you called me a cheater. Though I’m not really sure where that came from.”

She shrugged lightly. “I guess I was just looking for things that would hurt.”

“Well, it worked. It hurt.”

“I was feeling pretty hurt.”

I frowned at the table. “We were all feeling hurt. Your granddaddy did us dirty. My parents got lucky with us landing here. I still have nightmares about my mother crying.”

“I understand that all too well.”

“What happened to your parents, Virginia? Why aren’t they with you?”

Pain shot through my fist—and it wasn’t until I checked my hand that I realized why. Virginia was puncturing my knuckles with her nails. While it wasn’t unusual for me to feel aches and sore spots, this pain came with something else, a sinister feeling that crawled up my arm and across my chest. It suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“Goddamn, girl,” I wheezed. “Easy.”

She released my hand, taking the feeling back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“What did they do to you?”

Anxiety crawled between us, inserting a wall. That was a feeling I knew too well from my parents doing it. But feeling it from Virginia made me irate. What did she have to hide? And why did she feel like she had to hide it?

“They’re gone now,” she whispered. “I heard my grandfather died somewhere in the wilderness or something like that.”

Sympathy made me reach for her. I massaged her hands, trying to get her to loosen up because, good gods, she was wound tighter than a rusty screw. “Ginny, why do I get the feeling that you’re not telling me everything?”

She looked at me for a moment, and then she was thinking something, probably considering her memories, sifting through facts. At the end of her little reflection, she smiled gently. “I’m telling you everything that’s important, Slater.”

“I’m holding you to it.”

“I promise I won’t let you down.”

Conviction lived inside those words. It warmed me over tenfold. I squeezed her hands and grinned wide. “About our little adventure—would you happen to know of anybody who can fake some IDs? Just something to hold us over.”

“Actually…” She blushed. “I caught a kid with a fake ID at the bar once. He gave up the guy’s name. I never approached him about it, but I thought it might come in handy one day.”

She pulled out her phone and showed me a number with the letters F.E. in bold.

“You’re my badass princess, aren’t you?” I teased as I caressed her cheek. “I should have taken you with me when I had the chance.”

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