Page 4 of The Sacred Wolf

Or a shiftskin.

Only sweatpants.

And a fluffy white towel tossed over one of his light brown shoulders.

Evan and I sucked in a breath at the exact same time. Sebastian’s nostrils flared, but his eyes gave nothing away. No hurt. No anger. Nothing. Which made it really hard to keep my own eyes up there instead of letting them follow the line of dark hair from just below the crux of his clavicles to just below his sternum where it then spread out over the ridges of his abs before tapering back into a line just above—

“Girl!” Evan shouted in his best impression of the sassy gay friend from a late 90s teen comedy as he shoved me out to arm’s length. “When are you going to tell me who makes these shiftskins?! Are they Lulus?! They’ve got to be Lulus!”

“Um…” I eased out of Evan’s grip entirely and glanced over at Sebastian, making my eyes large and innocent and a little bit ignorant the way most shifter males liked them. “Can you answer that? You know I missed out on all the most classified classes. Are they Lulus?”

“They’re shiftskins,” Sebastian said flatly. “We make them in-house.”

“Ooooh, a design department!” Evan swished over to Sebastian as effeminately as I’d ever seen him move. “Where do I sign up? Because I have some changes I think will really slay. I’m thinking sequins, I’m thinking glitter… ”

I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing. Evan could probably hack into the New York Stock Exchange and destroy the human economy before he could design a novelty T-shirt much less revolutionize millennia-old shifter fashion.

“May I have the room?” Sebastian asked curtly. “I have an important meeting this afternoon, and I need to release some tension before I go.” His lip curled into the tiniest hint of a sneer. “So I don’t bite anybody.”

Evan’s eyebrows shot up, and he pursed his lips. “Oh, well then, maybe Elyse and I should stick around and pick up a few pointers on releasing—”

“We were just going,” I said, pushing Evan toward the door. He pranced dramatically forward, going so far as to kick up one heel before he entered the hall. Then he threw his head back over his shoulder and rolled his eyes at me before relaxing back into his normal walk. I couldn’t help the smile that quirked my lips.

Sebastian growled softly and then choked it off, his stubbled cheeks pulling inward. Between that and the lopsided quality of his dark wavy many, I was pretty sure he’d just rolled out of bed at ten a.m. like a spoiled prince. Kiana was always up by five to begin her days full of Alpha Heir duties, but I supposed Sebastian didn’t have anything to prove.

Neither did I, but for Evan’s sake, I said, “We weren’t doing—”

“What you were doing is none of my concern.”

Sebastian strode past me, and I hated myself for the way my treacherous eyes trailed after his low-slung waist band. But in my defense, I had never once claimed not to be wildly attracted to him on a superficial level, nor had I ever said that I would never be with him. Only that I needed some space to figure myself out. I’d naively assumed this would involve the two of us taking the time to see if we could develop a genuine friendship that might turn into something based on more than his whims.

“Unless you think your scent markers might be changing,” Sebastian grunted without so much as a backward glance. “In which case, I hope you’ll have the decency to let me know before I smell it for myself. I don’t like surprises.”

“You don’t like—” I laughed darkly, remembering my surprise when he kidnapped me and locked me in a tower. “Are you serious right—actually, you know what?” I shook my head in disgust and backed toward the door. “As you wish.”

Chapter Three

Explosions of midday sunlight flashed through the metal framework of the Third Avenue Bridge as my yellow taxi rattled and rocked across the Madison Avenue Bridge upriver. Black spots appeared before my eyes, forcing me to squint, but I couldn’t look away from the mundane setting of the worst night of my life. How many tires had rolled right over all the bloodstains my family had left behind? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? I’d lived in New York City my whole life, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around just how many humans we shared the Five Boroughs with.

We didn’t bother them. That had always been the first prong of the two-pronged Rule. We didn’t bother them, and we didn’t become them. For as long as any of us living could remember, we had kept to ourselves and our own strange ways, and, for better or worse, we had never interfered in their affairs. Some of them believed we were really out there. Most believed we were just Big Bad Wolf fairy tales useful for keeping all their Little Red Riding Hoods in line.

Jayla had been one of the former.

Evan had been one of the latter.

And Charlie… well, Charlie had believed in me.

You can do this.

But should I be?

My stomach churned, and not just from the cabbie’s questionable driving. I had lied to Evan about needing some alone time and then went forward with my own plan for sneaking out while pompous Sebastian and his father attended the five-borough meeting with all the other Alphas on the neutral ground of Roosevelt Island. I wasn’t ready to see Jayla and doubted I would ever be, but I needed to see my father. And there might never be another chance like this when I knew for certain my sister wouldn’t be home. She was one of the Pack Daddies now. She wouldn’t miss her first meeting.

I swallowed the acidic guilt rising in my throat. Evan was going to be hurt that I hadn’t even let him ride along. Shifter life was already isolating enough, but Sebastian and his father wouldn’t let either of us leave the Plaza until our faces fell off the ever-spinning news cycle—which we weren’t even allowed to keep up with. The TV had been removed from Evan’s quarters before he moved in, and the TV in mine could only access the streaming platform it had been logged into when I first arrived.

So, there really hadn’t been anything for us to do after training sessions except sit in my room staring at pictures on the screen and eating meals delivered on the Alpha Family’s dime. In one month’s time, Evan had brought me up to speed on all the blockbuster movies of the twenty-first century along with some indie art films that had answered a lot of questions about a lot of things. And when we finally achieved the impossible and reached fiction overload, Evan had introduced me to the mindless pleasures of competitive fashion and cut-throat cake-baking.

We’d had as much fun as we possibly could under the horrible circumstances, but honestly, it was really nice to see the sun shining on the Harlem River again. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture for Evan right before the cab left the bridge. It did nothing to assuage my guilt over leaving him, but bringing him just wasn’t an option. If our morning training session had accomplished anything, it had confirmed my fear that Evan wouldn’t last two seconds in a street fight. And me showing up unannounced on my old doorstep while my sister was in another part of the city…

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