“God, all this excitement has made me hungry.” Grousing Jase complained more.
“You’re always hungry.” I sent Reagan up front to sit with Jase. That left me with a very pale Kerri lying across my lap taking in shallow breaths. I was worried that she had been unconscious a significant amount of time since we left the park.
* * * * * *
“Well, this makes for an interesting evening.” Eden pressed her stethoscope to Kerri’s chest, listening to her heart. “She didn’t fall?” Then she checked her pupils.
“No.” Shaking my head, I sat on the bed next to her, holding her hand and rubbing warmth into her skin.
“She’s got a hell of a set of lungs on her, though.” Jase was standing in the doorway, biting deeply into an apple, the crunch of skin and flesh loud inside my bedroom. I wondered what Kerri would think of us all, of me when she woke up.
“She’s in shock, obviously. It’s not every day you get the rug pulled out from under you and realize the majority of the town you live in is a bunch of shifters.” Disappointed, she looked at all of us, assuring me that Kerri should be fine in a few hours.
I’m not fine.
I’m so far from fucking fine.
Seeing the shocked expression on her face and blood drain all the precious color from her cheeks like the white moon in the sky was enough to age me another twenty years of my wolf life.
“What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to explain this?” Eden stood up from examining Kerri and walked around to where I was.
“You give her a Valium and explain it to her like she’s a toddler.” She slapped a pill bottle into my hand hard; the rattle of two pills inside made a smacking sound against the plastic. Her features turned stormy and while I could definitely take her down fully shifted in wolf form, I respected her and knew it was my fault.
“I’m sorry, Eden.”
“I warned you about this. Our kind hasn’t lasted this long in Woodland Creek by getting romantic notions about every human who passes through town. Your parents are one of the few exceptions.” Reminding me of my parents didn’t make the burn of shame and guilt in my chest any easier to breathe through.
“I know. I’ll take care of it.”
“Will you? Because if she so much as breathes about shifters, you know that Creighton and Stefano will have no qualms about taking her…” Eden stopped, leaving me with much to think about. A venomous spider and a snake as those two were earned their fearsome reputation by causing problems everywhere. I shut the door to my bedroom, leaving Kerri to rest until the time for confessions came. There was a lot to discuss and not much time to do it in.
Jase ordered in some food from Drake’s Diner, making sure we were well stocked if it came to keeping Kerri until she was…comfortable with the idea of us. I felt a sick gnawing in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. I was pretty sure he ordered one of everything; the countertops were filled with bags and boxes of food there was no way all of us could eat. Reagan was putting away the cold items in the fridge and Jase was in the kitchen picking off his plate.
“Guess I’ll start a fire and
we can settle in to wait for her to wake up.” Jase emptied his plate into the garbage and moved to the living room fireplace.
“Actually, do you mind taking Reagan back to the dorms on campus? I really want to do this alone with Kerri, at least at first.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Reagan stepped forward and I held my hand up to ward her off.
“Yeah. It’ll be okay. I’m just going to go shave this beard off and cut my hair to something a bit more manageable and friendly looking.”
“Don’t make any jokes about eating her, dude.” Wagging his finger at me, Jase popped me in the shoulder and at another time his joke might have been funny.
“Get out, furball.” Pushing back, he left, putting an arm around Reagan. She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek, telling me good luck.
Left in the empty house, I said a prayer from my dad’s people in silence, a blessing of hope and strength, which was what Kerri would need to live unscathed in Woodland Creek. Now that she knew things, the secret things we’d worked hard to keep from the outsiders, I contemplated taking her to meet my parents. I was sure that my father, an outsider himself to the shifter world, could help her understand. I just needed her to wake up.
I grabbed my shaving kit and began to shave the lingering beard of wolf hair from my face and cut back the unruly strands of longer hair that seemed to want to grow out each time I shifted to wolf form. After changing the razor out and dumping the loose hairs into the trash, I rubbed some aftershave over my face. I patted the towel down over my still wet face and looked up into the mirror to see Kerri’s lovely face, pale and drawn. I wanted to kiss the shaking worry from her body, touch her sweet soft lips, but first I had to be honest with her.
“Kerri…”
Chapter Thirteen
“I love the intimate, single spotlight, troubadour-y quiet, delicate moments. But I also love Springsteen and screaming and shouting.” James Bay
KERRI