He grimaced. “Loud. Your heart is always loud.” He banged his hand against the wall behind him. It echoed throughout the house. “Thump, thump, thump. Always loud. Want to turn it off.”
“That’s… not how it works.”
“If you’re dead it does.”
That was pointed. “Do you want me dead?”
“Yes.”
And his own heartbeat betrayed him. A slight flutter, but there nonetheless. “Liar.”
He scowled at me. “Not lying. You die, I get silence. You die, I don’t have to hear thump, thump, thump always.”
I said, “Then kill me.”
His eyes narrowed. “Really?”
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
The asshole looked like he was considering it. Then, “Not today. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” I echoed. I looked around the room. “Was it nice?”
“What.”
“Here.” I waved my hand. “This place. The people in the photograph. Was it nice?”
“Why?”
I sighed. “Dude, seriously, this whole answering a question with a question thing is getting old.”
“Then stop asking questions.”
“That’s not how this works.”
He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “That’s not how what works?”
I leaned my head against the wall. My ears were cold. “At the bar in Green Creek. The Lighthouse. You came. You followed the others.”
“Hunting them,” he said, sounding oddly proud. “Very good at hunting. Always quiet.”
“You were going to hurt them.”
“Easier. Easier to kill. If I did, she wouldn’t hurt me. Wouldn’t cut me. Silver knives on bottom of my paws.”
I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Elijah more than I already did. Part of me knew that she’d done something to him and the other wolf to keep them docile, to make them subservient. Outright torture seemed plausible, especially after what she’d done to Chris and Tanner. But hearing it from him made me wish she was still alive so I could kill her myself. She’d gotten off easy. “You didn’t, though. Kill.”
He fidgeted, obviously knowing where this was headed. “No. I didn’t. Wanted to. But didn’t.”
“Because I was trying to kill you.”
He cocked his head, and it was such a wolf thing to do, I almost laughed. I’d seen that look before, though he’d been a timber wolf when he’d done it. He was annoyed. It shouldn’t have calmed me as much as it did. “You could never. Better wolf than you.”
“You’re bitten. I was born wolf.”
“You’re too loud,” he retorted. “I kill, I kill them all. But then you came out and said grr.”
“I did not say grr, you asshole.”