“So you punched a hole through his house.”
“He listened after that.”
“Mark.”
“Gordo.”
I grabbed him by the arm. “Would you stop? For fuck’s sake. You can’t hide this. Not from me.”
“That’s almost funny coming from you. Talking about hiding things.”
That stung, though I deserved it. It wasn’t Mark, though. He didn’t dig at open wounds. “Don’t be a dick.”
He winced. “Sorry. I don’t—I don’t know where that came from.”
He was lying. We both knew exactly where it’d come from. “I need to know if you’re in control. You can’t go into a room full of humans if there’s a chance you’ll turn on them.”
For a moment I thought he was going to pull away. He breathed in through his nose as the others went inside. As the door opened voices poured out, some of them angry. I wasn’t looking forward to facing the people who had remained in town. Hopefully they’d bought the bullshit story being spun.
“I’m not going to hurt them,” Mark said, a scowl on his face.
“Show me your eyes.”
“Gordo—”
“Do it, Mark.”
He flashed his eyes.
Orange. Just orange.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Just—stay by me, okay?”
His lips twitched. I saw the hint of teeth. “Gonna keep everyone safe from the big bad wolf?”
“Christ. That’s not going to be a thing. Ever. You hear me? In fact, you say that again and I’ll kill you myself. I think I liked it better when we hated each other.”
He took me by the hand. “I never hated you, Gordo.”
I looked away. I wanted to tell him the same, but I couldn’t. Because I had hated him. I had hated all of them. It’d taken me a long time to figure out how to stop. And I didn’t know if I was all the way there yet.
He sounded sad when he said, “I know. It’s okay, though. It only took my ex being an evil witch and me losing my mind to get you to come back to me. Worth it, if you ask me.”
“That’s not funny,” I said hoarsely.
“A little funny.”
“When this is over, we need to have a long talk about this thing you call your sense of—”
He moved then, almost faster than I could follow. One moment he was in front of me, his hand in mine. The next I was shoved behind him as he began to shift, growling low in his throat.
I looked over his shoulder.
The timber wolf stood in the middle of the road.
Its face still hadn’t healed, not completely. The silver in the crowbar was strong, and the wolf was an Omega. Its power to heal had slowed. The wound was knitting itself back together, but its muzzle was caked with blood, and its right eye was swollen shut.
And it was pissed off.