“We were engrossed. Girl talk, Julian.”
Ella gave his name a French twist on the J, turning it into something between a Z and a G. She only did that when she was irritated with him. What had he done? His eyes narrowed on Alex. What had she said he’d done?
“Unless there’s something urgent,” Ella continued, “I suggest you run along before we bore you to death.”
“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “Run along.”
He lifted a brow. “Is there some reason you don’t want me here?”
“How much time do you have?” she muttered.
Ella laughed, startling them both. Alex turned to her at the same time Julian did, and together they snapped, “What’s so funny?”
Ella’s smile widened. “You pretend to loathe each other, but you do not. As they say on TV: ‘What is up with that?’”
“You’re crazy,” Julian said.
“So I have been told.” She glanced back and forth between them. “Usually when I am right.”
Julian had sent Alex with Ella because Ella was the most no-nonsense woman he knew. She had an uncanny knack of seeing the true person behind the facade. He trusted her opinion.
But seeing her with Alex, shoulder-to-shoulder like the best of friends, unnerved him. Didn’t Ella smell the evil on her? He could.
To prove the theory, Julian sniffed—once, twice. Hell. All he could smell was her.
“What did you want, Julian?”
He’d come to bring Alex to Cade, but along the way he’d realized they needed to have a talk. She should keep her mouth shut about who she was, what she’d done, why she was here.
However, now he found himself wondering if he should at least tell Ella the truth. It had not been fair of him to command the Frenchwoman to welcome the enemy into her home when she hadn’t even known the enemy was here. Ella’s sound judgment was obviously being clouded by—
What? He didn’t think Alex had the ability to pretend to be something she was not. From what he’d observed, she was pretty damn honest about everything. For instance—how very much she wanted to kill him.
“Come with me,” he ordered, and stalked toward the front door, expecting Alex to follow. He would speak with her on the way to the lab, where she would give blood to his brother. He really wanted to know why she was migraine-free after being touched by nearly two hundred werewolves.
He opened the door, stepping back to let Alex go first. Except she wasn’t there. She was hovering in the entryway between the kitchen and the hall.
“I told you to come,” he said.
“I told you to die,” she returned. “But you’re still breathing.”
Quickly choked laughter drifted from behind her.
How could she deny his commands? No one else ever did.
However, when he observed more closely, he noticed that she would surreptitiously take two steps forward before clenching her hands, gritting her teeth, and taking a slow, difficult step back.
“Come,” he said again.
She took three quick steps before she could stop herself. Then she punched her fist into the wall.
Actually she punched her fist through the wall.
Whoops.
Ella hurried into the hall, saw him standing by the door scowling and Alex with her fist now stuck in the plaster. That was going to be a pain in the ass to fix, and it was going to leave a mark.
In the wall.