Wolf Broken (Wolfish 2)

And we don’t now.

Her question makes my shoulders tense. I withdraw half a step, refusing to look at her.

“We’re fine. I’m fine. I just need to talk to Kaleb,” I say, nodding in his direction.

Her eyes stay on me, scanning my face as she reads me like an open book.

After a moment, she lets out a sigh.

“That’s fine there, Kaleb. I can do the rest myself,” she calls out across the snow.

My brother’s head pops up, his eyes flickering over to me and then just as quickly back to her.

“Are you sure? I could do the rest of it?”

I brace my arms harder, trying my hardest to keep my temper in check.

Lydia, thankfully, gives Kaleb a soft smile and shakes her head, ordering him inside to wash up before the rest of the packs arrive. From somewhere over my shoulder, I hear more rustling in the kitchen, and voices. Marlowe and Vivian are back, fresh game slung over their shoulders. They still carry the scent of the hunt on them, and the adrenaline makes my temper flare.

I catch Kaleb on his way in the door, half his body still stained with black earth.

“I need to talk to you,” I growl in his ear, “about what you said to Sabrina over the weekend.”

His body, usually lithe and light, tenses beneath my touch.

“Nothing,” he says, too quickly, then backtracks when he sees the reflection of my face in the glass. “At least, nothing she didn’t already know. Or should have known.”

He tugs himself free from my grip, but I follow him down the hall to the bathroom.

“What do you mean by that?” I ask, as he does his best to ignore me in favor of the water running from the faucet.

He ducks his head under the cold water for a moment as the flecks of dark dirt wash from his skin. He takes his time when he emerges, sticking one arm under the water and scrubbing the dirt from his skin and nails, and then the other. When he straightens back up, and reaches for the towel to dry himself, I snatch it out of his hand and hold it out of reach.

Now, finally, he’s forced to look up at me. He tries to grin at me in that carefree way he does to get out of trouble, but I keep my expression stern.

“What did you say to her?” I growl, moving the towel even further out of reach.

The hair on the sides of Kaleb’s face is soaked. He stands in front of me, his grin faltering as water drips down from him to the wood floor.

“I told you already,” he says, “I just told her to be careful. I reminded her what we’re capable of.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

“And what was that?”

Kaleb reaches for the towel, but once again I pull it just out of reach at the last second. I’m not much taller than him, but the little I am … it makes all the difference.

Color rises in his cheeks as his own temper, still no match for mine, rises.

“Come on, Rory. Why do you have to be so serious all the time?” he snaps.

“Because this is serious,” I say. “You should have seen Sabrina this morning. Whatever you said to her, it’s thrown her off.”

I finally relent and let him snatch the towel

from my hand, but he doesn’t immediately storm off. He buries his soaking face in the downy towel for a moment, but when he emerges, cheeks flushed, he’s eying me warily.

“How so?”