Regardless of Isaac and me not getting caught in an awkward moment, things still feel awkward. It’s difficult to push down the conversation Isaac and I just had so quickly, and replace our anguished faces with fake smiles for Beverlee’s sake.

“Well, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Beverlee says, still standing in the doorway, “but I wanted to see if you’d go with me to Rita’s house in a bit and help us set up for her scrapbooking party.” I wince, but I don’t think she notices. “I know it’s short notice,” she goes on, “but she kind of called me last-minute. If you don’t want to go, it’s—”

“No, I’ll…I’ll go with you and help out,” I say smiling across the room at her. I can tell by the way Isaac’s gaze strays toward the floor that he is not happy about this.

“Thank you, Adria,” Beverlee says, beaming. “I’ll let you unpack. We’ll leave in about an hour. Oh, and you don’t have to stay for the party—I won’t torture you that much. I’ll give you a ride home after we set up, okay?”

I nod, smiling appreciatively, because she’s right; making me sit through a scrapbooking party would seriously be torture.

Beverlee shuts the door after she slips out.

“You can’t be by yourself,” Isaac says as the false relaxed demeanor sheds off his body as soon as Beverlee is gone. “I’ll go with you.”

I laugh. “No, you won’t go with me. It’s kind of like being forced to watch a chick-flick marathon—you’d be all buckets-of-crazy.” I kiss him on the cheek. “You can’t be with me everywhere. I’ll be fine. If I see Genna—”

“And what if you don’t actually see her?” he says. “And now that she knows she can’t hide from you as easily, she’ll use other means: hallucinations, anything….”

“I’ll handle it,” I say, though I don’t really believe it. “Nathan was onto something about that companionship stuff—Genna does seem kind of nice as weird as that may be.”

“I don’t like it.”

I smile warmly at his protectiveness. “I won’t be gone long. And I promise if I start to feel anything, I’ll call you right away. I promise.”

Isaac gives in. He knows he has to, as much as he is against it. If he had his way, he’d be with me every second of the day just so he could watch over me.

I made it through scrapbooking duty unscathed, and Beverlee had me home before dark. But between just getting back from Portland and going with Beverlee pretty much straight after I got home, I was passed out in my bed before ten o’clock.

The softness of Isaac’s words whispering in my ear gradually brings me back to life.

“Wake up, baby.”

I roll over to face him, curling myself into the fetal position and clutch the thin blanket tighter around my shoulders. It takes me a minute to realize that Isaac’s really in my room and that I’m actually half-asleep. I moan a little into his body, not wanting to wake up.

“I need you to go with me,” he says softly, tracing my eyebrow with his fingertip.

My eyes creep open, expecting to see sunlight shining through the window, but I quickly grasp that it’s still pitch dark outside. I let them open the rest of the way and it takes a moment to adjust. I glance over at the clock on the nightstand to see that it’s almost one o’clock in the morning.

“Go where?” I say, still trying to get my voice to wake up too.

His finger traces along my jawline and then he gently takes my chin between his thumb and index finger, leaning down to kiss my lips. “They’ve moved Aramei,” he says after pulling away.

I rise from the bed, propping myself up by my elbow. “What? They moved her? Why?” I say, rubbing the haze from my eyes and pushing my body to sit up the rest of the way. The moonlight flooding the room from the curtain-less window makes Isaac’s outline look so dark next to me, but I can clearly see his face and the curvature of his cheekbones.

“My father moves her around from time-to-time,” he says, still in a low voice since we’re the only ones awake in the house. But since Beverlee and Uncle Carl are downstairs now, I don’t worry about them hearing us.

“Can’t Nathan or Zia stay with her this time?” I look at him irritably, not because he’s asking me to get up and go with him, but because I’m getting tired of it always being him stuck with the job.

“Damn, Isaac,” I go on, “why can’t Trajan take care of his own responsibilities?” I toss the blanket off my legs and reach up to rub my eyes some more.

I hear him sigh next to me.

“I know,” he says, dispirited, “but my father has a lot of responsibilities being what he is.”

“But why you?” I snap. “It’s always you and I’m sick of it.”

I stand up from the bed and he follows. “You know I’ll go with you, but don’t tell me you’re sneaking into my bedroom at one in the morning to get me to go because you’re worried about Genna.”

“I can’t tell you that.”

I let out a frustrated breath.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hooking his hands around my arms, “but until I know she’s going to leave you alone and move on to somebody else, I’m not leaving you here with me more than an hour’s drive away.”

His gaze is sincere and unwavering.

I kiss him on the cheek just at the edge of his mouth. “I know…it’s okay; I’ll go with you.”

I don’t want to go. I’ve only seen Aramei once in all this time and after that night I knew I couldn’t bear to see her ever again. And now, knowing that I’m a millisecond away from ending up just like her, being in her presence and reminded of my fate, it’s the last place I want to be. But Isaac needs me and the longer I think about it, I start to convince myself that maybe seeing her again is something I need. Maybe there’s something I missed the first time I was there. Maybe I’ll find some kind of closure.

Who the hell am I kidding?

There’s not much in the way of closure to ending up a vegetable.

Isaac walks over to the chair by the window and grabs my lounge pants for me. As I’m pulling them up over my panties I say, “I take it Nathan didn’t see Genna at the store tonight then?”

“Not a sign of her.”

“Well, what if he never sees her again?” I say, pulling my hair into a neater ponytail. “You can’t drive yourself crazy always worrying about me. I’ll put a stop to that real quick.”

“What’ll you do?” he says, though I do sense the faintest bit of humor hidden in his tone. This time though, he doesn’t let it interrupt the seriousness of the conversation.

“I don’t know,” I say, slipping on my sweater, “but I’m just telling you in advance.”

“Where are you going?”

“To brush my teeth,” I say from the door of my room.

“We don’t have time for that.”

I open the door and step out into the hall. “Well, at least let me hit the Listerine.”

We slip quietly out the front door, but not before I write a quick note for Aunt Bev saying Zia dragged me to her house, and leave it on the kitchen bar.

“So, where did they move her?”

We’re heading northwest and just like the last time, I already get the feeling this is going to be a long night. I want to curl up next to Isaac and sleep the whole way there, but the bucket seats in his Jeep make that idea difficult to pull off.

“It’s a secluded cabin about an hour and a half from here,” he says while I’m trying to curl against my door instead. “It’s only temporary; my father will probably move her again in a few days.”

I groan laying my head against the window, pulling my knees up to my chest.

“And I take it you’ll be going wherever he moves her then, too?”

I feel his hand on my thigh. “Does it really bother you that much?”

I rise up, deciding that there’s no way I’m going to get comfortable enough to sleep. I turn my back at an angle, half against the seat, half against the door, and I cross my arms over my chest. “Only that he expects you to be her babysitter—Isaac, I just—.” I raise my head from the seat and Isaac looks over at me briefly. “Can I be honest with you?”

“I always want you to be honest,” he says and it stings for a second. “Baby, I know you hate my father and it’s okay.”

“No, I don’t hate him. I know you look up to him and I know that he’s not exactly Mr. Smith who lives next door and doesn’t mind if the neighbor borrows his lawnmower—I can look past the fact that he’s a werewolf. I understand what he is and what you are and that your ways are different from ours.” I pause and he glances over at me again. “I just think he could be a little more…loving.” It actually sounded pretty stupid saying it, but what I didn’t catch in time was that it also might’ve stung Isaac a little. Isaac may have grown up like this, devoid of the kind of love that humans feel from their families and it shouldn’t bother him as much as it might a human, but I know more than anyone that Isaac, being around humans so much all his life, started to crave love like we experience it.

He told me this himself months ago at Harvey’s Coffee when we were still getting to know each other.

But the Elders, the way they are and always have been…they are legions of brutal killers all vying for some kind of power and when power and rage is at the top of the chain there is no room for love.

“My father loves us,” he says very quietly, looking out the windshield, “he just shows it differently.”

I think of my words more carefully this time.

“How does he show it?” I say, though not as if I’m being derisive.

“I’m alive, aren’t I?”

I scoff and throw the control I had been maintaining right out the window, looking away from him. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

20

ISAAC GLANCES OVER AT me once more, moving one hand off the steering wheel and back on my thigh. The softness of his face reveals to me that he actually wasn’t trying to be funny. I swallow hard and brace myself for whatever he’s about to say because I know I’m not going to like it.

“My father chose me as an Alpha,” he begins. “He sees strength in me unlike he sees in some of my brothers and sisters. And there are things you don’t know…” he looks at me for a longer moment as the yellow-lined road straightens out ahead, “…he’s let me get away with breaking our laws before.”

I admit, I’m surprised by this information and definitely eager for him to continue.

He looks back at the road. “Getting involved with humans, for one.”

I raise a brow, wondering about what course we just ended up on.

“It’s forbidden,” he says, “like a lot of things, it seems. But it was because of me that my father loosened the law about…” he seems uncomfortable with this all of a sudden.