I admire Isaac’s admission.

“What did he do that was so dirty?”

Isaac’s shoulders bounce gently with soft laughter.

“He attacked me in my sleep.”

My mouth falls open. “Seriously?” I smack my palm against the table. “Was he a rogue?”

“No,” Isaac unwraps a little complimentary peppermint and pops it in his mouth, “he just fights dirty, is all.”

“Why are you smiling about it?”

I don’t realize until after I ask the question that I’m sort of smiling too.

“Just thinking about it.” He pulls the neck of his shirt down to show me the deep scar I’ve always known was there, cut across his jugular. “He cut my damn throat,” he whispers.

“And that’s funny?” I’m not smiling anymore. Actually, I’m kind of pissed that he finds this at all humorous.

“Baby, you know it takes more than that to kill one of us,” he says, softening his expression to comfort me. “But you’re right; I shouldn’t talk about it that way with you. I know it hurts you.”

“Yes. It does,” I say matter-of-factly.

A woman and her small son walk past and sit at the booth behind us. Shortly after, two more families fill the empty tables nearby. The faint chatter of voices I’m used to hearing gradually becomes more evident as more and more conversations rise up all around us. I find myself lowering my own voice as if my simple everyday conversation with Isaac—though really it’s not that simple and everyday—will give his secret away. I do that a lot when out with him anywhere. It never matters where. It doesn’t seem to make any difference that Isaac looks perfectly human and that only I know him for what he truly is. I will always look over my shoulder, mind carefully what I say in public and sometimes even sweat a little when someone gets too close, as if they’ll be able to detect the faintest difference in him.

It’s absurd, but it comes with the territory, like being the keeper of a dark secret and you’re paranoid everyone around you knows you know more than you’re telling.

“So why’d you change the subject?” Isaac says, catching me off-guard. “You’re not getting away with it that easily.”

“Get away with what?” I really did forget what we had been talking about before.

“That independent wall,” he reminds me.

“Fine, you win,” I say, looking across at him. “But only under one condition.”

His lips tug into a surprised, subtle grin. “Oh really?” he says, reaching across the table and enclosing both of my hands underneath his own. He pulls my hands up and brushes his lips across the tops of my fingers. “You know, I’ve never done well with conditions. They make me feel all…restricted.” He kisses the fingers on the other hand and I melt further into the seat.

But I have to pull my hands away before I fall completely under his spell and so I move back against the seat again, playfully pushing him away, though the tips of my fingers graze his for longer than they should.

“Will you stop that?” I can’t help but smile. “Manipulation is a villainous trait, you know.”

Isaac chokes back a small laugh and his blue eyes grow a little wider.

“The condition,” I begin in my most authoritarian tone, “is that you can’t buy something just because I happen to mention that I like it.”

He crosses his muscular arms in front of him and just looks at me. I wait a few seconds longer for his objection, but apparently, I still have the floor.

“When we go somewhere,” I continue, “it’s like I’m tip-toeing around everything I say—I didn’t really want the leather purse that much.”

“Yes you did.”

I blink, stunned.

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, actually you did,” he repeats. “Your words were: ‘I frickin’ love this purse, Zia—look at the little skulls on the inside.’”

It’s funny, but stings a bit, how he called me out, but I pretend not to be fazed. “I was talking to Zia,” I say, now crossing my arms to mimic him. “It’s what girls do; we fall in love with pointless stuff all the time, but in reality we only love it as long as it’s new. I was totally over it after the first day I carried it to school.”

That isn’t entirely the truth, but when he looks at me that way, with that trademark sexy, confident smile, I tend to babble a lot.

“Fine,” he says, uncrossing his arms, “I won’t buy you anymore purses.” He rolls the peppermint package between his fingers and places it on the plate. Even that insignificant movement seems calculated, as if he’s only pretending to be giving me my way.

“No,” I lean up fully and reach across the table, taking the front of his shirt into my fist. “Not just purses, Isaac. Otherwise, I’ll start saying how much I frickin’ love stuff from Tiffany’s and Louis Vuitton.” I pull him toward me by his shirt and press my lips against his, tasting the peppermint without having his tongue in my mouth.

We break the kiss at the same time, pulling away from each other barely two inches, his shirt still wedged in my fingertips.

“Adorable,” he says and a little girlish grin spreads across my face, though I’m not sure if he’s being affectionate, or mischievous. Isaac is good at that; unreadable when he wants to mess with my head because he knows it makes me crazy.

I don’t have time to figure it out as the waiter interrupts the moment, approaching gradually and then placing Isaac’s drink and the check on the table. He takes our finished plates away.

He forgot the to-go box, but I don’t say anything.

“Thank you,” Isaac nods, moving his hand over the check before I can see the total and annoy him with my futile objections about him paying for it.

The waiter nods and strolls away, leaving us alone again.

Pulling out his wallet, Isaac fingers through his bills and chooses a ten for the tip, placing it near the half-full bread basket.

He takes a quick drink and stands first, offering his hand to me. “Ready to go see Seth off?” he says and I slip my hand into his, maneuvering myself out of the booth.

The moment I stand I feel hot blood rush up the back of my neck and into my head. Furious black spots spin around in front of my eyes like thousands of mosquitos, causing me to squint and become disoriented. Catching my breath is more urgent than an answer, so I keep my eyes on the table hoping Isaac won’t notice.

“Adria,” he holds tightly onto my waist, his strong fingers pressing into my ribs tenderly. “Sit back down,” he says, guiding me back toward the booth seat, but I refuse.

“No, I’m fine,” I say, searching my mind for the most logical explanation. “It’ll pass—damn flu, I know I’m getting it. And right before summer break, too.” I clench a fist at my side, totally mad about the timing.

The palm of Isaac’s hand covers my forehead, testing the level of heat coming from it—though I don’t feel at all feverish—and then both of his hands cup my cheeks. He stares into my eyes. “Are you sure?” he urges me. “You can go home or to my house and take a nap instead.”

From the corner of my eye, I notice the couple sitting to the left of us has been listening. The woman looks away when she notices my gaze on her.

“I’ll be alright,” I say, looking at Isaac again, my face still resting in his hands. “We’ll go see Seth and then it’ll be a long, hot bath and bed at home for me.”

Isaac barely smiles, almost as if he doesn’t believe a word I said about being fine to go on with our plans.

6

SETH, THIRD OLDEST OF Isaac and his brothers, is leaving for Serbia tonight and they’re throwing a big party for him at the Mayfair house. It was supposed to be Nathan, the oldest and next in line to inherit Trajan’s throne, but Nathan decided sometime after that fateful night at the Vargas house that he will stay in the States and rule here.

I’m convinced this was all Isaac’s doing.

Nathan wanted Isaac to rule here. He was more than ready to give up his ‘Ascendency’, as they call it, to Isaac not only so that Nathan could go back to Serbia with his father, but because Nathan wanted Isaac to be Alpha here.

But something changed in Isaac after he rescued me from certain death at the hands of Viktor Vargas. He’s been different. Not to me—except that he’s become even more protective than before—but to everyone else around him. His priorities have changed and from what I gather from conversations Isaac seems to leave me out of, his loyalty has shifted:

“I’m unfit to lead here, Nathan,” I overheard him say just last week. “When I made the decision to do it, it changed everything. And I don’t regret it.”

I had been downstairs in Isaac’s kitchen with Zia and we were about to leave for Finch’s Grocery, but I left my purse upstairs in Isaac’s room and had run back up to get it.

When I heard them talking inside the room, I forced myself to listen at the door.

“I get it, man,” Nathan said, “but this is your pack, little brother, not mine and not Seth’s. It was meant for you.”

Silence ensued for a brief few seconds, which made me nervous they might know I was right outside the door.

“I can’t do it,” Isaac said. “To try and take on both, I would be failing both and you know it. Our father is barely capable of doing it himself and his years and experience far outweighs mine. I can’t do it.”

Take on both of what? I thought.

I wanted to push myself closer against the cracked door even though I could hear them just fine, but I was too afraid to make the slightest bit of movement, worried I’d give myself away.

I heard one of them sigh heavily and assumed it was Nathan.

“Then like I said before, I stay here too,” Nathan said with heavy abandon in his voice. “If you give up your Ascendency to Seth, you know that Father will denounce your Lineage.”

“I don’t care,” Isaac said coldly, as if he truly meant it, though the repercussion still wounded him. “An Alpha protects his own.”

My palms were sweating and I had stopped breathing at some point, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything under the sound of my breath. But at those last words, the breath caught in the back of my throat just as I had thought it safe to let go. I swallowed hard. An Alpha protects his own. Trajan had said that once, the night I met him and Aramei in the cave. A hundred things went through my mind then, but the one I plucked out of the disarray, the one my rational mind chose to believe was the obvious: Isaac’s first and most important responsibility is to me. Alpha or not, Isaac’s loyalties are to me and while it makes me feel like the most important girl in the world, it also doesn’t feel right.

Why do I want to be the reason that Isaac loses anything? I’m not well-schooled in the werewolf history and how their principles, beliefs and customs work, but I know enough to know that Isaac is giving up everything for me.

I don’t like it, that he feels such a responsibility to me. I don’t like it that I feel like a responsibility at all.