Until her eyes settled on mine.
“I’ve heard great things about the woods in these parts.” She smiled, baring shiny teeth that overlapped.
Heart hurtling against my ribs, I backed up, and one of my heels caught. I windmilled my arms. Lucas caught me before I could fall.
After steadying me, he muttered, “Can you let a Pine wipe out first?”
Don’t show fear, Ness, Liam said through our mind link.
How could I not show fear?
I gaped at him, and then I gaped at all of the Pines and Boulders who’d turned to look at me, and then finally I gaped back down at the Creek Alpha.
Aidan Michaels crossed the lawn, coming to a stop next to her, and then, like her, he smiled up at me.
“What is it?” August asked, the only person who was still staring at me.
Everyone else was peering downward as Cassandra pressed her cheek into Aidan Michaels’s, as though marking him, as though he were a wolf instead of a hunter.
August stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the Creeks so I would focus on him. “Ness? Why are you so freaked out?”
I blinked up at him. “Cassandra… she’s… . ”
He placed a hand on my shoulder, leaking warmth into my frozen skin, not enough to thaw me out of my stupor though. “What is Cassandra?”
“Her voice,” I whispered.
“What about her voice?”
“IknowitIknowher.” I whipped the words out so fast they blended into one another.
He frowned. “How?”
“She’s… she’s the woman who… who operates… Red Creek Escorts. Called herself… Sandra.” I slammed the back of my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God. I’m going to be sick.”
“Shh.” He pulled me into his chest while I dry-heaved.
Thankfully my lunch didn’t come up. Just my anxieties. They rose and rose like steam from a pressure cooker. I was going to blow. I pressed away from August and rushed back to the guardrail.
“You!” I yelled at her, at Aidan, my voice ringing through the night, quieting all the others.
Gasps arose.
“Hi, Candy.”
“Candy?” Sarah echoed.
“Probably some Creek-way of saying sweetie,” the girl next to her said.
For a long moment, the woman I’d come to know as Sandra stared at me, and I stared back at her, and the rest of the world faded around us.
Had she manipulated Everest into working for her the same way she’d manipulated me into going on a date with Aidan? I turned my searing gaze onto Aidan, who was thumbing his ear. What connection existed between the hunter and the Alpha?
“Get dressed!” the Creek Alpha bellowed, shattering the silence.
“What was that about?” Liam asked me.
I was still too rattled to talk, so I let August explain.
The Creeks poured past her, trickling into the inn by the doors beneath the terrace, the ones that led to the pool. A moment later, the first clothed ones reemerged. One of them, a young girl with hair the color of Cassandra’s fur, returned toward the Creek Alpha, brandishing a light-blue shift, which Cassandra pulled over her head. It settled shapelessly above the Alpha’s ankles.
“Thank you, Lori.”
Lori craned her neck to look at us. Her face was thin like Cassandra’s, eyebrows thick and curved like the Alpha’s. I bet they were related. Mother and daughter perhaps? I wished I’d studied the Creeks. It would’ve spared me the shock of finding out that I’d been casually conversing with their Alpha.
Cassandra Morgan. I shivered.
She’d barely even bothered to disguise her identity. Had she wanted me to figure it out? Both women and Aidan started toward the terrace stairs, making their unhurried way onto the deck.
Liam and Julian waded through the throng of Pines and Boulders, positioning themselves in front of their packs.
“Cassandra,” Julian said.
“Julian.” She didn’t smile at him. She turned toward Liam, looked him up and down as though sizing him up. She was slightly shorter than he was, but that could’ve been because she was barefoot, whereas he wore boots. “Your resemblance to Heath is simply alarming.” She didn’t smile at him either.
Tendons shifted like windblown branches in the back of Liam’s neck, the only part of him I could see from my vantage point.
Lori, who was standing just behind her Alpha, regarded Liam, but unlike her Alpha, she seemed to like what she saw because her pink lips lilted into a seductive smile.
“Aidan Michaels abhors wolves, Cassandra,” Julian said, just as more of her pack walked up the porch steps, creating a thick wall behind Cassandra.
“You must be mistaken,” she said, wrapping one of her hands around Aidan’s wrist. “Aidan’s a great animal lover.”
“He might love dogs and his fellow rats, but he has no love for wolves,” Liam said.
“Aidan!” She released his wrist to clap a hand over her chest. “What am I hearin’?”
A smile tugged at Aidan’s thin lips. A matching one clung to the lips of many a Creek.
I stepped around Sarah and the girl from her pack to better see the Alphas, but something tugged on me, stopping me from moving any closer. I looked around me, wondering who’d grabbed onto my dress, but no one had. When I met August’s green gaze, I realized it wasn’t a hand that had held me back, but a tether. He shook his head, as though warning me from going closer. I bit my lip, turning back toward the Alphas.
“Grandma’s bones must be rattlin’ around in her grave,” Cassandra said.
I frowned.”Why would your grandmother’s bones be rattlin’?” Julian asked, accenting the last word to match her diction.
Cassandra smiled. “‘Cause Grandma was staunchly opposed to wolves hatin’ their own.”
I inhaled so fast white dots danced on the edge of my vision. Was she saying Aidan Michaels was… . a-