He fell back another step and began studying the forest around us, a finger propped on his chin.
“Owen…” I began again.
Owen whirled and refocused on me, brows raised in challenge. “What else are you going to do? Ask a member of the pack for help?” His lips curved into a thin smile, although there was no humor behind it. “Do you honestly think they’re going to train you to beat the one they believe rightfully deserves the alpha role?”
“Well, no.” I’d already thought of that, and he was right. I couldn’t ask any of them for help. They’d say no for sure.
Or worse—they’d say yes. And I wasn’t convinced some of them wouldn’t train me badly on purpose. Like Bevin. Or even Carter. He’d been nice enough but he’d made it no secret where his loyalty lay. The pack’s preferences had already been made extremely clear.
I sighed. “Before I can answer … I have to ask,” I said.
Owen’s gaze sharpened, his mouth and eyes pulling tight. “You want to know if I killed Regan’s mother?” he said and his words were sharpened to a vicious point.
“I want to hear your side.”
Hurt flashed—so fast I almost missed it and then it was gone. In its place was the mask, smooth and practiced and utterly void of any emotion. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold. “My side…” He trailed off and stared me down until I shifted my weight, hating that I’d brought this up at all.
Of course Owen wasn’t involved. I didn’t need to hear his side or anyone else’s to know that. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” I said, wanting to take it back, to move on.
His shoulders fell and he blinked as if coming out of a deep thought. “No, you have a right,” he said quietly. “I was not involved. I know your pack suspects us but … there are things about Regan’s mother that your pack can’t understand. Things that make it impossible for her death to be on our hands—” He paused and seemed to change directions. “Charlie?”
Before I could fully blink, he was in front of me, breathing softly against the tip of my nose as he leaned in. I gasped in surprise and my senses filled with him, throwing me off balance. “Yes?” I managed.
“I will never, ever hurt you,” he said. “No matter what. Do you trust me?”
“Yes, Owen, I trust you,” I said, the words coming out on a whisper.
The corners of his mouth turned up and his expression lightened. I wondered why he was so relieved over that but then he added, “Then let me help you win this. Let me train you.”
The hint of a smug smile pulling at his yummy mouth made it impossible to refuse. “Fine,” I said. “But you can’t tell anyone.”
“Cross my heart, hope to die,” he said.
Somehow, he made that sound like an invitation. It was equal parts creepy and seductive, and I had to ask. “Aren’t you already…?”
Owen laughed and he threw an arm around my shoulders. Heat flushed my cheeks at his touch. “Darling, you’re hilarious. This is going to be so much fun.”
We planned to meet the next day, and Owen walked me home. My nerves were on edge as we crossed back into werewolf territory, certain that somebody would spot us and jump out, ready to attack first and ask questions later. But he was so quiet, like a ghost slipping through the trees, and we didn’t encounter anyone.
“Until tomorrow,” he murmured, brushing a kiss across my knuckles, like the royalty he was.
The look in his eyes was pure amusement, almost as if he were laughing at himself making such a gesture. I felt my face redden. It’s not like boys my age went around kissing your hand in farewell anymore. But it was more than that, because something about Owen doing it seemed right somehow. Like it was a part of his character to be chivalrous.
I shook my head free of that thought immediately. Owen was a lot of things. Chivalrous was probably not one of them.
He released my hand, slipped into the shadows, and was gone.
I moved quickly across the lawn and shut the back door behind me with a soft click. I crept up the stairs, praying I wouldn’t run into anyone on the way to my room. If I did, I was still acting under the pretense that I’d been out for a run, but I was too preoccupied to lie very well right now, and I didn’t want to put forth the effort.
I closed my bedroom door with a careful click and then went to the window. I had no idea how I knew he hadn’t left yet, but I wasn’t wrong. He stood wedged in between the thickest trees, but he was still there, watching the house. His eyes flitted over the windows and stopped on mine. I raised my hand in a wave as my pulse hammered in my wrist. He acknowledged my wave with a slight nod and then faded and disappeared against the backdrop of trees.
My own reflection caught my gaze out the corner of my eye. I was smiling. As soon as I realized it, I wiped my face clean of any expression. I shouldn’t have been smiling for a vampire. Especially one who bred such animosity in my family. But I couldn’t deny the uplifting feeling being with Owen had left inside me.
Ever since the pack had taken me away from my mom, I had been carrying around the lead weight of dread. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen to me—probably because terrible things were already happening. But being with him made that feeling vanish. With Owen’s help, I could navigate the confusing waters of pack life. Of matriculating into a life among my own species.
I told myself it was because he was going to help me train, help me win, and then I would have a solid place in a family of my own. Something I’d never had and always wanted. But it was more than that. Deep down, I knew that part of my elation, my hope and excitement in being with Owen, was that I’d finally been given the opportunity for a future.
Growing up as a werewolf in a city full of humans, a future was the one thing I knew I would never have. No real friends, no boyfriends, and definitely no husband or family on my horizon. Not when I constantly had to hide what I was from the people around me. For all their preoccupation with the paranormal, humans didn’t react well to the existence of werewolves.
But now, here, with Owen…
I knew there was still an entire competition to win first. And I knew winning could mean being married to a stranger, a murderer, a monster in all the ways that counted for anyone else. But it also meant the possibility of a future. Having someone to share it with after believing my entire life would be spent alone; that was definitely enough to make me smile, even in spite of all the danger and risks that future held.
“I’m going to win,” I promised the girl in the glass reflecting back at me. My smile faded into something fierce, something determined, and it struck me that just then, the girl in the reflection looked a whole lot more like Regan than me.