Page 45 of Fate, Interrupted

She glances briefly over my shoulder toward the open warehouse, then back. “It’s a business, Silas. Not a war zone.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

I exhale. “This part of town isn’t welcoming to humans. You know that.”

“Does that include you? Anyway, I came.”

She shrugs, staring me down with a determined look on her face.

I search her face for fear or second thoughts. There aren’t any.

She drove twenty city blocks and walked onto my loading dock because I left her standing across the street yesterday without giving her a chance to tell me what she thought.

I go very still.

“You saw the wolf the other day,” I say. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“Yes, I saw the wolf. I also saw a fight,” she says.

No hesitation. No softening of the word, no search for an easier one.

I study her face, waiting for the second part. The part where the reality of it catches up with the bravado, where the instinctive human pullback kicks in and she walks it back.

It doesn’t come.

“And that doesn’t bother you,” I say.

“No.”

“You say that now.”

“I said it then, too. I’ve had time to think about it.”

“Thinking about it usually changes things.”

She stares at me, openly incredulous. “Well, it didn’t. Do you think I drove down here to tell you I changed my mind?”

“Did you?”

“No.” The word comes out clean and flat. “I came because you looked at me across that street like you already knew how this was going to end. Like you’d already written the last page.” She holds my gaze without blinking. “I don’t like being written off before I’ve said anything.”

The wind brings her scent straight to me, warm and familiar now. My wolf reacts immediately, and my head lifts to breathe her smell in.

I lock it down. Firm, immediate.

“You shouldn’t be this close to me,” I say.

Her chin lifts slightly. “You keep saying things like that.”

“Because they keep being true.”

“Why?”

Because I can feel you. Because my wolf has been tracking you since before I walked out here and hasn’t stopped for one second. Because the closer you get the harder it is to hold it all in place.

But I don’t say any of that.