Page 28 of Hunted

“You aren’t your father.”

“Anxiety and depression have a genetic component. You think I don’t worry every day when I take my meds that this is just the beginning? That one day I’ll spiral down and be as lost as he was, self-medicating with anything I can get my hands on?”

“No. You have your sister. Your aunts. And you have me. All my brothers. The pack. We would never let that happen to you. Never, Ellie. This is the anxiety talking. You’re catastrophizing, getting spun up over all the terrible what ifs that might never happen.”

She laughed weakly. “Now you sound like Cal.”

“Yeah, don’t tell him, but Cal is so smart he scares me sometimes. And he makes a mean plate of blueberry pancakes.”

Ellie bit her lip. “The nights our dad did come home, Hayden and I usually wished he hadn’t.”

She trailed off. And hard as I tried to block the image that formed in her mind, it slipped through, that of a much younger version of Hayden, far too skinny, her bony arms wrapped around Ellie as they split the last bowl of stale corn flakes in the house and ate it with water from the tap.

“You saw that, didn’t you?” She said quietly, neck flushing pink as she stared down into her bowl.

Shit. “I’m sorry. I’m getting better about blocking you. It’s just something about if it’s a strong emotion, something slips through. I am trying. I want…” I hesitated, stomach starting to hurt. “I want you to tell me things because you want to.” She was staring at me now, too intently, those gorgeous gray-green eyes seeming to see straight through me. God, I wanted to open myself up to her, wanted her to see every part of me. Softly, I continued, “I’ve had to live since I was twelve years old with the knowledge that what I was, what I could do, would eventually drive all of my family and friends away. That every last person would leave. Until there was no one left who could stand to be around me. That I would never be able to form a lasting relationship.”

“River,” she whispered, reaching for my hand. I let her take it, allowing her to lace my fingers in with hers. Her fingernails were short and unpolished, the backs of her hands covered in scratches. Scientist’s hands. The hands that cuddled rescue rabbits the moment she got home. I went into people’s minds, taking things. Ellie had been born into poverty, studied tirelessly for scholarships to get her degree and now had devoted her life to helping those in need.

What I couldn’t bear to tell her out loud was that maybe the worst part of my gift was not being able to shield yourself from the thoughts of those you loved, from hearing your brother worry you were damaged, or that your father feared you would one day kill your family in your sleep. I didn’t want to read Ellie’s mind, didn’t want to steal into her head and take the darkest memories that would make her blush. What I wanted was the one thing I never got. I wanted Ellie to share how she felt with me because she wanted to, because it was her choice, something just for the two of us. I needed her to want to let me in because I was the only person she wanted to share her most intimate thoughts with, rather than the way the rest of the world viewed me, as the monster they wanted to keep out.

Ellie took another bite of soup. “When my dad left town and I came to stay with Piper and Meera in college, everything was different. I didn’t know what to do at first, in a house with people around all the time that were looking in on me and with plenty of food to eat. I’ve always had anxiety and you would think it would have gotten better, with less to worry about. Maybe it was because I’d never been at a place in my life where I could really stop and examine things, but I freaked out.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense.”

“Really?” Her eyes lifted to mine and my wolf ears counted every beat of her racing pulse. Gently, I stroked the edge of her thumb where our fingers were still laced.

“Soldiers keep moving in a combat situation because they have no other option. It’s after they feel safe enough to fall apart that PTSD sets in.”

“Okay, so yeah. I should have known you would get it. Piper and Meera were so supportive. Hayden, too, of course. My sister is fierce. She’s always had my back. Through everything, even when I was having bad anxiety attacks and she had to walk into town to pick up my prescriptions in the rain.”

I silently swore. Hayden Crowe hated me. As in, every time we were in the same room, she stalked over in her platform Doc Martens and practically tried to claw my eyes out. On Ethan’s advice, I’d made a point of avoiding her. And now… I swore I was going to fix things between us if it was the last thing I did.

“We would go to the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings,” Ellie continued, stirring her spoon through her soup, “or sometimes to one of the organic grocery stores in town. Meera loves making soup. Lentil soup. Vegetarian chili. Tofu vegetable. Every week we’d try a new recipe, make a big batch and then have it with fresh cornbread or Piper’s homemade yeast rolls.”

“That sounds really nice.”

She nodded. “I’d never had that growing up, that experience of getting to try recipes and cooking with someone, and I found I really liked it. So now we’re always texting each other new soups we can try. It’s our thing. It probably sounds silly.”

“Not to me.”

She bit her lip, frowning.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.” Her heartbeat jumped, her breathing quickening. I was getting better at spotting the anxiety attacks starting.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You keep rubbing your temples.”

I dropped my hand. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re lying.” Her frown deepened. “Did something happen today, did you have to read someone—”

“No, it’s—”

“Because Ethan told me about the risk of neural manipulators developing fractured memories as a result of performing too many rewrites in a short time frame.” She slid off the barstool, dragging her hand away from mine so she could chew on her cuticles. Her pulse rate had already spiked fifteen beats per minute. “That’s what they thought happened to Phoenix Richards at first, that he had been reckless with rewriting people over and over without resting in between, and he altered his own neural pathways so much there was no way to reverse the damage.” She was practically hyperventilating now, her anxiety spiraling. “They didn’t realize he was also being controlled by Rossi.”