Page 80 of Hunted

Kerbey Lane was an iconic Austin establishment. Open twenty-four hours a day for every kind of pancake, omelet and breakfast food imaginable, they used locally-sourced ingredients, could make practically anything on their menu vegetarian, vegan or gluten-friendly and used their wall space to feature local artists. I glanced at the display of Keep Austin Weird t-shirts hanging next to the register as the server led me back to a booth.

By the time Hayden blew into the restaurant ten minutes late, it had started to storm again. Sheets of rain lashed the parking lot, the wind practically twisting the live oak trees sideways as people hurried in from their cars to escape the deluge. The restaurant was just starting to get busy ahead of the dinner rush, chatter from the fifty odd patrons and staff there like a scouring pad to my brain. I drew extra moon energy, drowning their voices out.

Hayden shrugged out of her blood red rain jacket and laid it across the seat. She had on a t-shirt with a picture of an electric guitar engulfed in flames that I remembered Ellie had gotten her for Christmas, ripped jeans, and Doc Martens.

“What’s this?” She eyed the plate the server had just left in front of her distrustfully.

The only chocolate thing on the menu had been a vegan brownie with ice cream, so I’d slipped the server a twenty, mentioned it was Hayden Crowe from Daisy Addiction, and they’d somehow turned it into an Instagrammable monstrosity that took up an entire dinner plate. Three warm, gooey chocolate brownies were arranged in a pyramid, buttressed by fat scoops of organic vanilla bean ice cream. They’d spritzed the whole thing with so many puffs of whipped cream and drizzled it with crazy whirls of chocolate syrup, it was honestly kind of hard to find the plate.

“I didn’t poison it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

She narrowed her eyes, but I saw her gaze flick to the sundae for just a second. “Like I’d trust you.”

“You seriously think I’d do anything to harm my brother’s wife?”

Hayden seemed to consider this for a second. “Given all the talk in this family? I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Nice.

The server walked by.

“Can we get a second plate?”

Hayden narrowed her eyes, scrolling through something on her phone. Most likely texting Ethan to let him know I was trying to poison her. I thanked the server for the plate, picked up my fork and started carving the monster sundae in half. “You want to pick which half you think is laced with iocaine powder?”

“Is this like some effed up scene out of The Princess Bride?” Hayden snorted. “What’s next, a rodent of unusual size jumps out from beneath the table?”

“Damn. I forgot my sword.”

“First rule of any unknown meeting. Always come prepared for the three terrors of the fire swamp.” But she took her spoon and dug into her half of the brownie. I did the same.

“I care about your sister.” When Hayden shot a dark look my way, I held my hands up. “I get that you hate me. I get that all the talk in my family has its reasons. But I would never hurt Ellie.”

“Yeah. You need to stop saying that.”

“It’s true.”

“Except it isn’t.”

I waited while she stabbed at the brownie. Stabbed was putting it mildly. Dahmer had nothing on her technique. People at the next table were starting to stare.

“You weren’t there that year her memory was wiped,” she said in a low voice. “You didn’t have to watch her tearing herself apart, convinced she was going mad. The nightmares. The confusion. You rewrote her memories in such a specific way that she would believe the werewolf attack in the cornfield was a hallucination she experienced as a result of a new med she just started. As far as a cover story, of course my sister believed she was fucking losing her mind. We’d both lived through hell watching our father suffer through the ups and downs of his bipolar disease. He wouldn’t stay on his meds, hated the way they made him feel, and self-medicated with alcohol and harder stuff. And when you rewrote Ellie’s memories, filled her head with every nightmare and hallucination specific to her fears, she was convinced she was doomed to his fate. And nothing I’ve been able to say in the months since the rewrite was lifted has been able to convince her otherwise.”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“And now you want to wipe the slate clean, pretend none of it ever happened.” She glared at me like she wanted to burn me to ash. “Well, sorry. Ellie might be so blinded by the sick bond you forced on her that she believes she wants to be with you. You might have convinced yourself that because you’re fated mates, it somehow absolves you of your sins. But I can’t forget what you did to her. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you. And if you had a sister, I wouldn’t have to explain that to you.”

“Hayden, do you think I don’t hate myself every day for what I did to her?” I stared her down. “Ellie has forgiven me. I will have to live with hurting my mate for the rest of my life. I will feel her anxiety through our mated bond and know I played a part in making it worse when I should have made a different choice that day Guillermo ordered me to erase her memories. There will never be a day I will not regret what I did. And I know how much you love Ellie. I’m sorry for putting you through that, too.”

Hayden frowned, stabbing at her half of the brownie, which was now swimming in a lake of half-melted ice cream. She scooped up a bite, then pointed her spoon out at the rainy evening. “If a rodent of unusual size leaped through that window at my sister, I would throw myself in front of it and let it eat me first. That’s what sisters do. You’re her bodyguard. But if push comes to shove,” she chewed her lip, “I get that what Ellie is doing is causing a lot of bad blood in the shifter community.”

“You think I give a shit about that?”

“A lot of people do.” She stirred her ice cream, which was turning brown from the chocolate. “You heard the President’s announcement earlier today?”

“Yeah. Throwing the blame for Rossi’s attack at the lab back on violence between the shifter and vampire communities. Same old song and dance.”

“How bad do you think this is going to get? Do you think they come in and shut my sister’s lab down, stop her research, throw the rest of us in cages?” A tear trickled down the inside of her nose. She swiped it angrily away. “Because if I need to distance myself from her to keep her safe, I will.”