Page 25 of A Pack of Lies and a Big Bad Wolf

I frown at her. "I don't do a wall thing."

"Kieran, you do a wall thing. You are the wall thing.”

"Speak,” I say. She narrows her eyes at me.

“Well, now I won’t speak, since you ordered me to.”

“Don’t speak. Or do speak if you want to. Do whatever you want.” It’s surprisingly hard for me to say those words. So maybe I’m a little bit of a control freak.

"It's about Rose."

My jaw tightens. She sees it and holds up a hand.

"I'm not yelling. This is me, calm, on your couch, drinking your coffee, having a civilized conversation, which I believe is a first for us, so let's see how long it lasts." She takes a sip. "There's a tri-pack dance next month. Rose wants to go. You said no."

I give a short, sharp nod. "I did."

"Why?"

"Because she's seventeen, and a tri-pack dance is hundreds of wolves, at least fifty percent of whom will be male, with bad intentions.”

“Do you consider anyone ever wanting to date her to be someone with bad intentions?”

I answer with a growl and an involuntary extension of my claws, which I quickly retract. Date my baby sister? Hell no. No-one gets to do that. Ever.

Instead of glaring at me or mocking me, she gives me a small smile so full of sympathy that it makes my heart skip in my chest.

"Right. And when she's eighteen? And nineteen? And twenty-two, and twenty-five, and thirty? When does she get to go to a dance, Kieran?"

I don't answer, because the honest answer is never, and I'm aware that's not a position that survives contact with reality.

“Did you tell me to stop babying and protecting my brother?”

“That’s different,” I growl. I can’t explain how, but it is.

"Amaryllis told me about your mother," she says quietly. "And your father."

I nod grimly. I mean, it’s not a secret.

"I'm not going to make a speech about it. But I want to say one thing, and it's this: Rose is a healer. She's always going to be a healer. And healers don't sit still when someone nearby is hurting — your mother couldn't, and Amaryllis can't, and Rose won't be able to either. That's who they are. Sometimes strength is accepting that we can’t control everything, or everyone, Kieran. I know you’d die to keep your family safe, but that’s not what they need from you.”

She stops there, and sips her coffee.

The worst part is she's right. The second worst part is that she knows she's right, and she's being gracious enough not to press it, which means I can't even enjoy a good argument about it.

We sit in silence for a minute. It should be uncomfortable, and it isn't, which is its own problem. She's looking at me over the rim of her mug with an expression I can't quite read, and then she sets the mug on the side table and pulls her shirt off over her head.

I blink. Her bra is plain white cotton and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, and she appears to have no idea what she just did, because her eyes go wide and she looks down at herself and then back up at me.

"Oh my fates, what am I doing? Why did I do that? Do you pinky-swear you’re not hexing me?"

My anger fades and melts into a huge, self-satisfied grin. "Your wolf knows where you live," I say.

"No she doesn't."

I will not press the point, because I’ve already won the argument, whether she knows it or not. "Well, your wolf knows where she wants to spend the night."

"Just because I'm maybe spending the night doesn't mean we're mates." She says this while sitting on my couch in her bra, which undermines her point considerably.