Page 56 of Fate, Interrupted

“She came here because she saw my wolf. And she wanted to let me know that it didn’t bother her.”

“And you told him?”

I nod glumly.

“That’s the part that worries Father,” he says. “Not that you met someone. Not even that she’s human. But that she saw what you are and walked toward it instead of away from it. Most humans don’t do that. When they do, they’re usually invested.”

“Or it means she’s not like most humans.”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s what I said.”

We stop near the end of the conveyor line, the machinery running its steady course beside us. I look at him, and he looks back, and I think about our mother, about being eight years old, about how this building has always been partly a structure built around a loss that nobody talks about directly.

“You think I can walk away from her,” I say.

“I think you can handle it.”

“Same thing to you and Father.”

“You kissed her.”

The words arrive without preamble and hit harder than they should.

“You’re guessing.”

“No.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t need to be.” He says it with the infuriating calm of someone who has already done the math and arrived at the answer before the question was finished. “I know what you look like when something has gotten past your defenses.”

I drag my hand over the back of my neck.

“You make me sound like I have no choice, no control. It doesn’t have to mean what you’re making it mean.”

“It means what it means,” he says. “Wolves don’t experiment with this. You know that. When the wolf locks onto someone, it isn’t casual. Distance and self-discipline don’t make it go away.” He pauses. “It changes things.”

“You are an Elias mini-me. You sound just like him.”

“Because he’s right.” He says it without apology. “And you know he’s right, which is why you’re standing here arguing with me instead of just telling me I’m wrong.”

I shake my head in disgust. The warehouse moves around us as I look at my older brother. So purposeful, almost to the point of righteousness.

He looks back, taking in my narrowed eyes and stony expression.

“Be careful.” Same two words my father used. Same two words Norah has, no doubt, heard from her friends and her sister. It seems that everyone within a reasonable radius has arrived at the same conclusion independently.

And I’m not ready to examine that.

Logan steps past me, heading toward the dock.

“Logan.”

He stops.

“If you didn’t tell him,” I say, “and he already knew—who did?”

He glances back—closer to resignation than anything else.