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The only reason he knows so much about me is the fact that everyone thinks they know so much about me. And he was hanging around the house and knows Rick. So I guess, yeah, he knows me.
“Tell me about your family before I meet them,” I say.
“My mom is back at home, running the farm.”
“You come from a farm.”
“You didn’t know that?” He cocks his head at me, seeming surprised for no reason. Does he not know we never talk about anything besides who is allowed to run around in their wolf form and who is going to get her pussy bred, and how fucking hot spankings are even though they’re embarrassing and they hurt and…
“I don’t know anything about you!”
Tinker is giggling into her cereal. “I gotta go,” she says. “I gotta be somewhere that is not the world’s most awkward interview of two people who are bound by fate.”
She gets up and leaves, giving Henry and me the kitchen and its silence.
“So, a farm? Where’s the farm?”
“Nebraska,” he says.
“Okay, that’s ages from here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But your dad is here?”
“He and my mother split up after they had me. Mom tends the farm; Dad did what he had to in order to get me somewhere worth being.”
“That’s vague. Did he sell drugs or something?”
No sooner is the question out of my mouth than I realize how fucked up it is.
“Sorry,” I add.
“He was a pharmaceutical sales rep for a time,” he says. “And he made contacts with people, some of them in your pack. And I got a job tutoring Rick, and here we are.”
“So we met because Rick’s a dumbass,” I smirk.
“Yes.”
I almost ask him why we didn’t have the mate recognition back then, but obviously I was too young. I’ve only recently come into my true and full femininity, via a path of death and blood that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
Well, actually, I would. The men who have been manipulating my family for decades now need to die, and who better to ensure their demise than me, a talented amateur murderer who has everything it takes to go pro.
“What are you thinking about?” Henry’s question cuts into my revenge fantasy.
“Nothing,” I lie. “I mean, I don’t know. Just how fucked up it’s all been.”
Good save, I think to myself.
“So you came out to the city with your father and now he’s part of the pack you formed when you and Rick weren’t talking, and I’m not allowed to know why that happened that way, for whatever reason. Am I caught up?”
“Pretty much.” He starts messing with the coffee machine.
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“Just me,” he says. “My mom farms on a family farm. I’ve got cousins and aunts and uncles, whole extended thing back there.”
“But you never wanted to retire to that quiet a life?”
