Chapter 26
Will rounds on her, expressing a mixture of relieved and frantic.
Kira notices that Will looks very different to everyone else in the room, and not just because he’s wearing the smart pants and clean button-down shirt of the city.
There’s something different in the way the wolves hold themselves.
Has she ever noticed before? Has she begun to mirror them, standing the same way? Suddenly conscious of her own posture, she tries to rearrange her limbs.
After a moment, Will throws himself forward to hug her.
He doesn’t get that far because Jayden reacts to the sudden movement by wrapping a defensive arm across Kira’s stomach, pulling her back into his body as if to shield her from attack.
Somewhere in the room, Liam whistles, and Kira wants to shoot him a filthy look, but she’s more focused on the fact that a very protective Alpha wolf is currently putting himself between his chosen partner and a potential threat, and Kira can feel him bristling.
“It’s okay, Jayden, it’s alright,” she says quickly, taking her hand to unwind his arm from her body,
“Will is my best friend and roommate.”
Will’s eyes flit from Kira to Jayden and back again. They narrow.
“What are you doing here, Will?” Kira says, forcing a laugh to try to defuse some of the tension in the room.
Will has always been confident, composed, but marching into a room full of this many strangers who are clearly a gang must have been intimidating.
“I came to see you. Can we talk? Alone.” Will stresses.
“Of course,” she says, soothing Jayden again with a squeeze to his wrist that tells him Will is nothing to worry about.
“I’ll be back.”
Jayden nods, watching them head out of the back door with all of his pack’s eyes on him.
Out in the cold air, Will runs his hands through his hair. Worry paints his features. He gives Kira a searching look that travels all over her body, like he’s looking for some kind of injury or visible sign of distress.
When he finds nothing, he looks back up into her eyes.
“Who are all those guys, Kira?”
“My friends,” she says. She can hardly tell Will that they’re her wolf pack.
“Friends? That one who looked like he was going to snap my neck didn’t look too friendly.”
This poses more of an issue for Kira. There is no human excuse for the Alpha instinct that threw Jayden in front of her.
She smiles sheepishly. “People around here just aren’t used to strangers showing up unannounced. I can’t believe you’re here! In Woods! How did you even find the place?” She remembers how her own satellite navigation went haywire looking for the town, like it could sense magic.
“With difficulty,” Will says dryly.
“I had to drive around in circles in these woods for hours until I ended up in the next town over, and they helpfully gave me directions here. They’re friendlier than this lot.”
Kira wonders if he encountered the wolf pack there, also the ones who have been straying too close to their territory.
“You should have told me you were coming. I could’ve met you in town and shown you all the cool stuff. This is my father’s parents’ house. The guys are helping me with the renovations, because it was falling apart when I got here.” She knows she’s rambling, because she always rambles when she lies and though this isn’t necessarily a direct falsehood, she’s telling at least five hundred lies in one breath by omission.
“I called you twice last night, Kira, and three times the day before. Since when do you not answer your phone?”
I was on a date in the woods, she thinks, then she remembers her mornings waking up in Jayden’s bed and her cheeks turning pink’
“I’m sorry, I was out with the guys. I left my phone at the inn.”
Will shakes his head in disbelief, and Kira can’t blame him. Back in the city, she kept her phone glued to her hand at all times.
“I’ve been worried out of my mind,” he hisses, through gritted teeth.
“I came here because I thought you had been taken in by some kind of cult!”
“A cult?” Kira laughs. Laughing is the wrong thing to do, because her friend turns scarlet with anger.
“You come here for two days for a funeral, and the next thing I know you’re not coming back to the city? You never check your phone? You start by telling me that you’ve got in with some group of people here who understand you like no one else does and that you’ve found yourself, and suddenly you don’t want to come home? You don’t even call your college, so I’m the one who has to cover for you because your advisor isn’t happy you’re missing your meetings?”
Shit. Kira meant to call the college. She really did.
“This is a weird small town! Cult wasn’t such a wild theory!” Will shakes his head, gesticulating back at the house as if the group inside were exactly what he was talking about.
“I’ve been freaking out.”
“I’m sorry, hyung. I had no idea,” she says, even though she realizes now that Will told her over and over how worried he was, and Kira just wrote it off as her best friend’s anxiety, nothing to think too much about.
How many times has she not called Will when she promised she would? How many times has she not returned his messages?
“I’m really sorry,” she says, and this time she means it more.
Will sits down on the crumbling bench in the garden and eyes the axe that Jayden has left impaled on the block, where they often cut wood for the fire.
“You have to understand, Kira. We both know you’re vulnerable and coming here for the funeral of a father who... your father,” he says instead, clearly deciding against elaboration.
“You have only just started your medication, and we still don’t really know what’s wrong and if it’s something that makes you more susceptible to being.”
Right. Will thinks that her strange episodes mean that she’s more likely to fall in with a cult. Of course, he does.
A hysterical laugh almost spills from his lips when she considers what Will would say if she told him the truth, but thankfully for her own good, she manages to hold it back.
“Tricked into joining a cult?” Kira finishes for him instead.
“I’m okay, Will. I’m so sorry I scared you like this. I’ve had a lot going on and I’ve been self-centered. I didn’t even think about how it would look to you. But I’m fine, I promise. No cults here in town. Everyone is great.”
Will slumps in relief.
“Did you really drive all the way here from school this morning?” Kira asks with a tentative smile.
“It was awful, Kira.”
“I know. My satellite navigation died when I was looking for the place. We should go up into town and you can try Mrs Parker’s cooking. It’s almost as good as yours.”
The compliment, a gentle reminder that he’ll always be number one, seems to make Will perk up a little.
“Will your guard dog mind?”
Kira chokes on air. Oh, Jayden will like that one. Her guard dog. The choke turns to a snicker.
“You mean Jayden? He and I are. Well we’ve been.”
“So that’s why you haven’t come home and you’ve forgotten your friends exist?” Will sniffs, rolling his eyes as he stands.
“Here I was thinking you were going through some kind of traumatic experience, and instead you’ve been getting dicked down by puppy-eyed-Schwarzenegger in there.”
Kira gapes at him, wondering quite how bulging Jayden’s muscles could look in that simple white shirt, and then she smiles. She missed having her best friend around.