chapter 16
903 Words
Slouching casually against the booth seat, I grip my glass in one hand and go for my best bored voice. “You’re a hard man to find.”
Kian raises an eyebrow, then lifts the menu back up to peruse the selections. “You didn’t find me.”
I reach out and slam my palm into the laminated paper, knocking it to the table.
“What the hell are you?” I snap.
He purses his lips for a moment, the first sign of emotion I’ve seen on his face. “I’m a shif—”
“Bullshit,” I cut in before he even finishes speaking. “You’re not a shifter. You’re more than that.”
Joe appears next to the table and slides my change across the sticky surface. He glances between me and Kian, then raises an eyebrow at me. “You forgot your change.”
“Thanks,” I say and peel off a ten for him.
With one last suspicious glance between us, Joe leaves us to the rising tension.
Kian leans forward, lacing his fingers on the table top. With his elbows out and his chest so f*****g broad to begin with, the position makes him loom, makes his body take up all the space in the little alcove. His voice comes out gruff, dark, and dangerous. “You’re going to presume to tell me what I am?”
“Yeah,” I bite out, then swallow my heartbeat in my throat. “You’re a feral shifter.”
A server arrives then, interrupting us again, and I consider screaming at her to go away so I can interrogate Kian in peace. But her bubbly energy displaces the tension hovering over the table. She’s ridiculously young with a round face, huge eyes, and breasts that her little crop top can hardly contain. Her name tag says Brandee.
Kian doesn’t even look at her. His thunderous gaze remains trained on me as the words “feral shifter” hover in the air between us.
“Hiya!” Brandee chirps, pen poised over a little pad. “Can I start you off with a drink?”
Before Kian can speak, I shoot him a vicious smile, holding his gaze while I speak to the waitress. “He’ll have a happy hour whiskey. Cheapest you’ve got.”“Coming right up!” she promises with a smile, then bounces away with her ponytail swinging.
A muscle ticks in Kian’s jaw, and his eyes glitter like aged gold coins. “Do you know what feral means?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. Wild. Untamed.”
He nods as if that explains everything, then leans back, nearly mimicking my “pretending to be unbothered and casual” pose. He gestures to my glass. “Gin and tonic. Your tastes haven’t changed.”
“This conversation isn’t about me.”
“Oh, I think it is,” Kian murmurs. “Who told you I was a feral shifter?”
“A witch.”
“Hmm. What else did this witch tell you?”
I take a sip of my gin to calm my nerves. This version of Kian grates on me. The low, even tones. The disinterest. The way he almost seems to be talking down to me, like I’m a child who’s gotten a wild notion and he’s the grown up trying to make sense of my naïveté.
Where’s the man who looked at me like an equal? The mysterious, sexy man with the knowing smile?
Whatever. It just makes it easier for me to do what I came to do.
“This witch,” Kian prompts. “What did she tell you?”
“You’re going to destroy the world, and it’s my job to stop you.”
“And you believe her.”
“Knowing what I know about you? f**k yes, I believe her.”
He tilts his head. “What do you know about me?”
I freeze, realizing I might have said too much. What I know about him is that he met his mate, bonded with her, then walked away like she was trash.
Any shifter capable of that isn’t a shifter at all. But quite frankly, I don’t want to go down that road. There’s nothing to discuss.
“Just what she told me,” I say coolly. “That you’ll destroy the world.”
Brandee bounces back up like an excitable poodle and deposits a short glass on t he table in front of Kian. “You folks eating?”
“That will be all,” he says without looking away from me.
“O-kaaay,” the bubbly server says, drawing out the syllables. “Just wave me down if you need me.”
In her absence, Kian picks up the glass and sniffs it, then makes a face before setting it back down, untouched. A small, petty part of me fills with glee.
Score one for Amora.
Kian sighs into his glass. “You have no idea what you’re messing with.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
He raises his golden-ringed gaze to meet mine. “You should’ve taken the hint when I left you three years ago.”
His words slice deep, and an ache spreads through me, chilling me from the inside.
There it is. The elephant in the room. The source of the tension so thick between us.
- Writer
