Page 51 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

“Iknowthey are.”

She chews her bottom lip. “So I just… stay here? Alone?”

“Just for a little while.”

She shakes her head, but not like she’s disagreeing—more like she’s bracing herself.

“I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” she says quietly.

“Then don’t be.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“No,” I say. “But it starts with this. You stay hidden. You stay safe. And I come back.”

She reaches for my wrist without looking, fingers curling around it.

“Promise?”

I squeeze her hand. “Always.”

I don’t saymine. I don’t saymate. I don’t say the thousands of things burning behind my teeth. But when I stand and shift again, fur replacing flesh, paws digging into dirt, I feel her watching me like sheknows.

Maybe she does.

21

KENDALL

The cabin is too fucking quiet.

I’ve got the windows cracked—to let this grief and sweat linger outside of my body. The wind shifts through the trees just beyond the porch, whistling like it knows something I don’t.

I sit on the edge of the bed, blanket tangled around my legs, phone in hand like it’s some kind of lifeline.

Come back,I whisper into the silence, hoping Callum can hear it wherever he is.

Because every minute he’s gone, I feel it. That ache, like something’s missing from my bones. And then my phone rings.

I jump. Scramble. The screen flashes a name that makes my heart stutter.

Adora.

I answer before I think. “Adora?”

“Kendall.” Her voice is breathless. Tight. Like she ran to make the call.

“I—I wasn’t sure you’d actually pick up.”

“I almost didn’t,” I admit, standing and pacing. “Are you okay? Whereareyou?”

“Still in the city,” she says. “But I had to talk to you. I couldn’t sit with it anymore.”

I stop near the window, watching the trees. “Sit with what?”

“The stuff I didn’t say,” she replies. “At the hospital. That day.”

I close my eyes.

---