Page 106 of Wolf Cursed
I wanted Kai.
I wanted to trust him. To give him parts of me I’d never offered to anyone else. And never would again. This was it, I realized. Whether supernatural fate or human love or something in between, it was Kai or no one.
Damn.
No pressure.
“I still don’t understand why you think I’m going to laugh at you,” I said.
His grin was crooked now. Sheepish.
“Because this placeisspecial,” he insisted. “To me, anyway. It’s not exactly romantic though.”
“Now, I’m intrigued.”
He glanced over at me then back at the road. “Take a look.”
I looked up, and my eyes caught on the glint of metal against the setting sun. The road had leveled out here, and the gravel became mostly dirt. The trees that had pressed in around us fell away to reveal more open space.
We were here.
Whereverherewas.
Above our heads, a rusted metal sign read Crater’s in faded lettering. We passed underneath it, and I heard the squeaking it made as it moved in the wind. I glanced to my left as we passed by piles of metal scrap and what was left of a vintage Chevy pickup. Just inside a chain-link fence, we parked beside a pile of rotting tires, and Kai cut the engine. I pushed open my door and hopped out onto the dirt, my boots kicking up a cloud of dust as I rounded the hood to where Kai waited for me.
“What is this place?” I asked, looking around at the graveyard full of cars, trucks, motorcycles, and even a few boats crammed together inside the chain link fence we’d come through earlier.
“A junkyard,” he admitted.
“I see that,” I said, more amused than anything. “But why?”
He took a deep breath, and I could tell already that this place really did mean something to him. And so did this moment.
“Crater was a friend of my dad’s. I’ve known him since I was a baby.” He looked away, staring out over the sea of broken cars. His voice dropped low as he went on. “When my dad’s drinking got bad, especially once my wolf emerged, I’d run off and come up here and hang with Crater.”
A shadow fell across his expression, his mouth twisting as some memory dug itself to the surface. “We’d sit and play cards. Or he’d teach me how to work on whatever he was fixing up at the time. Sometimes, we’d just sit and listen to the radio.” He shrugged, his expression clearing as he looked at me again. “It was a safe space. And…well, I know you’ve been through a lot. And I thought you could use a safe space too. As glamorous as it is,” he added with a smile.
“Kai,” I began, but a booming voice interrupted me.
“Stoner, is that you?”
I turned to see a tank of a human walking toward us, his wide frame bulldozing its way past the car corpses and metal heaps. Okay, human was the wrong word. If I hadn’t believed in supernatural creatures before, I would now. Just looking at this guy told me there was more to him than normal human DNA.
Kai grinned at him. “Crater. What’s up, man?”
They did some sort of handshake-hug thing and then Crater turned to me. “Hi there, I’m Crater Row. You must be Ash.”
“My reputation precedes me,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Ah, don’t worry too much about it.” He winked. “Kai’s pining is his own problem.”
“Hey,” Kai protested. “I bring one girl up here and you turn on me.”
I laughed.
Crater was a monster of a guy—definitely not someone I’d want to meet alone in an alley, but I liked him already.
“One girl, huh?” I teased. “You sure you don’t bring all your girlfriends up here to impress them?”
