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“So that’s a no on the police report?”

“What?” I hadn’t been shaking my head at him. “No. I mean, no, I don’t think I want to. I don’t know.”

“Then why were you shaking your head?”

Stupid alpha peripheral vision. And stupid Colin, knowing me well enough to know I had whole conversations with myself, even when I was supposed to be conversing with someone else.

The seat of the car felt unusually uncomfortable, and I shifted around a little bit. How many hours—maybe hundreds of hours, since Colin’d had this car a long damn time—had I spent in this seat? If you did a 3D scan of it, it’d probably conform exactly to the shape of my ass. It was perfectly comfortable.

The discomfort was all on me.

“You don’t have to stick around, you know. You have shit to do. Like running a whole pack.”

“Ahhh. I was wondering when you were going to get around to that. The whole, ‘I don’t need help, I only called you because I was freaking out for a second, but everything’s fine, I’m an independent person who doesn’t need anyone—’”

“Shut thefuckup, Colin!” I spun on him, rage bubbling up in me. “You spent all that time telling me how I’m not any less because I’m not a werewolf and not an alpha, and now you’re being an asshole about how weak I am and how I need your help? Well screw you! I don’t need your help! Just drop me off and go the hell home. Idon’tneed an alpha babysitter.”

Colin twisted the wheel, and with a screech of tires and a shower of gravel, pulled us into a turnout to the side of the lonely forest highway. He gave the key a savage twist and shut the car off, and in the sudden silence, the faint ticking of the engine and the brush of the wind against the sides of the car sounded loud as hell.

He stared out the windshield for a minute before turning in his seat and giving me his full attention.

Colin didn’t intimidate me. He never had. Of course, when we’d met he’d been nearly as weedy as I was, an identically awkward thirteen-year-old. And somehow my mental image of him had never changed, even though he’d added seven inches and probably eighty pounds of pure muscle since then.

Right at that moment, he intimidated me, and the shock of it had me frozen in my seat.

This was Colin.Colin, not some random alpha asshole. But the breadth of his shoulders spanned the front of the car, and the way he blocked out the light from his window made him seem to fill the whole space, sucking out the oxygen and making it claustrophobic as hell.

I found myself shrinking back against my door, suddenly desperate to get as far from him as possible.

Colin leaned in, and my head bonked against the window as I fell back that last inch.

I swallowed hard, hating my reaction, hating everything about this.

“Why do your parents want you to stay home and hide, Newt?” His voice, even and quiet, raised my hackles more than a threatening tone would’ve done. Like he was so in control that he didn’t even need to try.

“Is that a trick question?”

“No. It’s a leading question. And why are you crammed up against the window?”

And that might not have been a trickorleading question, but it definitely qualified as one I didn’t want to answer.

I licked my very dry lips and took a firmer grip on the edge of my seat. “My parents are overprotective as hell, you know that.”

His eyes narrowed. “You answered that question because you didn’t want to tell me why you’re all scrunched up. What the fuck, Newt?” His body went rigid, and I tensed in response. And then he leaned back against his own window, his face going blank. “You’re afraid of me. You’re seriously—you’re afraid? Ofme?”

My heart pounded, sick guilt souring my stomach. He was trying to hide the raw hurt I could hear in his voice, but he’d failed.

I managed to unstick myself from the door. “I’m not afraid of you, don’t be an idiot.”

Colin pressed himself back against his door a little more, and now I was the one leaning in a little bit, reversing our postures like we were on a string that could only stretch so far. Usually calling each other names was how we ended whatever fight we were having, but this time it didn’t seem to be working. Should I escalate? Call him a stupid idiot?

Was I still thirteen?

No, and Colin definitely wasn’t either.

“I’m having a bad day,” I finally managed.

“Yeah,” he said tightly. “I guess you are.” He sat silent for a minute, staring down at his lap. “Since you’re not going along with the whole leading questions method here, I’ll answer them myself. Your parents want you to hide at home because they care about you, and that’s their way of showing it. I’m not trying to talk you into hiding at home because I care about you, and that’smyway of showing it. So what part of me showing I care by respecting your independence means I think you’re weak? And I’m not your fucking babysitter. I’m your friend.”