Page 48 of The Tracker's Secret
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IWAS SHIVERING. MYteeth clicking together like flamenco castanets. I hugged my naked arms and curled tighter into a ball. It did no good. I was still cold as hell. There was a tiny blanket on me and I clutched it closer, tight to my chest, but then my legs got uncovered, so it was hopeless.
I continued to shiver for a while longer until my brain realized that if I wanted to get warm I had to see why the hell my blanket had shrunk. Slowly, I opened my eyes and blinked at a door jamb and the textured carpet on the floor. I was lying on my side, the carpet’s fibers scratching my cheek.
When did Rosalina change her carpet?
This one was Berber, for sure, and neither one of us had enough money to afford that.
I rolled over onto my back, which was when I noticed someone looming over me. I scrambled backward on my ass and pressed my back against the wall, clutching what turned out to be a towel and not a blanket. I was naked.
Eric peered down at me, his gaze appearing less icy than I remembered.
“W-what happened?” I asked in a scratchy voice. My throat felt itchy and gritty as if I’d drank a glass full of beach.
“You shifted.” His voice, like his eyes, was somewhat softer. He leaned down and placed a stack of clothes on the floor next to my outstretched legs.
My eyes roved around the room until they found the shreds of the clothes I’d been wearing. My brand new tennis shoes looked like they’d been through a paper shredder.
Oh, no!I’d really liked that pair. They weren’t cheap either.
“Get dressed,” Eric said. “I’ll wait for you upstairs.”
He walked out and left me staring at the torn shoes. A feeling of loss clawed at my chest that had nothing to do with the shoes, even though I was trying to convince myself that it did.
I snatched the T-shirt from the little pile and slipped it over my head. Then I grabbed the pants, a pair of navy-blue sweats with white stripes down the sides, and found a pair of flip-flops resting underneath them. I tossed the towel aside, got dressed, and stuffed my feet into the overlarge flip-flops. The clothes were baggy, but not too much.
Before I left the room, I glanced over my shoulder at the clock on the wall. It was almost 7 AM. I blinked and squinted at the numbers to make sure I was reading them properly. Three hours had passed, and I had no memory of them.
Heart hammering, I walked out of the room, down the hall, and up the steps. Eric was standing in the middle of one of the sitting areas, cell phone in hand, his thumb scrolling. I stopped at the edge of the rug that delineated the sitting space. I noted he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier. Had he not shifted?
The morning sun had started seeping through the thick glass walls. Eric scrolled for a little longer, then pressed the off button and set the phone on an end table. For the first time, I noticed there was a scratch along his left biceps.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time,” he said, his eyes flicking toward the exit.
“Wait, you’re not going to tell me what happened?”
“You shifted.”
“I know that.”
He huffed as if suggesting I was clueless.
“Okay, I may have no memory of shifting, if that’s what you mean, but unless you went to the trouble of ripping my clothes off, I have to assume that’s what happened.”
Eric’s mouth twisted. Clearly, he hadn’t liked my “ripping off my clothes” comment, but if he was going to be a smartass, I could be one too.
“Don’t push your luck with me,” he said.
Something trembled inside me at his words, something that was all new, and I didn’t like it at all. Eric was an alpha, and I suspected that my meekness was due to an instinct of self-preservation forcing me to submit to his higher rank.
I gritted my teeth, hating the feeling. I didn’t like to submit to anyone. I liked using my voice and being heard. Why should I obey him? If what people said was true, then Eric was nothing but a monster and a murderer, someone who didn’t need to be anyone’s leader, and who clearly used his strength and ruthlessness to prevail over others.
Pushing through the servile instinct, I said, “I’m here to learn, am I not? So how am I supposed to do that if you won’t tell me what happened?”
To my surprise, Eric smiled. It was the first smile I’d seen on his face. It was nothing to write home about, but it changed his face enough to let me see past his hardened exterior. Maybe once, his smiles had come easily, but I could tell they didn’t anymore. I’d just met him, and I knew this was a rare moment for him, so rare that when he realized he was smiling, he quickly went back to being serious.
“You’re strong, Sunder,” he said, using my name for the first time. “And your wolf is too.”
