Werewolves by Kelley Armstrong

Author:Kelley Armstrong [Armstrong, Kelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36291-9
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2012-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

At the cabin, Jeremy washed and dressed my burns, then asked if I was ready for bed or wanted to stay up longer.

“Were you staying up?” I asked.

“If you were.”

“If you were, I will, but if you’re tired …?”

“Are you tir—” Jeremy stopped. A small half-smile flitted across his lips and I knew what he was thinking. We could go on like this all night, neither of us willing to voice an opinion that might inconvenience the other. With Clay or Nick or Antonio, I made my wants and opinions known without hesitation. Survival of the loudest. With Jeremy, his unerring civility resurrected my upbringing, and a simple choice could evolve into an endless “After you,” “No, I insist, after you” farce. If Clay were here, he’d make up our minds for us before the second round of the dance. Without him, we were on our own.

“I’m going to stay up awhile,” I said.

“I’ll keep you company.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. We’ll sit on the deck. Go out, and I’ll fix us a snack.”

I went outside. Minutes later, Jeremy followed with two glasses of milk and a bag of cookies.

“Nothing stronger around to dull the pain,” he said, handing me the milk. “You’ll have to settle for simple comfort.”

Jeremy sat beside me. We gazed out over the water for a few minutes, the crunch of cookies echoing in the silence. Smoke from a campfire floated across the lake.

“We should build a fire,” I said.

“No matches.”

“Damn. Where’s Adam when you need him?”

Jeremy gave a half-smile. “We’ll have a bonfire for you back at Stonehaven. Plenty of matches there. Marshmallows too. If only I can remember how to carve a roasting stick.”

“You know how?”

He chuckled. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Yes, I did some camping as a child. Dominic used to rent a cottage every summer, get Tonio and his brothers out of the city, back to nature. They’d take me along.”

As Jeremy lapsed into silence, I struggled to think of a way to keep him talking. Jeremy didn’t discuss his childhood. Not ever. I’d had hints from others that it wasn’t the most idyllic youth, but Jeremy kept mum on the subject. Now that he’d cracked opened that window, I wasn’t about to let it close again so easily.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“Not far. Vermont, New Hampshire.”

“Was it fun?”

Another half-smile. “Very. I didn’t care about the back to nature part. Stonehaven has all that. But it let Tonio and me play at being real kids, to play with other kids. Of course, we met other children at school. But we always went to private school. As Alpha, Dominic enforced that for Pack sons. If their fathers couldn’t afford to send them, he paid for it. Strict environmental control. Home for weekends and holidays, minimal interaction with humans. On vacation, though, we could cut loose, so long as we used false names and all that.”

“You had to use fake names? How old were you?”

“Young. Tonio was older, of course. But I was the one who made up our stories.

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