Kenna
I’ve been lying on my side looking out the window for hours. I haven’t slept a wink.
I curl my knees into my belly, nuzzling deeper into the flannel print sheets in one of Ryan’s guest rooms. It’s 6:00 in the morning. We didn’t get back to his house until well after 1:00.
And I haven’t moved from this position.
I run my fingers over my mouth, closing my eyes at the memory of the kiss–my first kiss. My first kiss ever.
That’s probably why the whole thing felt so magical. Being pressed against a wall and ravaged by a masked stranger was the most delicious thing that’s ever happened to me.
So, that’s probably all it was. Shocking, delicious, and desperately wanted.
Not the mate bond.
Right?
I roll onto my back and look at the ceiling. Milky streams of morning light start poking through the blinds, dancing across the textured ceiling hanging over my head. I can feel the rain in the air before it starts, and the ticking sound against the windows feels like the kind of gentle wakeup call I need to get up and ready for whatever today brings.
I’m sure I’ve overthinking what happened between me and that man last night. I didn’t see his face. I didn’t catch his name. But his smell and his taste is imprinted on my mind, and I can’t shake the memory of how his body pressed into mine or how it made me feel.
Also, I shouldn’t be thinking about this at all, given the circumstances of how the kiss happened. From what Ryan told me, an all-out brawl started in the entrance of the temple and bled into the ballroom, where panicked chaos ensued. I can’t help but feel like there was more to it than a simple fight. He couldn’t explain why the power went out, and Ryan doesn’t have powers beyond that of a wolf, from what any of us in the family know, so he couldn’t taste that strange, metal flavor in the air before everything started happening.
But I had. I can still taste it now as I walk out of my room in a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top, my unbrushed hair pulled up in a huge bun on the top of my head.
A door at the very end of the hallway opens just as I close my own door. A woman steps out carefully, quietly, wearing nothing but the pale gray dress shirt I swore Sydney had on last night. But that makes no sense. Was it Ryan’s?
The woman I saw–the woman with long, platinum blonde hair who’d smiled at Sydney at the ball–this is her.
She looks toward the kitchen, then back down the hallway, going rigid when she sees me standing there.
“Good morning,” she whispers, smiling kindly, but her cheeks turn a bright, ruddy pink.
“Good morning,” I whisper back and find myself smiling too. She grimaces as she slowly shuts the door behind her. It squeaks, and she mumbles a curse under her breath.
“I was going to make some coffee,” I tell her, “if you want some.”
“I’ll be late for work if I stay,” she whispers, but grins. “Thanks, though.”
“Yeah–”
She hurries down the hallway toward the kitchen and living room, disappearing around the corner. I stand in place for a few seconds until I hear the front door open and close.
I huff out a breath. Did she come back here with Ryan? After making eyes at Sydney?
I didn’t see Sydney after leaving the ball. Ryan said Sydney left his side, and he never saw him again and figured he might have just gone home to Shadowcrest.
I run my tongue along my lower teeth and stalk into the kitchen.
Sitting with a hot cup of coffee in my hands at the kitchen counter, twenty minutes later, I watch Ryan walk in. But, his bedroom is a floor above us, not down the hallway where my room is located.
So, he slept with her, and then kicked her out into one of the guest rooms, huh?
“You’re a dog, Ryan,” I hiss.
Ryan, barely awake, blinks and turns to me. “What?” He runs his hand over his face, scrubbing sleep from his eyes.
I open my mouth to tear into him about his devious behavior when a door down the hallway creaks open.
Sydney stumbles out into the open concept kitchen and dining room looking dazed. His formal slacks are undone, and he’s barefoot, and shirtless.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan and I ask in unison.
Sydney groans, holding his head in his hands. “Stop talking so loud.”
“This is my usual voice.” I look from Sydney to Ryan.
Ryan smirks, shaking his head. “I should have known you’d come back here instead of to your own pack territory.” He points at his brother, but his eyes meet mine. “If anyone is a dog, it’s him.”
I stand, clutching my coffee as a laugh works its way up my throat.
Sydney blinks like the faint, stormy daylight is painfully bright. “Did you guys take my shirt?”
“Oh, my Goddess,” I laugh. “Ryan actually got you drunk last night!”
“Obviously,” Sydney growls, making his way to the coffee pot. “I couldn’t go back to my pack like this. Plus this place is uh… a closer walk from the temple.”
I lick my lips and glance at Ryan, who’s grinning at his brother. “So, what was her name?”
Sydney smiles to himself, but then his brow furrows. “I don’t remember. Shit, I don’t remember…. She told me, I’m sure. I’ll remember it after a few cups of coffee.”
“Well, you just missed her. She has your shirt, too.”
Sydney looks over at me with so much annoyance behind his bloodshot eyes that I momentarily bristle.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I tease, sipping from my mug. “I’m happy for you.”
“At least one of us got lucky,” Ryan remarks, chuckling.
Sydney closes his eyes and whispers a prayer to the Goddess to give him the strength not to lose his mind before he turns with a steaming cup of black coffee in his hands.
“I don’t believe you didn’t get any action. Who did you bring home this time? Is she still hiding upstairs?” he asks Ryan.
Ryan shakes his head. “I’m taking a break from the ladies.”
Sydney arches a brow. “Sure you are.”
“It’s true. You are, in fact, the only one who got any attention last night–”
“I got kissed.”
The twins look at me, practically snapping their necks in surprise.
I lean against the counter, which bits into my ribs.
“No you didn’t,” Ryan says, snorting a laugh.
“It’s true.”
“When?” Sydney asks, looking more than shocked.
“When everything was going on.” I wave a hand in dismissal, but Sydney looks confused and Ryan looks… suspicious.
“What happened?” Sydney looks between us.
“Well, you left early with your lady friend so you missed the whole thing,” his brother says to him, but his eyes are still on mine. “Kenna, who did you kiss?”
“What happened, Ryan?” Sydney orders, but Ryan shakes his head, holding a hand up to silence his brother.
“I don’t know. He asked me to dance and then the power shut off, and he hid me in an alcove for a while until it was safe.”
Ryan looks so severe right now. Sydney, too, straightens.
“He was wearing a black mask, and all black, and he had black leather gloves on,” I rattle off. “I don’t know why he was wearing gloves–”
“The man who brought you out to me on the veranda last night?” Ryan says in shock. “That’s who you kissed?”
“Yeah. Do you know him?” Hope blooms in my heart but is quickly squashed by the look the twins share. They’re using the mind-link, I can tell. Bastards.
Sydney looks at me for several seconds before storming out of the kitchen and back into the guest room.
“What’s his problem?” I ask.
“Kenna,” Ryan says slowly, easing toward me. “Did you… feel anything, during the kiss?”
“Like, what, the mate bond?” I laugh, because I’m not about to give myself hope that that bright, shiny feeling in my heart right now has anything to do with the mate bond instead of everything to do with the excitement of last night in general. “I don’t know, Ryan. It was my first kiss, so I don’t know how to feel.”
He lets out his breath but continues to look at me skeptically. Sydney returns with his phone pressed to his ear, his eyes clearer than a few moments ago.
He lowers his phone for a moment, glaring between me and Ryan. “A brawl?”
Ryan shrugs, but I can tell from the look on Sydney’s face that he doesn’t believe it for a second. In fact, that suspicious feeling that whatever happened last night was a lot more than a brawl creeps in again as he slowly brings the phone back to his ear. His eyes meet mine. “Kenna, go get dressed right now.”
“What? Why?”
“You, too.” he says to Ryan, shaking his head.
He crosses his arms over his chest. “What the fuck is going on, Syd?”
“We’re on our way,” Sydney says to whoever is on the line and hangs up. “Kenna,” he repeats sternly, “go get dressed. Now.”
A prickle of unease shoots up my spine. I obey because Sydney has never talked to me in that kind of tone before. He sounds… angry, yeah, but there’s more to it. An underlying current of nervous panic settles in the house as I pull on a pair of pants and matching shirt I brought with me from Eastonia, something that probably seems very formal for day-to-day wear here in Crescent Falls, but I have a feeling we won’t be out and about at the festival today. The pink satin fabric makes the sunny, peachy coloring of my skin stand out so I like it. I meet my cousins in the kitchen again, both of them dressed for the day.
Sydney, completely sober now, turns to me. “We’re going to the castle.”
“Did something happen?” I ask hurriedly.
Ryan looks like Sydney just told him what really went on the night before. His cocky smile is nothing but a tight, flat line as he nods.
“Family meeting,” Sydney says gruffly and turns around to walk out of the house.
Family meetings aren’t a good thing in my family.
A family meeting means something went terribly wrong.
I lock up my spine and follow Ryan out of the house, letting the memory of my time with the stranger slip away and be replaced by a cold, nagging sensation that threatens to let my powers come to life. I keep them so clipped, so under control, but right now, I can feel the shadows I inherited from my dad sliding over my skin. I cross my arms over my lap as I settle in the back of Ryan’s car–a massive SUV with a third row. I’ve been deposited in the way-back so the twins can speak privately in the front.
As Ryan steers us toward their parents’ home, my stomach curls.
Their conversation is muffled by the AC, but I catch Ryan murmuring, “If he’s here, then it’s serious.”
“I know,” Sydney replies, and I look up to see Ryan looking at me through the rearview mirror.
I sink into the seat, my powers dancing to life.
“Does she know?” Ryan asks. “About… them.”
“No,” Sydney says. “It's not our place…”
I look out the window as I lose Sydney’s voice to the radio Ryan just turned on. We cross through a gate and start driving down a long, winding, paved road. A security checkpoint looms in the distance, and beyond that, the Alpha King of Crescent Falls’s castle rises above the trees.
What the hell is happening?
I look down at my hands, letting my shadows curl around my fingers in a glimmer of dark, twisting mist.