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I’d give anything to be in that house right now, sitting beside Veva and Sarina. Logically, I know Beth is capable, and I know that with all the psychics in that room, one of them would know if something was going to happen.

But the distance still makes me ache.

I hadn’t realized it before, or maybe I’d pushed it all the way to the back of my mind, but the time and distance from Veva had turned into a sort of low-grade headache, a humming, looping pain that circled my head like the fluids in a vehicle.

Always there, sometimes leaking out and causing damage.

And now that I have her again, now that she’s close enough for me to actually touch, it’s getting harder and harder to keep myself from doing it.

Maybe I should have told her to go to bed last night, shouldn’t have cuddled up with her on the couch like that. But this is the first morning in a long time that I feel well-rested—the first full night of sleep I’ve gotten in ten years.

As their meeting goes on, I sit in the truck, scanning the street, keeping my eyes and ears open. It’s unlikely that the Grayhides could get this deep into our territory, but I’m not taking any chances with them.

I wonder if they’ve found the bodies of the shifters we killed. Dead shifters trading hands between our packs isn’t new—but with the rising tensions, I’m surprised the Grayhides haven’t struck back yet.

An hour later, when my coffee is almost gone, the front door finally opens, and Veva and Sarina come out, waving good-bye to Beth and walking toward the truck.

My entire body lights up at the sight of them walking toward me. Coming home.

But when Veva opens the truck, helps Sarina up and inside, she barely looks at me.

“Should we grab lunch?”

Her shrug is noncommittal. She reaches for the seatbelt, pulls it over her body. “Whatever you want.”

I stare at her, words bubbling up in my throat. I want to talk to her. Talk about the fact that when I fell asleep last night, she was with me, and when I woke up, she was gone. Talk about the fact that she very clearly scrubbed any trace of my scent off her body.

Right now, I want to tell her that I want my scent on her. In fact, I want our scents together. I want to claim her like I should have all those years ago.

“Can we get chicken?” Sarina asks from the backseat, and I tear my eyes from her mother, meetings hers in the rearview, smiling.

“I know just the place,” I say. When I glance at Veva again, she’s looking steadily out the window.

***

Light from the moon spills in through the kitchen window when I pad in, rubbing my eyes, heading for the cabinet with the glasses.

I stop short when I smell it— her .

“Veva?” I ask, and a moment later, she emerges from the shadows. How the hell was she hiding like that? And how did it take me that long to realize she was down here with me?

“Sorry,” she whispers, running her hands up and down her arms. “I heard the steps, just casted to hide myself without thinking.”

I know that’s not true—she knew it was me. She was keeping herself hidden from me on purpose—that’s what she’s been doing from the moment she and Sarina got here. Trying to hide from me, to keep this from happening.

But I’m done hiding, done skirting around her.

“Veva,” I say, swallowing down the trepidation in my throat. “We need to talk.”

The sigh she lets out is long-suffering. For a moment, I expect her to turn and run back to the guest room, fall back on the tactics she’s been using to try and stay away from me.

Instead, she goes a bit soft, stepping forward and sliding onto a stool, resting her head in her hands on the counter.

“Okay.”

Stunned by how quickly she’s given into talking to me, it takes me a moment to regain myself, to remember what it was that I wanted to say to her. Why I said we needed to talk in the first place.

“Well?” she asks, sounding more tired than accusatory. “What do you want to talk about?”

I blink at her, then say, “That night.”

“What night?”

“Don’t—you know what night, Veva. The night you left.”

Even though it’s dark, I catch sight of her gritting her teeth, her jaw shifting, her eyes roaming over me. I straighten up, worried she might be looking for the best spot to lay a blow.

“Why do you want to talk about the night I left?” her voice is deadpan, completely devoid of emotion, and I realize this is just a different type of wall, a new method of keeping me out.

“I came to your mother’s house the next morning,” I say, stepping toward her. It’s going to be harder for her to shut me out if I’m standing right in front of her.

I watch her nose twitch, see the way she catches my scent.

The scent of her mate.

“I know.”

That stuns me—I wasn’t expecting her to know that. I was saving it as proof. Proof that I would have taken her as my mate, even if that’s not necessarily true.

“You know?”

“My mother told me, the day I went to see her.”

“Okay,” I bite my lip. “So—I came to see you because I didn’t want you to just…take off like that, Veva. Things were complicated with us, but that doesn’t mean I wanted you to run off to the Grayhides—”

“I have never been a Grayhide,” she says, emotion filtering into her tone for the first time since we started this conversation. “Sarina and I lived on the outskirts of that pack. Which is basically what I was doing here.”

“Veva.” I’m at the counter now, and I set my hands down, just a few inches from hers. “I—”

“And you know what, Emin?” she straightens up, and I realize she’s still on the last thing I said. “Things were not complicated between us. I came to you. I tried to tell you—”

“I just couldn’t hear it then,” the words come out through my teeth. “You know the position I was in, with my father. My parents, both of them, their fixation on us climbing ranks in the pack—”

“Oh fuck you, Emin,” Veva hisses, standing.

Her stool nearly topples over, but she throws a hand out, backward, and steadies it with her magic.

The sight of it is mesmerizing, and despite the conversation we’re having, a thrum of pleasure rolls through me at the sight of my mate, her competency. Her strength.

My mate.

“Fuck you,” Veva repeats, her face a bottle of fury as she glares at me.

“Do you want to know something? You walk around here like you’re some big, tough guy, but the truth is that you’re a coward .

You couldn’t hear it back then? You were fifty percent of that equation, you ass.

What I came to tell you that night was just as equally your problem, and you made it all mine. ”

“I know !”

I don’t mean to raise my voice, but I do. It rings through the space, and for a second, there’s just the sound of Veva’s heavy breathing. I glance up at the ceiling, listening for the sounds of Sarina waking, scared by the sound of a man yelling.

Veva says, “She’s still asleep.”

“I was a coward, Veva,” I meet her eyes, hold them, take another step toward her. “You’re not going to hear me denying that. But here I am now, trying to make up for it. Telling you that I…I knew it back then, too.”

She frowns. “Of course you did.”

“Okay,” I let out a quick breath of air through my teeth. “Yeah. But I couldn’t say it. I can say it now.”

Panic crosses over her features, and she glances at the ceiling again. “You can?”

“Yes.” Reaching out, I take her hands in mine. “Veva—I know you’re my mate. We’re mates.”

It feels so good to say it that I keep going, ignoring the look of confusion on her features.

“I felt it back then. Being with you is unlike being with anyone else. When I’m with you, it just feels right.”

The Veva I’ve come to know—so prepared, mature, resolved—is gone, and instead, standing there, is the Veva from when we were teenagers. Scared, confused, her face wide-open to me.

“Emin,” she says, her voice shaking with something I can’t identify—rage? Fear? “Please tell me you’re fucking with me right now.”

Now it’s my turn to frown. “No. I’m not. I—”

She pulls backward, shaking her head, her back hitting the wall as her eyes catch mine.

“Emin,” she spits, “I didn’t come there that night to claim you as my mate.”

I blink. “You didn’t?”

“No,” she laughs, and the sound is wet, almost hateful, but whether it’s toward me or herself, I can’t tell. “I came to tell you I thought I was pregnant . With your baby.”