Page 24 of Witchblood

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Older than you.”

I growled at him. “If you think you’re going to have any sort of relationship with me, you’ll need to stop being evasive.”

“I’mbeing evasive?”

“Yes. I just want to know stuff about you.” Because he might be my mate, even if my heart was terrified of the very same idea. It was also intrigued. My heart hurt with how fast my mind leached on to the hope of actually having someone, of being important to someone.

“We have time. I have much to learn about you as well.”

“Because the Volkov didn’t tell you everything?” I scoffed.

“He didn’t,” Liam assured me. “I heard stories from the wolves in your pack, but how much of those should I believe? If I were to take them at their word you’d be the most dangerous man on the planet, tricking the Volkov and controlling the world’s werewolf population with your mysterious tea, pranks, and smiles.”

I gave him narrowed eyes to show him just how much baloney I thought he was trying to feed me.

“Seriously,” he said. “Child of legend, stories sung as in days of old. I am nothing in the shadow of such greatness.”

“Now I really know you’re teasing me,” I told Liam. “And being evasive about yourself. Are there songs that the bards of old used to sing about you? Broken hearts and battles won? That sort of thing.”

“Hmm. Bards, I don’t think so. YourApawas a bard in his day. He sang me a song or two about you while I was there. Teasing things, embellished to sound ridiculous and funny. Though there’s always some grain of truth to those songs, isn’t there?”

“Like?” I prodded, trying to think of anything I’d done that had been worthApacreating a song.

“Eggs in shoes?”

I laughed. Yeah, I’d done that. “Apa’s wife insisted I do chores, one of which had been collecting the fresh eggs from the chickens every morning. She would cook them, but somehow there would never be enough for me. Wolves eat so much she would explain.Apanever said anything, though I knew he’d disapproved. He’d been waiting for me to do something, stand up for myself, I think, and so I had. Instead of bringing the eggs to table one morning, I cracked the whole lot of them over her shoes. Probably hundreds of dollars of expensive shoes ruined, but I’d been eleven.Apahad taken the egg collecting job away from me and given me the garden to tend instead. That worked out just fine for me.”

“Food coloring in shampoo?” Liam continued laughing.

I nodded. “Okay, yeah, that was me too.”

“Tea that gave the whole pack the runs?”

“Now that’s going a little far and it wasn’t the whole pack.” It had just been a handful of wolves who enjoyed picking on me. “Careful, I still have the ingredients for that tea memorized. Should you have any incontinence issues, let me know.”

Liam laughed. He had a great laugh. It wasn’t fair that I wanted to hear the sound more often. “You know a lot about me, and I still know so little about you,” I complained.

“Okay, but we have time. I can’t possibly tell you everything in one night or even a year. You still need food and rest.”

“Sure, but we gotta start somewhere right.” If we were starting something, and dammit if I didn’t hope we were.

“Okay, three burning questions for right now,” Liam consented. “However, the way I answer is up to me.”

“Fine. First question, where are you from?”

“Maple Falls, Washington.”

Grr. “You know that’s not what I meant. Where you are now is not where you are from.”

“It is now. But if you must know, I was born in Ireland.”

The hints of accent could have been Irish. I’d not heard it outside of movies enough to know, and his was interlaced with a hint of a Southern drawl and his very modern American TV standard. I’d be listening for it now. Not that it mattered much where he was born.

“Second question, how long have you been a wolf? And you better not say since some asshole bit you.” It actually took more than a bite. It took death. Much like vampires, wolves had to die to be reborn. Unlike vampires it didn’t take years of blood exchanges, just one horribly bloody moment and their world could change.

Liam shook his head. “I choose how I answer, remember? Anyway, I am not as old as the Volkov, but substantially older than you. It makes me feel old just to think about it.”