I looked around quickly. Emely had disappeared.
Annoyed, I looked back at Dad.
“The usual.”
“What did you say?”
He looked at me with concern.
“Don’t act like you weren’t listening, Dad. I’m not going to be a part of this bullshit.”
My dad didn’t say anything about it, but I knew how he felt about the pack.
“Any news?” I asked, not in the mood for small talk, but my dad knew what I meant and quickly got to the point.
“Just some hikers I stopped from going into Fogs Forest.”
I nodded pensively.
While I wanted nothing to do with that town, these missing people cases had caught my attention. Because if the pack had anything to do with more and more people disappearing in the woods around here, it didn’t look good for my family either, even if Dad was the town’s police chief.
“You shouldn’t throw away your friendship with Emely.”
With those words, Dad turned and went back into the house.
Once again, I clenched my fists. Something sharp was digging into my skin.
I remembered that the blue stone I had found a few minutes ago was still in my hand.
I opened it and looked at it more closely. Only now did I see that the charm dangled from a subtle silver chain. The stone, a crystal, was about the size of my thumbnail but not particularly heavy.
It must have fallen off the Adams girl earlier when she had tried to lift the suitcase out of the trunk. That strange girl.
She was Ms. Adam’s daughter, but she didn’t smell the least bit like a witch. Maybe I was just mistaken, but nothing like this had ever happened to me before. The sharpness of my senses must really have reached a drastic low point.
The thought of earlier made me grin again.
I put the necklace in the pocket of my jeans.
She would get it back—just not today. She had made me understand that I had gotten on her nerves, and that was something I had to get over first. Usually, girls would run after me unasked. I hoped that would change on campus.
This girl here was different, not my type, though, and way too stubborn, even though she looked really cute with her different-colored eyes.
“Are you coming in, little brother?” Mia’s asked from our porch.
According to Dad, my little sister was much more mature than me at the age of 15. To be exact, she was the complete opposite of me. I was the stubborn loner, while she owned the role of the responsible angel in the family and gathered a bunch of friends around her in high school. And even though she drove me crazy sometimes, I loved her. Without her, I probably would have been screwed.
“Yeah, pain in the ass,” I grumbled, the corners of my mouth automatically moving upward.
Mia grinned back. “First one to the table!”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
Chapter 4
Emely
How could Julian be such a stubborn ass? It wasn’t like we wanted anything wrong from him. Actually, he also knew that my father would never force him to join the pack. On the contrary. He had given his word to the Bardots, and the word of an Alpha was a rare gesture of generosity.
But he also had to listen, as all Alphas had to, to the Code that had been created when wild wolves had begun to disregard the rules and show themselves to humans, only to give in to their hunger and bring all the myths about us to life.
I sped up a bit, and the trees almost rushed past me, even though I was just in my human form. Not for one minute longer did I want to be in this part of town. It smelled like them everywhere here, and I didn’t know which was worse. That the Quatura wanted to tell us what to do or this disgusting stench.
My legs took me further into the eastern part of the forest, because at no price did I want to run into any witches here.
Slowly, it began to smell of nature and wildlife again, and my body relaxed a bit. And slowly I recognized some trees with their scratch marks from the fights of the guys.
I didn’t think much of these power games, just to show which rank one had within the pack. Maybe that was the reason Julian didn’t want to join us. But what the hell? Sooner or later, he would come to us. I knew that, even if he resisted so much. There were rules that even he had to submit to.
A soft crackling in the undergrowth tore me from my thoughts, and a familiar smell rose to my nose. It looked like I had arrived home faster than expected.
Cautiously, I looked around, but nothing strange caught my eye.
He had gotten better. But so had I.
I took a quick leap to the side, and a second later, my sixteen-year-old brother landed on the damp forest ground, right where I had been standing a moment ago.
“Ahh, fuck!” it escaped him, and he tried to straighten up but buckled.
