“Emely, what are you doing?!” I heard a voice behind me yell.

I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

“Her eyes just started glowing.... Just like ours.”

That was all I could get out of my mouth at that moment. I was still completely lost and had no idea what that had just been.

Did I want to know? No. Was it any of my business? If it was some weird witch thing, probably not.

We both, Julian and I, sat on my bed and stared at the sleeping girl.

Shit, man... What if she could have died? The witches probably would have torn me apart and Julian right along with me.

I swallowed hard.

“It was the same with me,” Julian murmured thoughtfully.

I turned my gaze away from the witch and looked at him instead.

“What?” he asked, irritated.

“You sound like there’s something else.”

Julian was silent for too long, which didn’t mean anything good. If he knew anything about them, he should tell me now.

“Can witches actually imitate the beginning stages of our transformation?” he finally asked.

“Now, what makes you think that?”

“Her arms...”

“What about her arms?”

“I thought I saw her veins bulge out for a brief moment... Just like ours.”

What he said there made me suck in my breath sharply.

“Impossible. You must have been out of your mind,” I returned.

Julian looked at me with annoyance. For a second, I even thought he was about to grin now, as he often did, but his expression darkened.

“What do you think of me?” he asked, looking at me hard.

I shrugged and looked back at Bayla. “I don’t know. You’ve been through a lot.”

I didn’t regret my words one bit. He should be able to talk openly about his problems. Just like others did.

Unlike Julian, I had no one to really talk to.

I quickly dismissed that thought. The pack was there when I needed it. Kieran answered the phone when I called him.... I just hadn’t been too keen on burdening others with my problems yet.

There were real problems, ones that were above our own and could become a danger to the pack. One of them lay before us, unconscious and probably still as hot as the hood of my Jeep at the height of summer.

Julian remained silent. He ignored my implication, thinking.

“If Ms. Adams finds out about this, I’m a dead man.”

A dead man? Okay, now I really had to laugh.

“You’re not her lapdog, Julian,” I teased him, amused.

“She’s my neighbor, though. And you shouldn’t mess with neighbors.”

“When you interact with witches, that’s exactly what happens.”

And by now I could sing a song about that. Wherever witches appeared, the mood changed. Drastically.

“Why were you even here?”

I thought he wouldn’t answer, but then he looked at me. As if something had occurred to him again.

“I don’t know... There was this weird feeling...”

“A feeling?”

I raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

“Yeah... It was like something was calling me. Like something wasn’t right here.”

Which he was right about. Something was very wrong here.

“Maybe your sixth sense, Julian,” I joked, though I didn’t get such an enthusiastic response.

There was now a look of dissatisfaction in his eyes. But he left it at that.

I had always known that Julian’s powers were stronger than those of the others within our rank in the pack, which was due to the fact that his mother had been a Senseque and not a human, as it was the case with the others in the pack, excluding me and Nash.

Already back then, Julian had always beaten Nash when the three of us had played in the backyard.

At one point I had been really worried that he had wanted to hurt Nash seriously... But that had never been the case. The two of them had once been inseparable and had watched each other’s backs.

Alarik had explained to me that it was normal for male Senseque to get very involved in such little power games.

Of course, it was clear to me that every Alpha had to radiate a certain authority. But Nash was really overdoing the last couple of months.

“One thing you might want to know.” I looked at Julian with attention. “She doesn’t know she’s a witch.”

So, I’d been right.