Wolf Girl (Wolf Girl, #1)(58)

After seeing my parents and Raven out to a car that Quan was driving, I thanked Sage for the surprise and slipped back into my apartment. Sawyer asked me to come over after, but I couldn’t; I needed to absorb the fact that I was half Paladin, that I was born of the blood of Sawyer’s family’s mortal enemies.

I looked down at my phone. I wanted to text him or PM him on Insta, but he wasn’t big on technology and social media. His WolfDude_4 profile only existed to like and comment on my photos.

Taking a deep breath, I called him instead.

“Hey, beautiful. You coming over?” he answered and I smiled.

“Actually I’m kinda wiped out emotionally. I was just calling to see if tomorrow was okay to meet up instead.”

“Are you okay?” His voice was suddenly protective and alert.

I nodded, and then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Just some heavy stuff with my mom.”

“Oh,” he sighed. “I thought you would like having them here. Otherwise, I never would have gotten it approved.”

“No, I do. I have a really good relationship with my parents. It’s just…” I really wanted to tell Sawyer, but I didn’t think he could handle this and still love me, so I told a half truth. “Do you know why my mom was banished?”

His sharp intake of breath told me everything I needed to know. “Yes. She had a love affair with a Paladin during my father’s selection year.”

I winced. When he said it like that, it sounded bad, but hearing my mother tell the story was different. His words were true, but it wasn’t my mother’s fault she loved a kind man who she’d known since childhood.

“Sawyer?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you guys hate the Paladins so much?”

He was silent a moment, then he breathed into the phone long and deep. “You know that story I told you about the curse that witch put on my family one thousand years ago?”

My heart threatened to jump out of my throat. “Yes,” I croaked.

Don’t say it. Don’t say what I think you are about to.

“Well, that woman was half Danai and half Paladin wolf, their alpha.”

Fuck. The Danai were the dark witches…

“So the Paladins are … like the Ithaki? Hybrids? They have female alphas?”

I’d never heard of such a thing; my head spun. Ithaki were fey hybrids, and Paladins were wolf ones. Holy shit.

“Yes. But the witch bloodline has obviously diluted over a millennium. Should I come over? We can talk about this more.” He sounded concerned.

My mind spun with all of this knowledge, but I shook my head. “No. No, I’m tired, I just want to process this and sleep.”

“Okay, yeah. See you at breakfast?” He sounded hopeful.

“See you then.”

When he hung up, I looked down at my hands and wondered if there was a way to see if I had any witch blood inside of me.

Obviously not. Oh my God, Sawyer would never marry me if he knew what I was…

My mind shuffled through all of this information until about one a.m. when I finally passed out from exhaustion.





I awoke to a blaring siren. My eyelids snapped open and my phone rang.

“Hello.” I was groggy and out of it. What time was it? Why didn’t the siren stop when I answered the phone?

“Stay in your dorm. Don’t leave no matter what,” Sawyer told me, and hung up.

What the…? It hit me then that the siren was the vampire attack siren.

I bolted upright and looked at the clock. Three a.m.

Rushing to my closet, I threw on jeans, and then did a ten second teeth brush and tied my hair up in a bun. Why was I getting ready? I had no idea, but if the freaking vamps were here, I wanted to be ready for anything.

Someone banged on my door and I froze. Were they coming for me again?

“Open up!” Sage yelled, and relief rolled through me.

I pulled open the door to see her gripping a samurai sword in one hand, and a gun at her hip. Throwing stars and stakes were tucked into her belt.

“Whoa. What’s going on?” I backed up into the room and shut the door behind her.

Sage sighed. “They’re here to arrest Sawyer.”

It was like time stopped. My mouth went dry at her words. “What! Who?”

Her hands shook. “Well, I assume so. My mom just texted me that the Drakes are here investigating the murder of their son.”

Oh shit, shit, shit. As much as I loved Sawyer for avenging my honor or whatever, and wiping that douchebag off the face of this earth, killing the prince of the most powerful vampire coven in the country was not smart.

“At three a.m.!” I shouted.

She shrugged. “It’s day for them. Vampires, remember?”

Duh. I knew that. The vampires at Delphi had to take special pills to keep them awake in order to go to school, and then another set of pills to be able to sleep at night and adapt in the human world. Contrary to fantasy stories, they could go out in the sun, it just wasn’t natural for them. Their circadian rhythm was all off.

“Where are they holding him?” I moved for the door and she reached out to stop me.

“In the registration building, but you can’t go. The alpha is sending guards to keep an eye on you and I. They know we will try to interfere.”