Whispers at Moonrise (Shadow Falls #4)(54)

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Kylie reconsidered her positive attitude when a couple of hours later, she batted at the bugs swarming around her as she moved into the woods with Holiday and Burnett. But it wasn't the bugs causing the deterioration of her good mood. It was one certain dark-haired, blue-eyed werewolf.

Kylie should have been excited about going to the falls. She always felt better after a visit. But right now, she didn't want to feel better. She wanted to feel ... mad.

Wait. She didn't want to feel it, she did feel mad.

Mad at the rose-leaving, note-writing were.

She'd completely let go of her aggravation about Lucas not showing up last night. She'd tried to set aside the fact that he'd practically told her he had to keep secrets from her. While she didn't like it, she'd even accepted that Fredericka, his one-time sex buddy, would always be within touching distance of him, when Kylie wasn't anywhere close enough to touch him herself. She had worked at overcoming the fact that his grandmother, his father, and even his entire pack, were against their being together.

She'd done a lot of setting aside, overcoming, and accepting. And after this morning, she realized that it might have been too much-because after not showing up last night, after hardly seeing her yesterday, he'd barely acknowledged her this morning in the cafeteria.

Another mosquito buzzed past and she swiped at the air, sending the pest headfirst into a tree. Bzzz ... splat!

Couldn't Lucas have come over and had breakfast with her? She wouldn't have even blamed him if he'd brought Clara with him. But no, all she'd gotten was a smile, and even that smile had seemed somehow purposefully short. Then he'd joined the were table with all his other friends, his pack-people who clearly came before her now and probably always would.

Last night, he'd climbed into her bedroom way after midnight while she'd been asleep. He'd left her a rose and a sweet note, and this morning all she'd gotten from him was a half-assed smile. What was up with that?

She sure as hell didn't know. Who was she kidding? She knew exactly what was up. She wasn't good enough for him, because she wasn't a were.

That stung. Really stung. Then, to make matters worse, when Derek sat beside her, Lucas had the audacity to text her and say he didn't like it.

Right. He didn't like the fact that Derek had sat beside her, but he'd chosen not to sit with her. Instead, his sexy little butt was sandwiched between Fredericka and one of the new female weres, who was all over Lucas to the point that even Fredericka was unhappy about it.

Yeah, Kylie could hear Lucas telling her that he no longer cared about Fredericka. She could hear him saying that he hadn't asked the new girl to sit beside him, and she could hear him saying he had to be loyal to his pack. And maybe Kylie was wrong to feel angry, or maybe she wasn't so much angry as she was just tired of playing second fiddle.

Second fiddle sucked.

Another mosquito bit the dust when she swiped it off her cheek.

"You might want to slow down," Burnett said, moving up beside her with his long-legged strides.

Kylie glanced at him. He studied her briefly, then shifted his gaze back to the terrain as if expecting something to jump out at them. He'd been acting antsy since they walked into the woods, not that Kylie paid too much attention; her heart had been too busy fiddling with her second fiddle matters to care if Burnett had drunk too much caffeine.

"Seriously, slow down," Burnett said.

"Why?" Kylie asked.

He briefly glanced over his shoulder again. "As wonderful as faes are, they're slow."

Kylie sighed. She hadn't realized that she was moving at a fast sprint. A non-human sprint. A non-witch sprint, too. Which meant she wasn't really a witch, right? Glancing back, she saw Holiday power walking to keep up.

"Sorry." Kylie slowed down and noticed how Burnett kept looking around as if he expected something to jump out at them. Had something happened? And if so, did it have anything to do with her?

Holiday's footfalls sounded beside Kylie. She glanced from the nervous vampire to Holiday.

"Thanks for slowing down," Holiday said, sounding a bit breathless. In less than a minute, Burnett lagged behind them, just out of vampire hearing range. Probably at Holiday's insistence. No doubt she wanted to talk with Kylie, and Holiday didn't like knowing he'd listen in.

The verdant smells of the forest filled Kylie's senses. For the first time since she entered the woods she recalled her grandfather and the fog. She immediately tried to listen with her heart to see if she felt the calling sensation from before; it wasn't there. Then she wondered if somehow the whole fog episode was behind Burnett's edginess. Or even worse, had they tried to return and set off the alarms? Would Burnett even tell her about it if they had?

Probably not.

She looked back at Burnett. What did the vamp know?

Moving closer to Holiday, Kylie asked, "Can you tell me something and be honest about it?"

Holiday's footsteps on moist earth made squishy sounds, as if Kylie's question had added a weight to her step. "I don't lie to you."

"By omission you do. Not being up-front about something is as bad as lying." And then there was the issue of how little Holiday shared about herself. As much as Kylie confided in Holiday, it hurt to realize it wasn't a two-way street.

"I don't purposefully keep things from you." The truth in her tone hung in the damp air. They walked without talking for a few moments.