“Her papers are real?”

“Yep, they’re not forgeries. Sabina Krasowski was born in Louisiana in 1990.”

“It’s rude to disclose a woman’s age.”

My eyes widened at her voice which, lo and behold, sounded a bit clearer. Probably because she was huffing at Ethan’s revelation.

Women.

Even as she-wolfs, they didn’t change all that much.

“You could have just asked me for that information. You didn’t have to look into my past.”

Eli shook his head as he scraped his chair back so he could get to his feet. When he walked over to her, she flopped off my lap just as she’d flopped onto it earlier and spread out between us, her head between her paws.

“We meant no offense,” Eli told her gravely. “But it’s hard to hear you, and you rest so much. We didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Well,” she said with an inner sniff as well as outer huff, “I can tell you that someone does want me dead, but no one would want me to come back as a wolf. In my family’s culture, cats and dogs are impure.”

Ethan cleared his throat. “Her father is Draga Krasowski.”

I hitched my shoulder. “So? Who’s he?”

“He’s a Roma king,” Ethan replied, rolling his eyes at me.

I narrowed mine at him. I hated it when he made me feel like I was a moron for not knowing some random motherfucker’s name.

“What the fuck is a Roma king?”

Sabina’s eyes cut to me, and she gave me a nudge with her nose. “He’s famous for all the wrong reasons.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Eli stated, making me sneer at Ethan.

“Not everyone knows random people,” I sneered at him mentally.

Some of us had lives and didn’t just absorb nonfiction books like they were going extinct before the end of the year.

“Roma, like Romany? Gypsies?” Eli blurted out, before he muttered, “Sorry, Sabina.”

She sighed. “Not my culture anymore.”

Was it just me or was her voice clearer than ever today?

“Anymore?”

“I was born into it,” she muttered, shuffling around, and it didn’t escape my attention that she moved so her nose was still touching my leg and her butt was pressed into Eli’s side.

The way she needed to connect warmed me, because it told me I wasn’t alone in this. We weren’t out in the cold—we were in this together.

“I was born into the life, but I escaped when I was eighteen.”

My eyes flared wide. “That’s a strong word. Did you run away?”

She whined, before tucking her face into my side, no longer just touching her nose to me—she was hiding. Outright.

Ethan released a soft breath. “I found out after I scoured the papers online for news on her.”

“What happened?”

Eli’s query had Ethan moving over to sit down on one of the armchairs beside the fire again. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he let his hands dangle between them.

“Drago’s an important man in the Roma community down in Louisiana. Arranged marriages are common there. As are honor killings.” He cleared his throat when we all tensed. “They’re rare, but not in Drago’s community.”

“What happened?” Eli demanded, his voice turning low.

Deadly.

“By the sounds of it, at least from what I can make out, Sabina was his eldest daughter and was promised to a family rival.” He shrugged. “Sounds crazy to me, but they had some kind of turf war going down. Kept stealing shit from one another. She was supposed to broker peace between the two families.”

“Only, I’m not a commodity,” she rasped, her head still turned away.

“No. You aren’t.” I rubbed between her ears, trying to soothe her with my touch.

I wanted this conversation, so badly, to be with the woman, but that wasn’t about to happen. I had to figure that the Mother would decide when she’d shift back into her human skin, so for the interim, we had to deal with this level of communication.

It didn’t outright suck, but not being able to hear this from her lips, to see the nuances in her face, hear them in her voice? It made this a thousand times harder.

“She fell for a boy in her school.”

“Daddy was mad because he didn’t want me to graduate, but Momma insisted. We’d had CPS sniffing around that year because of kids being truant. The families said they were homeschooling the girls, but they weren’t.” Her voice wavered. “I met him there.”

“Quarterback of the football team,” Ethan said softly. “High school sweethearts.”

“I got pregnant. On purpose,” she admitted. “We agreed that was the only way Daddy would ever let us be together.” She shuddered.

“Police are still investigating Kian’s death and Sabina’s disappearance,” Ethan finished, but I knew there were plenty of holes in the story. Holes he didn’t want to pick apart when she was within hearing range.

Had she carried the baby to term? Or lost it?

The question was on the tip of my tongue but, though my brother thought I was a moron, I really wasn’t.

Instead, I whispered, “Would your father still want your blood?”

It wasn’t the most diplomatic of questions, but it was prudent, considering the current situation we were in.

“Yes. That’s why I’ve been in the carnival ever since. I was new to Ollywood’s, but I’ve been with four the past twelve years. It takes me around the country. Out of his way.

“But he wouldn’t tear out my throat. We’re Roma, not shapeshifters. And even though I’m impure to him now, even though I betrayed our family, he wouldn’t use a dog to change me.”

“It wasn’t a dog, Sabina,” Eli corrected her softly. “It was a wolf. A shifter. You don’t have rabies.”

She sniffed. “No. I guess I don’t. Maybe that’s something to be grateful for.”

I thought about that pathetic little trailer she’d lived in. How small it had been, how clean and neat, even if it had been a sign of her poverty, and I thought about her being in that type of place for years. Years and years. Hiding away. Leaving everything she knew behind because her family wasn’t a safe place, it was something she knew to fear.

I gnawed on my bottom lip as I also thought about her childhood sweetheart.

Did she still love him?

Mother, how wrong was it, and how stupid, to be jealous of a dead boy.

I ground my teeth down, shame flooding me at the uncharitable thoughts. I couldn’t begin to imagine the horror she’d been through, and my feelings were a moot point.

“You’re still looking for the people who bit me?” she asked, breaking into my thoughts, making me grateful she didn’t know where my mind was at.

Ethan winced at that phrasing—two people.

She was adamant. Of all the things she’d said this week, most of it drowsy and some of it incoherent, she insisted on repeating that.

Two people.

Two had done this to her.

I scrubbed my hand across my jaw as I admitted, “We don’t have a clue.”

She sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”