Page 48 of A Wolfe in the Woods

“She called it her silent guardian. Kept it by the window so when she looked out, she didn’t feel so alone,” he murmured, his gaze flicking to the statue.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t help but challenge.

He smiled, but it seemed like a warning. A quick baring of his teeth. It was a beautiful summer day, but the Jonathan from last night felt gone, replaced by this wintry, cold version. Prickly like ice around the edges. What had happened between then and now?

I held my breath when he stepped closer, my heartbeat picking up in my chest, my urge to flee climbing. “I don’t know. Why do you think that is…Blanchette?” It was the way he said my name—the legal version—cold, clipped, condescending. Like we hadn’t known each other.

I thought about what Meg had revealed to me on the phone. A wolf in the courtroom. Had he really done all those terrible things? Defended those terrible people?

The Jonathan in front of me? Yes, I could believe it.

But the Jonathan that I’d just discovered had been my grandmother’s friend? The Jonathan that I imagined pruning back her roses and keeping the wisteria neat around the arched trellis? The Jonathan who’d made me laugh last night up onCryer’s Point and listened to me patiently when I’d told him something I’d never given voice to before?

No, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—believethat.

“I came to thank you,” I said, remembering my original intent, though now I was a little stung. I cleared my throat, trying to loosen the tightness. “For helping her when I wasn’t there. I…I wanted to ask you about her. About?—”

“About all the years leading up to her death?” Jonathan asked, narrowing those eyes on me. “All the years you never came to see her? All the years you canceled your plans to make a trip out?”

I flinched. The guilt tipped over inside me and spread like a pool of thick ink, coating my ribs, drenching my heart until it felt like it was weeping.

“That’s not…” I started.True?Fair? But wasn’t it? “You don’t understand.”

“I think I do,” he said, voice flat. “I understand it becauseIwas there…and you weren’t. I was there to watch your absence wear her down.”

The words articulated so precisely—it left no room for defense. And they felt like blades between my ribs.

“What’s the matter? You look guilty.”

I stood frozen, throat tightening, shame pooling behind my eyes. Of course I looked guilty. I was.

There were reasons I hadn’t come. Excuses I’d made. Schedules. Deadlines. Distance.

But they sounded hollow now. All of them.

“And if there’s one thing I can smell from a mile away…it’s the scent of guilt.”

“Why are you being like this?” I asked quietly. “Y-You’re being cruel.”

His jaw tightened until a muscle throbbed. His eyes locked onto mine—unblinking, fixed. A hunter’s stare. Then he steppedback, slow and deliberate, as if giving me space was an illusion. As if he were circling—while all around us, the forest seemed to lean in. Trees, limbs, and brambles inching closer. Like it wasn’t just watching. Like it was trying to cage us. Or cage me.

“She kept her silence. I won’t,” he told me.

It felt like he’d squeezed his fist around my throat. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

And I realized thatthiswas what he thought of me. This was why he’d been so cold when I’d first met him. He’d knownexactlywho I was, from the very beginning, and he’d already passed his judgments.

So, what had all of yesterday been? A warped, strange test of his? Or had he wanted to draw me in closer so that it was easier to go for the jugular? Like a…like a Lycan would. LikeErikwould.

The realization drained all the blood from my face.

“You haveno ideawhat she meant to me,” I rasped quietly, glaring up at him. “Or what I still feel for her, every single day, in every quiet moment! All Iseeis her, all Ihearis her voice. So how dare you judge me. Especially when?—”

I cut myself off, my nostrils flaring as I struggled to keep the tears at bay. I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

“Especially whenwhat?” he asked, the words clipped.

I pushed the wolf figurine against his chest, and he caught it before I let it fall. It looked laughably small in his hand.