Page 37 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“Not hungry,” she mumbled into the blanket.

There was a part of him, the part that felt called to take care of her, to take care of everyone, that urged him to pull back the blanket and tell her to get her ass to the kitchen for some food, that she could go back to bed with a full stomach. But he resisted, stepping quietly out of the room and closing the door with care after him. That wasn’t his place.

He ate his three sandwiches in silence at the kitchen table, balling the foil before tossing it overhead into the trash can. With the afternoon ahead of him and nothing to do, he decided to go back to the mess hall. There was a stubborn grease stain on the floor that was just begging for attention.

She’s fine. She’s sleeping in. She’s had an exhausting few days. There’s nothing wrong with her. Hoofbeats usually mean horses, not zebras. She’s fine.

Repeating that litany was the only thing that enabled Robbie to close the door to the cabin behind him and walk away. It shouldn’t have been difficult. He hardly knew her. This was all a ruse—and for his sake, for that matter. And yet it felt impossible all the same.

He felt like running again. His heart pounded in his chest with every step he took away from the cabin. But running would take him miles away, the thought of which quite literally turned his stomach, the sandwiches threatening a reappearance. With his hands on his hips, his breath coming in short bursts as if he had just run, Robbie looked around. The mess hall was close, and in addition to tackling the grease stain, he’d made plans with Rose to do inventory of the pantry, walk-in, and reach-in. It was a four-minute walk from the cabin—two if he ran—and he could be back in a blink if she needed him.

Which, of course, she wouldn’t.

But just in case, he thought. Just in case.

He ignored the sense of wrongness, the alarm bells ringing in his head, telling himself it was just his anxiety. After all, anxiety was what had brought him to Nadja’s office in the first place. Anxiety was what had started them down this path. Anxiety was her business, but she’d done enough for him. Far more than she had to. He’d deal with himself.

And so, feeling as if he was pulling his tongue off of a frozen pole, he walked away from the cabin, telling himself that she was fine, that she was just tired, that she was catching up on sleep after a busy week. Things that didn’t feel remotely true.

CHAPTER 16

Robbie hadn’t seen Nadja with her eyes open in three days. Not because she hadn’t been up. He could tell by the way the laundry basket looked and how her toothbrush moved around in the coffee mug on the bathroom counter. But she was still asleep when he left for the morning and already in bed when he came back for the evening. If the food he put in the fridge for her hadn’t been touched, he would have sounded the alarm.

He wanted to sound the alarm anyway, but she was her own person. He wasn’t her keeper. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He certainly wasn’t her mate. Not for real, anyway. And if she wanted to sleep on the same schedule as his mama’s old tabby, that was her business.

But that didn’t stop his worry from threatening to eat him alive.

A week after their arrival, halfway to the full moon, he came home smelling like fryer grease and sweat because someone (Rose) had heard him talking to JJ about doing fried chicken nights at one of the restaurants where he worked, and someone (everyone Rose told) had bullied him into doing one for the pack.

He expected to find Nadja asleep, as she had been for the past few days, and so he started stripping the moment he closed the cabin door behind him, peeling the sweaty shirt off his shoulders and fantasizing about a cold shower.

“You smell interesting,” she said from the kitchen table. While he wouldn’t exactly call the noise he made a shriek, it was definitely close.

“You’re awake,” he said, feeling stupid with his shirt tangled around his neck and arms, the damp cotton clinging to him like a determined octopus.

Her eyes looked glassy and feverish. She sat at the table in the kitchen, so pale that the light from the LED bulb overhead—JJ said he was going to drag the pack into more sustainable living if it was the last thing he did—made her look almost green.

“You don’t look so good, Doc,” he said, finally wrestling the shirt over his head, the cotton hanging limp from his hand at his side. All of the worry of the last three days, every single nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong—all of which he’d tried to ignore—it all crashed around him like a rogue wave, threatening to swallow him whole.

“And you look amazing,” she said quietly. “Are you leeching my health?” She laughed, but it stopped short when her eyes rolled slightly back before she caught herself upright again.

He was at her side in a heartbeat. Not his heartbeat, which had frozen in his chest, but a heartbeat. He should have asked for permission before touching her, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself from laying a palm against her forehead.

His stomach roiled. “You have a fever.”

“And you don’t,” she said breathily.

“No,” he said, dropping to a knee in front of her.

“You really do look amazing,” she said. “This place is good for you.”

He couldn’t argue with her about that. He felt stronger than he ever had, more solid. And aside from the constant need to be moving, he felt almost normal.

“You need a doctor,” he said, feeling as if his throat would close around the words.

“No,” she said, resting her hand over his on the table. “A doctor can’t help me.”

Oh, god. Is she dying? Is this one of those things where she’s too far gone for medicine to save her and she came here with me anyway and now she’s going to die here? The thought flashed so suddenly, so horribly, that he almost fell flat on his ass.