Page 19 of Silver Claw

“How has Lucy been?” Sam asked, finally, as I opened the door.

“Lucy’s fine,” I told him, “though she’s going to be pissed that you came here first.”

“I called her,” he said. “She said I should find you.”

I only nodded.

“What’s going on, Kait?” he asked, and I could hear the worry creeping into his voice.

“I’ve sent the addresses to your phone,” Max called, as we crossed the empty waiting room. “Joe, make sure you’re somewhere safe before it gets close to dawn.”

Max worried about Joe more now than he ever had, as though becoming a vampire had made him more vulnerable than he’d been as an easy-to-kill human.

When I pulled out onto the street, Sam was beside me in the front seat. Joe was behind me, because no matter who was in the car with me, Joe wanted to have my back.

“Sam,” I said finally, as I drove. “Some things have happened.”

“Tell me the worst thing first,” he said, clenching his fists. “Let’s get that done.”

There was a lot of bad shit to tell him, but I knew what would hurt him the most. So I started with that.

And maybe that was when it really sank in for me.

I’d never wanted to be a shapeshifter in the first place. I’d gotten that from my birth mother. I’d never wanted it.

But even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it, it hurt me to lose it. Because a gift from my monster of a birth mother or not, it hadbeen part of me. And the siphoner had carved it out like it was her right to do so.

It would break Sam’s heart.

“I lost my shapeshifter,” I whispered, and then, my voice stronger, I said it again. “I lost my shapeshifter.”

He looked like I’d said I was dying. “How?” he asked, like he couldn’t quite believe it but absolutely knew I wouldn’t lie about it. “I mean…how?”

So I told him about Anika Draper and how she’d siphoned out my magic because she believed it was her duty to do so. “I have my wolf and my blade,” I finished. “That’s all she left me.”

He sat back in his seat and stared through the windshield, silent.

Finally, when we were a block away from the first haunted house of the night, I reached over to pat his knee. “Sam?”

“I’ll find her,” he murmured. “And if she can’t give it back to you, I’ll kill her. Maybe that will release your power back to you.”

I felt worse for him, somehow, than I did for myself. “That’s not how it works,” I told him, my voice thick. “I’m still me. I’m still exactly what I was to you.”

He looked at me. “What are you to me, Kait?”

“Your friend,” I said immediately. “You’re part of my pack.” I hesitated, but only for a second. “I love you, Sammy.”

At first, it was like he didn’t quite understand what I’d said to him. He frowned and opened his mouth to ask me, maybe, to repeat my words. Then he simply stared at me, and when I glanced at him, I saw things in his eyes that only a person who’d been born into horrific abuse would understand.

“Sam,” I said again, quietly. “I love you, shapeshifter.”

He sniffed, then rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He said nothing, and his gaze grew distant, as though he were lost for amoment in his thoughts. He’d had a shit life and a shit family. It was unlikely anyone had ever told him they loved him.

I knew Lucy loved him, but Lucy would take her time saying so.

Finally, he smiled, and it lit up his whole face. “Thank you for that,” he said, his voice low. “Not just for the words, but for the truth of them.” He nodded, almost to himself. “I believe you.”

My chest ached for him.