Page 50 of The Golden Receiver

As a team, we were working together better. Maybe all Willis and his crew needed was to bitch a little. Maybe it was the fact that Willis had gotten some field time during our home loss the week before and he’d fumbled a ball that Eric had thrown right to him, leading to the other team recovering it and scoring on their next drive. Maybe he’d finally realized that he just wasn’t a better player than Kieran.

Maybe that meant I could relax.

I wished someone could tell my mind that, because the strange fixation with being near Kieran all the time didn’t stop.

I even waited for him to be ready before we left the practice facility every day. There might have been ulterior motives for that, like the simple way he stepped up next to me and asked if I wanted to join him for dinner, which was another thing we were doing together more often.

“Normally, you know I’d say yes, but Kali has called a pack meeting. Blood moon preparations,” I told him when he asked after practice.

“Professor Fan said that’s a big night on campus, right? Everyone shifts?”

I nodded. “It’s an even bigger night for my pack. Kali and Luke lead us on a big run at this park near the warehouse. There’s some woods. Last year, it turned into a really weird game of hide and seek with some of the younger pack members. They tried to sniff us all out, which led to us trying to make it harder to be tracked. It was a lot of fun.”

“Is that what you’re doing this year?” he asked me. He sounded genuinely interested. I wished I could take him to the warehouse with me, but planning the blood moon would be boring for him. If I ever introduced him to the pack, I wanted it to be something that he enjoyed.

Not that I’d thought about it.

Much.

“Maybe? We’re definitely doing the run, but we’ll talk over everything when we’re all together. Kali may be the leader of the pack, but she doesn’t rule with an iron fist.” That was a complete stereotype that humans made about werewolves. The alpha was meant to care for the pack above all else, and that’s why Kali was the perfect alpha. She kept us out of trouble. She made sure we were where we were supposed to be. She did a lot of the planning for everything the pack did as a group.

She even still scheduled my doctor’s appointments, but that was because I always forgot.

“What time are you meeting everyone?”

I pulled out my phone to check the time. I knew I was cutting it close, but I didn’t want to leave Kieran halfway across campus all by himself. It was that whole weird thing that had been happening since he fell asleep on my shoulder on the bus. “About now,” I admitted.

“And where are you supposed to meet them?”

“At this bench halfway between Poe and Karloff.”

“Then shouldn’t you head over there?”

I groaned. I should, but I didn’t want to leave Kieran alone. I looked at the fork in the path that would take us back toward the dorms. Kieran sighed and started down the path, away from the dining hall where I’d thought he was going. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to dinner?”

“I can eat in my room,” he told me. “You’re going to make everyone late, and then I’m going to have to hear you bitch about it all week when they get annoyed that you’re late.”

I wanted to argue with him, but he wasn’t wrong. I sighed and followed him down the path.

Like I would have done anything else.

We were close to the dorm when I heard Serena’s familiar voice. “Evie!” she called out. I heard Kieran snort, and I elbowed him. “There you are. I told Nick and Charlie that your practice probably ran late, but they said you probably forgot.”

By the time she finished her sentence, she was standing in front of me with a bright smile on her face. Nick and Charlie were following behind her at a slower pace. Her dark eyes landed on Kieran, and her smile grew even bigger. “Oh my god, is this him?”

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

“You know that’s him. You saw him at the game,” Charlie pointed out as he stopped next to Serena. Nick fell into place on her other side. “Kieran, right?”

Kieran nodded. I didn’t need the sour edge of his scent to tell me that he was nervous. His body language had changed. He’d been relaxed all the way up until Serena landed in front of us. Now he was tense. He reminded me of the guy I’d met on the first day of summer training. It had taken ages to get him to relax. I swear if my pack mates had made us go back to that closed off Kieran, I would bite them.

“Are you going to introduce us, Evie?” Nick asked after a moment of painful silence.

“Nick, Serena, Charlie, this is Kieran. Kieran, this is Nick, Serena, and Charlie,” I introduced quickly. I jabbed my finger at each of my pack mates as I said their name. Not that it mattered, because Kieran didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Evie has told us a lot about you,” Serena said in what I could only assume was an attempt to be helpful.

It wasn’t.