5. Roxy’s reveal #2
Right as I have that thought, the whirlwind that is Roxy Kane comes bounding into the library because, even if Ash isn’t her bonded mate who lets her do whatever she wants, a simple ‘closed’ sign would never keep her out.
Wearing a t-shirt that has a cartoon of an exasperated raccoon on it, with the words ‘WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING?’ printed over the adorable trash panda’s hands, she flips her sunglasses up so that they’re nestled in her black-and-white streaked hair and slams her hands on the library counter to get her mate’s attention.
“Holy shit, Ash. Have you heard the news?”
Ash has his nose buried in a book he was supposed to be shelving, but that snagged his attention enough that he started to read while I tested how many paperbacks I can stack under my chin at one time.
Hearing his mate, that same besotted look as usual twists his face, his purple shifter eyes brightening as he says, “I thought you were checking out the dumpster behind Sycamore this morning? Wasn’t there a quarterly clean-out at the electronics store run by the tigress shifter who roared at us the last we went through her trash? ”
“I was,” agrees Roxy, “and I found a whole satchel of shit to clean up and sell at my store before she knew I was diving. I figured that deserved a reward so I went to snag a croissant from Honey, and I was there just as Max called her up and gave her the good news.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as hers glitter in anticipation before she says: “Riordan came back this morning.”
I drop all eight of the books.
Both Ash and Roxy’s heads whip my way. Ash begins to lope around the counter while Roxy is in front of me before I can even register that the books are on the ground and my hands are trembling slightly.
She quickly stacks them for me. “Hey. You okay?”
Well, I was better before I heard that the Beta of the Moonshadow Pack is back in town…
And, no. That’s not nice. Everything I’ve learned about Riordan Lobo since his disappearance says that he is a very kind, very stand-up guy.
He’s a loyal second to his younger brother, Max, and poor Gus misses him terribly.
He was only doing his job when he put me in the holding cell at the sheriff station, and it was his curse that affected me so strongly after the fact.
I want to believe that my minor obsession with the wolf shifter has everything to do with how I finally met a curse that my all-powerful cursebreaking abilities never got the chance to nibble on.
He was gone before I could, and I felt his absence like a string tugging against my chest before he got far enough out of reach that the string was snipped in two.
It doesn’t help that I’m partly to blame for him leaving Moonburrow.
Oh, Honey and Roxy have pshawed and told me that it’s not my fault, but I know better.
Everyone trusted Riordan. Everyone believed in the chief deputy.
But when there was a supposed murder in Moonburrow while the sheriff was out of town, he brought a witch in to investigate what happened to Ash.
Then, in his perspective, that witch killed one of her sisters.
Through Honey, I know that Max talked to Riordan after the Beta left me alone in the holding cell.
He’s well aware that Olivia Frost faked her own death—that I’m no murderer—and he decided that, since he had to go out of town for some reason, he might as well use his head start to figure out where Olivia ran off to after she escaped the holding cell and disappeared.
For some reason… I know why he left. It was because of me.
It took Roxy Kane all of five minutes following the first time we met after Olivia escaped before she made a crack about the chief deputy feeling guilty for using his curse against me.
I didn’t have the chance to look too closely at how the curse was affecting him, but after how he took my free will away until there was enough distance between us that I could shake it off…
yeah. I would feel guilty if I did that to someone, too.
And now he’s back, and I don’t know how to react.
Part of me was drawn to him despite his being a wolf, but when he told me to be quiet and I was…
another part of me broke that day. I already had to face my fear of wolves, coming to Moonburrow where the local pack was full of them, and for him to use his dominance to force me to do something I didn’t want to do, it was only inevitable that I conflated the chief deputy with the monster who once hurt me.
So am I okay? No, but since Roxy seems thrilled to have the chief deputy back, I don’t want to bring down her spirits.
That’s why, instead, I say, “Would be better if I hadn’t woken up to Olivia’s ghost in my bedroom the other day and now we know there’s been two murders… but, yeah. I guess I’m okay.”
I’m also lying through my teeth. Good thing that, as a raccoon shifter, Roxy is considered to be ‘prey’ and she has no clue that I’m fibbing.