JEOPARDY: The Cursed Soldier.

31. Into the Wolf's lair.

Kayla was suffocating.

Not because she was driving alone for the first time in her life. Or because she was scared she would get lost after having gone to Ivan's only twice (both times driven by someone else). But because she was dumb, and she should have known better.

Of all the people in the world, nobody knew how deep Angela's and Ivan's relationship was than Kayla. She had witnessed their every intimate moment and then some. But, somehow, she had the guts to think that she and Ivan could have something. That she could like him and he would too.

She almost laughed out loud.

She was an idiot. An idiot who deserved the constricting feeling in her lungs. And everything else her werewolf nerve would feel and amplify for her.

A half-hearted, relieved sigh passed through her lips when she saw the gate to Ivan's house. At last, she had done something right.

Recalling every instruction Ivan had drilled into her head, she parked the van at his gate and honked. She didn't want to text Ivan because it hurt to look at their casual texts. It was those same texts and all the times that they had spent together that had given her hope for the impossible. They had founded the reason for her pain.

"Hey!" Ivan greeted, letting himself into the car and settling on the shotgun seat.

Kayla neither answered him nor did she look at him. She just started the car and started driving it to Angela's house.

Shock of all shocks, Ivan didn't press her, or say a thing to her after that. Almost like he knew why she was pissy with him. Which would be embarrassing, because she had no right to be jealous of Angela or angry at him.

She wanted to bang her head on the wheel.

Why is this my life?

She had woken up that day full of determination and plans to look into whatever her mama was keeping from her. But she hadn't even finished her breakfast before she had been summoned into Angela's room and ordered to take one of the vans and pick Ivan up because Angela wanted to introduce him to her parents.

Shock, a heaviness in her heart, and a wrenching sensation in her stomach had accompanied Kayla as she had walked to her room to change. Amid changing she had paused, taken her phone from the drawer, and googled what it meant when people who were dating met each other's parents.

They were many results. And all had shown the same thing: Angela and Ivan's relationship was getting serious and permanent. The wrenching in her stomach had gotten worse, and her room had turned claustrophobic.

"What are Angela's parents like?" Ivan's voice pierced through her bubble of misery and shame.

"What?" She glanced at him and found that his eyes were already on her. A frown on his between his thick eyebrows and darkness in his grey eyes. A darkness that was neither desire nor anger. But something puzzling and equally fiery.

"I kinda wanna know what to expect when I get there and Angela and I have hardly talked about it...So..." He trailed off like she was supposed to understand what he had just said. But her brain seemed to have stopped functioning properly. Other than not crashing that car and berating herself. It didn't feel like it could perform another function.

Again, he seemed to understand her inability to reason, so he enunciated, slowly. "What is Angela's mother like?"

Kayla actually chuckled, not with mirth, but bitterness. That was a great question. A question he should have asked his girlfriend before he agreed to meet her parents. Not her.