Deceptions (Evie Cortez Book 1)

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

My body betrayed me and woke up as if it was time to go to work. I wanted to sleep some more but again I couldn’t. I sat up on the sofa and realized I wasn’t the first one awake that morning. I walked into the kitchen and found Caleb at the table reading the newspaper. It didn’t surprise me at all to learn he was an early riser.

He pushed a chain across the table. “We found this outside yesterday after the fight.”

I picked it up. “The family pendant. I forgot to take it off but then again I thought we’d be fighting on two legs.” Mentioning my animal shape caused the alpha to tense. I realized I was a new animal in his territory and that could be trouble. “Is that going to be a problem, some weird shapeshifting girl living down your street?”

He laid the paper down and looked at me with those serious blue eyes. “Not if no one else finds out but if they do they might challenge you and a lone animal lives a hard life.”

“They shouldn’t be able to tell, you didn’t.”

“That was before last night.”

“And now?” I was growing worried. I already had vampires against me because they believed I should be eliminated for not completely turning since they felt something had to be wrong with me.

“I know it’s there, the unique scent you carry is the animal part of our soul. Since you let it run free it’s reawakened and now a very present part of you.” he carefully explained.

“Because you saw me do it but no one else is going to see me turn into anything.” I looked down at the pendent at my hand. The clasp was broken from popping off my neck when I shifted. I closed my hand around the chain and it was as good as new. I put it back on.

“Jared smelled the wolf on you, anyone else could just as easily.”

“I just have to stay away from your kind.” I said, walking away back upstairs to get ready. I knew it wouldn’t only be the werewolves that could tell the animal scent on me, the vampires knew how to sort out different scents too. I couldn’t take back what happened last night and like with my magic I didn’t want to. Shapeshifting was a part of who I was and I was sick of running from it.

With Jamie still asleep I carefully took my bag from her room and went to the bathroom. I washed up and pulled a clean pair of jeans and a white buttoned dress shirt. I couldn’t go see my father looking completely disrespectful. I combed back all my hair and tied it up. There wasn’t much more I could do, this was as good as I was going to look. My face held a long cut across my cheek and the surrounding area was bruised. I didn’t hurt as much but the fight was visible.

I went back downstairs to get rid of a few nagging questions in my head. “That envelope Michael asked me to give you and the meeting on the rooftop. That doesn’t have anything to do with this, does it?” I asked Caleb in the kitchen.

“No, it was an agreement. There hasn’t been any trouble in town in the last weeks. The fact it happened on the same night is a sheer fluke.” He explained sounding confidant, I believed him. Michael nor Dominic would never use a child to get business done.

“Well, I have to get going it’s a long drive.”

“You shouldn’t go alone.”

“I shouldn’t do a lot of things but I’ll be back if that’s what you’re worried about.” I turned around and left the house realizing he was worried and it left me feeling strange because he wasn’t the type I saw being worried for me. I wasn’t used to it.

The Coven village was a five hour drive. I had planned to go as far as possible when I ran from home but they would’ve expected that. When I arrived in Celestin I decided it was the place for me and never left or looked back.