8. Zander

When I finally make it up to the fox cabins, it’s late afternoon. Idly, I wonder if I should have offered to get the kids from school. I hope that I don’t miss Mia on the road, but I don’t see anyone coming down the gravel when I come up, so she’s probably still there.

I’m so excited to see her again, I feel a little… buzzy. Like there’s a nervous jitter in my legs. My skin feels itchy. I want to run with her again, through the woods. She’s such a beautiful fox. As with most shifters, she’s bigger than the animal would be on its own, but her coat was luscious looking—a thick, copper red that’s only a shade lighter than her hair.

Her little fox smile is so perfect for her personality.

That same settled, sure feeling comes over me. There’s no doubt in my mind that this woman is the woman I want to be my mate. I just wish my parents could meet her.

She’d give them hell. They probably wouldn’t like her at first. But eventually, they would. Mia operates like that.

In a way, the fact that it’s their advice that turned the narrative around her in my head is them meeting her. My parents said that when I met my mate, I would know.

I didn’t know right away, for sure. But I definitely know now.

I park the truck, and I’m about to unload some of the timber when I pause.

Something seems… off.

I wish Mia had a phone. I make a mental note to get one for her, then I hear the screen door slam closed and the creak of someone on their little cabin porch.

I round the truck, hoping that it’s Mia, but I pause once I see who is standing there.

It’s Josh.

“Hey, man. Is your sister around?”

“No.”

Oh, boy. This is how we’re going to do this? “Okay. Do you know where she went?”

“What did you do to her?”

Shit. How does he know? I sigh and walk away from the truck. “Listen, Josh, I… I really care about your sister.”

I love her so much that it feels weird. Like I wasn’t living a full life before I met her. Like loving her is some kind of rock, and my whole world now revolves around it.

He’s unmoved. He glares at me, his eyes flashing yellow. “So?”

“So, I’d like to know where she went because I want to talk to her about something.”

“No.”

This is getting annoying. However, I remember being his age. I remember how it felt to have a chip on my shoulder so big, it felt like the whole world was just sitting there, weighing me down.

Instead of snarling at him and ordering him to tell me where Mia is, I take a deep breath.

“Can you tell me why you’re just saying no, instead of being helpful?”

“Because I don’t want you to know where she is,” he says plainly.

I have to give it to him. Honesty seems to really be working for him here. I nod, respecting the choice. “That’s fair.”

“Good. So leave, then.”

“Not gonna do that, Josh.”

“Why?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “This argument is getting circular. I care about Mia. You care about Mia. Why don’t we work on the same team here, and I can help you, and you can help me. We’ll both be honest about where she is and go from there. How does that sound?”

Josh shuffles on his feet.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Something’s wrong. “Is she okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

He hesitates, his eyes looking down on the ground. “She was crying.”

My heart skips a beat. “What?”

“When she left. She was crying. Not in front of us, but she had been. She went to go get some stuff from the grocery store, but when she came back, she didn’t have any food, and she had been crying. I could smell it, and her eyes were all red and puffy. When she cries a lot, her face looks like shit, and it takes a long time to go back to normal,” he mutters.

I take a step forward. “Did she say why she’d been crying?”

“No. Just that she was going somewhere, and she’d be back. She said that it was really important that I knew she’d be back.”

That makes sense. She wouldn’t want her brother to feel abandoned again. “Okay. And she didn’t say where she was going?”

“No, but she took one of the cars that Briony said we could use. So you need to know she didn’t steal it, okay? I know you think that we steal shit, but Mia would never. She is going to get something, and she’ll be back soon.”

I shut my eyes. I never should have said that stupid stuff about fox shifters being thieves. It’s a stereotype, one that obviously doesn’t apply to all foxes. I don’t even know if it applies to any foxes.

Looking back, I was such an idiot. Zander Black. Lead enforcer. The one who made sure that when all the pack’s minds were on one thing, they’d stay that way. The one who had social currency to spend and chose to spend it on harassing innocent foxes.

“I’m sorry, Josh. I never should have said that.”

His eyes snap to mine. They’re a little less yellow now, more the same shade of green as his sister. “What?”

“About foxes. You aren’t thieves. It was a stupid, ignorant thing to say, and I don’t know why I said it.”

I was just being… me. The Zander that everyone expects, instead of the Zander who follows his heart and listens to the truth.

“So Mia didn’t tell you where she was going?”

“No. But…” Josh hesitates. He knows something.

“It’s okay. You can tell me,” I say softly.

“She said something about a seven-hour drive.”

My heart thumps. “Seven hours? Why would that be important?”

“Because that’s how long it takes.”

“How long what takes, Josh?”

His eyes are fully green, no yellow in sight, when they lock on mine.

“That’s how long it takes to get home.”

Home.

Why on earth is Mia headed back to New Mexico?

Since she’s in a pack vehicle, I have the ability to track it. She’s scooting along the highway at a breakneck pace, headed south. Hopefully she won’t take the main interstate, because if that’s the case…

I’ll catch up with her. I tell myself that I will.

Currently, however, my mind is chewing on the fact that Mia just… left. Without telling me.

Does it have something to do with the water rights buried on their old land? I told her that I would help her with the appeal. I’ve already messaged my dad’s friend, who’s the wolf representative at the Supernatural Bureau. He said he would make time for me soon.

This makes no sense. Unless…

My heart sinks.

I didn’t even consider the fact that she might not have wanted my help with that problem. That she doesn’t actually need it, and my offer was offensive.

That thought, though, opens the door to an even worse one.

Maybe Mia doesn’t want to have something with me. Maybe for her, this is fake. She didn’t feel the need to check in with me before she left because we aren’t together. She wants my help, but I also know she’s too proud to take anything from someone without trying to get it herself first.

Maybe she thinks this is still a fake relationship. Just like we said it was.

My eyes widen, and the road in front of me blurs. Last night, I kind of hinted at the fact that I wanted more. That our relationship was not fake for me anymore. But it wasn’t a real discussion. I made a throwaway comment, a joke that’s been running between us since we started this whole relationship. I said something about ‘my real girlfriend,’ which we’ve both said before.

It hasn’t been fake for me since the kiss at Thorne’s house.

It hasn’t been fake for you since you showed up with coffee on her front porch.

The realization rocks me. Somehow in the past few months, Mia has become a major feature in my life. More than that, she’s someone that I love.

She’s the woman I want to be my mate.

And she might not feel the same way. At all.

My phone rings, breaking me out of the thoughts that are cascading through me in a flood of anxiety and disappointment. I grab it, not bothering to look at who it is. “What?” I snap.

Briony is on the other end. “Wow. Way to greet me with a pleasant tone.”

“Sorry. I’m just…”

“Are you okay?”

I sigh. “No. Mia left.”

“Left?”

“She isn’t with the foxes. She’s gone.”

“Is she okay?”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” I say from between clenched teeth.

She sighs. “Okay. Are you following her on the pack car’s GPS?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I saw you talking to Terra earlier. How’s she doing?”

I pause. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and I grip the steering wheel of my truck so tightly that my knuckles turn white. “When did you see that?’

“Oh, I was on my way to the store and drove past.”

“What?”

Briony laughs. “You know how you can drive past the hardware store if you want to take a side road to the grocery? That’s what I did because I was on the phone with Evander and didn’t want to get stuck at that stupid intersection where the roadwork is happening.”

She went to the grocery store but didn’t come back with any food.

“No,” I whisper out loud.

The pieces click together in my mind. If Briony saw Terra and I talking on the way to the store… then Mia might have, too.

I held Terra’s hand.

Oh.

Shit.

Fuck.

“I have to go,” I bark into the phone. Briony makes a sound of protest, but I cut her off and open the GPS tracking app.

Whether or not Mia thinks our relationship is fake is unknown. But I have a feeling she wants this as much as I do.

Because if she saw me holding Terra’s hand… and she didn’t think that our relationship was fake…then she’d be upset. Very upset. Upset enough to drive seven hours back to New Mexico.

I slam on the gas, and my truck roars down the road.

I have to find her before she walks straight into a den of literal mountain lions. I have to ask her how she feels.

Mostly, though, I have to tell her how I feel. Because for me, this isn’t fake.

Not in the slightest.