She looked beautiful.

“Ready to go?”

“No,” She said, “but that doesn’t matter.”

She was right. It didn’t. We had to go anyway.

Despite Lou’s other mom assuring us they’d be fair, neither of us were looking forward to the tribunal. Would they see me as the wounded party, and want to punish Lou? Would it be a panel of animal mages? What if they wanted to hush everything up—or worse, what if they liked the idea of getting a shapeshifter of their very own?

Dread filled my gut. It wasn’t that those last few were very likely, but what did I know? I had no idea what we were facing. At the very least, Lou was in trouble. I didn’t like Lou being in trouble. Especially since I had the uneasy feeling that it was more my fault than hers. The wolf had been convinced that we’d trapped Lou, not the other way around. Had I accidentally torpedoed Lou’s career?

This morning had been…shit, this morning had been a gift. Lou didn’t see it that way, I could tell. Didn’t want to take advantage. But the weird thing about holding Lou this morning was it hadn’t felt like I was holding her. It felt like she’d been holding me. Lou had the biggest, fluffiest fucking heart, like one of those enormous beanbag chairs, but she didn’t let just anyone sit on it. But once you were there? She was a fierce little thing.

Having that, even for a moment, had felt like standing in the middle of the fucking sun. Maybe it wasn’t my sunshine to keep, but basking in hers had felt amazing.

Which made our distance now harder to take. Something had eclipsed the sun and here I was, naked, vulnerable, and shivering in the middle of a field. You know, metaphorically speaking. Literally speaking, I was sitting in a car wearing a damn tie.

I hated ties, even ones that reminded me of my sister. They felt too much like a leash, and the idea of being leashed again made me break into a cold sweat. But I didn’t want to show up to the tribunal looking like a scrub, either. That wouldn’t do Lou any good.

Lou had closed off her end of the bond. I wasn’t getting anything. The silence was thick as we got on the highway in my SUV. Lou wasn’t in any headspace to concentrate, and if I’d let her drive, I think we would have ended up in a ditch. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling much better, but my hands were steady. Fuck, maybe we should have hitched a ride with someone.

Even though she’d shut down her barriers tight, so I couldn’t actually feel what she was feeling, I didn’t need to—her leg was jiggling a mile a minute and she was chewing on her thumb, a scowl on her face. The thick smell of fear and worry flowed off her. Without thinking I reached over and put my hand on her leg, stilling it.