Tasting

395–Found A Dead Body

Nora:

“What is going on?” I watched Nash stop his car to answer a phone call.

“Okay! We’ll be there,” he hung up the call and rested his head against the seat.

“Can you start the freaking car? There’s no time to be dramatic,” I hissed, and he steadily turned his face toward me, staring.

“You need to shut up now, Nora,” he said, delivering a serious threat. “Or I’ll make it so you’ll want to snatch my lips off my face right now.”

I fell silent before rolling my eyes. If he kissed me, I would punch him in the face.

“Can you start the car? There’s a guy who’s missing. Nash! He was so anxious the whole time he was talking to us,” I began to rant, recalling how scared that poor guy had sounded when Nash decided to silence me with one statement.

“They found his dead body in the school’s bathroom.”

I paused, turning to look at him with a frown on my forehead before grunting.

“They found his dead body?” I didn’t know what was more tragic: that he had been killed at school or that maybe even if I had had guards take care of him, he would have ended up dead anyway.

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395–Found A Dead Body

“And the security footage shows him to be the only one going into the school’s bathroom. You know what that means, right?” he uttered, and I just sat there, staring straight ahead.

“He was destined to die after he crossed paths with the Weeping Guardians,” I sighed, putting my hands over my eyes.

“And you’re thinking about blaming Cain for it?” His comment made me remove my hands and look at him.

“I’m just saying, I understand we messed up, but you don’t even want us to tell you why? Because, Nora, we had a reason, and we did it all for you.”

He shocked me because how was it for me that I cried and cried, and they just cut me off?

“Oh, really? I know,” I nodded.

“You do?” He immediately lowered his voice.

“Yeah, it was for my own good that I was no longer in your shadows.” With that, I finished talking to him and turned my head to the window. I didn’t plan to go to the school.

I wasn’t a doctor. Silas would take care of the body and tell us what the cause of death was.

“Okay, good,” he slammed his hand on the steering wheel before turning to me once again. “If you think this whole act will fool us, you’re wrong. We will not rest until we find out the truth–the truth about you and Brody–and then you will have to come back.” With that, he started the car and drove us to a nearby café.

Since we had been on the road since morning, it was for the best

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395 Found A Dead Body

that we had something to eat. We sat down and ordered food, all the while I kept having flashbacks of my conversation with Robert.

“May I ask you something?” Nash pulled me back to reality, and I gently raised my head to give him a nod to go ahead.

“What is that beautiful anklet on your foot?” My heart did a flip when he tilted his head and tapped his foot, sitting across the table from me in this open seating area.

“This-” I cleared my throat, avoiding his jaw clenching, “I designed it for myself to control my wolf and also test my abilities.”

I lied, expecting he would ask me more questions, but instead, he just pouted and nodded his head very sarcastically.

“That makes a lot of sense, you know,” sarcasm dripped from his voice.

I shrugged, but deep down, I was hesitant about why he wasn’t asking any more questions. I wanted him to keep going until I had satisfied him.

“You see, the battles and everything require-” I started talking about it again, but he silenced me once more.

“No! I mean, it’s fine. I understand.” He was bobbing his head, causing me anxiety.

“Are you going to put the pack in another lockdown?” Since I wanted to avoid the subject and also discuss the task at hand, I brought up the lockdown without thinking too much about it, but his reaction was really interesting.

He raised an eyebrow and then smiled. “No! We don’t do

395–Found A Dead Body

lockdowns from monsters.”

I wondered why they had put the pack under lockdown then.

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“But-” As I straightened my back, recalling the previous lockdown, a voice interrupted us.

“Nash!”

Oh! How could I forget this voice?

It was Daphne. But she didn’t carry the sass in her voice that she had used previously when she was dating him.

“Daphne?” The way Nash said her name was evidence enough that he didn’t want to see her and wasn’t expecting her to show up.