"I know." He stepped in and wrapped his arms around her. "And I don't want what those two have. I want you. No matter how complicated it is. But you can't expect me to have some magic way to make it easy."
She stared at him mutely, her lips parted. Thinking about what he'd said. Turning it over in her mind. He waited a moment, watching her, and then—without waiting for her to make the first move—he pulled her close. She leaned her head onto the warm, familiar curve of his shoulder. A firefly flash of relief shone through her then disappeared as quickly as it had come. In the dark that followed, there was nothing but despair.
She and Matthew were finally sorting things out, and she was going to have to ruin it by telling him the worst thing imaginable.
"You might not think that when you hear how complicated it is," she said.
"I already know—"
She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked into his eyes. At the confidence and love and relief that were glowing there, like hot coals.
"No, you don't," she said. "Something happened. It's— it's horrible. And I have to tell you." The words were coming faster, tripping over one another as they rushed out. "And I need you to help me and I'm sorry because it's going to ruin everything we just talked about—"
The light in his eyes turned to worry. He lifted a hand to cup the side of her face. "Claire. Stop. Just tell me. What happened?"
"Amy knows," she said simply, needing to get it out. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Matthew's eyes widened. "That must be what she wanted to talk to me about at Emily's. I said we'd had a fight and she got all concerned, but I didn't want to talk to her about it and . . . Oh God, she knows you're a werewolf?" he whispered.
"Yes. She—we—ran into Katherine at the mall, and I guess Amy got suspicious, and then she overheard you and me at the dance and figured it out somehow. She was acting like she still wanted to be friends, like—like she thought she could help me, almost." Claire hung her head. "But the bottom line is that she knows. I told the pack—I had to." Even though it was warm in the Engles' kitchen, her teeth started to chatter.
"Of course you did. What did they say? What are they going to do?" He looked at her with a mixture of dread and hope.
"They aren't going to do anything," she said.
"Really?" His eyebrows shot up. "But no matter how nice Amy is, that can't be safe—"
She interrupted him. "No, it's not, and that's why they've said I have to kill her." Her voice rose with each word, quavering and half-hysterical.
He sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs, which creaked in protest. He stared at her and she said nothing. She watched him thinking. Saw him swallow.
"They won't make an exception?" His voice was little more than a croak.
Claire shook her head.
"But when I found out, they made me a gardien. Why can't they do the same thing for Amy?" His face was pale as milk.
"A gardien is a really rare thing, Matthew. Before you became a secret-keeper, you'd already been kind to my mom, and then you helped me get her out of your dad's lab. This situation is different, and the pack's already said that having any more gardiens is too dangerous. When humans discover us, we don't just make them part of our world. We do everything we can to keep the worlds apart." It sounded like something Marie would say, but Claire could hear the truth in her own words. It murmured to her, ugly and undeniable.
"Why do you have to do it?" he whispered.
"Because I'm the one who was found out. It's—it's sort of a punishment." It felt like the words were too big for her throat.
Matthew stared down at his hands for a long time. Claire dug her fingernails into her thighs, bracing herself. She wouldn't be surprised if he took back everything he'd just said about not minding that she was a werewolf.
Finally, he looked up at her. "Is there any way around it? Some sort of loophole or something?"
She stared at him. Hard. "Do you really think I haven't twisted the whole thing inside out and upside down looking for a way out? It's the law. And beyond that, my mother—my Alpha—ordered me to do it. To have her dead by tonight."
"You really don't have a choice, do you?" Something about the defeated way he said it shook Claire to the core.
"No, I don't." She paused. "But you do. You can't walk away from the pack, but you don't actually have to help me do this." Her voice was almost inaudible. "I would understand. I would walk away from it if I could."
"I'm not letting you go through this alone." His anguished gaze held hers, and grief and relief trampled through Claire, crushing everything else.
"You would really do that?" she asked, still not quite able to believe it.
He held out a hand to her. "For you. And no other reason. How can I help? What—what needs to be done?" He swallowed hard.
"I need an alibi," Claire whispered, "and also an untraceable e-mail address."
Chapter Twenty-One
BACK IN HER room, Claire sat in front of the computer, her hands poised above the keys.