“It’s number thirteen.” And he wanted her to sit in it? Was he crazy?
Ryan spoke slowly, like he was talking to a mentally challenged person. “Yes, like you said, it’s a number.”
“An unlucky number.”
“There’s no such thing as luck.” Ryan shook his head, resisting the pointless urge to argue with her over the subject. She was clearly insane, and he should just accept it. “I’ll take that seat, you have mine.”
Makenna almost felt bad placing him in danger by swapping seats. Almost. Leaning back, she soaked up the expectant atmosphere. The crowd was hyped, ramping up the anticipation. She sipped at her Coke through her straw. “Damn, it’s hot.”
Wedged between them, Zac grinned. “Dude, these seats are fleek. How did you get such good tickets so late?”
“I already had them. Dominic and Trick were going to come with me.” They hadn’t been too happy to lose their tickets and had pointlessly complained. Ryan had stared at them until they had thrown their hands up and walked away. “Are you any good at football?”
“I’m all right. I play with Colton and some of the other guys at the shelter sometimes.”
That name made his wolf growl; he viewed the male as a rival. Personally, Ryan didn’t believe Makenna was dating Colton. That didn’t mean he wanted to hear about him.
“Makenna used to come along and watch . . . but they banned her from the games.”
Ryan blinked. “Banned?”
Makenna adjusted her sunglasses. “It was totally unwarranted.”
Zac laughed. “You punched the ref, and that was before the game even started.”
“He told Cady she couldn’t play because girls were too fragile for football. I was merely proving to the chauvinist asshole that not all females are fragile.”
There was genuine outrage in her voice, and Ryan was getting the impression that Makenna was a female who would stubbornly stand behind any key causes that she believed in. He liked that.
Originally, he’d suspected that she was using the shelter as a place to hide or to seek redemption. But now he was thinking . . . “Supporting the shelter is your way of fighting for loners, isn’t it?” Those shifters had no rights, no protection, and had a terrible reputation—it was an injustice that the Makenna he was coming to know would despise. Maybe because nobody fought for her.
Makenna didn’t like that he’d read her so well. She gave him a breezy smile. “The shelter’s pretty cool, right?”
She was good at evasiveness, Ryan acknowledged. It was irritating. “Do you often answer a question with a question?”
“Do you think I do?”
He barely fought the urge to grind his teeth. Instead, he bit into his hot dog.
“Makenna told me you’re a tracker,” said Zac. “Where did you learn to track?”
“One of the enforcers in my old pack taught me when I was a kid.”
“A kid?”
“I spent a lot of time with the enforcers.” At first it had been because his mother frequently dumped him on them—wanting his father, who was a trainee, to care for him. Ryan hadn’t minded. He’d been fascinated by it. So they had given him the same training, taught him to fight, to hunt, and—later—to kill. Those enforcers had given him the skills and confidence he had today as well as a talent he could take pride in. At home, he’d felt like an inconvenience and a burden. Being around the enforcers had given him a sense of belonging, made him feel useful and worth something.
“Do you like being one?”
“Yes.” It was all he’d ever wanted to do.
Zac scoffed down a few pieces of popcorn. “What’s it like?”
“Hard. Grueling. Rewarding. Long hours.” Although, to be fair, he worked longer hours than most. “This morning, I was up at six a.m.—”
“Seriously? Dude, I don’t even know what six a.m. looks like.”
Makenna smiled as Zac listened avidly to Ryan’s bullet-point description of a typical day for an enforcer. She couldn’t help but notice that Ryan didn’t include any of his feelings on his position or the responsibilities. It didn’t even seem he was being evasive or bottling his emotions. It was as if it didn’t occur to him that people would care to hear about his feelings on matters.
She wondered if it had anything to do with his parents. When she’d researched Zac’s family, looking for potential guardians, she’d learned about Ryan’s parents. His mother was a selfish, chronic complainer and his father was a retired enforcer who had a big fondness for whiskey.
Growing up around such emotionally absent, self-absorbed parents would certainly lead a kid to believe that their feelings simply weren’t relevant. The thought of a small Ryan being overlooked and emotionally isolated made her ache. Her wolf growled, protective of Ryan. Makenna could admit that she, too, felt a little protective of the surly male. She didn’t bother questioning why—her thoughts often made no sense. Besides, she didn’t have time to think on it any further, because the stadium announcer’s voice suddenly blasted through the speakers.
Although Makenna wasn’t necessarily a big fan of football, she found herself enraptured by what was happening. The game was pretty intense. Like most of the crowd, Zac cheered, gasped, cursed, yelled advice, and complained about penalties. Ryan remained as reserved as always. Sometimes he would grunt or shake his head, and his eyes would twinkle whenever a touchdown was scored.