There was a quality to his voice that should have stirred my instincts, but I wasn’t listening to my inner voice. I was Hedi the mate-claimer, and she was lifting the quilt intent on panty retrieval, her Nightingale instincts on full alert. “Is there anything I could give him that would make his withdrawal easier?” I asked, sweeping the mattress with my hand.
No answer. No panties, either. Frowning, I flicked a glance upward.
My Trowbridge studied me, then chewed the corner of his lip, and then drew his leg up so that he could rest his wrist on his knee, and then—finally, after all those thens—he said quietly, “Don’t go down there. That’s not the way you’re going to want to remember him.”
And bang. The wheels on the bus stopped turning.
A flush tinted his cheeks. “I won’t have to. Your brother’s been on the juice for decades … He can’t go without it.” Pity on his face. Regret in his tone. “In a day, maybe less, he’s going to go into convulsions, and then he’s going to die.” Blue eyes steady on me, he delivered the final slap. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
He shook his head. “I won’t let you cross that portal.”
Merry scratched against my palm as if to say, “Let’s have another think on this.” But
The man who’d trailed a line of kisses along my spine only an hour ago now swung his legs out of his bed and stood. Legs spread and planted. “No. You can’t.”
And then I understood.
Everything. Welcome to Part II of the “later shit.”
“You knew,” I said, backing away. “You knew even as you promised me that you wouldn’t hurt him, that the worst had already been done. You’ve known since this morning.” Disbelief and disgust churned my gut. “All the time we spent making love … Oh, you ripe bastard, you knew.”
“You said that in this bed it was just you and me!”
“You could have—”
“I didn’t cause this,” he said harshly. “He’s been a dead man walking for a long, long time.”
An expression of such sadness swept over his face, as if he could see the hurt ahead, could already measure the size of the resulting scar. “Don’t, sweetheart,” he said.
I spun for the door—just as he knew I would.
Weres.
They’re so fast when they want to be. Before I could turn the handle, Trowbridge had caught me by the hips. Then I was being turned, and his body slid between me and escape as he repeated, in a voice laced with sadness and awful knowledge, the same utterly useless request. “Don’t, sweetheart.”
Don’t what? Don’t fight?
Let death win?
Never.
I launched myself at him, striking out blindly with my nails, my fists, my feet. Ever stoic, he weathered my abuse silently. Never striking back. Never flinching. His gaze filled with so much pain for me that I wanted to scratch out his eyes.
Unmovable. The ultimate doorstop.
When most of the fight went out of me, and I slid to the old wool carpet, he followed, wrapping his arms around me, absorbing my weight and my misery as my knees collapsed.
We knelt together. His body curved around mine.
And I hated him.
Dust bunnies quivered against the baseboards as I panted and seethed.
“I don’t care if you hate me,” he said in a fierce whisper. “I won’t let him hurt you again. I won’t let him take you down with him.”
It was there, inside me—black and bitter—my Fae’s dark and wicked wish to render him as helpless as me. She lifted her dragon snout to murmur, “Teach this wolf our strength.”
It would be so easy. He’d forgotten the danger of our hands, hadn’t he? Past his shoulder we could see a variety of things we could use to stun him. The old bulky television, the lamp with its fussy shade. We could turn this room into a maelstrom of Fae might.
My Fae smiled, the tip of her forked tail flicking.
We could destroy this room, this man, this unsettling love.
I came close. Right there, in that room of ugly wallpaper and easy chairs with broken springs, I could have splintered into three separate pieces, because all the straws had been piled, one after the other, on this camel’s back.
Was it always going to be like this?
Always caught in the middle between two loyalties?
Never Fae enough for the Fae. Never Were enough for the wolves.
Never knowing which side to pick.
Trowbridge pressed his chin to our sweating brow.
And finally, found the perfect words.
“I love you, Hedi Peacock.”
Okay, if there really was a fairy godmother, and sweet wishes turned plain cupcakes into red velvet cake batter, I would have told him that I loved him right back. Right then, right there. Cue round three of hot sex. But I knew suddenly, just by the hurting squeeze on my heart, that life isn’t baby-fat cupids, and valentines with two lines of
It should have filled me with unholy delight. Hadn’t I longed for those words? Then, why did I feel like I was wearing hip boots and a rain slicker while fireworks burst over my head?
I took a time-out, and once more let him gather me up like I was a witless rag doll. I said not a word as he deliberated between bed or easy chair once again, nor commented “smart” when he opted once again for upright over vertical. I lay unprotesting in his arms as he dragged his blunt fingernails lightly up my backbone. Remained unmoved as he parted the hair at my nape to press a melting kiss on the knob of my spine.
“Love doesn’t triumph over all,” I said, resting my ear on his warm chest.
“I’m tired, Trowbridge,” I said slowly. “I’ve been trying to make parts of me invisible, and I’m pretty sure I can’t do it anymore. I am all three things—the Were, the Fae, and the girl. Which means that I’m never going to be the easy—or even the right—fit for you. My inner-Were isn’t a dominant wolf, and my Fae comes out at the worst times. I’m never going to run with you under the moon with your pack. And I’m always going to be seventeen years younger than you.”
“I know,” he murmured, combing my hair with his fingers.
“I’ll never forgive your pack,” I told him. “They tried to kill me. And you’ll never forget who my brother is. Or what he has done to you.” I knew the answer—in my heart I
A pause, soaked with bitter memories.
