Mackenna couldn’t take it anymore. Tossing the blanket off her legs, she struggled to sit up.
“Hey, whoa.” Cade jumped up from his chair and hurried over, placing a hand on her shoulder to keep her on the bed. “Easy, Mack. What are you trying to do?”
“I was trying to get up so I could give you a hug.”
“Give me a…” Chuckling under his breath, he rolled his eyes as he scooped her up from the mattress and took her place, repositioning them so that she was settled securely on his lap. “This good?”
“Well, I was supposed to be hugging you.” She snuggled deeper into his arms and buried her nose against the side of his neck. “This works, though. I’m really sorry about your sister.”
“Me, too. I just wish I could have been there. I know I couldn’t have done anything, but I hate that she died alone.”
Mackenna’s heart ached for him. “What about your parents?”
She felt him shake his head. “Dad ran off when I was a kid, and my mom died about ten years before the Purge. It was just me and Maddy.”
“Where were you when it happened? The virus, I mean.”
“I was stationed in Georgia when everything went down. I had a little house a couple of miles off base. I guess it was about three days after everyone started getting sick when I came home and found Maddy on my couch.” He paused and swallowed hard, straining the muscles in his neck. “She was already gone. There wasn’t anything I could do for her.”
She couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like for him, and she hadn’t thought it possible, but the story only got worse from there.
He talked about being held captive briefly by a pack of werewolves in St. Louis, then sold to the Abraxas coven—a name she actually recognized. Thankfully, she’d never had any run-ins with the vampires, but the name alone was enough to elicit fear in even the bravest Gemini.
When he got to the part about being slowly drained for weeks inside an abandoned movie theater, she pressed a hand to her chest, hoping to ease the ache in her heart. It didn’t work.
“Oh, Cade.”
He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, but his scent reeked of bitterness. “The Revenant saved me. They got me out and fixed me up, but Abby wasn’t there.”
Understandably, his knowledge of how the female had ended up in an auction and eventually purchased by the Ikande lion shifters was a little fuzzy. “Apparently, they’re this group of albino shifters. Generations of inbreeding isn’t the best way to produce a strong line. So, they started kidnapping females or buying them from these auctions to…uh…breed them.”
Mackenna almost threw up in her mouth. “That’s where you were headed when you found me, isn’t it?”
Cade nodded, his cheek rubbing against the top of her head.
He was still healing from his imprisonment with the Abraxas coven, but he’d still been prepared to risk everything to bring Abby home safely. Instead of going on with the rest of the team, however, he’d stayed behind.
He’d stayed because of her.
Obviously, she hadn’t known any of that, and it wasn’t as if she’d asked him to stay. Even if she hadn’t known about Abby, the Ikandes, or any of the rest of it, she wouldn’t have asked him to stay behind when people needed his help. Still, guilt gnawed at her.
She lifted her head, forcing herself to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry for any trouble I caused you. I can see how much you wanted to be there.”
“What?” Cade shook his head. “No.” Brushing her hair back, he pressed his palm to her cheek and sighed. “No, Mack, it’s not like that. I mean, yes, I wanted to go after Abby. I wanted to do what I could to help all the women being held there. We all did.” Leaning in, he pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead. “I don’t regret staying, though, not for a minute.”
Whether it was true or not, he clearly believed it.
It was the perfect segue to the conversation they’d been avoiding all day, but that didn’t make her any more apt to start it. “I guess we should talk about that.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “About us.”
There was none of the anger she’d expected. No tension or apprehension. Instead, he nodded a couple of times, then lifted her hand to press a kiss to her knuckles.
“Let me start by saying that up until recently, I had a pretty negative view of the Gemini as a whole. I certainly never thought I would be mated to one.” He slipped a finger under her chin when she lowered her head, encouraging her to meet his eyes again. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you. I’m trying to explain why I’m probably going to be terrible at this.”
“Well, not wanting to be mated to a werewolf will do that.”
Cade shook his head. “You’re not listening. I never said I didn’t want to be mated to you.” He brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. “I am going to have questions, though, and I’m going to need you to be patient with me.”
As much as she wanted to be offended, she could understand where he was coming from. If her first introduction to humans had been at the hands of Hunters, she’d probably despise the entire
