“I’m sorry,” Brooklyn said, taking a deep breath and shaking her brown hair back.
“Wait, don’t tell me you’re going to miss me,” I said with a grin. “You hated me the whole time we were at Ravenwood.”
“I have to tell you something,” Brooklyn said, biting her lip and casting a guilty look my way.
My heart lurched, and my mind immediately went to the secret I’d been keeping from the wolves—that I was also a vampire. Had she told them?
“Okay…” I said slowly.
Brooklyn crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, avoiding my eyes as she spoke. “Remember when you took the compatibility test?”
“Yes…”
“Well, the guys asked me to do whatever it took to distract their creepy old dad,” she said. “And… It ended up there was only one way to keep him distracted all night.”
“Oh my god,” I said, sickness gripping my insides at the memory of the last thing I’d seen at that Christmas ball. Brooklyn grinding on Mr. Wolf, his creepy hands all over her. “Brooklyn. I’m so sorry. I would never have asked you to do that or wanted you to do that. I’m sure they didn’t mean you had to go that far.”
She scoffed. “You’ve met them, haven’t you? They’d go to any length to get a mate. And I—I was disposable to them.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, a knot forming in my throat as I sank onto the edge of the bed. She was right. And in some way, I was to blame. They’d been sneaking me out, so Mr. Wolf wouldn’t be part of the test.
“I know it’s not your fault,” she said. “You were the same as me.”
“Then why are you apologizing?” I asked, swallowing hard. I knew there was something more, something she was working up to.
She gnawed at her lip again, leaning back against the doorframe. “Well, I know that now,” she said. “But I was so pissed about it, that I had to do that for you, and that you might be the wolf they were looking for while I was just trash to them…”
My heart began to hammer, and I clenched my fists on my knees and waited for her to go on.
“I sort of… Manipulated him into telling me about the test. And then I trashed your results.”
“What?”
She pulled her shoulders up toward her ears, looking miserable as she stared out the window instead of at me. “I’m sorry. I’m a small, petty, jealous person. If I couldn’t be special, I didn’t want to have to watch them kiss your ass and ignore me for the rest of my life. Or shove me off on their dad every time they needed to distract him.”
I thought about it a long minute, then shook my head and stood. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
“I’m sure there’s lots of alchemists or witches here who could do it,” she said desperately.
“You know, I don’t really care,” I said. “I chose Alarick, and he chose me. We don’t need alchemy to know we love each other.”
“But he could be your mate.”
“He is,” I said. “We didn’t need a test to tell us that.”
“That’s not the same as a fated mate.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I think I always knew we were supposed to be together. I dreamed about him long before I met him.”
Brooklyn looked like she’d argue, but then she shook her head and moved on. “Are you mad?”
“No,” I said honestly. “They treated you horribly, and I get why you did it.”
I’d been so sure the test would show that I was Alarick’s mate, and now I knew why it hadn’t. But in truth, she’d probably saved me a ton of drama and heartache, given me freedoms I’d never have had if I’d been compatible with a wolf. Of course, I also wouldn’t have ever been attacked, killed, and turned into a vampire. But that was all in the past now.
“I should have told you before,” Brooklyn said. “I wanted to. I just didn’t know how, and I thought Alarick might murder me or cast me out, and I’d be a lone wolf.”
“And now you found your mate.”
“And I realize how selfish it is to keep anyone else from theirs,” she said. “I hope you can find Donovan’s and Adolf’s, too.”
“I’ll try,” I said. I stopped in front of her, and after a second, I laughed and gave her a hug. She might not be perfect, or have made all the right decisions, but I was hardly one to talk. In truth, I’d gotten used to her prickly exterior, and I’d sort of miss her. She had a lot of fight in her, and I could admire that. Plus, it was nice to see that after so much heartache and trauma, she’d finally found the mate she’d wanted so badly.
“I might see you again,” she said, releasing me after our embrace.
“Maybe,” I said. “If not… I hope you’re happy.”
With that, I headed downstairs, thanked our hosts, and after a bit of instruction, I took off with the Wolf brothers.
“And then there were four,” Donovan said as we traipsed into the woods on the trail that they’d told us led to the witch valley. We followed it past an old, falling down stone house in a briar patch, a little stream, and up the mountainside. It was dotted with blackened tree trunks amid lots of smaller trees, obviously the site of a recent forest fire. When we reached the top of the mountain, the trees were healthier, and we found Cayenne and Malik waiting in a clearing where they said they’d meet us, in the shadow of a huge white lighthouse.
Astrid was doing cartwheels in the grass beside
