Shiloh laughs, a broken sound. “Everyone says that. Do you think if they repeat it enough, they’ll change the truth?”
We drive north and north and north, until we near the edge of the city limits. This far from the center of Amazon territory, the buildings are all one and two stories, and a good portion of them are residential. People who can’t afford the higher cost of living nearer to the river. It should set them up for raids from the perimeter, but Aisling has several blocks along the edge of the city converted to what is essentially a kill box. Anyone attempting to invade will be met with force and eliminated.
Both the Mystic faction and ours have something similar, though Ezekiel has been overseeing the revamping of ours. Those blocks in all three territories are part of the reason we chose to return the way we did—using Lammas to force a ceasefire.
Not that any of that shit matters right now, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Shiloh is a fucking Amazon and has been this entire time. Monroe is shaking against me, but I can’t see her face to tell if she’s upset or furious, so I just hug her tighter against me. “Shiloh—”
“We’re almost there.” She turns, too sharply, and slams to a stop in front of an empty lot between two buildings. Judging from the charred remains and a few concrete half walls, it wasn’t always empty. She throws the truck into park and climbs out before I can dredge up some kind of verbal response.
What the fuck am I supposed to say?
“An Amazon,” Monroe murmurs. “Her parents were fucking Amazons.” She twists to look up at me, her green eyes shining. “I know this place, Broderick. The people here hurt a child when I was twenty-one, and I killed them and burnt their home to the ground.” Her lower lip quivers before she seems to make an effort to still it. “I killed Shiloh’s parents. I didn’t even know they had a child.”
“How could you have known?” As Shiloh said, Monroe was only fifteen when Shiloh left the city.
“I should have known.” She reaches past me for the door. “They were fucking priests for my mother. She should have known.”
Ah.
That’s the crux of it.
I open the door, and we slowly climb out and join Shiloh where she stands at the curb, staring at the charred remains of her childhood home. Monroe is still moving strangely, but she waves me off when I lean in her direction. She’s right. Shiloh is our priority. I move to stand behind her and carefully wrap my arms around her, moving slow so she can shrug me off if she wants.
She doesn’t.
Shiloh tucks my arms around her like a security blanket and leans back against me, hard. This close, I can feel the fine tremors shuddering through her body. “I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“Why are you sorry, Broderick?” She’s speaking too fast, her words tumbling over each other to escape her lips. “Is it a problem that you’ve been fucking not one but two Amazons this whole time?”
I turn her in my arms until I can see her face. Her eyes are red, but there are no tear tracks on her face. Somehow, that makes it worse. I carefully take her shoulders. “I love you.”
Shiloh flinches. “But—”
“I. Love. You,” I repeat. “You are more than the faction you were born into, more than the abuse you survived, more than everything that came after. Why the fuck would something that happened before we met have any relevance on how I feel about you, Shiloh?”
Her tremors get stronger. “You hate Amazons.”
Next to us, Monroe gives a wild laugh. “Not all Amazons, love. Not…” She drags in a rough breath. “I killed your parents. Did you know that?”
Against all reason, that seems to steady Shiloh. Her lips curve in a sad smile. “Guess you got your wish, after all.”
“Don’t do that,” Monroe whispers. “Don’t make light of this catastrophic failure on my part.”
“Monroe.” Shiloh shakes her head, her hair brushing across my arm. “I said it before and I’ll say it again—you’re three years younger than I am. What could you have possibly done?”
“I could have killed them sooner.” Monroe reaches out but hesitates before she touches either of us. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, love. I didn’t…” She makes a pained sound. “I can’t believe the shit I said to you. Why didn’t you punch me in the face when I was talking about how that would never happen in my faction?”
“The thought did cross my mind.” Shiloh’s still shaking, but she feels a little steadier, less likely to shatter. “What happened to them?”
I open my mouth to ask if she’s sure she wants to know, but Monroe beats me to speaking. She always did have more faith in Shiloh’s strength, more willingness to let our woman stand on her own two feet without a protective cocoon around her. “They hurt someone about six years after you left.”
“A child.”
“A child,” she confirms. “I was the one sent to handle the situation and to make examples of them.”
Shiloh draws in a full breath and releases it in a shuddering exhale. “I’m glad. I… I should have done it myself, but I couldn’t.”
“No. No, Shiloh, you shouldn’t have done it yourself. No part of this is on you.” Again, Monroe reaches out. Again, she drops her hand before it makes contact. “We failed you.”
Shiloh catches her wrist
