Forty-Six
FORTY-SIX
Emiel
PRINCESS WAS SAFE. I thought I’d doomed her by deciding to take responsibility for her. The moment I’d agreed to take her home, she’d disappeared—because life was shit and nobody could keep anybody else safe, not ever .
But now she was here, curled in my arms in this awful piss-and-bleach-smelling concrete shithole of suffering and death, and she wasn’t gone forever . I knew, on some level, that I was sitting on my ass in the middle of a hallway with Mia and a bunch of strangers watching me fuckin’ crying over a cat . But I couldn’t do a goddamned thing about it.
Mia was talking quietly with the shelter supervisor and the adoption liaison about paperwork and postoperative care and home introduction . And I was still sitting here with my face buried in Princess’s fur, getting cat hair stuck to my wet cheeks.
She wasn’t trying to squirm away, but she wasn’t purring, either. Just rubbing her face over and over against my shoulder, making a soft little mewling noise every once in a while.
I knew by the scent of summer flowers that Mia was walking toward us. God, I really needed to get on pheromone dampeners, like, yesterday . Between her and Luca coming into heat soon, I was losing my damned mind. I braced in case she was gonna put her hand on my shoulder or something, but she just skirted around us and crouched in front of me.
“Hey.” Her smile was watery. Probably not as watery as my face was.
“You saved her,” I said hoarsely, because that was the least stupid thing I could think of to say.
“ We saved her,” she corrected. “Not sure this would have gone so well if you weren’t helping pay the adoption center’s bills with your donations. Anyway, they say she’s been spayed already, when she went to the Gateway East facility last week. The vet used dissolving sutures, so she won’t have to go back to have them removed.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to take in any details beyond she’s here, she’s safe .
“She’ll need to go in for additional vaccinations and boosters,” Mia continued, “and right now we need to go sign a bunch of stuff.”
“I left the cat carrier at the Hope Project,” I said stupidly.
She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, and my gut lurched with something hot and unwanted. “Yeah, I didn’t even think about that when we were rushing over here. We’ll figure something out, I’m sure. Are you two ready to get up? They said we can do the paperwork in that glass introduction room, so Princess can stay close by.”
I wasn’t ready, but I also didn’t want to be stuck in this concrete box full of unhappy animals any longer. I lurched to my feet, cradling Princess against my chest. Nodding my willingness to go, I let Mia lead the way, heading back in the direction we’d come from when I’d first heard the yowling.
The next forty-five minutes was a blur, but eventually, we walked out of the front door, with me carrying Princess in a cat carrier borrowed from Dr. Kadakia. As soon as we reached the Bronco, Mia stopped and held out her hand to me, palm up.
“Keys,” she said. “I’m driving, no arguments.”
I didn’t usually let other people drive my truck. But if I drove, Princess would have to be alone in her carrier, not knowing what was happening or where we were going. I dug out the keys and dropped them in her palm.
Riding in my own passenger seat was weird, and not all that comfortable with the carrier jammed crosswise on my lap. Mia drove extra-cautiously, I guess because she was used to a little tiny car. But she only fumbled the clutch once, while reversing out of the parking spot. After that, she shifted gears like she knew what she was doing.
“Do you need to stop at the Hope Project and pick anything up for her?” she asked, once we were on the highway out of Belleville.
I shook my head. “I’ll get the carrier tomorrow and take this one back to the adoption place during lunch. Maybe give ’em some more money while I’m at it.”
The soft smile she angled toward me made me feel uncomfortable. I stuck my fingers through the ventilation holes in the carrier. A soft cheek rubbed against my fingertips, and a moment later, Princess started gnawing gently on my ring finger—her sharp teeth not breaking the skin.
“Home it is, in that case,” Mia said. She seemed to catch herself, shooting me a sidelong glance. I wondered when she’d started thinking of Zalen’s house as ‘home.’ I kept quiet, though; playing with Princess through the carrier’s air holes... trying to keep her distracted.
When I finally trudged down the basement stairs with my new cat and let her out of the carrier, it still didn’t feel real. Fairytale endings were just that. Fairytales. But Princess was here, and she was mine now.
Mia had waved me off when we came inside the house, saying she’d just make Princess more nervous, and they could get to know each other after she’d settled in. Then she’d gone off to make sandwiches.
I sat alone on the bottom step, watching Princess explore the food and water bowls before giving the litter box a skeptical sniff. The feeling behind my ribs wasn’t exactly good or exactly bad. Mostly, it was just big .
Contrary to what other people probably thought, I wasn’t stupid. I knew this tight, too-big feeling was tied up with my own psychological shit. It was why I’d dragged my heels for so long about bringing Princess home in the first place.
Dragged them for too long, almost.
I’d been... really young when I learned that no one was coming to save you from the monsters. Like, really young. People who had more power did whatever the fuck they wanted to people with less power. People who were stronger did whatever they wanted to people—or animals—that were weaker.
Society had all these rules about what was allowed and what wasn’t... what you could do to someone else’s body without their permission and what you couldn’t. Yet, in dark corners all across the world, people ignored those rules day in and day out. Mostly without ever facing any consequences.
I’d promised myself that I’d become big enough and strong enough and mean enough that no one would ever think they could hurt me again. But I’d also promised myself that I’d never become the monster. I just wanted to be left alone. Not being hurt, and not hurting others... not unless we’d both signed up for it inside a chain-link cage.
The cage fights let me keep my edge, so I knew I’d always be able to fight off another alpha whenever I needed to. They also let me thrash out the monster that lived inside of me, so it wouldn’t escape when I didn’t want it to. I’d always figured everyone in the world had a monster like that inside them, but lately, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
Did Mia have a monster hidden away? Did Luca? Did Zalen? Byron did, but I was pretty sure his had been beaten down too far to ever come out again. I didn’t know if that made him more or less broken than I was.
Princess let out a little chirp and wound her body back and forth through my legs. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t afraid of me. She probably should be. Most people seemed to be. And the rest just didn’t know me well enough yet.
I didn’t like the feeling that I might not be able to keep Princess safe for the rest of her life. What if she ran out the door and got hit by a car, or she got in a cabinet and ate something poisonous... or she got cancer... or chewed through an electrical cord and got electrocuted... or—
I shook my head sharply, knowing that the way my heart started racing in response to all the what-ifs wasn’t normal.
Instead, I poked at the feeling I got when I thought about how someone had trapped Princess and dragged her to a big concrete building to get killed, and we’d saved her in the nick of time. No one had come to save me , but I’d helped save her .
A light knock sounded on the door at the top of the stairs. I twitched, startled, and Princess scampered away to hide in the shadows behind the water heater.
“Hey,” Mia called down softly. “I’ve got those sandwiches. I’m coming down.”
The door opened cautiously. With no sign of a cat trying to make a break for it, Mia came down with two stacked plates held in one hand and two cans of soda tucked under her arm, along with a couple of paper towels. I got up from the bottom step hastily, clearing her path.
“How’s she doing?” she asked, handing me a Dr Pepper and a paper towel.
“Jumpy,” I said.
“Can’t really blame her, poor thing,” she replied, sympathy heavy in her tone. “Here, take one of these sandwiches. They’re tuna salad, and I saved some tuna for her on the side.”
She slid one of the two sandwiches from the top plate to the bottom one and handed the top plate to me. Sure enough, there was a little pile of canned tuna sitting on one corner.
“Thanks,” I said, swallowing the sandwich in a few bites and setting the plate down on the floor. “Guess this was a Michelin star tuna sandwich, huh?”
Mia had retreated to a perch about a third of the way up the staircase and was working more slowly on her own lunch. She snorted.
“Oh, totally .” This, around a mouthful of food. She swallowed gracelessly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Only the best canned tuna and mayo-from-a-jar at this establishment. I did chop the celery, though.”
I had to tear my eyes away as she licked traces of mayonnaise from her fingers, turning to look back at Princess’s hiding place instead.
Fuck, I was taking those damned dampeners starting today .
“It was good,” I mumbled.
Princess chose that moment to poke her head out, whiskers arched forward and nose twitching as she scented the air. After a suspicious look in Mia’s direction, she prowled forward and started delicately eating the tuna from my abandoned plate.
“Smart girl,” Mia said approvingly. “Always go for the human food when it’s on offer.” She set her empty plate on the stair tread next to her and leaned back on her elbows. “We did good today, Emiel. I’m really happy for both of you.”
I prodded at the big ball of overwhelm still stuck behind my lungs. Was this happiness? I wasn’t sure.
“I thought she was gone forever,” I admitted, not sure why I’d said the words aloud.
Her expression sobered. “I know you did. Sometimes it feels like there aren’t a lot of happy endings in the world. I guess we just have to celebrate the ones we do end up getting.”
“I guess so,” I said, looking down in wonder as Princess finished her tuna and started winding around my ankles again.