49. Ivy #2
The burned edge has eaten into the hugging girls on the far right. Half a face, half an arm. Gone.
"This is the only picture I have left," Plague says.
I look up at him.
His expression is perfectly controlled. Blank as a mask. But his eyes are a different story, and I'm learning to read the difference.
"They look happy," I say softly.
"They were." He pauses, then clears his throat and chuckles hoarsely. "Our mother would have loved you, Ivy."
My chest aches in the best and worst way simultaneously.
Plague carefully slides the photo back into his wallet. He tucks it into his coat and his hands settle on the table, and I notice the faintest tremor in his fingers before he laces them together.
"Thank you," I say. "For telling me."
He nods once.
"Does Whiskey know?"
"Whiskey knows about the scar. He's seen it. He doesn't know how I got it."
"Will you ever tell him?"
"Probably not. I can tell from the way he looks at it, he wants to punish whoever did it.
And there is no one specific person to punish.
So he would go insane, or try to take over the world in revenge," he says dryly.
"Whiskey with no outlet is apocalyptic, Ivy.
I've seen it. It's the kind of thing you hope to forget. "
A startled laugh chokes out of me before I can stop it. It might not even be appropriate to laugh at all right now.
But he's laughing, too, now.
Not much, but a little. His shoulders come down a few inches as he breathes again for what might be the first time in ten minutes.
"So," he says, lifting his water glass. "I've told you mine."
"Hmm?"
"Tell me about you." He takes a sip. "I know what happened to you. But where did you come from before you became ours?"
His words give me the butterflies.
I pick at the last piece of flatbread, tearing it into smaller pieces I don't eat.
"Well… my dad died when I was seven."
Plague sets his glass down.
"Car accident not long after they got divorced." I shrug the shoulder with the scar. "It was winter. Black ice. He was on his way home from work. Nothing dramatic or newsworthy, just… gone."
The candle flickers between us.
"Welcome to the dead dads club," I say, lifting my glass of water.
Plague snorts. It's one of the most unreserved sounds I've ever heard from him, and I grin even though my chest is tight.
"Exclusive membership," he says flatly. "Terrible benefits."
"Zero stars. Would not recommend." I clink my glass against his. "But hey, at least the company's good."
His eyes soften.
I tear the flatbread smaller. "My mom's alive, though. For what that's worth."
"Which isn't much, from your tone."
"She loved Wade." I hear the bitterness creep in and I don't try to hide it. Not from Plague. "When I brought him home, she acted like I'd won the lottery. Star hockey player, gorgeous, rich, charming. She practically planned the wedding herself."
"Did she know?"
"About the abuse?" I shake my head. "I don't think she wanted to. I tried to tell her once, early on, when things were still just… controlling. Not physical yet. She said I was being dramatic. That all alphas are protective. That I should be grateful he cared so much."
Plague's eyes go flat and cold.
"She's going to be a problem," I add, popping a few pomegranate seeds into my mouth. "Now that everything's public. I keep her number blocked on all my devices for a reason."
He nods like this is the most reasonable thing I've ever said.
"But she'll find a way." I push the torn flatbread around my plate. "She always does. Maybe she'll believe me. Or maybe she'll show up crying, telling me I've ruined my life, that this pack is the real danger, that Wade was such a good alpha, that I should go back."
"Over my dead body," Plague says calmly, taking another sip of water.
He isn't being dramatic, either. I can tell from his stillness that wasn't a joke or an exaggeration. He says it the way he'd say the weather's nice today, and somehow that makes it the most threatening and protective thing he could have said.
"She'll hate you," I warn him. "All of you, actually. Okay. Maybe not Thane."
"I'll send flowers."
I nearly choke on my pomegranate seeds.
He watches me cough and recover with the faintest smirk, and I realize he timed that on purpose, the bastard.
"What about your father?" he asks, quieter now. "What was he like?"
The question catches me off guard. People ask about the death. Nobody asks about the person.
"He was gentle," I say. "Big guy. Soft voice.
He used to read to me every night before bed, even when he'd worked a double shift and could barely keep his eyes open.
" I smile at the memory. "He did all the voices.
Every character. He'd fall asleep mid-sentence sometimes and I'd poke him until he kept going. "
"He sounds like a good man," Plague murmurs. "I wish I could have met him."
I swallow and nod.
I don't have anything else to say. But the silence that follows isn't uncomfortable. Not exactly. It's more like we're catching our breath.
The conversation steers toward other things eventually. How I like to read, and how Thane wants to put bookcases in the loft.
Plague lights up at the idea.
We spend the rest of dinner discussing our favorite books. Science and philosophy for him, of course, but he tells me in no uncertain terms he thinks he's seen Whiskey with a few of my favorites, which is beyond hilarious to me and I know exactly what I'm going to bring up later tonight.
When I get marked.
Plague signals the server and takes care of the bill and an absolutely massive takeout order for Whiskey before I can even reach for my own wallet in my bag. He helps me into my coat at the door, his hand lingering at the small of my back as we step outside.
He opens the car door for me, but I don't get in yet.
"So," I say, leaning against the car and looking up at him. "Are you ready?"
He blinks. "For what?"
"For whatever’s next." I tilt my head, grinning. "You. Me. Whiskey. A king-size bed." I tap Thane's mark through my coat. "And two new ones of these."
His expression doesn't change. If anything, it gets more controlled, which means the opposite of what he wants it to mean.
"Of course I'm ready," he says.
"Mm-hmm."
"I am."
"You sure?" I reach up and straighten a nonexistent wrinkle in his turtleneck. "Because your hands are shaking."
He shoves them into his coat pockets.
"I'm ready," he repeats, firmly. Like saying it with enough conviction will make the red creeping up from his turtleneck disappear.
It doesn't.
I stretch up on my tiptoes and kiss the corner of his mouth. "You're cute when you're nervous."
His ears flame red.
But he doesn't deny it this time.