Chapter 38
Iwoke in a pack-sized bed, to find Glade in my arms.
For a very long time, I remained still, trying to process everything that had happened.
Knight was on her other side, and even asleep, his expression was drawn, one arm around her as if he didn’t know what else to do. Kyan had been in here, too. His autumn persimmon scent hung heavy in the room.
I remained still, reality seeping in like spilled ink, turning the world dark, despite the light filtering through sheer curtains.
We were safe—I thought, anyway. I was groggy, and sleep came and went and time didn’t make much sense.
I awoke properly at her distress. Knight had left now—it was just her and me, and she was restless. I drew her closer, instincts guiding me, even as I realised how little I deserved to be the one to do this.
My breathing relaxed as she did.
Was this real? Or was I dreaming again?
She was so fucking beautiful, so perfect. She deserved better.
I’d failed her.
The pack leader she should have had. The scent match who had let her take the fall… Shame washed over me, wave after wave, and my panic must have come through, because dark lashes fluttered open, and dazed eyes found me.
Her grip tightened as we stared at each other.
She blinked again, glancing around, frowning.
“What…?” Her voice was a low rasp as her eyes darted to the room around her. “Where am I?”
“Safe,” I whispered.
I… thought so; their scents were in here. They had found safety while I was falling apart, and I needed her to believe in it. I knew safety wasn’t something she’d ever been able to believe in before.
Her fists closed around my shirt as she drew closer, forehead resting on my chest as she shook.
She was crying, I realised, and I gently rested my hands on her waist.
“I promise.”
“Your brother.” She looked up, and my heart tripped at her look of desperation. At her fear. “Is he…?” She trailed off, expression cracking.
I struggled to find my voice. “Glade?—”
“Is he alive?”
There was something caught in my throat as I tried to swallow. Finally, I nodded. “Yes.”
I hadn’t killed him. So far from it—I was alive on his whim.
The low whimper she let out shattered me again, and she curled up against me, shaking violently.
“It was…” She trailed off, voice so weak, but she didn’t say any more.
“It’s going to be okay.” I ran my hand along her hair, needing her to know that. She shook her head, and when she looked back up at me, tears clouded her eyes.
“It was… another nightmare?” she whispered. “I can’t…” Her hand drifted to her throat as though she couldn’t breathe. “Please…” She sounded so brittle as she squeezed her eyes shut. With the next words, I felt her tremor, her nails digging into my chest. “I’ll do… anything,” she whispered. “Anything you want.”
I paused, stumbling over those words.
“I will be anything you want,” she said again, this time forcing herself to look up at me. “Just let them live.”
My blood turned to ice as I stared at her, realising what her dazed eyes saw.
Not me at all.
Ace…
I shoved away from her, fear lighting my system as I staggered from the bed, and she tried to follow, stumbling the moment she got to her feet, but I was backing up. The moment I let her go, a piercing whine ripped from her chest and she collapsed, knees crashing to the carpet.
The sound was like a dagger to my heart, and my instincts went haywire.
She needed me…
I was torn between running, and reaching for her. Her scent rose in the air, dangerous, and she closed her hand around her throat, breaths short and sharp.
Brilliant chestnut eyes still glittered with tears, not fully here, I realised as she reached back out for me.
“P-Please,” she begged. “I can’t… I can’t do it again.”
Suddenly, Knight was there, dropping a tray of food on the bed and crashing to his knees before her.
“What happened?” he demanded.
I saw the way her body loosened at his touch.
That… that was what she needed.
Not me.
But she was fighting his grip, trying to reach for me, a vicious growl tearing from her throat as Knight tried to stop her.
I backed toward the door as Kyan arrived.
“No!” She was fighting Knight, eyes wild, dark cardamom, a feral haze in the air.
I all but scrambled into the hallway, colliding with a balcony railing. Terror closed like a fist around my heart, making it hard to breathe, but the moment I was gone, I heard her screams, each sound a vibration to my very bones.
Glade was burning up. Feral, fractured scent clouding the air and threatening to turn my mind to mush.
“Her heat—!” Knight growled.
Knight didn’t have to tell me. I was already tearing open the bag of supplies he’d grabbed when he was out.
Every fucking hormone drug you could get was in there, thank fuck. I found the shot I needed.
“Shh, shh, Princess, I got you.”
Knight had trapped her in a bear hug. She was bundled amidst thick, muscled arms and loose, chaotic locs. His unnerved purr rumbled, barely doing a thing to settle her. She was still trying to fight him, and the cracked whimper escaping her chest with every breath sent splinters through my heart.
When I touched her arm, she flinched, chestnut eyes finding me, lips drawn back in a snarl, panic etched into each line of her face. Knight had his fist in her hair too, using his strength to keep her steady against his chest.
“I’m here, Oasis,” I breathed. Something softened in her eyes as I cupped her cheek. I felt the static between us, and she stopped writhing against Knight, unable to take her eyes from me.
I dropped my hand slowly, finding her arm and holding it steady.
She frowned, head cocking slightly, eyes darting between mine as if she wasn’t sure what I was doing.
Her whine broke my heart as I pressed the needle into her flesh. She flung her weight against Knight to no avail as I injected the drug.
“I’m sorry.” My voice quaked at the betrayal in her gaze before her eyelids fluttered shut and she went limp in Knight’s arms.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Suppressant.” I swallowed. “Strongest kind. Should push it off for a while.” They weren”t like regular suppressants, they were much stronger, and terrible for hormone balance, but I couldn’t risk it going any further. She’d also have to take it on a schedule. But if we gave her something lighter and her heat broke through, it would be too late for anything safe.
“He was waking up—coming in and out.” Knight’s doubt was flooding the bond. “I thought he’d need food. I didn’t know he would let her go.”
We’d realised she needed our touch. Without it, she was getting feverish. The stress of what she’d gone through was throwing her into heat. Between the hormones and the trauma, it wasn’t surprising at all she was going feral before our eyes. The only thing that had settled her was our touch, and Zed had been impossible to pry from her until now.
“Kyan.”
I swallowed, not taking my gaze from her, guilt swallowing me whole.
It was my fault.
Knight and Zed had both been here, and I couldn’t sleep. I thought… It was so stupid. She needed me here, and I was… fuck… Now I’d given her drugs that could make everything worse. What if I wasn’t thinking straight? What if there were better options?—?
My thoughts cut off as Knight reached out, grip firm on my chin as he forced me to look at him.
“It was the right call.” His voice was rough. “You need to check on Zed. I have her.”
Knowing there was no force on this earth that would pull Knight from Glade, I dared leave to find Zed outside the front doors, crouched on the steps that led up to the grand mansion, fingers digging into his scalp.
I sat down beside him.
A long, long time passed,
I didn’t say anything.
I’d always been shit at comfort and feelings. But sometimes, when Knight was upset, I felt him calm in the bond when I sat near him, even if I didn’t say anything. The bond was really useful for things like that.
Zed wiped his eyes with his sleeve and glanced at me.
I made sure to meet his eyes, and sure enough, the bitter edge to snow santal smoothed out a bit.
Good.
I was doing it right.
“Is she…?” He trailed off.
“Heat. I gave her drugs. Knight’s taking care of her.”
“I fucked up.”
“You didn’t know.” She took touch-starved to another level. She needed one of us there at all times—I was anxious leaving her now, even knowing Knight wasn’t going to let her go. But Zed was important, too.
There wasn’t a piece of this family that we could neglect, and for the first time in my life, it was just me and Knight holding up the ship.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Zed said at last.
Hmmm.
Okay, I was in a little more trouble if he wanted to actually talk.
Still, he looked distracted, running fingers through his hair as he stared off into the beautiful gardens.
“You… never wavered,” he said. “When I couldn’t stop hating her, you never found a way to stop loving her.”
No.
But we were just… different. When she rejected Zed and Knight—after they’d fallen in love with her so hard that she’d stolen the colour from every other inch of the world… Well, I think they had to hate her so they wouldn’t hurt so much.
But for me, that would have been impossible.
She was my oasis. Rain clouds in unending drought. Not loving her just wasn’t in my DNA. It was figuring out how to live without her… That had been the hard part.
“The night at the High Roller…” He asked. “You were the one who found her.”
I cocked my head, considering where he was going with that.
“How much did you know?” he asked.
“I knew she was in trouble.”
“You were watching her?”
“From the moment she left Ace. I just didn’t know…” I frowned. I’d made a mistake. “I never wanted to take away the choice you gave her.”
It was something Zed had offered that I couldn’t have thought up, and I’d realised at the time, it was that choice that she needed most.
Only, it had blinded me to her pain.
Glade was my other half. Something burned so deep in my bones, sometimes it was as if I knew when she was near.
I think she did, too.
At first, when she’d escaped, I’d gone to her. Never showing myself, but waiting on a bench she would pass on her way home from the shops, or sit in the coffee shop beside her gym. I just needed to remind myself what it was like when I could breathe.
She was the static in the empty air, the silence before a roll of thunder, or the first, warm drop of an oncoming storm. And yet, that was also how I’d come to believe she didn’t want us—even after Ace.
Because when I was near enough that I could take a breath, she’d run. Every time. As if she could feel me, too.
Now, I knew she had sensed me, but when she’d fled, it wasn’t because she’d hated me at all. She was protecting me. She’d been on the run, always terrified that we’d pay the price if she turned to us.
It all made sense. Her aversion to us, her fear of getting close.
I hadn’t seen it.
Everything else, but not that.
“How much do you know about my brother?” Zed asked, dragging me from my musings.
I met Zed’s eyes, feeling something through the bond that I could relate to entirely.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything you have.” His jaw ticked as he looked back out across the neatly trimmed gardens. “I can’t face her again. Not until I have something to give her.”