Chapter 9
THORNE
Izzy and I walked side by side down Main Street.
She held a blood coffee in her hand while I held nothing in mine because caffeine and my nervous system currently weren’t on speaking terms. The mist hung low over the rooftops, softening the edges of the crooked buildings and glowing shop signs.
A broom floated lazily outside the tailor’s shop, sweeping the same patch of sidewalk it’d been sweeping for four decades.
“You’re sulking,” Izzy said.
“Not sulking,” I said. “Thinking.”
She hummed. “Mm. Just as dangerous.”
Before I could respond, a string of colorful curses rang out from up ahead.
Izzy stopped in her tracks and shot me a glance. “Miss Hannigan?”
A smile curved my lips before I could stop it.
I loved that Izzy had been here long enough not only to learn everyone’s names but their quirks and mannerisms as well.
If one was walking down Main Street and heard shouted profanities, one knew to expect Miss Hannigan, the local supplier of ethically sourced carnivorous flora.
And seeing as how it was just shy of ten in the morning, I knew we’d find her elbow-deep in the soil behind her house, likely wrestling a vine as thick as her waist.
Izzy and I instinctively altered our path to venture closer. Sure enough, there stood the middle-aged plant whisperer, her hands gripping the vine as she wrestled it like an exhausted parent at a toddler birthday party.
Once we came into sight, both Miss Hannigan and the plant paused. The rustling of its leaves was the only warning it gave before the damn vegetable shot over Miss Hannigan’s fence with surprising speed and snapped the air about a foot from my shoulder.
“Gerald!” Miss Hannigan barked. “I said you could eat the pellets, not the pedestrians!”
The vine trembled like a misbehaving pet and slunk back toward Miss Hannigan, laying its leafy head on her shoulder. She stroked it like it was nothing more than a sweet, loving animal.
Not sure I’d let that thing so close to my throat, but I wasn’t a witch who could sweet-talk vegetation.
Izzy waved. “Morning, Miss Hannigan.”
“Morning, girls!” she chirped, as if attempted murder was nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
“If you see Mr. Feldman, tell him his gnomes are unionizing again. They’ve gone off on some march with little signs.
” She clucked her tongue and fed Gerald another pellet.
The plant’s mouth—yes, mouth—opened and snapped shut narrowly missing her gloved fingers.
“Will do!” I called back.
We left Miss Hannigan to tackle her leafy menace and continued down Main, the smell of roasted coffee beans and fresh bread wafting down the street.
“So, you were saying before we were rudely interrupted by Audrey II back there?” Izzy prompted.
I sighed. Yesterday, after my little run with Calder, I’d barricaded myself in the condo all day—away from my mate and my brothers—and stewed over my choices until finally I’d forced myself to go to work.
I’d told myself I needed to make a clean break from Calder, but the first time I’d found myself in his presence, I’d abandoned all restraint and romped through the woods with him.
I’d wanted to discuss it with Izzy last night at the bar, but the number of people who’d come in had made that impossible.
This morning, though, after yet another night of very little sleep in which I’d tossed and turned for hours, I’d finally texted Izzy four words.
“You. Me. Walk. Now.” She hadn’t argued, even though she had to be just as exhausted.
And here she was, supporting me without so much as a single complaint.
Because that was what best friends did.
“I did something… questionable,” I said.
“Define questionable,” Izzy said when I didn’t immediately continue my story. “We talking morally grey? Physically dangerous? Or emotionally stupid?”
“All of the above,” I muttered.
We hopped aside as the baker’s assistant rushed past us with a row of levitating croissants drifting behind him like obedient ducklings. The scent of butter and sugar instantly made my mouth water.
“My dumbass brothers ambushed me at the bar yesterday afternoon. They said things that—ugh, it doesn’t matter what they said. All that matters is they worked me up.”
“As they often do,” Izzy said, chuckling.
I rolled my eyes but nodded. “I decided to go for a run to burn off the stress. I didn’t care where, I just needed to outrun my brain.”
Izzy hummed in acknowledgment.
“Except he was there. And he followed me.”
She shot me a wide-eyed glance but didn’t interrupt. She knew exactly who he was. I hadn’t spoken his actual name to her since our conversation in my condo.
“I should’ve turned around,” I went on, irritation threading into my voice now. “Or changed direction. Or done literally anything that set boundaries. Instead, I kept going. And I let him run with me.”
The words hung there between us as we crossed the street, a pair of banshees arguing loudly over a parking meter in front of us. Izzy and I both grimaced as we passed them, barely avoiding clapping our hands over our ears to drown out their piercing shrieks.
“We…” I groaned and dropped my head back, staring at the pale blue sky for a moment. “We played, Izzy.”
She stared at me, blinking. After a few moments of silence, she said, “I’m going to need more context than that. Play can mean many things.”
Heat flushed my cheeks. “Gods, no. I didn’t mean that. I was wound tightly, and I needed to let it out. He let me take my frustrations out on him. I nipped him a few times, knocked him to the ground, that kind of thing. Just werewolf stuff.”
“You beat up your estranged mate in the woods,” she said, mildly amused.
“When you say it like that, it sounds unhinged.”
“It is unhinged.”
“Fair.”
We passed one of the dozen or so town alchemists, who was cooking something putrid that assaulted my nose. Even Izzy wrinkled hers.
“Why didn’t I tell him to get lost?” I continued. “All I had to do was shift, tell him to eff off, and keep running. But when I saw him, I just… I…” I sighed and fell quiet.
Izzy gave me another glance, then nodded. “I don’t know much about werewolves, since I’ve never really known any beyond your family. But it seems to me like natural wolves run in packs, as do werewolves, yes?”
I nodded, then thought about it and shook my head before finally shrugging. “We like to run together, sure, but I wouldn’t say we have packs. Not like real wolves.”
“But you do like to run together.”
I nodded again.
“So, you had a wolf moment,” Izzy said with a shrug. “It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”
I let that settle between us as we walked, the town’s morning routine carrying on as though my internal crisis wasn’t happening at all.
Up ahead, Madame Corvin stood on her storefront step, hands perched on her hips as she argued with her window display.
Apparently, her enchanted mannequins had decided to model last year’s fall cloaks instead of the new spring line, and no amount of discussion seemed to be changing the mannequins’ minds.
Madame Corvin snapped her fingers, muttered a spell, and one mannequin turned its head away from her in blatant defiance.
Even the inanimate objects in this town had attitude.
“I’m just worried he’ll make something of it,” I finally admitted.
“I spent so long teaching myself how to exist without him. How to sleep. How to breathe. How to not look at every doorway like he might walk through it.” My jaw tightened.
“What if one run undoes all that effort? What if next thing I know we’re…
gods help me… civil? Friendly.” I made a face. “I don’t think I can handle that, Iz.”
Izzy slowed, then came to a complete stop and faced me. “Thorne, only you get to decide who he is to you. If you want him to remain firmly in the ex-mate box, then he stays there. You don’t owe him anything.”
Some of the pressure in my chest eased at that, but not enough.
She studied me another moment before continuing, quieter now.
“But I will say this. When Lucien and I first met, I couldn’t stand him.
I mean truly. I wanted him out of my life, out of my home, out of my airspace.
Except even when he was gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Then whenever I saw him again, it was like this rush, this addiction I couldn’t control.
” She gave a small, knowing smile. “And that was without a shared past, without years of memories.”
“What are you trying to say?” I asked.
“That I think you’re being too hard on yourself. It isn’t easy to break up with someone, let alone your mate. Believe me, I know. I think you should give yourself more grace.”
We started walking again and I considered her words as we fell back into a comfortable silence. Izzy was right—it was up to me what happened next. And if that meant absolutely nothing, then so be it. It wasn’t like he’d demanded anything of me. Hell, he hadn’t even asked to be my mate again.
Then again, he also hadn’t apologized for leaving me either. Nor offered an explanation.
“Gods,” I muttered.
Izzy glanced sideways at me but didn’t interrupt.
I shoved my hands deep into my pockets. “You know what the most annoying part of this is?”
She lifted a brow in silent invitation.
“I don’t think any of this is actually about us.” The words came out flatter than I expected. “I think this is more about him trying to make himself feel better.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t tell him what happened, but he knows something did,” I said, irritation gaining traction.
“And the first thing he did was run to my brother, hoping Cassian would give him answers. Why? So he could fix me?” I huffed a humorless laugh.
“He doesn’t care about our failed relationship.
This is about him trying to assuage his guilt because he left and I got hurt. ”
“That’s a big assumption to make,” Izzy murmured.