Chapter 16 #3
He’d been best friends with Blade for as long as he could remember, and this was the first time he wanted to beat the guy to a pulp. But not here. Not in front of dozens of people, friends, and families. Mace might be an impulsive ass, but he wasn’t a total loose cannon.
Mostly. It was taking an extraordinary amount of self-control to keep himself in check right now.
“Come with me,” he growled to them, his words so warped with fury that he barely understood them himself.
Mace didn’t give them time to ask questions. He strode toward the house, his fists clenched tightly at his sides, every footstep falling harder than the last. He figured he should be leaving burned footsteps in his wake, but he didn’t look back to see.
The moment they were inside with the door closed, Mace slammed one of those tight fists into Blade’s jaw so hard he heard his own shoulder pop. Blade stumbled backward, hitting the wall with enough force to leave a dent in the shiny steel.
“Mace!” Scotty leaped between them, blocking his path before he could nail Blade with another blow. “Holy shit! What are you doing?”
Mace ignored her, his focus fully on Blade, whose stunned expression and bloody lip almost made Mace feel bad for hitting him. Almost. The level of betrayal kept him firmly raged out.
“You bastard!” he snarled. “You broke our vow and fucked her!” He rounded on Scotty and jabbed his finger in her face. “And you. How could you?”
The air in the kitchen went still. Heavy and laden with layers of shock and shame that pulsed off them in waves.
Scotty’s skin, already creamy pale, went sheet-white, her freckles standing out almost in defiance of the accusation.
Silence hung over them like a shroud.
“Answer me!”
Startled by Mace’s roar, Scotty jumped. “Mace. Please. It wasn’t like that.”
The breath whooshed painfully from his lungs. It was true. Yes, he’d suspected, but a not-so-small part of him was sure he was wrong. That he’d imagined things.
Scotty swallowed dryly, but before she could explain how it wasn’t like that, he lost his shit.
“But you don’t deny it.” No, of course not.
They just looked down at the floor, so suddenly curious about the fucking, blue-stained cement.
Level of his fury? Maximum. Totally pegged out.
All he could think about was Scotty asking them to find her someone to screw.
“What the fuck? What the fuck, Scotty? Were you so desperate to lose your virginity that you what? Seduced him while I was laid up in the hospital?”
“What? No!” Anger or, more likely, guilt, turned her face crimson. “Gods, Mace, we didn’t have a choice!”
He stared in disbelief. “No…no choice? What, you had a virginity emergency? Did your hymen suddenly—?”
“Don’t.” Blade’s voice was a low growl, rumbling with the threat of violence. “Don’t talk to her like that, Mace. I’m warning you.”
Blade could shove his warning up his ass. “Or what? You’ll fuck her again?”
Suddenly, the fist of a pissed-off, redheaded daughter of a Horseman cracked into his cheek, knocking him into the fridge.
“Stop being a dick!” she shouted. “Blade was dying. We fell into this crazy cave system, and he lost his backpack. His suppressants were in it. Would you rather he be dead? Pretty shitty of you to automatically assume the worst too.”
It took a few seconds for her words to penetrate his anger.
Okay, sure, he’d gone too far. But dammit, knowing that Blade had slept with Scotty was like a spear to the heart.
And knowing they’d kept it from him made it even worse.
So, yeah, he’d fucked up, but not as badly as they had.
And he wasn’t going to let them turn this around.
“Maybe if you’d been honest and told me, I wouldn’t have had to assume the worst! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
“Mace, we couldn’t. Your health—”
Ignoring Scotty, he rounded on Blade. “And how the hell did you lose your injections?”
Blade dabbed blood from his lips. “What, you think I lost them on purpose?”
“I think you were being reckless. You hate wearing your pack. I’ve told you a million times that you shouldn’t take it off every time we stop for two seconds.”
“Fuck you!” Blade shouted. “You weren’t there because you were careless and went off the trail. You don’t get to accuse me of jack shit.”
They all went silent at the sound of a door opening off the living room, but whoever came in left a moment later. Still, it was enough time to lower the temperature in the kitchen—and Blade’s tone—by a few degrees.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Blade muttered. “What’s done is done. She saved my life, but it was a one-time thing, and it won’t happen again. Happy?”
No, Mace wasn’t happy. At all. Okay, sure, logically, he could admit that Blade and Scotty had done the right thing. And maybe they even believed that this could be forgotten. But the cork was out of the bottle, and no one was putting it in again.
Putting it in.
Blade had put it in, all right. Anger and jealousy clawed at the raw wound gouged in Mace’s heart. Blade had been the one to take her virginity. He’d gone through a unique experience with her, had given her a once-in-a-lifetime memory that Mace could never repeat or be part of.
“I’m sorry, Mace,” Scotty said quietly. “But it wasn’t any different than when you guys saved me from that sea demon a while back. Or when Blade restarted your heart that one time. Or when I gave you my blood a couple of days ago. We help each other.”
Mace wanted to flip out. He wanted to break things. Punch things. Kill things. He considered what his parents would do. Wraith would probably go the kill-things route. But Lore and Idess would tell him to stay calm. Remove himself from the situation and think about it.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t how Mace was built. He was more of a deflector than a thinker. He liked to rile others, but he didn’t like being riled up himself. Yup, he was a Gargantua demon-sized hypocrite, but he didn’t care. He didn’t like conflict in his life. Keep shit simple.
There was nothing simple about this situation, which meant he had to be the one to simplify it. Fortunately, he could lie to himself as convincingly as he lied to everyone else.
Taking a deep, rattling breath, he nodded and pasted on a smile. “S’okay. All’s forgiven.”
Scotty’s eyes narrowed into skeptical, glittering slits. “Really?”
“Yeah.” No. He looked over at Blade and continued the lies. “Sorry about the sucker punch.” No, he wasn’t. “If it makes you feel any better, my knuckles hurt. You have a hard face.” That part was true.
Blade reached up to test his swollen jaw. “It does make me feel better. But you know how you can make it up to me?”
Mace groaned. He knew what was coming. “You want to beat me in a game of Dragon Bait.” The virtual reality game was one of the few in which Blade could kick Mace’s ass, and he did it handily. So handily that it was humiliating.
“Better.” Blade’s smirk was downright evil. “I want you to spar with Ares next week when we train.”
Scotty whistled, low and long. “Wow. That’s harsh.” Then she flashed a grin as wicked as Blade’s. “But fitting.”
Fuck. Mace hated sparring with Ares. Everyone did. The guy trained like he fought and gave no quarter. Well, he didn’t kill you, so that could be considered quarter. Sort of. Because by the end of the lesson, you wished you were dead.
“I deserve that,” Mace said with a lightness he didn’t feel. He did, however, feel the need to drown himself in alcohol and forget that any of this ever happened. At least, temporarily. “We done here? Because the smell of the steak on the grill is killing me.”
Scotty nodded. “Let’s go.”
He held out his fist. “Team up.”
They touched fists, the same as they’d done a thousand times. Felt the same. Looked the same.
But it wasn’t. Scotty’s smile was too sappy. Blade’s was too forced.
As they traipsed out the door, laughing and joking like everything was back to normal, he had a feeling that nothing would ever be normal again.