Chapter 15 #3
The summer warmth vanishes. I’m outside in the dark, a biting wind cutting through me.
Kade’s face is all wrong—tight, torn up inside.
Maia’s face is streaked with tears, terror making her voice shake as she clutches his arm.
“Please, Kade,” she pleads, a broken edge of desperation coating her words.
“You have to save him. I know you can do it. I need him. I need my mate. You are the only one I trust. Please, you have to lead the team.”
Kade hesitates. Then something in him just . . . breaks. He nods, and the grim determination that settles over him looks like death.
Another sickening lurch.
Smoke. Blood. I’m running—no, Kade’s running—the ground blurring, the sounds of battle tearing through the trees.
Panic claws up my throat. The sun is setting, throwing long, grotesque shadows over the dirt.
Kade bursts into the main lodge, and all sound disappears except for a high-pitched ringing that’s only in my head.
Bodies lie all over the place, bloody and broken.
He drops to his knees beside a crumpled, unmoving form whose dark hair is matted with blood, strewn across the wooden floorboards. It’s Maia. Her neck is torn open.
A roar of anguish rips from Kade, battering through my defenses until I’m drowning in it. He gathers her to him as he shakes with rage and grief, his face contorted. Tears stream down his cheeks and land on her too-still body.
My fault. I did this. My fault. I did this.
The thought is relentless. Crushing.
Everything blurs, dissolving into a maelstrom of animalistic grief.
I’m low to the ground, the scent of earth and fur overwhelming.
A massive dark wolf, its eyes burning with a desolate, unutterable pain, throws its head back and howls.
The sound is misery and despair, a tormented cry that lashes out into the night.
It’s Kade. But not Kade. Just a wounded animal consumed by grief.
Then it snaps.
I’m back in the warehouse. My hand is still on Kade’s forearm, but now it feels like a live wire. My knees buckle and I gasp, choking on a sob. The world tilts dangerously and I worry I’m about to plunge back into the vision. Still, I clutch at his arm, needing his solidity in the aftermath.
Kade hasn’t moved. Hasn’t even breathed since I touched him. Then, slowly, his head turns. When his eyes meet mine, they’re not just haunted anymore. They’re destroyed. He knows I saw it, knows I felt it.
His jaw clenches, and he tries to pull away—some too-late instinct to protect us both from this trauma. But I hold on, my grip fiercer than I expected.
He looks at where I’m grabbing him, then back at my face. He doesn’t look angry. He looks broken.
“Kade,” I can barely get the words out. “Oh, Kade. Your sister.”
A sudden ripple goes through him, but my other arm is already moving, winding around his back to support him.
“You weren’t supposed to see that. I don’t . . . talk about it.” There’s a vulnerability on his face that I’ve never seen before.
I nudge him toward the closest chair, a simple stool. He feels unsteady and I’m not sure how much longer he’ll be able to stand—and no wonder, if he’s holding all of that inside.
Taking a seat, he hunches inward, his body trying to defend itself the only way it knows how. His hands go to his face, covering his forehead.
Going to my knees on the floor beside him, I put my hands on his lower thigh, trying to offer any comfort I can.
“I’m so sorry, Kade, I didn’t mean to.” I feel like I’ve invaded his privacy, dredged up a past he wasn’t ready to confront. “It was the magic, I couldn’t control it. I’m so, so sorry.”
“No.” His voice is firmer than I would have thought. Taking his hands away from his face, he places them over mine, engulfing them entirely. “It’s alright. You should know. I want you to know.”
I am momentarily stunned. Kade is normally so closed off, so distant. I thought he would be furious that I pried into his past, seeing things I shouldn’t, things that are none of my business. Instead, he’s looking at me so earnestly, like he’s finally letting me in.
But then, he says, “Because I’m a liability to you.”
And in his unguarded expression, I see the depths of his pain reflected in the hollowness in his eyes, the set of his jaw, and the way his brows pull together. A stab of empathetic grief threatens to overwhelm me and it’s almost like being flung back into the vision, feeling his pain as my own.
He tries to retreat, taking his hands off mine, but I’m so done with him pulling away. He shouldn’t have to handle this on his own. So I chase his hands and grab them, clutching them tightly and refusing to let go.
“What are you talking about?” I demand, baffled. He is the only thing that’s kept me alive this long, he must be able to see the empirical truth of that.
“It’s my fault. What happened to Maia. To the pack. When I can’t be objective . . .”
“Kade. It wasn’t your fault. You have to know that.”
“It was,” he whispers, tears gathering at the corner of his eyes.
I swallow, emotions thick in my throat. But I have to keep it together—this is Kade’s trauma, not mine. I need to be here for him, to be the person he needs right now. How long has he carried this, alone? I won’t let it continue, not while I am here.
“Why do you think that?”
“I fucked up. I was supposed to be the tactician. The tactical choice was obvious, but . . . Maia. Her m—her husband was in danger. So I let her talk me into going with the rescue team for David. With too many of our best. It was a decoy. To draw us away, weaken the main camp’s defenses.
And I walked right into it. When we got back, the rest of the pack.
Maia.” His voice cracks. “Well, you saw.”
I squeeze his hands, locking our gaze. He’s submerged in shame and self-reproach; it’s written all over his face. But I won’t let him drown.
“It was not your fault.” Before he can interrupt me, I barrel on. “It was an impossible situation, and you made an impossible choice. You couldn’t have known. The person to blame is whoever attacked you, not you.”
“No! Sutton knew exactly how to get to me, how to take advantage of my weakness. He used David, used Maia, to get to me. If I had just followed protocol, if I had been able to make a clear-headed assessment of the situation, it wouldn’t have happened.
Twenty-one of us dead. Elders. Non-combatants.
Good people. The best. I let my love for Maia cloud my judgment, dictate my actions. And it’s Maia who paid the price.”
“Love isn’t weakness, it’s strength. You saw your sister scared and in pain and you did everything you could to help her.
That’s beautiful. That’s loyalty and protection.
If someone used that against you, to hurt people you care about, it’s not a tactical flaw.
That’s . . . being human. It’s how anyone would react when someone they love is threatened.
It doesn’t make what happened your fault. ”
Kade’s eyes, still clouded with pain, meet mine.
He doesn’t argue, but I can tell that I’m losing him as an even deeper desolation sinks into his features.
This isn’t some passing guilt, it’s a fundamental belief etched into his very being.
He pulls one hand free from my grasp, running it over his face.
“Pretty words,” he says in a flat voice, “but it doesn’t change anything. ”
“Kade—”
He pulls his other hand away and I know I’ve lost him. “It was a long time ago.”
A clear dismissal. With a flash of knowing, I realize that this memory is from over a century ago. But that would make Kade’s age . . . impossible.
“1917,” I breathe, before I even realize I’m speaking aloud.
His gaze snaps sharply to me, his jaw tight. “Stop using your magic on me.”
“Are you really . . .?” My question hangs in the air.
Grunting what might be an acknowledgement, he shoves himself abruptly from the stool, his movements jerky, almost violent. “Old enough to know that I work best alone.”
He doesn’t look at me as he stalks away, heading for the thick metal door at the far end of the warehouse.
The door swings closed behind him, dull and final, as he runs away from me—again.
I want to chase him, to convince him it wasn’t his fault and he doesn’t have to push me away, but the door is shut. He’s gone.