Chapter 52
Thealina
The walls of Rafe’s office press in. My hands tremble against the edge of his desk, the mark on my palm burning like it’s been freshly branded. Heat crawls up my wrist, into my chest, until my whole body feels too small to contain the storm.
It’s happening again.
A sharp pull, like an invisible hook snagging behind my ribs, yanks at something deep. The room shudders, blurs at the edges. The floor beneath my feet turns to liquid. I stagger.
‘Sam…’
His face appears, alarmed, his dark eyes narrow as he steps toward me. “Thea… no!”
But it’s too late.
The air warps. A snap like crack of lightning splits the space between us. My stomach lurches. The mark on my hand sears hotter, and before I can scream, Sam lunges, catching my hand, threading his fingers through mine.
The world tips, but his grip on me is tight.
We hit the ground hard, the breath punched from my lungs.
Snow. Gods, it’s snowing.
Cold bites my skin. I scramble to my knees, and Sam’s shivers, but covers my nakedness with his, crouching low and pressing his body against my back. His hand still grips mine so tightly I feel the pulse of his mark.
I blink at the world around us. A frozen clearing. Cedars heavy with snow surrounds a small, crooked cabin half-lit by lanterns.
Smoke curls from its chimney.
Nothing here is familiar. This isn’t my timeline.
I turn to him. ‘Where…?’
His face is deathly pale.
“Gods, Thea. Why here.”
I stare at him, cold and confused. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
He doesn’t meet my eyes. His gaze locked on the cabin.
A figure emerges. A younger, leaner, version of Sam, but still with that scar along his jaw. A version of the same Sam but with haunted eyes storms out into the elements. His shoulders tense, face twisted with a grief I don’t understand. Sorrow clings to the air here.
“Please don’t watch this.”
It’s too late, another figure appears, chasing after Sam, wrapping a robe around her as golden hair falls in loose waves, her voice carrying through the wind.
“Sam… wait! Please. Stay!”
I freeze. That voice so familiar.
“You said you’d stay,” the golden-haired girl cries.
My stomach knots. I can’t breathe.
She reaches for him, stumbling through the snow, tears streaming down her face. A ghost of a past I’d buried years ago cracks me wide open.
‘That’s my best friend.’
Sam’s hand tightens around mine, his knuckles white.
I turn to him, something sharp and sick blooming in my chest. ‘Who is she to you?’
He swallows hard, jaw clenched. “The love of my life.”
The world tilts once again and I turn in time to see Aurelia—gods, Aurelia—grab younger Sam’s arm. “Don’t do this to me, please.”
Sam’s face twists. “It’s for your own good, Ari. You don’t see it now, but you will.”
“I rejected my mate for you!”
I gasp. Oh, Aurelia. You used to get so giddy and nervous thinking about when your mate would come to you. And she rejected him, for Sam, who now rejects her.
He looks gutted. “I know,” he mutters. “You’ll see that was for the best.”
‘Oh, he shouldn’t have said that.’
Aurelia slaps Sam, the sound echoing in the wailing wind.
‘No, I shouldn’t have.’
The weight of it crashes over me. The pain in his voice. The ache in hers. I want to run to her, wrap my arms around her and tell her it’ll all be ok. But I can’t. I stopped sending letters, stopped visiting her in the Water lands of Winari.
I’ve no right to her grief; I burned that bridge moons ago.
Sam yanks on my pouch tied around my waist, his hands trembling as he takes a piece of Taka and waits for his constellation to absorb it. He grabs my face between both hands and presses his forehead to mine.
“Hold on!”
The world shatters. Heat, light, wind, a hundred voices screaming through the void as my stomach is pulled in all directions.
His flat crashes around us. I hadn’t been here since 830. But he still lives here, after all this time. Same couch, same cushions, same lantern-light flickering in their sconces. We land hard on a rug, he still crouches over me, his arms caging me in, shielding me, both of us panting.
“Breathe,” he says. “Thea, breathe. Calm your emotions or you’ll jump us.”
My lungs seize as I fight to pull the pieces of myself back together as Sam rubs my back.
‘I didn’t know.” The tears burn. ‘I didn’t know she… you… my husband, he…’ I can’t stop the sobs, the hiccups, the panting.
“Breathe, Thea. In… that’s it… and out.” He breathes with me, grounding me in the present. “Small world, ay Brawler.”
‘Indeed, it is, Chuck.’
True to the style of Sam he laughs, but I see the mask he slips back into place after re-living such a sad memory. I wish to push for more, but the dark flicker of his eyes has me keeping quiet.
Except for one.
‘Will you ever go back to her?’
He’s silent for a moment, refusing to meet my eyes, the muscle in his neck straining before his lips part.
One word. One syllable.
“No.”
The word simple—the pain behind it anything but.
Harsh rapping at the door startles us, though we don’t expose ourselves further by moving apart. We wouldn’t have any time anyway, I think, as the hinges fly across the apartment and the wooden door kicked open, revealing a fuming Rafe at the threshold.
I swallow beneath his burning gaze and realise what it must look like to him; Me, his brother, naked, wrapped around each other on the floor.
His knuckles are white around my clothes. They’d have been left in his office when I travelled. Sam’s too, as well as the linking serum.
He stalks in, slow, calculated steps filled with a predatory gaze and a body reeking of jealousy.
“Rafe…” Sam’s voice is desperate, eyes pleading.
“Lina, baby, I’m gonna need you to shift to the side,” he says, holding out my bundle of clothes, not taking his glare away from Sam.
“Rafe, it’s not like that.”
Rafe does nothing, says nothing, until I bring my clothes to my chest, hiding myself as I squirm back on my bum.
I can’t even speak to him mind to mind, and my mutilated mouth can’t make enough syllables to tell him this isn’t what this looks like.
I barely have my skirt on when Rafe lunges, tackling Sam, both in equal strength fighting for dominance.
My body forgets how to dress, my limbs flail about, panic swimming through me as the brothers go at it.
Rafe’s a bundle of rage, and Sam enjoys every minute, his laugh coming in small bursts as fists fly. Sam gets a few punches in too before Rafe lands one on his jaw.
“Not my face, Rafe!”
“Fuck you and your face,” he says with a forearm pressed into Sam’s neck. “You touched her!”
“Not in that way. I’d never!”
“It’s enough!” He applies more pressure and Sam’s face turns red.
“STOP!” My mouth tries to say, and fails, but it’s enough that Rafe looks up. Sam seizes the opportunity to turn his body, overpowering Rafe back to the floor. He groans, slightly winded as Sam punches his face.
It breaks my heart watching two brothers who love each other dearly fight like this, and it doesn’t feel like it’s just because Rafe saw me naked with him.
“I’m sorry! You should have kept me dead. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Come to me! I could’ve helped. Could’ve avoided all of this.”
They yell between fists and legs and grappling for the upper hand.
Neither backing down as they destroy things around them.
A table, vase, candles, even a chair is upturned.
Rafe’s rage gets the better of him. His emotions erupt in an uncontrolled torrent, bursting with force as he gains dominance over Sam, slamming his back against the floor over and over whilst yelling his frustrations, and Sam lets him.
The guilt consumes his eyes.
“You set me up! You broke Lina’s promise!” He slams again. “You fucking saw her naked!” And again. “Touched her bare skin!”
I need to calm him down. Sam’s given up and absorbs Rafe’s wrath, it won’t be long before Rafe does irreparable damage.
I slam into him, my top half barely dressed, crashing into the floor where he catches me to prevent me from landing first. He attempts to move me aside and scramble back to Sam, but I hold strong, grappling him to the floor, pulling him down on his arse, his back against the leg of the couch and straddle him, forcing his face into my bare breasts exposed between the open lapels of my shirt, my hold around his head firm.
His rasping breaths heat my flesh, and his hands snake up my back, fingers pressing into my skin. I rest my cheek on top of his head, giving Sam some privacy as he staggers up to dress, wiping his bloodied nose with the back of his hand.
“You break my door, you fix it,” he says, walking over the threshold. “I need a drink.”
Rafe pants. I pant. My heart thunders from the storm that tore through this room.
But I keep him fixed to my chest, gripping his hair so tightly as he lulls with each shaky inhalation.
He groans, rubbing his mouth over my soft flesh.
He attempts to turn to rub against the other one, and I ease my grip on his hair for him to seek comfort from my body.
His lips graze my nipple sending a sharp ache through me—not from desire, but from the sheer ache of how much I feel for this man. How much I want to take our pain even though I harbour so much anger that he’s married to Ava.
Anger I’ve no right harbouring when I’m estranged from my own husband.
This happened because of me. Not Sam. Not Rafe—me.
And I’m so fucking sorry.
He nuzzles deeper, brushing his entire face over my chest, over the fullness of me like a restless, wounded animal. The wet warmth of his tears trickles down my skin. It splinters my soul as I run my fingers through his hair, cradling the back of his head, and press a lingering kiss to his temple.
His grip tightens, body trembles beneath mine, and for a moment, there’s no battling brothers, no wife or husband, no betrayal or hard choices. Just this.
Flesh and bone.
Grief and comfort.
Him and me.