I cry while trying tonotcry, which doesn’t end up working. Instead, the sobs I attempt to quiet become snorts until Ryder’s hoodie is a mess of fluids he might very well kill me for.
Time passes differently when grief has its hold, but eventually, distantly, the door opens and wolf claws tick along the wooden floor. Shuddering through my tears, I subtly wipe my face a final time and exhale to stifle the sobs.
If I’m lucky, he’ll go to sleep and not be any wiser of my misery.
Silence falls through the cabin until a heavy and large hand rests on my head. A pause. An inhale. The hand slides down my hair, between my shoulder and face, until a finger I don’t havethe strength to fight breaks through my barriers of fake bravado and tips my tear-streaked face up to his.
Anger flashes. Which, why wouldn’t he be annoyed to return home, presumably to rest, only to find his captive crying?
“Don’t cry.” His order is tinged with a plea. His hand covers my cheek until his thumb sweeps beneath my eye, clearing more tears. His skin is rough but feels pleasant too, like something I never want to stop touching me.
“I’m fine, only wallowing. Sorry, I’ll stop so you can rest.”
He snarls, but it’s nothing that frightens me. In fact, the opposite, and a warmth settles on my shoulders. I may not be home, but Ryder feels pretty safe too. Trusting my kidnapper after a day doesn’t say mentally stable, but when life goes to shit, I’ll take comfort where possible.
His hand drops from my face. With another shuddering breath, I readjust my legs to settle in for a long night of begging for sleep to take away my melancholy. He doesn’t head for his bed, though, but instead bends at the knees until one arm is sliding beneath my legs, the other around my back, and he hoists me from the chair.
Startled, I latch onto the closest thing—his neck—as his heat warms my side. His heart thumps against my arm, the same rhythm as mine, and I find comfort in that fact. He crosses the cabin to rest me in his bed.
“For as long as you’re with us, you will sleep here.” He slides his arms out from beneath me and grabs one of the furs by my feet to lift it over top. “Understand?”
He tucks me in, readjusting pelts to form a pillow, and I let him care for me. It’s…nice. I’m twenty-four, and Mom long stopped taking care of me like this, not that I really need her to. But sometimes… Sometimes it’s nice to have a hot guy comforting you.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why do you keep apologizing?”
“You came back to me crying my eyes out.”
His tone lightens—as does his touch as he sweeps bangs from my eyes and drops to his knees so we’re face-to-face. “You cry as much as you need to,kamahki. You’ve earned that much after today.”
I catch his hand as he goes to move it away, not realizing until too late what I’ve done. Eyes meet, and with a heat of embarrassment—and a bit of self-doubt—I release him to instead rest my hand beside his.
“How was hunting?”
“Fine ’til coming back and finding you crying.”
“It almost sounds like you care,” I joke because for these few minutes, it really felt like he does. And that isn’t something I can process. “This time next week, I don’t know who or what I’ll be. Harlow made it out fine, but her circumstances were different. Darkness clearly made Sloane—that’s Twilight Grove’s High Priestess—insane. What’s to say I won’t be like her?”
Ryder slides his hand the inch towards mine and covers it. He flips them, until his fingers are latched around my wrist, palm cupping mine. His touch makes me want to cry because of all people to counsel me through grief, he wasn’t on my list. Not even the top one hundred.
“You don’t know what you’ll become, so don’t think like that.”
“It’s hard not to.”
A squeeze of my hand, and the glowing eyes move closer. Given how dark it is, they should frighten me. Ryder himself should terrify me. Fear isn’t what’s unfurling in my stomach.
“I know,” he whispers. “But don’t believe the worst. Is…is this helping?” Another squeeze of my hand.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Minutes pass and I’m beginning to drift, sadness finally catching up. Dried tears still cake my cheeks, and a quick charm would clean them, but doing so means pulling my hand away, and I’d rather the world end than do that.
Instead, it’s Ryder who releases me before heading for the fireplace. I peer through slitted eyes as he lights a small flame, then crosses the room, and his large body moves overtop and drops beside me. The sleep I was succumbing to evaporates as he tucks an arm above my head, another around my hip to pull me against his body. His impossibly perfect body that makes me feel small.
A purring rumble, like the sound I woke to this morning, vibrates my back and sleepiness immediately slams into me as thoughhecast a spell on me. My mind drifts, senses about to sweep me away, and the only thing holding back is the need to know.
“Whadya doin’?”
