I pause as the familiar ragged pain rears up. My hand reaches up to my chest, an automatic reflex, and Ava’s face softens as she picks up on my unease.
“Nikolai…,” she says gently. “You don’t need to answer that. I’m sorry.”
Shaking my head, I push words out through the lump in my throat. “I’m fine, little bird. It’s important for you to know, I think.”
Haltingly, the words tearing free from the locked box in my chest, I explain about Emery. Sent to live with Max and Leah when her mom and dad died in a car crash, she grabbed my attention from the moment we met.
“So Emery was your cousin?” she asks Max quietly, and he nods. “By adoption. She was younger than me.”
“How old are you?” she asks curiously.
“Max is the oldest at thirty. I’m twenty-eight, Nik’s twenty-seven,” Luc explains. “Bastien is twenty-six.”
Emery and I were the same age.
She glances back to me with a sad smile. “So, love at first sight?”
Luc snorts out a laugh. “Not exactly.” Bastien sniggers, and even Max breaks out in a smile.
“She drove me mad,” I confess. “From day one, we argued over everything. Movies, food, anything the group talked about, we seemed to pick a fight over. Then Max’s parents sent her to a summer school, and when she came back….,”
I justknew. Knew from the second she waltzed back into my kitchen, her eyes locked on mine and her hips swaying. I don’t go into that, though. These memories are precious, and they belong to Em. Maybe one day I’ll feel ready to share them.
I wet my dry lips. “We were inseparable,” I whisper. “And then she awakened, when she was twenty.”
Ava’s eyes slide closed. “They took her?” she asks, her voice wavering.
“No.”
It’s Max who answers the question, his voice grim and low.
“We weren’t going to let her go. Our parents travelled a lot, and Nik had already awakened as an alpha, so we managed to hide it at first. We knew we couldn’t keep it secret forever though, so Emery moved in with Nik and we looked for somewhere permanent to go.”
“What about your parents?” Ava asks me, her voice small. I take her hand into mine.
“My mom died when I was sixteen, lung cancer. My dad… he didn’t really want me. It was always my mom who pushed for a child, so when she died and I’d just awakened, he moved out pretty quickly. I think he’s living with a beta now, outside of Denver. I don’t have any contact with him.”
“Oh.” Ava’s brow creases as she looks between us.
Luc takes up the baton for me. “I’d been playing with the stock markets for a while, and we’d built up some savings for a pack house. Bastien found this land for sale. It was secluded enough that Em wouldn’t be restricted to the house, and close enough to a major city that we could do supply runs without getting too familiar with the locals. Nik was in charge of the renovations.”
I see the moment the lightbulb switches on. “The nest,” she whispers. Her face falls. “You designed that for Emery, Nik.”
I swallow. “It wasn’t meant to be, little bird. She never saw it.”
“Because of me.” Max interrupts us, and Ava flinches at his dark tone. “Because I failed her.”
“You didn’t fail her, Max.” My voice is tired but I’ll have this conversation as many times as Max needs me to. “There was nothing else you could have done.”
Ava stays silent, her hazel eyes swiveling between us. I steady myself with a hand on the table, and her small fingers reach over, entwining with mine. She squeezes my hand, and I grip her fingers.
“Em had her first heat not long after she awakened,” I explain softly. “She became pregnant, but it wasn’t an easy pregnancy. Max did everything he could, but she went into labour early, and there were complications. She didn’t survive.”
Ava’s sudden spike of fear pushes Bastien to his feet. Rounding the table, he picks her up, sitting back down with his arms around her. “That’s unusual, love,” he promises her, but his eyes flicker to Max. “Isn’t it?”
Max pales. “It is.”
But he doesn’t sound convinced. Ava shivers as she glances down at her rounded stomach. She squeezes her eyes shut, and I want to kick myself.
