I still didn’t know if I was doing the right thing by answering his letter, but it was too late to back out, so I strode towards the porch.
I stared at him the whole while, taking in more details as he came into sharper view. The eye Giselle had stabbed was moving normally, and it seemed like he could see out of it, but the iris was milky in color, and his pupil was almost completely blown out compared to his other eye. Not that I was surprised about that. Silver wounds took forever to heal and could temporarily scar us wolf shifters. Maybe in another year, he would be fully back to normal, maybe a little less.
For some reason, I was struck by the idea that every day since that night, he’d had to see his altered reflection in the mirror.A constant reminder of how he’d tried to come into my life and continue Charles’s relentless terror. I had to admit, I’d been surprised when Giselle had said he’d left town after apologizing. I’d expected it to be a trap, but the lone wolf’s change of heart had been genuine.
“You came,” he said finally, when I was close enough.
“I did,” I answered simply, because how did one start a conversation in our situation?
We stared at each other, and I got the feeling we were both deep within our own thoughts. Silence rang out almost audibly.
“Wanna take a walk?”
The whole idea seemed so absolutely absurd, but I shrugged. “Sure.”
He nodded, and fuck, some of his mannerisms were so like Charles’s that I had to firmly remind myself that my ex-beta was dead and this man had nothing to do with the attack on my pack and family.
I could tell he scented my sudden spike of alarm before he paused, his eyes flicking to my face. I saw apprehension there, but no fear. Whatever Melton thought was going to happen, he’d already come to terms with it.
But what surprised me was the pain in his eyes. The deep, abiding sadness. No end, no escape, just endless depths of hopelessness.
And in that, I saw myself.
Or at least, a version of me. A version I had been working on for a long while, but really only felt like I’d made progress with during the last year.
“You’re good,” I said, which was possibly the most woefully inadequate way I could have put it, but thankfully, it seemed that Melton wasn’t really in the mood to critique my word choice, because he nodded and moved right along, descending the three steps of his porch.
“I ain’t been good in a long time.”
Yeah, that checked out.
It was a bit strange, observing Melton in my peripheral vision as we walked. He was a stranger, and technically an enemy, but I felt as if I knew everything he was feeling. Thinking, even. It was a direct portal to how I’d been not that long ago, and man, seeing it from the outside was eye-opening.
I’d thought I was getting by then. That no one could really see the turmoil churning within me and eating me from the inside out. Boy, how fucking wrong I was, because it was basically written into Melton’s eyes, his posture, his scent.
I really hadn’t been fooling anyone, had I?
“Why Giselle?” I asked after the silence began to feel oppressive in nature. One would think that strolling through tall trees with the crisp air free of all those pollutants in the city would be relaxing, but that certainly wasn’t the case now.
“Hm?”
“Giselle. She was just some random human woman. Why did you take her?”
“To hurt you.”
While his rather curt answers were frustrating, they were also understandable. But still, I had questions and the least Melton could do was answer them.
“I figured that. Butwhy?She was a stranger and it was our first date. It wasn’t like there was some deep connection between us to actually hurt me.”
Melton snorted. “Yeah, she said so. Can’t believe that tiny thing stabbed me in the eye for a guy she was on a first date with. I’m sorry about causing her medical emergency.”
Although the man’s permanently guilty scent had lessened a bit, it surged back in full force at the mention of Giselle’s medical issues. Not that I blamed him. Sometimes, when I looked back on that fight, I was pretty damn ashamed too. It had Giselle topull me out of the bloodlust, and it had nearly sent her to the hospital again.
“I’d been watching you for a couple of weeks. Can’t say what finally motivated me to come ‘n’ get the revenge I thought my little brother deserved, all I can explain is that it just felt like there wasn’t a point to much else anymore.”
“You were watching me? I didn’t scent you at all.”
“I was careful. Kept my distance. The thing is, you don’t do much. You’re either in that house of yours or working a random gig, always with different people. You never have any real interactions with anyone outside of that crazy woman and your kids.”
