“Heated seats?Yes, please!My back will love you forever.”
“My pleasure,” I answered, trying to keep my voice steady as my stomach dropped at her choice of words. I knew she was just being playful and grateful, but that awful, blood-soaked, night-terror-fueled voice in the back of my head whispered that I’d already had a love that was supposed to last forever.
And I’d lost it.
It had been ripped away by my best friend. My right-hand man. The shifter I thought I could trust more than anybody else except my wife.
She’d died scared and alone, her body on the rug that had hidden the hatch where my son and soon-to-be daughter were concealed.
“Are you okay?”
I blinked several times and realized I was still sitting there, foot on the brake, my breath ragged. Giselle was looking at mewith concern, but I couldn’t see any judgment in those doe-like eyes of hers.
“I might be about to have a panic attack,” I admitted.
God, that shame in my belly turned into a full-on bonfire. I was pathetic. Truly pathetic. What kind of alpha couldn’t even control his emotions?
“That’s all right,” she said, her voice light as a feather as if I wasn’t being a complete and total loser. “Your foot is on the brake, so I’m going to put us into park, okay?”
I nodded, trying to focus on the here and the now, but those dark, clawed hands were tearing their way up my spine and sinking into my brain.
Itsallyourfault!Itsallyourfault!Itsallyourfault!
“There you are. We’re in park, so you can take your foot off the brake.”
I did, my entire body ramrod straight except for my head, which was turned toward Giselle. Her hazel eyes and perfectly pink lips were all that kept those greedy, relentless hands from dragging me back down into the blood, back down into the endless guilt that I could never escape. “Excellent. Now, can you reach down beside you and recline your chair? It might be a bit scary at first, but I think it’ll help.”
Recline my chair? I could do that. That was simple, right?
That was what I told myself, yet it definitely took me several long seconds to figure out how to move my arm, then severalmorefor my shaking hand to find the small lever on the side of my seat and pull it up.
She was right; it did jolt me at first. The pounding in my chest and spinning in my head spiked so hard I thought I might actually have an apoplexy right then and there, even though that wasn’t possible for shifters. But then I controlled my descent and managed to get that ardent maelstrom down to a dull roar.
“Very good. You’re doing amazing, Ben.”
Fuck, her voice was like a song. Was that a cheesy thought? In any other situation, I would probably say it was, but the melody of her words washed over me like a cool deluge. It wasn’t enough to knock me to my senses, but it calmed the burning fervor that the guilt and shame were trying to immolate me with.
“I’m going to touch you, okay? If you don’t want me to, I need you to either tell me no, or if you can’t speak, just blink twice. I’m going to put my hand on your chest and help you with a breathing exercise, okay?”
“Yes,” I said, and God, I was so fucking embarrassed. I was a thirty-one-year-old man, and not only had I been about to ditch a truly lovely person who had gone out on a limb to be vulnerable with me, who was ill and had given up so much to help others, but now I was such a slave to my emotions that I couldn’t even man up and take her on a date.
I was ruiningeverything.Just like I always did.
But then her hand was on my chest, her hand so incredibly delicate. I focused on the feel of her fingers, which were long and tapered almost like a pianist’s. I remembered wishing that I could learn to play an instrument when I was younger, but once I’d hit puberty and been one of only three alphas in our pack, the three of us had been pushed into training to become the heir.
While most packs tended to follow a bloodline lineage, with an alpha child taking over from their parent, not everyone did. Designations were random, and not every single alpha from puberty went on to becomethealpha of the pack.
It was something that confused non-wolf shifters to no end, considering they didn’t really have the same pack structure we did, but it made sense to me.
Wait… why was I thinking of pack hierarchies? I didn’t know, but it was a pleasant distraction. Much like Giselle’s hand on my chest.
She was so cold. I didn’t know how I managed it, but my still-trembling hand pressed the seat-warming button and put it on high. There. At least I could do that much for her.
Slowly, achingly slowly, I pulled myself away from the malevolent grip trying to pull me down, down,downinto the abyss. But every time I made some headway, I was yanked back again. But Giselle’s gaze, her voice, her hand on my chest, were like a lifeline—an ethereal rope tossed down to me, allowing me to finally gain ground over the mire that was threatening to consume me.
“I want you to breathe in for a count of eight. Nice and slow, not a hurry in the world. I’ll count, you inhale, okay? One, two, three…”
I focused on every word she said and followed her instructions. Somehow, each number that passed had me gripping higher on the rope and pulling myself farther away from the maelstrom. Away from racing thoughts and heart.
