I shouldn’t have asked. I’d thought I’d had a right to the story, but I hadn’t. I’d fucked up. I’d fucked up majorly!
But at the same time, how was I supposed to know? Forget about shapeshifters; the story that Ben was telling me was so far beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It was horror incarnate. So many people’s worst nightmares all compiled into one truly monstrous nightmare.
No wonderhe’d had a panic attack in the car. Not only did he probably have a lot of trust issues, but his best friend had murdered his wife.
Fuck… what was I going to do?
There wasn’t really anything Icoulddo, but it went against every fiber of my being to ignore someone in crisis. And Ben had every reason in the world to be in crisis.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, kneeling where I was. Far enough not to broach the barrier of his extended palm, but hopefully close enough to be a comfort. “You don’t have to keep going.”
“No…” he said raggedly, tears dripping off the end of his nose as he vibrated with… with what? Anger? Agony? Rage? Betrayal?Probably all of them. “It doesn’t feel good to say this aloud, but… I don’t know, it feels almost right?”
“Grounding?” I supplied.
“Yeah,” he answered more resolutely. “Grounding.” He took another long, steady breath, and I realized he was using my counting method. “The guy who took you smelled exactly like Charles. Even looked like Charles’s wolf. So, for a moment, I thought he’d somehow come back from the dead to kill someone else who was close to me.”
My ego fluttered at the thought of Ben saying I was someone close to him, which was absolutely ridiculous considering there were way more important things going on. “He said something about his little brother.”
Ben gave me a sharp look. “Pardon?”
“He said he needed to avenge his baby brother. Something about his body not having a grave to rest in.”
Ben swallowed several times, and I watched a long procession of emotions walk across his face. “Charles didn’t have a brother.”
I shrugged. “He was pretty insistent. Is burial an important part of your culture?”
“It can be. It varies from pack to pack. I… after I killed him, I burned him and all the others who had attacked us. I made sure there was nothing left. That was why smelling him again was so, uh, so…”
“Triggering?” I suggested. I hated how assholes had turnedbeing triggeredinto mocking slang for being angry.Triggeringwas a useful term for many people with PTSD or traumas to express themselves. And considering a large demographic for those with PTSD were veterans and people recovering from CSA, one would think that people would want them to have as many tools as they possibly could have.
“Yeah. That. I guess.”
Ben had just blatantly admitted to murder right in front of me. Didn’t even so much as blink. And not just one man, but likely around twenty. Slaughtered them with his own two hands.
I tried to picture it, and even with what I liked to think was a rather capable imagination, I could barely envision it. And to be frank, I didn’t condemn him for it. Call it conditional morality, but while I couldn’t really see him being that violent,Icouldpicture the razing of his pack. His pain was so palpable that it had illustrated the scene within my own mind.
So many innocent lives lost. And for what?Money?Honestly, if I was in Ben’s boots, I think I’d have gone mad. Completely off my rocker, possibly speaking gibberish and rocking in a corner, possibly becoming a mindless killer. Hell, if I was a shifter, I might have just become an animal and let go of any crumbs of humanity I had left.
Could they do that?
Another question to ask. Except I wasn’t a complete moron. Now wasn’t the time. Ben had just revealed all his trauma to me, and I was feeling more than a bit sheepish that I’d come into the conversation feeling righteously entitled to his story. Yes, I had been kidnapped. Yes, I’d kinda fought against a wolf shifter, but that wasnothingcompared to what I’d just heard.
“Do you want comfort right now?” I asked softly. “Or would you prefer some solitude?”
What I really wanted to do was throw my arms around his shoulders and hold him until both our hearts weren’t aching anymore. My chest no longer only hurt from the arrhythmia; it hurt for Ben, too. What he’d survived… God, there were no real words for it. It would have destroyed many others, but he had pushed through and was now an amazing father to an amazing little boy.
“I, uh…” He trailed off again, but I didn’t blame him. We’d had a rollercoaster of a night, and that was putting it mildly.Never in a million years would I ever have expected even one of the things that had happened, but we’d gone for a combo of chaos. “You’re all right with all of this? I just told you that werewolves were real.”
“I’m likely in a bit of shock right now. The beta blockers block the effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline, so that’s certainly having an effect on me. I’m tired. I’m very sore. And my heart is still slowing down.
“Maybe tomorrow morning, I’ll have a different reaction, but for now, I am digesting.”
He stared at me again—he was doing a lot of that, but I wasn’t going to sweat over it. At least he wasn’t sobbing anymore, because God, watching his heart break like that was torture. And I wasn’t even the onewiththe heartbreak.
“I think I need to be with my kids right now.”
“All right then, how about I order an Uber, then you lock up the house behind me and go be with your kids. Maybe hug them extra tight tonight?”
