Jarek kisses my cheeks, murmuring my name over and over. “Not your fault. You did the best you could. You cannot control evil. I’m here.”
“I thought there was hope, that maybe she was stuck and waiting for me, but she’s not. She’s here. All this time, she was here? She needed me, Jarek.” I sob, my knees collapsing, but he holds me up. “She was alone.”
Jarek grabs my hair, tightening his fingers in it, and presses his cheek against mine.
“No, Kaida, no. You don’t think about that. Don’t.”
Cadel presses against my back, and Mordecai stands behind Jarek, a silent witness to my pain, his own radiating out of him.
“She’s dead, Alpha. What do I do now?”
Jarek touches a kiss to my lips. “You keep going, you keep fighting. She wouldn’t want to see you in their hands.”
I bury my face in his shoulder. Cadel strokes his big hands down the outside of my upper arms.
“I can’t remember if I have a family or not,” Cadel murmurs. “But if I had someone like you, I would want you to be safe, no matter what I went through.”
I reach my hand up, and he grabs it, holding tight. We stand like that for long minutes, and it feels like something unimaginable wraps around us, tying us together.
“Okay, I’m okay,” I whisper and pull back.
Jarek inspects my face, and I reach up, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“What’s this?”
“I can’t bear to see you in pain, Omega. Your pain is my pain now.” His whispered words wrap around a part of me that has been so lonely for so long.
“We have to survive this place,” I murmur, and a little bit more of my heart believes it.
“We will. We’re going to go and find a nice place and build a home. We’ll have all our friends around us. Children. Grandchildren. We will grow old, sitting side by side on our porch, and this will just be a horrible time in our lives that we’re going to forget.”
He kisses me in a way that makes me think of warmth and the heat of a fire. I press into him. His scent, his touch, everything soothes the pain inside. I know its biology, but I don’t care. This alpha makes the pain stop, and he makes me feel like I’m not alone. It’s our first kiss, but it spins me out, sends me reeling and falling in a direction I didn’t know I wanted to go in.
I whine into his mouth, grabbing onto him, pulling myself closer. He growls and lifts me up, his hands gripping my ass cheeks.
He pulls back, and I stare at him, my hands resting on his shoulders.
To me, he’s a miracle.
He opens his mouth, but Cadel interrupts, tugging on my hand. With a reluctant last glance at Jarek, I get moving again. Mordecai has moved off, ranging ahead to make sure we don’t run into the Beta’s Path.
I need to fix things between him and me. The distance is an ache that I hate.
“I just don’t like it,” Mia says.
“You don’t like what?” I ask, tuning into her conversation with Legion.
“We’re discussing the way Bear has been lately. I know he has a lot on his shoulders, and winning this war is the most important thing, but he doesn’t even seem to care anymore.”
“He cares; he just doesn’t show it,” Legion says, unconcerned.
“He didn’t even cry—”
“Mia, he knew some of those people for the better part of twenty years. They were his brothers and close friends. He cared.”
She bites her bottom lip. “He just doesn’t need to be so secretive and manipulative.”
Legion laughs. “I think everyone who has ever been in charge of anyone is manipulative at some point.”
