“I did.” Megan looked up at me with eyes filled with tears. “A human isn’t meant to go through a heat. You can overheat, and that can hurt your organs.”
“But I’m a werewolf.” She shook her head and looked at Nix.
“Our last life, you never shifted. Your body was strong, but not werewolf strong. We leant you our strength, but your body was actually still very fragile. You just never noticed the difference because you were never in an actual fight.”
“So you couldn’t share the heat with me because you were afraid I was going to die?” The two nodded. I dropped down next to her. “I am so sorry you had to go through a heat without me.” Nix snorted and Megan met my eyes and then looked away.
“One?” Nix chuckled. “No, Amy.”
I looked at her and then back at Megan. “If it wasn’t once, how many was it?” She just shook her head. “How many Megan?”
“Please.”
“Megan! Tell me.”
She looked at me with a sad face. “Seventy two before we finally fell pregnant.”
Seventy-two. The floor fell out from under my feet. “How could you face that alone for seventy-two times?”
She sighed. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” I was grasping at straws. “That’s like…”
“Once a month from your eighteenth birthday, when you met Brandon, until we became pregnant. It would have been more, but we made our pup on your birthday. So that year I only had the one.” She answered softly. “We were almost twenty-five when we died.”
The truth hit me like a punch in the gut. She survived so many times, all alone in the forest. “I am so, so sorry.”
She took a deep breath and stood. “They get easier. And I had my mates touch to temper the burn. You both just went through you first without any help other than me. I took the heat, so you had those few breaks to collect yourself.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “You are the strongest wolf I have ever met.”
She laughed. “You’re only saying that because I’m your wolf.”
“No.” Nix came over and sat next to her. “She is right. You are strong, stronger than the both of us. You spent six years dealing with this, and we both failed our first time.”
I scoffed. “We didn’t fail Nix. And I think that is where your anger is coming from. You’re acting like this is something to win or lose at. And pining for a male is losing to you. We were poisoned. We didn’t have a mate to help us through it. And all we had was the males we like to focus on. We did better than anyone could expect.”
Nix watched me for a minute before she sighed. “You’re right.” She laid her head down. “I was so focused on you begging Rowan, and ashamed of how I was howling for Erubus that I was…” she trailed off.
“You were ashamed of both of us.” She nodded.
“But I took it out on you. And that isn’t fair.” She sighed again. “Megan is right. I was projecting my anger onto you. And you didn’t deserve it.” She stood and shook her fur out. “The heat took so much out of me, I felt so weak, and honestly that scared me.”
Megan licked Nix’s paw. “You are the Alpha. And vulnerability can be hard. But we are supposed to work together, we balance each other. When you fall short, I can step up. When I fall short, you do. When we both fall short, Amy has us.” I nodded.
“I know.” Nix paced a little, then she turned to me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you pathetic.”
I winced. “It’s okay. I understand.”
“No. It really isn’t. You like Rowan, and I know how much you would love for him to be your mate. I like Erubus just as much.” She dropped her head a little. “But after this heat, I think the best thing for the both of us is to distance ourselves from both of them. Instead of looking for him, I should just focus on running with the girls. I think we could learn a lot from running as a small pack in the woods. And you, I think we should focus solely on hacking.”
Megan nodded. “I actually agree with Nix. We are putting ourselves in harm’s way the longer we drag this out. Look at this last week. We let our guard down and Brandon forced a heat. If we were alone, we would be mated to that scumbag.” She snarled. “So distancing ourselves from the very nice, but extremely distracting men until we have figured out who is trying to kill everyone might be the way to go?”
I threw my head back and laughed. She said it so seriously. “Fine.” I nodded. “But I have conditions.”
My two wolves tilted their heads to me. “And…”
I just smirked. “We need to work together. And I know we have already agreed to this, but look at today, we went right back to pointing fingers and blaming each other.” They both sighed and nodded.
