“I was trying to protect you—”
“Protect me?” The laugh that tears out of me has no humor in it. “By lying? By keeping me in the dark while you knew exactly what was coming for me?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Then explain it!” The words rip out of my throat, raw and desperate. “Explain how you could stand there, bond with me, make me believe I could trust you—and the whole time you knew.”
Thane’s composure cracks, just slightly. “The others told me. They told Stellan and me everything about what happened with Phil, about what he did to you. I thought—”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer.
The others told me.
My knees nearly buckle as the full scope of the betrayal crashes over me.
“The others,” I repeat, voice hollow. “Gray. Rhett. Jace. Wes. Theo.” Each name tastes like ash on my tongue. “They all knew.”
Thane’s face goes carefully blank, which is all the confirmation I need.
“They knew… all of it. And none of them thought to tell me either.”
“They were trying to protect—”
“Stop.” The word comes out sharp enough to cut. “Just stop saying that.”
The Ether writhes around me, responding to the storm building in my chest. I can barely think past the betrayal burning through my veins.
“I let you in,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around myself. “All of you. For the first time in my life, I let people past the walls. I let myself believe I wasn’t alone anymore.”
“You’re not—”
“Don’t you dare!” The shout tears out of me. “Don’t you dare tell me I’m not alone when you all decided I couldn’t be trusted with the truth about my own life!”
Thane flinches, and something shifts in his expression—not just regret now, but alarm. His silver eyes track the mist coiling around us, and I see fear creep across his face.
“It wasn’t about trust—”
“Then what was it about?” I take a step toward him, and the space around us trembles. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you all decided I was too weak, too broken, too fragile to handle knowing that one of my abusers was coming back for me.”
Thane goes very still. “One of?” His voice is carefully controlled, but I catch the confusion underneath. “Bree, the mist—”
But I’m too lost in the wound they carved in my chest to pay attention to whatever he’s seeing.
“You treated me like a child,” I continue, the realization hitting with devastating clarity. “Like someone who needed to be managed instead of trusted. Protected instead of prepared.”
Thane takes a step back, his gaze fixed on something I can’t see, can’t focus on past the betrayal consuming me.
“Maybe they were right to be afraid of me,” I say quietly.
The space around us shudders at my words, and Thane’s face goes pale.
“Maybe I was never meant to be trusted either.”
“Bree, no—” His voice breaks, desperate in a way I’ve never heard from him. He reaches toward me, but stops short, like he’s afraid of what his touch might do. “That’s not—you can’t believe that.”
And from somewhere in the endless black around us, distant but unmistakable, comes the sound of laughter.
Soft. Maniacal. Pleased.
