FOURTY-FOUR
Jez
WHAT HAD CHANGED INSIDEme, these past weeks? What switch had been flipped? Although maybe it was obvious. I was mated now.
I still flinched away and panicked at the prospect of an unfamiliar alpha touching me when I wasn’t braced for it, like the orderly in Gage’s treatment room. But I’d lasted all of fifteen seconds naked in the shower with Heath before I’d ended up wrapped in his arms again, trembling with reaction.
And the thing was, he was shaking, too. His presence inside me, a sharp light that I’d come to recognize as Heath’s unfiltered self, felt as though it might break apart at any moment.
“Are you worried about Tony and Gage?” I asked, because they were all I could think about.
His arms tightened convulsively for a moment. I felt him wrestle his emotions back under control. Instead of answering immediately, he very deliberately loosened his hold, turning me so the shower spray hit more of my body. Nasty, clay-colored muck flowed across the shower floor and down the drain.
“Of course I am,” he said. His voice still held that gravelly hoarseness from earlier, but I was less convinced now that it was because of the dust. “I think I’m more worried about myself, though,” he added in a mutter.
I turned my head to look at him. “What do you mean?”
An ugly, heavy sense of self-loathing inside my head spiked. I was pretty sure it wasn’t coming from me.
Heath hesitated for long enough that I wasn’t sure he would answer at all. Then he stepped forward, easing me to one side so he could get his head under the spray. Gray mud sluiced out of his hair and beard, revealing its dark copper color when wet.
He put a hand out and braced it against the plastic shower wall, staying hunched over as he finally spoke.
“If I’d been alone, back at the hotel... if you hadn’t been there with me when the bomb went off, Tony and Gage would both be dead. Maybe Knox, too, since he’d have snapped his own spine in half trying to save them.”
I frowned, not sure what he was trying to say.
“What kind of packmate does that make me?” he asked.
I still didn’t understand where he was going with this.
“One who’s not psychic?” I suggested. “You’d never have been able to find them in the debris if I hadn’t been mated to Gage. None of them would have wanted you putting yourself at risk like that. Not when there was no chance.”
He made a sound that was probably a laugh, although it had a suspiciously choked quality. Straightening, he swept his soaked hair back and scrubbed a hand down his face to clear the water from his eyes.
“That’s my point.” Once again, he urged me under the spray. This time, he grabbed the shampoo and squirted some into his hands, rubbing them together before digging his lathered fingers into my hair. “At the silos, I’d have done something terrible if you hadn’t broken out of your cell and saved me. At the hotel, I’d have stood around like a useless piece of shit while my packmates were crushed to death, if you hadn’t been there and physically dragged me back inside to save them.”
The gentle scratch of his fingertips along my scalp sent tingles rushing down my body, making it hard to think. This was important, though. I grabbed his wrists, bringing his hands down to curl between us.
“In the silos, Ihadto get to you,” I told him. “It wasn’t a conscious choice. I just knew that it didn’t matter what was standing in my way. I had to climb over it or dig under it or smash through it, because it was stopping me from being where I needed to be. It was the same with Gage in the hotel. I didn’tchooseto drag us back into danger. I needed to be with him, and it didn’t matter what was separating us.”
Heath’s head bowed again, over our joined hands.
“We can choose now, though,” he said, not looking at me. “I ought to hate you for what you did to Knox. You ought to hatemefor holding you prisoner in the attic... for biting you without your consent. But...Jez. You being here makes me a better person than I would be otherwise. We could choose... to be better together.”
My heart stuttered, because this was something more than tolerating an unwanted mate-bond so that I wouldn’t have to get my mating gland removed. Just like Heath had said,this... was achoice.
I swallowed, even though it felt like gargling broken glass.
