“Hey,” Griffin says, his voice low and serious.
“Yeah?” I ask, my gaze jerking back to him.
“I want you to know that in my head, we’re in this together. You, me, Mirabelle, Ash, and Rage. The five of us. Ash calls me delusional whenever I bring it up, but I’ve still got hope we’re gonna get the fuck out of here. And when we do, Mirabelle’s gonna need you.”
I open my mouth to protest, but slam my jaw shut in the face of Griffin’s glare.
“I don’t wanna hear any bullshit from you ‘bout how you don’t deserve it or some shit. If anything’s become crystal clear to me this past week, it’s why Mirabelle’s liked you so much from the very beginning. You care about her. A whole lot. It’s obvious to anyone with eyeballs. You anticipate the kinda shit she’ll need without her even asking. Like her hair. I would’ve never thought about that!”
“Really?”
“Really,” Griffin nods. “The rest of us are fucking meat heads. Mirabelle needs something more than that. She needs you. And you’re blind if you don’t see that. She’s wanted you to be a part of this week. Just as big of a part as I am.”
“But—But I don’t have a knot, I can’t help her?—“
Griffin lets out a stifled snort of laughter, rolling his eyes. “You may be new to this whole fucking thing, but you’re a quick study and eager to please. You don’t need a knot to make her come.”
My shoulders slump forward as I lose the battle raging inside of me and brush some of Mirabelle’s hair away from her face, needing to touch her.
“I know you’re probably not going to believe me. You’ve got too much shit weighing you down. But if a knot would fix the fucking situation, we’d be done and over with what, two dozen times already?” He huffs.
“Probably over two dozen. It’s been a long fucking week.”
“You can say that again. Now, let’s figure out what she thinks about all this.”
Griffin shifts his arm, brushing the backs of his fingers across her cheek before giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
“Hey Sugar, sorry to wake you, but we’ve got something really important we need to ask you,” I say when her eyes flutter open.
She lets out a soft groan as she lifts her arms out of the blanket cocoon she’s currently in and stretches.
“Question?” She hums.
“Yeah, sweetheart. The doc just came in. He said your heat isn’t getting better.”
A quiet whimper leaves the back of Mirabelle’s throat as her expression falls. “Really? But—but?—“
“Shit,” Griffin says, paling at the sight of the tears that cling to her lower lashes. He shoots me a panicked glance.
It’s almost as if he’s saying, “See, this is why we need someone like you,” with his eyes.
“The Doc said we had one option we could try,” I jump in, reaching out and lacing her hand with mine. “Take a deep breath with me, ‘kay? It’s not the end of the world yet.”
“O—okay,” she sniffles. “Sorry, I’m such a mess. I think—I think it’s the hormones or something. I don’t know why I’m freaking out.”
“Don’t apologize. You don’t need a reason to justify you freaking out, Sugar. Plus, I’d say freaking out in this situation is normal.”
Well, if you can call any part of this insane, fucked up situation normal, it would be her reaction.
She takes my breath away as she blinks up at me, her chest rising and falling with deep, steadying breaths.
She doesn’t have the glassy look that normally indicates her fever is spiking. Probably because she just took Griffin’s knot a couplehours ago.
Good, she seems clearheaded enough to give us an answer we can trust.
“We want you to know that you can say no. You don’t have to say yes. We can try and figure out an alternative. But Dr. Stetson said one thing we could try to get this fucked up heat to stop is for... is for you to bond with an alpha.”
Her eyes go wide, and her head jerks to blink up at Griffin, who offers her a silent nod of affirmation.
