"When we first met that night, I was attracted to him. More than… I don't know. More than is reasonable, I guess, since he was a complete stranger at a party. And when he showed up at my apartment, before I'd gotten home, and then, when he attacked me… I was scared.Terrified. But I still felt… I don't know, I can't explain it. Calm? I just kept breathing him in, butin a way—" Mona sniffs, and I tense when I see the tears welling in her eyes. It clouds the arctic blue of her iris, like a sheen of glass, until she wipes away. I reach out to hold her hand, and she lets me.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
For fuck's sake. We've made this girl cry too much already. My voice comes out raw. "Don't. You don't need to apologize. You can talk about it, you know."
"But he's, like, your brother. I don't want to—"
"No brother of mine would have hurt you like that. Not unless…"
"Unless what?"
I hedge, but I don't want to lie to her. "Unless he had a very good reason."
She pulls her hand from mine. I almost backtrack to assure her I believe her and I'd kill Silas for hurting her, but like everything else since the very moment we met, she surprises me.
"I've been wondering the same thing."
I lean back in surprise. "…Really?"
She nods, then looks off into the distance, brow scrunching. "Silas told me to go north. That his brother would take care of me. Why would he say that?"
It's exactly what I'd been thinking, but I have no answers. We stew in silence for a few minutes, when I decide to finally broach the reason I wanted to come out here.
"We need to talk about your shift."
"About how slow we are?" She chuckles.
"You know I support you. And I don't want to add to your worries. But five minutes to shift… and that she can only hold her form for a few hours?"
"One time it was almost a whole day! And a bunch of times it was all night. Like seven hours or something."
Her eyes are twinkling, so I know she's not offended. Until they narrow over my shoulder and I turn to find Grayson storming toward us. His smoky scent precedes him, like a huffing dragon. He pauses at one end of the picnic table. Mona and I are sitting together on the bench, and I can tell he's contemplating fitting his gigantic body on her other side. Mona sees it too, and she's holding in a laugh, while Gray's expression tightens and he climbs in opposite us.
"How did training go?" he asks, nodding toward the gym.
"Not great," I tell him. "Spaghetti arms here can barely lift a tire."
"Excuse you, I lifted that tire ten times."
"Three."
"Three times. That's more than I've ever lifted a tire, so that's a three-hundred percent improvement rate."
"Who taught you math?"
"I'm just saying, at this rate, I'll be fit as fuck in no time."
"Fit as fuck?"
She lifts her arm and kisses her scrawny-ass bicep.
"You're ridiculous."
She laughs. It's big and throaty and she throws her head back and I fucking feel that shit in my bones.
Grayson watches us volley back and forth, jealousy bleeding into his expression.
"Why do I need to train, anyway?" she asks, finally facing Grayson. They both diligently ignore the tension, his accusations from yesterday, and his unanswered apology at her closed door. And the hour following, where he begged and pleaded in a way I'd never expected of an alpha of his stature.
