“You're still smoking. I thought you were quitting before camp.”
Thane appears taken aback by my strange, misplaced accusation, his cheeks filling with color as he chuckles nervously. He gets to his feet, rubbing clammy hands on his denim jeans.
“I—I did quit,” he reveals, rubbing a hand behind his neck. “I just found Brooks's stash, and I indulged. I needed it. But it was a one-time thing.”
“You don't owe me an explanation, Thane.”
“I know. But you always reminded me how dangerous nicotine and wolfsbane were. Didn't you say…a deadly combo?”
“Yeah, I did….” Nodding thoughtfully, I wrap my arms around my chest as I turn my face toward the wall, staringblankly ahead. It's none of my business what he does, but the smell of cigarettes brings me back to the night he'd rejected me.
In the midst of everything I've been hauled into since he found me in Seward, recalling the night of his rejection threatens to break my heart all over again. It's probably because I'm about to enter an arranged mating ceremony with the man who rejected me in the past. And that's why I'm trying to look for some good in all of this.
“Are you o—”
“I'm fine,” I cut Thane off abruptly, tilting my chin with a hint of defiance that leads him to slowly back away toward the door.
He lingers for a moment longer, his tall, broad frame filling the doorway, and I do my best not to give him a second look, especially after that weird exchange when I touched his cheek. Embarrassment with a hint of pride is a deadly combination for my pulse, and I wish he'd just go away so I can breathe again, but his shadow spills across the room with a heaviness of the weight of everything unspoken.
I can feel his eyes on me as if he's searching for something he’s already lost.
He clears his throat softly, a sound bordering on confusion and hesitation.
“Get some rest, Willow,” he says finally, voice low, careful, as if he’s afraid that if he speaks too loud, I’ll shatter to pieces.
I don’t answer. I can’t. I'd probably shatter into pieces if I did, and I'm trying so hard not to break.
When the door clicks shut, and the sound echoes through the stillness like a full stop on a sentence I never wanted to write,I let out a sigh of relief. The silence that follows is louder than any fight we’ve ever had, and somehow, it feels like imaginary hands wrapping around my throat to suffocate me.
My body feels heavy when I lie back on the bed, my pulse still uneven from the nightmare—or maybe from him, I’m not sure.
The air in this room feels different now, thicker somehow. It smells faintly of tobacco and mint, and I hate that it’s comforting. I hate that it smells like Thane.
Like the boy who used to sneak into my greenhouse to tease me about talking to my plants.
Like the man who once promised I’d always be safe in Girdwood.
I hate that part of me still believes him.
Rolling onto my side with an exasperated sigh, I stare at the wall, at nothing in particular. My mind won’t stop replaying everything—his touch, the look in his eyes when he caught my wrist, the spark that leapt between us like lightning. It wasn’t just warmth. It was recognition. And that’s what scares me the most.
I feel seen, at a time I don't want to be feeling that way. Perhaps, in the past, I would have basked in that feeling. But when I wanted it the most, it didn't come, and instead, I was shattered.
Destruction.
The one from my nightmare.
I've already felt destruction, and now my nightmare is telling me about Thane's.
Is it revenge I'm meant to seek?
Or is the prophecy true? Believable?
Pressing my fingers into my palms until they sting, as if the pain can drown out the confusion clawing through me, I can't seem to get numb the way I usually would.
I can stillfeel.
Because underneath the hate is something much worse, something dangerously close to what I used to feel for him.
