“No,” Trevor said. “Maybe. I…It’s been a long time, and I was never going to…to say anything.”
“Why not?”
“It hurt. It hurt too much to talk about…about my mate.”
“But you knew what was happening to you. And why.” A furrow dug deep between his brows, and his mouth crimped.
Say it. Go on and say it to the alpha. “I didn’t know she was mine, not when we were all pups. Shoot, none of us knew anything back then, did we? The old ones didn’t want to mess us up, didn’t want us thinking every crush was fate, obsessing about one girl out there in the world meant for us. I get where they were coming from.”
“But you were unique,” Malachi said. “Your mate found you when you were six years old.”
“Yeah. She did.” The surprise of tears again. He blinked them back.
In a flash he saw her, blonde bob and a sort-of-teal dress—no, aqua, the color that would turn out to be her favorite. Her little chin thrust out when she announced the stupidity of baby dolls. Her little bottom lip wobbling when she asked if they could play together, or…
“I can go away if you want.”
The memory flayed his chest open, a pain exponentially sharper than his cracked rib. He couldn’t keep back a single tear that fell down his cheek and dropped to the floor with a soft plop. All these years, her deepest insecurity hadn’t changed. She’d thought he wanted her to go away, so she had. All the way to North Carolina.
Malachi stayed silent while Trevor wrestled to contain himself. At last he was able to sit up straight in the chair, or as straight as the rib would allow. He swiped the tear track from his face though it had mostly dried by now.
“You remember how it was after she moved, the first week or two…. I was a wreck.”
Malachi nodded.
“Well, we were proud pups. I hated feeling weak, hated knowing the rest of you knew how bad it was for me. And…it probably took a year for me to put everything together. To realize she was my mate, to realize I was losing my gifts.”
“And when you did, you hid it.” The growl was back.
“Of course I did, Mal. Y’all were tough as mastodon leather. I was soft as cake. That’s how I saw it anyway, and I just— I decided not to be. I tried not to feel the hole in me, and Arlo says the more I shut that part of me down, the more all the rest of me shut down. He says that’s why I’m fading.”
A ripple of recognition crossed Malachi’s face. “Fading.”
“Do you know about it?”
“Some. When did you tell Arlo?”
“I didn’t. He put it together last week, when Kelsey came home.”
A slow nod, and then for a few minutes they sat in stillness. Malachi’s eyes grew distant as he processed and pondered. Typical, but welcome too. The silence gave Trevor room to breathe, room to contain. He wondered if Malachi knew how it helped to sit without speaking beside a good friend. Probably. The alpha sensed things like that.
“I’ll speak to him,” Malachi said at last. “If there are ways to help you, I need that information.”
“I figured you would.”
“What else did he say?”
“Just that I have to stop absorbing it. I have to allow it instead, or I’ll keep fading. And I…I need Kelsey. I need my mate.”
But in her eyes, he’d just proved he didn’t want her. Not enough for honesty. Not enough. He pressed a hand to his chest, but the pain wouldn’t stay down. He bit his lip and shut his eyes.
Malachi drew in a quiet breath.
“What?” Trevor said through clenched teeth.
“Your scent.”
“Yeah, I know. I guess I absorbed that too.”
