“They’ll provoke you.” He tightened his grip on my arms. “They’ll reach into your mind, seize your worst fears, and force you to live them.”
The last grilled cheese I’d eaten tried to climb back up my throat. I swallowed hard and forced a smile. “Worse than being locked in a concrete box with no pillow?”
His eyes went watery. He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. Then he cupped my face in both hands and justlookedat me.
“I love you so damn much,” he said. “I’d tell you to stop being a smartass, but I can’t. I don’t want to change anything about you.”
My insides buzzed like that Operation board game I’d played as a kid, every part of me lit up and humming.
And, suddenly, I was done being okay with dying. I wanted to live—and I refused to do it without Jesse by my side. I’d told myself that I loved him but could live without him if I had to. But that was a lie. Something I’d come up with to feel safer. There was no version of my life worth living that didn’t have him in it.
I smiled, and it was real this time. “Then I guess I have to prove them wrong.”
“Caleb—”
“I’m not going to fail,” I said. “My worst fear is losing you, and no one can make me believe that’ll ever happen.” I stroked his jaw, letting the soft hair tickle my fingertips. “You wake up before dawn just to listen to me breathe. You’re down bad, Mr. van der Meer. I’m stuck with you.”
He released a shaky laugh. Then he jerked me against him and kissed me. For a second, I thought about how I hadn’t brushed my teeth in two days. Then I decided I didn’t give a single fuck and kissed him back.
We pulled away at the same time, and he rested his forehead against mine. We stayed like that, breathing each other’s air.
“I think this is our love language,” I murmured. “Forehead frotting.”
His shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. “Fuck,” he said, sounding breathless and a little wrecked.
I drew back and smiled. “That too. Definitely that one.”
The door opened. Stefanos entered with the two burly wolves behind him. He looked between me and Jesse with an unreadable expression.
“It’s time,” he said.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
JESSE
The Council chamber hadn’t changed. Wooden risers curved around walls that flickered with torchlight. The barrel-vaulted ceiling might have been the oldest in London.
The floor was scrubbed clean, but no amount of scrubbing could erase the dark stains from the stone. Sometimes I wondered if the elders kept it that way on purpose.
Caleb sat in a wooden chair in the center of the chamber, his spine straight and his hands in his lap. No more than twenty feet separated us, but it might as well have been a thousand. The guards sitting on either side of me ensured I wasn’t getting anywhere near him.
Stefanos and ten of the other elders occupied the first row of risers. Eight men and two women, they were as silent and unforgiving as the stone around us.
The walk to the chamber had given me time to build a case. By the time we’d arrived, I’d torn it apart myself. Caleb had attacked Welch. He’d broken Cross’s nose and snapped his arm. The elders wouldn’t care that he’d been provoked.
It was better to focus on the positive. Caleb had been uprooted from everything he knew. He’d weathered morechange than most people experienced in a lifetime, and he was thriving. He was resilient, smart, and funny.
He was mine.
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and Nin entered.
Every head turned.
Power swept into the chamber like a dark wind. In my mind, my wolf went still and alert. The temperature plummeted, the air turning brittle and sharp. Caleb’s eyes widened as she descended the stairs.
A human looking at her would think her beautiful. Over six feet tall, she resembled a runway model with her lithe build and striking features. Her dark brown eyes appeared black. A long sheet of midnight hair fell to her waist, the glossy strands glinting in the torchlight.
