“I want you to trustme.” Her voice doesn’t shake, but her jaw does. “You’re not my father, Bastien.”
“No. But I’ve already put one sister in the ground because of what some boys did.”
That lands between us, cold and final.
“I’m not risking another.”
Juliette doesn’t flinch. “I think Aimee would want me to live, Bastien. To be happy. Not spend my life being protected to death.”
Juliette didn’t know Aimee. Not really. Juju never saw the way Aimee lit up a room or how fast she trusted the wrong people. She can’t speak for a person she’s only acquainted with through photographs and other people’s memories.
I look away, jaw tight enough to crack. “What do you really know about this Marc?”
“He knows not to touch me without permission.”
I nod once. “If he fucks this up?—”
“He won’t.”
“I break bones, Juliette.” I let that settle. “And worse. That’s not just a rumor.”
She stomps on my foot, but I don’t flinch. “You threaten everyone.”
“I’m not fucking around. I mean it.”
“Oh, let her have her fun, Bastien,” Dad says, leaning against the doorframe behind her.
I exhale through my nose. “And if she’s harmed?”
Dad doesn’t blink. “Then you have my permission to kill the little bastard.”
He doesn’t know I have before, that this wouldn’t be new to me. And it wouldn’t even keep me up at night.
I don’t make empty threats. If this Marc crosses a line, there won’t be a warning. Only atonement.
I stare at Juliette—so young but not so soft.
“Fine.” The word scrapes out, rough as gravel. “But if he so much as makes you cry?—”
“He won’t.”
“You think you’re grown, but I remember the day you were born. You fit in one hand.”
“And now I’m holding my own. So chill, bruh.”
Bruh.
Who comes up with the shit kids say?
Mamère sits in her chair with a grunt, eyes cutting to me, sharp and knowing beneath her crown of white curls. “Et toi, mon loup?”
And you, my wolf.
Funny, the timing. She hasn’t called me that in years. Not since I was a boy with scraped knees and too much silence behind my eyes.
And Laurette—of all names she could have chosen—calls me the same.My Wolf.As if she felt it too, the thing curled inside me, waiting.
And now, out of nowhere, Mamère reaches for that name again.
