“First, she doesn’t trust shifters for shit, so luckily, she got me,” Boogey bragged and indicated his body as a whole. He was always playing his human card like a fucking ace of spades. It was slightly amusing.
“Boogey?”
“Condensed, right. Linda never told Carys much about Domino or her father, just warnings. So, she didn’t really know the kind of man he was until she got tangled with him. Her mother said she’d always missed having a dad, so when he found her …”
Boogey shrugged. Monster got the message he was relaying. Carys would’ve done anything for her father’s love.
“The illness her mother had was the broken bond. Seems Cliff or Samual, the dead fuck, severed their bond before,” Boogey drew his thumb across his neck and made a click with his mouth. “He killed his wolf.”
“That’s fucking diabolical,” Monster mused.
“Yeah. But that’s not the worst. He injected his daughter with something to use her. And on top of that, he lied to her about having a cure for her mother.”
Samual himself and Carys had pretty much touched on all those points to an extent.
His pixie had been through the emotional wringer. Monster and Ulf wanted to protect her. Lock her away so no one could hurt her ever again. Not only was that impossible, but he also wouldn’t even be able to protect her from losing her mother, which was an inevitability.
But we hurt her, left her scared and afraid of us.
I’ll fix it. Monster promised Ulf.
“How bad is she?”
“Pretty bad. According to Kansas’s homemade shifterpedia.” At the mention of his fallen brother, the mood shifted again. “She’s in the end stages. Sorry, brother.”
“Is there anything we can do? Any medical intervention they haven’t tried?”
“Modern medicine can’t do shit. The only possibility is a vamp. If we can find a bloodsucker willing, he can save her, but her life force would be tied to another’s again.”
Monster perked up at Boogey’s words, and so did Ulf.
So much became clear.
Monster shot up from the stool. “Thanks, brother,” he said genuinely, but was already heading to his room.
With a steadying breath, he opened the door. The vision before him swelled and twisted his heart at the same time.
Cuffed to his bed was a sleeping Carys. As he approached, she didn’t stir. Sitting next to her, he could see the tracks of her tears on her cheeks. Dark circles ringed her closed eyes.
Cursing himself for being an ass, he strode into the bathroom and started a steaming bath. After stripping, he padded back into his room and unlocked her. She still didn’t stir much.
“Fuck, Pixie,” he whispered more to himself than to her. “You’ve been through it today. Instead of helping, I just made it worse.”
He carried her into the bathroom. “Wake up, sweetheart.” She needs tenderness.
Hell, did he even know tenderness? As a rule, no, but he understood after care for enthusiastic sex. Same thing, right? “Just before,” he murmured as he set her on her feet.
As she swayed and woke up, he started stripping her.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was husky with sleep.
“Taking care of you like you deserve.”
He pulled her leggings and underwear down together. “Lift,” he ordered when he got to her foot. A slight smile crossed his face as he felt her tiny hands on his shoulder to steady herself. It was a small, subconscious gesture, but it meant something to him. It was a small measure of trust she’d extended. After all the things he’d done in the last twenty-four hours to break her trust, unintentionally and otherwise, he’d take it.
He repeated the command with the other and she complied.
“My good girl.”
