“My father runs that organization. My mother died because of it. I’m dismantling it from the inside and I’m standing in front of you with hunter blood in my veins and in our children’s veins.” Her voice didn’t crack or waver. “So when you say you don’t trust a single hunter near me or our children, you might want to think about what that includes.”
My lungs emptied.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
She turned toward the sleeping area.
I moved before the decision formed.
My arms came around her from behind. Desperate. The kind of despair that happens when you hear your own cruelty played back in the voice of the woman you love and realize the wolf you’ve been blaming isn’t the problem.
You are.
“I’m sorry.” Into her hair. My lips pressed against the crown of her head and stayed there. “I’m sorry. That was cruel and wrong and none of it applies to you.”
She didn’t tense or pull away. But she didn’t lean back either.
“You’re the exception, Mira. You’ve always been the exception. I can’t get angry at you. I tried once and it doesn’t take.” My mouth moved to her shoulder. A kiss pressed against the fabric, gentle, the contrast to everything I’d been tonight.
“But I wasn’t as okay as I thought I was. I shouldn’t have lashed it out on you. I let it turn me into someone who hurts the people he loves. That’s on me.”
Her hands found my forearms. Gripped. But her body stayed rigid, the commander holding ground even while the woman underneath registered the warmth.
“Five minutes,” I said. “Just let me hold you for five minutes.”
“You can’t promise that it will fix anything.”
“I can promise I’ll try. That’s all I’ve got right now.”
A breath. Then another.
She leaned back. Just a fraction. Enough that my chest took some of her weight and the three heartbeats pressed closer to my palms.
“Maybe it’s selfish to ask this of you right now. After everything you just discovered about yourself.” A pause. The admission cost her and the price showed. “But I need you, Percy. Not just the jokes or the charm. You. And I can’t bridge that gap alone.”
The words landed in the space where my cruelty had been and filled it with the weight of trust I didn’t deserve. She hated admitting need. Every man she’d ever needed had used it against her. Hudson. Thiago. Even us, when the council’s ultimatum turned need into a weapon.
And she was handing it to me anyway, minutes after I’d reminded her that her blood was the enemy’s blood.
“I need you to meet me half-way because… I really need my best friend back right now.”
Best friend.The word hit me square in the chest. Not mate or alpha. Not the father of her children. Best friend. The thing I’d been before everything else.
She was reaching for me. After everything we’d done.
After we’d ripped her heart out and told her to leave. She should hate me. Should make me crawl and beg and bleed for what we’d put her through. Instead, she was standing here, still hurting, still carrying the weight of our rejection and this entire situation, trying to understand my grief anyway.
I was such a fucking asshole.
My pain was real. But Mira was in pain too. A mother she’d never known. A father who was a monster. Hunter blood running through veins that now carried lycan children. Opposing parts of her identity yet she’d infiltrated that compound alone, smiled through Thiago’s lies, and never once sat around drowning in self-pity.
She’d sacrificed everything and still found room to comfort me. The least I could do was pull my head out of my ass.
Her body softened against mine until her fingers traced lazy circles on my forearms.
Neither of us counted.
