And we’ve been dying without her.
No way Thorin, Khalil, andfucking Sethwould just let her go. They found her and they made her theirs like some twisted version of finders keepers.
“Zeke?” Aurelia calls softly when I don’t speak for a long while.
I scrub a hand down my face—a hand that helped to shackle her and may have even harmed her—and then I force myself to open my eyes and face this beautiful girl who confuses and scares the shit out of me. “I have a better question for you, Aurelia. Why do you care what happens to us?”
“I don’t,” she says unevenly. She’s all bluster. I caught her off her guard, and now she’s trying to regain some control. “I just don’t believe you.”
Shame courses through me as I wonder again what we did to her. “You think this is atest?”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut when she gives the smallest nod without quite meeting my eyes. If I blinked, I would have missed it.
And suddenly, I realize how disorienting it must have been when I barged in here and flipped the script. Isaac did it often. He feigned mercy only to extinguish my hope in the most brutal way the moment it appeared.
All I’ve accomplished is convincing Aurelia that I’m just another monster.
Fuck.
“It’s not a test,” I assure her. “And as much as I wish I could convince you, I won’t push for now, but this isn’t over.” I say italmost like an apology because I can’t let it go—no matter how much she or my brothers might want me to.
“They’re not so bad,” she confesses with a small smile that I don’t understand.
It eases some of the worry that my brothers did unspeakable things to her, but that smile only replaces those worries with new ones.
“You sure it’s not the Stockholm talking?” I blurt. When the hearts in her eyes turn into sharp daggers, I feel like I’m finally getting a glimpse of the real her. “Right. Okay. Suit yourself. I’ll leave you now. Good night.”
Yanking the door open and barreling past Thorin and Khalil, I don’t realize it’s the middle of the day until I’m standing outside the cabin, bent over, hands braced on my knees, trying to convince myself of two things.
She’s not Tatum.
And I’m not prey.
When I finally step back into the cabin thirty minutes later, Aurelia is stepping out of Thorin’s room fully dressed. Our eyes meet briefly before she looks away and announces to no one in particular, “I’ll get started on lunch.”
AURELIA
The guys have gotten into the habit of hanging around the kitchen. They lend me a hand while I make us food or clean, but not today. Today, Khalil and Thorin sit around the kitchen table, discussing in low tones what to do about the dead bodies we left behind once the snow melts.
Ezekiel is nowhere to be found.
After I offered to make us food, he gave me a weird look like I’m a puzzle he can’t figure out but wants no part of before disappearing. Intuition tells me that the more I try to make him like me, the less he’ll trust me.
Of course, I can’t take it personally, but it’s easier said than done when he wears the face of the man I love. There are moments when he even sounds like Seth—though I suppose it’s not hard to do when the differences in their cadence and tone are subtle.
Seth is loud and chaotic, his mirth spreading throughout the cabin and infecting us all.
Zeke is quiet and pensive, darkening the mood of everyone around him.
And then there’s the moment in the dell earlier when Seth’s anger poked a sleeping Bane and the alter I hoped to never meet spoke in that terrifying rumble.I know what you’re doing.
The mere memory raises the hair on my nape.
Khalil and Thorin are wrapping up their plans by the time I’m done whipping together our lunch. Thorin disappears to fetch Zeke, and I keep my gaze pinned to the table when they return to avoid looking at Zeke.Even the way he walks is different.I hearthe hesitant shuffle of his steps behind Thorin’s commanding stride.
I dare a peek when he passes Seth’s usual chair directly across from mine and a guilty pit forms in my stomach when I glimpse the hard line of his mouth and the muscle in his cheek pulsing with unhappiness as he takes a seat at the far end of the table facing Khalil—as far away from me as possible.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Zeke didn’t come willingly, so I throw everything I have into the glare I pin Thorin with when he takes his usual seat next to me. The last thing I want is to force Ezekiel to accept me.
