I’m not sure I deserve it.
“Love you like a sister, Flo,” he says, bending to kiss the top of my head.
“Love you like a brother, Tic,” I reply automatically.
One more squeeze of his hand and he leaves me, hurrying upstairs to the orgy that I am sure is happening in Haven’s nest.
Maybe it should bother me, but it doesn’t. Instead, I turn my attention back to the website Jude made for me, and the textscrawled across the top.Flo and Behold,where strength meets grace and every seam tells a story.
And for the first time since I was rejected on national television, I feel a flutter of hope.
Episode 5: A Crown is Not a Heart
Forsythe
I’m okay,I tell myself for the tenth time today.It only hurts when I breathe.
My hand presses into my ribs, halfway expecting to find them bruised and aching. But there’s nothing. I haven’t injured myself, not physically at least. But mentally, emotionally? I might as well have slit my own throat and now I’m bleeding out.We'rebleeding out.
Focus, Forsythe. You need to focus. Get through the day. Just today, and you can break down tonight.
Just like I have every night since we sent Florence home, climb into my bed alone and curl around my bleeding aching heart. No, not my heart. I don’t have that anymore. It's firmly in my omega’s hands thousands of miles away.
No, don’t think about the distance. That way lies madness.
It really does. I’ve lain awake at night for hours, staring at the ceiling and counting each of the miles between me andmy omega. All forty-eight hundred of them. I feel that distance keenly. So does the rest of my pack. So, I imagine, does Florence.
With a sigh, I refocus. I’m already running late. I seem to do that a lot these days though no one is brave enough to call me on it. One more glance in the mirror, an adjustment of my tie, and a palm run over my head to smooth my hair, and I feel ready enough to face the day.
I have no other choice, really.
Piers is waiting in the sitting room, and I fresh pang of hurt hits at seeing my beta.
Not from anything he’s done, but because of whatI’vedone. I know I’ve hurt him, know I’ve forced him into something he would never have done if not for me, my ties to the crown. Given the choice, he would have followed Florence back to her home, would have wrapped her up and kept her in his pocket, his own personal sunbeam. But the bond between us demanded he remain at my side.
He glances up from his tablet as I enter and I give him what I hope is a believable smile. “Good morning, love,” I murmur, sliding my hand on his lower back and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “How are you today? Did you sleep well?”
“I slept like shit,” he mutters, not meeting my gaze, his scent turning slightly musty, like grass clippings left to molder. “Just like you did. Just like Thayer and Grieves and Courtland did.”
I grit my teeth, flexing my jaw.
“It’ll get better,” I tell him and try to believe it myself. “It’s just a fresh wound right now. It will heal, scar over and we’ll get back to our normal.”
He frowns up at me. “Will we?”
My lips brush his forehead again. “I have to believe that we will, love. Otherwise…”
He steps back, putting space between us under the guise of pouring a cup of coffee for me. “Otherwise we broke our pack when we sent Florence away from us,” he finishes for me. He doesn’t see how I flinch when he says her name.
“We’re not broken,” I tell him, as he hands me the steaming mug, “just fractured.”
“A fracture is a break.” The look he gives me could peel paint, but it fades in an instant replaced with one that is pure self-loathing and grief. With a weary sigh that makes my heart ache, he sinks onto the couch and rests his elbows on his knees.
“I’m not sure we can keep going like this. I know I can’t,” Piers says, both palms pressed to his face.
I glance at the clock and then back at my beta, obviously hurting, obviously needing me. There’s no choice. Grandmother will have to be displeased with my tardiness. “We’ll get through this, Piers,” I tell him, slipping onto the arm of his chair and gripping the back of his neck in a gentle massage. “We’ve survived every other thing the world has thrown at us, and we will survive this.”
He lifts his red rimmed, devastated eyes to me. “We’ve never been through something like this, Sythe. I know you want to pretend like we didn’t majorly cock it up when we sent Florence home, but we did.” I don’t hide the flinch when he says her name. Don’t even try to. He looks at me with haunted hazel eyes. “You have no idea…”
