I don’t want to get lost in that. I want him, that much is clear, but I need it to be in a healthy way.
“Do you want to talk about what happened tonight? Or is it too soon?” he asks, and I love that he understands me enough to know I need time to process. The way he doesn’t push me too much, too fast.
“I’m okay. You got there in time before he… before he hurt me in a way my tiger couldn’t heal.”
Ryan inhales sharply, and he pulls off to the side of the road when hair spurts from his arms. He takes a deep breath before speaking again.
“And what about Brett and Michael?” he asks, taking my hand again. His eyes bore into me.
“Brett lied to me,” I say simply. “He asked me to meet him in person, and I did. I suggested the location; I thought as long as it was public and, well, filled with humans that it would be okay. But it obviously wasn’t because he drugged me. He was planning to start up the trafficking again, with me as his first victim.”
It all feels like a story right now. As if it happened to someone else, not to me. I’m detached from it. My nervous system has shut down, and I’m not ready to do anything to change that. My body aches and exhaustion, unlike anything I have ever experienced, weighs heavy on my shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, Maya,” Ryan whispers, taking my hand and placing a soft kiss on my knuckles. “I know how much meeting your biological family meant to you. How much you wanted answers and that connection.”
“I did. But I also always felt guilty about it. My family is great. I mean, Mom worries about everyone, Dad doesn’t take anything seriously enough, and Pippa and Maddie are a lot, but in the best way. I think I needed to be able to let go, and now I have.”
“You don’t need to put a silver lining on it,” he tells me. “You don’t have to be strong right now.”
My eyes warm, and a solitary tear slips down my cheek, cooling my skin in its wake. Ryan pulls his hand from mine and wraps his arm around me. His warm fingers tracing soothing circles on my arm.
“I’m going to book in with my therapist as soon as we get home,” I tell him. “And I’m going to take some time off. I need to focus on me before I can think about being there for others.”
Ryan squeezes my now-healed arm, and I allow the exhaustion to take over, nestling into him as he resumes the drive home.
Chapter Forty-Six
Ryan
Pippa comes flying towards us in a burst of red hair and chaotic energy when we arrive at Maya’s place. “Oh my God, Maya,” she whisper-screeches before launching a series of rapid-fire questions. “Where were you? Why didn’t you answer your phone? What are you wearing? What the hell is going on?”
“Breathe, Pippa,” Maya says. “Where’s Maddie?”
“She’s still asleep. Typical. The one time she sleeps in, I’m awake all night. Maya, you disappeared off the face of the earth. Sofia came by too, and if I wasn’t worried before—which I was—I’ve been panicking since,” she says, eyeing me suspiciously.
My wolf lets out a low rumble of a growl, but I manage to cover it with a cough. This is good, I tell him. I want Maya’s family to be protective of her. They’ll learn I would never do anything to hurt her soon enough.
“How about I make you both a coffee, and then I’ll get the dogs out?” I offer. “You can chat with Pippa, and I’ll be back soon.” I hate the idea of being away from her, but I want to give her space too. She’s not a wolf; she doesn’t need me the way I need her, and I have to learn to manage that. I need to understand her independence and value that side of her.
She wants a healthy relationship, and Fate wouldn’t have put us together if I wasn’t at least somewhat capable of learning to be less obsessive.
“Can you stay?” Maya asks, taking my hand and warming me from the inside out. “I’m not ready to be away from you yet. We can walk the dogs together after?”
I can’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot. Maybe she’s going to meet me half-way. “Of course,” I tell her. “Coffee?”
“Definitely,” Maya agrees.
I smile to myself when I hear Pippa start in on Maya as soon as I’m out of human-level earshot, asking about Maya’s personality transplant and how good the sex must be to cause it. Maya doesn’t deny it, which I’m also taking as a win. I make some toast and scrambled eggs while waiting for the coffee to brew, then set up the kitchen table before calling them in.
We eat while Maya tells her sister about everything that’s happened over the past twenty-four hours. Pippa looks suitably horrified as Maya tells her about how Brett drugged her and abducted her. Then she talks about us, and I get a front-row seat for Maya describing how well things have been going, how safe she feels with me, and how she sees a future with me. She leaves out the part about me being a shifter, but I don’t want her holding anything back from her family.
“You can tell her the full truth, Kitten,” I prompt. Pippa’s mouth drops, and her eyes widen at my casual use of the nickname. Maya smiles at me, and I feel her relief through our bond.
“I suppose the biggest compatibility factor is that Ryan and I are fated mates,” Maya says reaching across the table and taking my hand. “Which is something common among our kind. Ryan is a wolf.”
“I… I don’t understand,” Pippa says, glancing between us.
“He can turn into a wolf like I turn into a tiger. He’s part of a pack, Pippa. There are others like me.”
