“I’m upset that something happened toyou!” he shouts as he gets in, slamming the door closed.
His hostility isn’t a surprise, but I’ve never had it directed at me before. It catches me so off guard that I startle, my muscles jumping before locking up with coiled tension.
First Slade, then Reid, and now Boden. I wreck everything.
The air in my lungs turns to ice, slowly spreading throughout my body. Even the pressure of Damian’s arm tightening around me as he pulls me onto his lap fades to a dull awareness as bit by bit, I mentally shut down.
I keep making everything harder for them when they were barely hanging on in the first place before I came into the picture. Maybe we’re all cursed to be our own downfalls, and that’s why they’re drawn to me; they’re gluttons for punishment. I make them even more miserable than they used to be, and that’s the only sort of life they know how to live.
Slade’s voice is a controlled warning. “Bo, calm down. You can hear the way her heart is racing, and can practically taste the scent of her fear on the air. We’re all worked up right now, I get it, but you need to take a breath and pull yourself together because you’re upsetting her.”
If I wasn’t caught in Boden’s wild-eyed stare when Slade spoke, I’d have missed the flash of regret before the brief remains of his golden irises harden. “No. You all swore that she’d be alright so long as we trusted her plan and stuck to our roles, but look at her! You never should have left her alone, but I should have insisted on being by her side; then none of this would have happened. The only peace of mind I had was that even if things went sideways, I could always find her, but now to discover I didn’t even have that fallback plan? Sheshouldbe upset; I fucking am!”
A low, deadly sound rises from Damian’s throat. “You want to beat yourself up with regrets, be my guest, but don’t try to put that guilt trip on her. If it wasn’t for Sabrina, none of us would have been able to tell Reid apart from the other lycans until his corpse shifted back and it was too late, and Hunter would be dead.”
Gripping the headrest in front of him, Bo clenches his fist. “We never would have been there in the first place if you all would have listened to me about what a reckless plan this was to begin with!” Gesturing at the wadded up, ruined clothes at our feet, he growls, “We’ve gone through two shirts already, and her head’sstillbleeding, yet we can’t risk going to a hospital because we’ll be sitting ducks for any of the families to retaliate. So we have to sit here and simply hope that despite how burned out she is, her healing will still kick in, or wait until we’re hours away from here to risk an emergency room visit. I highly doubt Cin and I got all of the glass out, but I’m going to have to hose her off before we can make any more headway, and that can’t happen until we stop for the night, which’ll mean reopening the wounds at that point.”
There’s a popping snap as Bo’s nails lengthen into claws, piercing the leather of the headrest he’s murdering in his grip. “She almostdied,and fuck only knows what shape Reid is going to wake up in. So don’t tell me to calm the fuck down. I’m not blaming her, I’m blaming you two for being more worried about sparing her feelings than doing your damn jobs of making the right calls even if they piss people off. Her abilities are so new that she has no clue what her limits are, and this trial by fire bullshit needs to stop. Shecannotkeep running headfirst into dangerous situations, because at the rate they’re escalating, she won’t walk away from the next one. We’re her mates, it’s our job to protect her... even from herself.”
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. The last thing I need right now is to feel like I’m manipulating them. Bo’s not mad at me, he’s scared. No, he’s disappointed in me, and realizing how epically I let him down is so much worse.
My eyes burn, but I hastily blink away the tears before they can form. Sliding from Damian’s lap into my seat, I try to keep my voice level as I reply, but my mouth is so dry that I have to busy myself fastening my seatbelt to buy time to wet my lips and clear my throat. “The necklace. It’s trackable, I take it?” None of them say anything. “Waterproof?” This time, Bo gives a terse nod, eyeing me warily. Withdrawing it from my purse, I slip the chain over my neck, the claw shaped pendant hanging just above my stomach. “Then on it stays, but I’ll take you up on the offer to swap out the chain if I’m going to be showering with it so it doesn’t chafe.”
Slowly, he asks, “You’re not mad about it?”
With only a slight hesitation, I bolster my nerves and lean into his side, praying that he won’t push me away.That,I wouldn’t be able to come back from, no matter how hard I tried. “Would I have liked you to tell me up front rather than keep it a secret? Obviously. But even if we ignore everything else, the first attempted abduction alone makes it a smart move. Not like I’m sneaking around behind your backs; I’m always with one of you when we leave the house. This is just a failsafe in case we get blindsided, and that seems to happen every few days, so I repeat; smart. You didn’t have to hide it, though I completely get why you thought that you had to.”
When he settles into his seat with a sigh, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, I quickly turn my face into his sleeve. Taking a couple of breaths, I try to rapidly blink away the couple of relieved tears that slipped past my defenses, but I’m not fast enough to hide them from Damian.
Rather than call me out, he reaches for the shirt pressed against the back of my head to readjust it, subtly brushing the evidence from my cheeks. “If you keep squirming, we’re going to have to tape it to your head, and it’ll hurt like a bitch to swap it out.” Arranging it so that I can lean against Bo and his arm will keep it wedged in place, he returns to his seat, snagging my hand along the way and threading his fingers through mine. “So stay put for a while.”
Slade meets my eye in the rearview mirror before pulling onto the road. “Get some sleep, mon soleil. Tomorrow marks the start of our new lives, so I think it’s the perfect time for us all to go into them with a clean slate.”
Chapter 4
Slade
