“No.” Several tense moments pass before Merrick admits, “We had to a few times anyway, though, because she was clearly drowning, but we only forced the issue when we were worried she might,” he trails off, and I nod to myself, able to fill in the blanks.
“She didn’t want help, she wanted to be angry. When the only thing you know is how to be miserable, eventually it becomes the norm; comfortable in its familiarity. At that point, anything that makes you happy feels wrong and you look for ways to destroy it before it has a chance to hurt you,” I declare with conviction, feeling a small weight lift off of my shoulders with the revelation. “You can’t fix someone that would rather stay broken, even if you don’t understand their perspective. All you can do is your best, but when it reaches the point that they’re dragging you down into the toxic pit with them, there’s no shame in saving yourself.”
Tilting my head to the sky, I stare at the endless expanse of blue, dotted with the occasional wisp of a cloud. “Why kill yourself trying to save someone that wouldn’t lose a night of sleep if you died?”
A heavy hand lands on my hip, Hunter threading his thumb through the belt loop of my shorts. “You’re going to give me a heart attack, don’t go so high.”
With a sad smile that he can’t see, I argue simply for the sake of arguing, starting to understand why Annika insisted on raising me the way she did; inexcusable and shitty as her methods may have been. “Five more steps.”
“One,” he counters.
“Seventeen.” Shooting him a smirk over my shoulder, his unamused face only makes my smile grow.
“Negative five,” he deadpans, not giving me so much as a lip twitch as I slowly slide my foot forward a step. Finally breaking, he rolls his eyes. Following behind me as I scale another few rocks, he acts as my anchor so that I won’t fall and break my neck if I slip.
When I’m close to cresting the peak, Merrick releases a volatile, guttural sound. “Get. Down.”
My heartbeat ratchets up a notch, yet I can’t seem to stop myself. Every step feels like a win, and while I’m aware that it’s simply my subconscious one-upping them, it’s... exhilarating. So much of the past week has been depressing as hell, and even our reprieve wound up being stressful. This, though? It’s stupid and pointless, but it makes me feel better than I have in days.
Ignoring his command, I raise my voice to be heard easier with the distance. “Do you even like her?”
At that, they’re rendered speechless for so long that I think they might choose not to respond. Eventually though, Merrick asks, “What do you mean? Of course we do; she’s our mate.”
Hunter beats me to the punch, far more confident than when we arrived. “Even after hearing how she treated your daughter? Does Annika really get a default exemption from all faults just because you were sleeping with her?”
It’s not quite how I was going to phrase things, but it results in the same general point, so I remain silent. Wriggling free of Hunter’s hold while he’s distracted, I take a few quick steps and leap over a small gap to the next highest boulder. My knee scrapes on impact, and I have to awkwardly haul myself up the rest of the way, but still; I made it. His pissed off growl reaches me immediately, but not him. The narrow platform I’m on means that he can’t follow until I move, so naturally, I pivot on my heel to smirk down at him.
No matter how brief my reign, or how decimated the kingdom beneath my feet is, I get to be the queen of the castle for a few minutes, even if it’s only as the queen of ruin.
Sebastian’s nearly imperceptible voice carries on the breeze. “How can we hate her if she gave us Sabrina? But how can we love her after everything she’s done?”
Neither Hunter nor I reply; there’s no point. Everything we wanted to convey, we already did. It’s up to them what they choose to do with the information.
Selfishly, I want them to pick me, and by the same token, I hate that they have to choose between us at all. But there’s really no alternative, is there? If they think she was justified in everything she put me through, then it undermines my suffering and I’ll never be able to trust them, knowing they’d have stood by as she neglected me under the guise of ‘tough love.’ And if they’d have stood up for me, they’d have been standing up to her, which would have driven an even bigger wedge between them than there already was.
Annika made all of us suffer in different ways, starving us of what we needed to thrive because she was struggling to breathe, and would rather we suffocated with her than be free when she couldn’t.
That woman was a mother in name only, and I’m going to have to make my peace with the fact that nothing I do will ever give me back the life that I should have had.
It’s a hard thing to accept, but I can feel something shift in my soul as it settles into place in my foundation. With it, a little of the pressure in my brain subsides, and the desire to keep pushing farther just to annoy Hunter fades alongside it. After a few steady breaths, I’m able to muster up a smile that doesn’t make me feel like a complete fraud.
I’m okay, always, because the only thing I can count on other people for is to let me down. But as I look at Hunter’s hostile face, his worried gaze flitting between the ground far below and how close my toes are to the edge, I question the golden rule that’s kept me going all of these years.
And I jump.
He catches me before my feet can touch the rock, dragging me close to his body with a low rumble vibrating his chest. As he opens his mouth to tear me a new one for pulling a suicidal, idiotic move, I wrap my arms around his neck and press my face against the side of his throat. His tirade dies off before it can gain traction, and for once, he doesn’t give me any shit or demand an explanation. He simply tightens his hold and lets me ignore the world as a whole for a few precious moments.
Eventually, I untangle myself from him, and look down at Leo, Merrick, and Sebastian, much farther below than I realized. Dropping my voice until it’s so quiet there’s no way even they can hear me, I ask, “Give it to me straight, okay? Is this all an act? Because they’re... they’re awful, right? It’s what you guys have harped on about for weeks; the infamous Slaughters and the carnage that they leave in their wake that’s kept the three of you in check all of these years. How can they go from that to suddenly acting like... decent people?”
Swallowing, I meet his forest green eyes and whisper, “Is she right? You’ve seen how they keep scrubbing the heels of their hands over their hearts, and my counterpart pulled a one-eighty and is acting like the past week of her sulking never happened, is perfectly at ease being here like there’s nothing to be concerned about. It all feels like some cruel game, like none of this is actually real.”
He holds my stare for a solid thirty seconds before shaking his head, scowling. “It’s real, but I don’t fully believe it either, truth be told.” Running his knuckles over my cheek, his throat bobs with his hard swallow. “I’ve seen firsthand the way they’ve cut down dozens of men without a single weapon, tearing them apart with their bare hands. Worse, I’ve seen the ones they’ve left broken beyond repair, yet kept alive, letting them die slow, agonizing deaths. Theyarecruel men, Sabrina, but... so are we. All of us have done awful shit throughout our lives. Some we’ll never be able to atone for, but more that we have no desire to. If you’re coming to me searching for a moral high ground, I can’t help you. Nothing is black and white, and the lines that wecanidentify are so blurred that I question my own sanity at times.”
With a wry smile, he tugs out my hair tie and fixes it to recapture the stray hairs that escaped. “But I’ve never questioned you. We came here hoping that you’d be the bridge between our packs, just scared to believe it was actually possible. You see the worst in everyone you meet, Sabrina, because you can see everything that they’re capable of becoming. But few people ever reach their full potential.”
Tightening my ponytail, he leaves a hand wrapped around my hair, keeping my attention firmly on his face. “Someone’s past shouldn’t define them, so if you think that the Slaughter’s are more than a potential alliance, people that you enjoy being around, I’m not going to try to talk you out of it, if that’s what you’re after. There’s so much that we don’t know, and I’m not going to pretend to have any of the answers, but I’m finding that I don’t really need them. I have you, and that’s the only truth that I need.”
Tongue in cheek, I wait for the inevitable jab, but it never comes. “That was pretty damn mature of you, Hunter Varyn; didn’t know you had it in you. I was actually hoping for some bitchy retort to make me less emotional before I faced the countless wolves waiting to take a bite out of me.”
