Nodding to herself, she merely wraps her arms around her legs again, resting her chin on her knees. Boden’s condemnation echoes in the back of my mind, and I relent, because shielding her will do no good. I’m better off easing her into what she’s going to be facing when she checks on Reid so that she has some time to prepare herself.
“Admittedly, Damian and Kaige bounced back faster than any of us, and they wanted to try and accelerate your healing again, but after how much it hurt you last time, everyone else unanimously agreed it wasn’t worth the risk of doing more damage. Sure, that may have only been because of whatever block you had going on with your wolf, but since the scrapes on your knees had already healed and your head was following suit, it seemed a better decision to give things a chance to progress naturally.” Gently running my fingertips in a path up and down her arm, I keep my strokes steady; comforting. “But after three hours of listening to Reid vomit in the next room, it wasn’t hard to persuade Damian to step in there instead, see if he could get a read on what was going on with his wolf. It wiped out the little bit of energy he and Kaige had managed to recover, so unless you know of any wolves around here to siphon from, we’re stuck waiting on natural recovery times.”
Moving on to the conditioner, I teasingly add, “Thankfully, you should be good as new before we show up on your fathers’ doorstep and they find a single hair out of place on your head, tempted to murder us all on sight.”
“And?” she whispers, not needing to clarify what she’s referring to.
Sighing as I work it into her hair, I confess, “And the second he stopped throwing up, he launched himself at Damian. Kaige attempted to coax his wolf into relaxing, but only wound up with a black eye for the effort. Cin hauled him off of them, and then showed him something on his phone. Instantly calmed him down, he crawled into bed, and hasn’t moved since, even to eat.”
Swallowing, she croaks, “What was on his phone?”
Gently brushing my knuckles over her cheek, I reach past her for the drain plug. “The picture of you from the dress store with Emmy.”
Humming under my breath as I let the conditioner soak in, I drain and refill the tub with clean water, giving her time to gather her thoughts. Before we can actually have that fresh start I was hoping for, we have to deal with everything waiting for her on the other side of that door. Mates that are barely holding on by a thread; which now includes Hunter, so at this rate, Kaige won’t be far behind, if I had to bet. The inevitable discussion about the shitshow and everything that happened. Add in the nerve-wracking addition of discovering where Reid stands now, and the least I can do is offer her a temporary reprieve, a place to hide before all of the problems in her life crash down to bury her under their weight.
I know from experience how heavy expectations can be, and Sabrina’s shouldering far more than I ever had to. So maybethat’swhere I go from here. Now that I’m not desperately trying to hold my family together, I can focus on helping her, turn my failure into her success. Everything in our lives has already fallen apart, so now I’ll concentrate my efforts on helping her pick up the pieces. Together, we’ll make something better than anything I ever stood a hope of accomplishing on my own.
I’ll prove her wrong, that it wasn’t a mistake to let us through her defenses. Maybe it hurts at times, but pain is inevitable when you love someone. And gods be as damned as the rest of us, I love this woman so much it hurts to breathe. So I’ll take Boden’s advice and protect her from herself even if it kills me to accept that I missed all of the signs. I was blinded by stupidity and denial, especially after as many times as we compared her to the twins.
Cinjin, the man whose human side gave up fighting a cruel world and ceded control to his wolf, and Reid, the one who nearly willed his other half out of existence by sheer determination alone. Sabrina is as self-destructive as they are, her two personalities at war with each other. She just conceals her suffering better than either of them.
“Damian, Hunter, and Kaige were as blindsided as us,” she finally murmurs as I finish rinsing her hair. “So even though the Slaughters provided the shipment to Stonewood to disperse out here, we can reasonably assume that they’re keeping it quiet back home.”
Hunter shouts from the main room, “You know we can hear you, right?”
Silently, she mouths a mocking retort that has me grinning like a fool. After a breath, she calls, “Of course I do, I don’t believe in secrets. I thought it only fair you were here when I pointed out that it’s rather convenient that you three showed up in Shadow Ridge, and suddenly Stonewood’s dealings with people from the opposite side of the entire country came to light after all of these years of flying under the radar. Not suspicious timing,at all.”
Lips twisted in a grimace, she palms the back of her head. “Fuck, Idoneed some coffee.” Sighing, she calls out, “I rescind my previous condemnation... if you can find me some caffeine. Coffee, soda, I don’t really care, but this headache is making it hard to be in a good mood, and I’ll admit that was a dick move on my part. I’m sorry for not having a better handle on my temper.”
Shaking her head, she turns my way, pinning me with those bright, deceptively innocent eyes that never cease to make me want to carve out my heart and throw it at her feet. “Are we really walking into that place knowing this? That the Slaughters have a hand in the drug that made those lycans, and we’re expecting them to simply welcome us with open arms?”
––––––––
In soothing, rhythmicstrokes, I return to running my fingertips in a path across her arm. “We could easily go elsewhere if you’d prefer. We arranged the new identities exactly for this reason; so we would always have a way out of whatever mess we found ourselves in.”
Groaning, she tilts her head to the ceiling, seeking either patience or answers, and my lip twitches. I don’t think she’s even noticed that we’ve been rubbing off on her, that she’s started adopting our habits. “If we never showed up after already putting them off for a month, they’d be beyond pissed. Plus, this trip is already off to an incredibly slow start, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent someone to intercept us soon to see what the holdup is.”
Blowing out a heavy breath, she continues, “Now that we’ve seen firsthand what that drug is capable of, could you imagine an entire pack of lycans, larger than Hunter, Damian, and Kaige’s combined, descending on Thatcher? They’d have him going belly up and outing us in two seconds flat. With that information, they’d find us sooner rather than later, so we’re better off getting ahead of it.”
“Shame, when slaughtering Pack Alodia was supposed to be a warning for Thatcher to keep his mouth shut. You’re right; on all accounts, unfortunately.”
Aggressively swiping a hand over her face, she huffs. “First time for everything, I suppose.”
Stroking her cheek with my knuckles, we descend into silence while she soaks in the tepid bath, hiding out from everything that’s going to assault her the moment she emerges. Mostly, though? I’m terrified that seeing Reid is going to be her breaking point and send her running away from us in a misguided attempt to save us from her with the way she’s already spiraling. Because even though she’s more defeated and lost than she’s ever been, the only thing that’s been broken is whatever mental barrier she was using to keep the two parts of herself separate entities. All’s not lost if we tread carefully and give her a reason not to surrender to her other half and give up.
We already lost Cinjin by failing to see how much he was struggling until it was too late. I won’t fail her, too.
Bo, on the other hand, is going to attempt to glue her to his side until she’s suffocating under the constant attention, and Hunter’s been getting into fights with anyone that looks at him twice. Cin damn near lost it when Sabrina didn’t even stir as we brought her into the motel and went to work cleaning and plucking the rest of the glass from her wounds, like he thought she was so far gone she’d never wake up, while also trying to take care of his twin. Through all of that chaos, Damian and Kaige have had even shorter tempers than usual, more on par with Hunter’s behavior.
It’s too much, and I’m tempted to keep her trapped here with me forever, to protect her from a world that I never should have let us drag her into in the first place; then none of this would have happened. But I’m a selfish excuse of a man that can’t regret it, because my life before her was far more painful to endure than all of our current trials combined.
Unfortunately, time waits for no man, much less a woman that has a patriarchy to burn. So reluctantly, I pull the drain plug and offer her a hand. Snagging one of the overly-starched towels off of the bar on the wall, I hold it out for her. After she has it wrapped around herself, I grab the other, dropping to a crouch and slowly working my way up from the scars on her ankle.
“You don’t need to go this overboard, Slade.” It’s a half-hearted protest as I slowly work my way higher, over her inner thigh.
“I don’tneedto do most of the things that I do.” Brushing my knuckles against her bare sex, I continue upward as I rise, thoroughly drying her off. “I do them because I want to.”
Thoroughly working my way over her entire body, she waits until I’ve finished to look up at me with a weak smile. “And the highlight of your morning was giving me a rub down?”
