“For so long I didn’t think fate had any kind of hold over any of us.” I rub my temples. “I thought we were free. I thought our choices mattered.”
“They do matter.” Kieran moves closer. “You’re looking at it wrong. Stop thinking you’re at the mercy of fate. The pathchanges. The stops along the way change. What you carry when you arrive, that changes, too.” His jaw tightens. “But you still arrive. And you can either spend the whole journey punishing yourself for the route you took, or you can look up and see where you actually are.”
“Because if I choose to live in the present and forgive my—” I choke on the word. “Then what was the point? Of all of it? The distance I put between me and Pepper. The years I spent convinced I didn’t deserve a pack, didn’t deserve belonging, didn’t deserve anything good because good things were for people who hadn’t fucked up as badly as me.” The sobs come faster now. “If I just get to be happy anyway, then all that suffering was for nothing. And I can’t—I can’t make it mean nothing. Because then I’m just a person who threw away her family for no reason.”
Full on ugly cry. Snot. Blubber.
This damn trial should come with an IV. I’m so dehydrated from crying.
“Oh, Ash.” Finnian is there first. Impossible, because Orion is faster and Kieran is closer.
And then they’re all there. Surrounding me. But I can’t—I can’t accept it.
“Stop,” I cry.
“No.” Kieran hugs me tighter. “Not until you realize that your choices are your free will and you made the choices you did for your survival. You didn’t throw anything away. You put it down because you couldn’t carry it anymore. That’s not betrayal. That’s being human.”
“I’m not human.”
“You were then.” His voice cracks. Just barely. Just enough that I hear it. “You were human and alone and surviving, and you did what you had to do. Stop crucifying yourself for not being omniscient.”
“I can’t.” My knees buckle.
But they’re there. Dropping to the soil with me. Holding me. Whispering murmurs as the tears flow.
The earth is cool beneath my palms. Wild Court magic humming through the dirt, through the roots, through me. And these three men, grounding me to something real when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.
“She would have died no matter what.” I say it like if I repeat it enough it’ll stop hurting. “In every timeline. Every version. Lucy dies and finds her mates in the underworld. That’s the fate. That’s the fixed point.”
My voice cracks.
“So why do I still feel like I killed her? Why does knowing it was inevitable make it worse? I put distance between us for nothing. I missed years with her for nothing. I chose isolation over family for nothing. And I can’t get those years back. I can’t?—”
“You know,” Finnian’s leg props up as they surround me, his voice carefully measured, “perhaps you are a domino that had to fall for Lucy to find her fate.” He sighs. “Cause and effect. The universe doesn’t care about fairness. It only cares about outcomes.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be true.”
True. What even is true?
I don’t know how long we stay there. Long enough for my tears to dry. Long enough for the forest to shift around us, shadows lengthening, the air going cool.
Kieran’s hand finds my hair. Strokes once. Twice. A gentleness I wouldn’t have believed him capable of six months ago. A gentleness that still catches me off guard every time, because Kieran was built for war and here he is, soft as silk against my scalp, patient as stone while I fall apart.
“You have leaves in your hair,” he says.
“Sexy.”
“Devastating.” His voice is dry but his fingers are careful, picking out the debris. “The Wild Court queen, decorated in forest floor.”
“It’s a look.”
“It’s something.”
Orion produces a cloth from somewhere and wipes my face without asking permission. The fabric is rough but his touch is gentle, and I let him because fighting it would take energy I don’t have.
“You done leaking?” he asks.
