Are we far enough from The Keep for Cade to?—?
Focus,Wolf snaps.Not safe yet.
Marius squeezes through a narrow crevice between two slabs of stone. We slip in behind him. It’s little more than a cave—a shelter carved by wind and time—and the moment we step inside, the cold thins and the silence deepens. Marius shifts back into his human form and nods at me to do the same.
I force Wolf to shake her head. Not a chance in hell am I meeting my dad for the first time naked.
Technically, he met you as me first, Wolf says, not helping.
“What’s wrong?” Marius asks, a crease deepening between his brows.
Wolf steps toward him and nudges his bag, nipping at the flap.Maybe he has a blanket or jacket in there.
“Do you need clothes?” he asks, catching on quickly, then frowning. “I brought these for your mother, just in case.”
The grief in his words strikes me to my core. Did he really not know she’d died? I mean, I guess so. Iris said he’d been gone for some time now, and I tried not to be offended that his kind had come to kill me and he hadn’t shown up himself…
A thought I’d previously forced into a box, not to be opened, for fear the answer of his absence might break me more now than it ever did as a child.
It’s possible he hadn’t known I’d become the Ashmark like the rest of the supernatural world did.
He radiates sorrow as he stares at me. Yet, a part of me doesn’t want to feel bad for him. He never came for me, but now that I’ve been in this world and seen its darker sides… Maybe he didn’t come around for our safety as much as my mother did when she took me away from NightShade.
He hands me an entire outfit: socks, thankfully plain, modest underwear, jeans, a black long-sleeve tee, a heavy coat, and even tennis shoes.
Then he points toward the rocks, a slight flush to his cheeks. “I’ll just wait out here for a few minutes.”
I start to call Wolf back, but she fights me with a ferocity I don’t anticipate.Mate.
Where?My heart spikes, and I’m instantly just as alert as she is.
Coming closer, but still too far.She whimpers.We need to go to him.
We can’t go back out there alone, and if he’s getting closer…I hate to admit it, so much so that I can’t even say the words to her, but I think waiting here with Marius is best. After breaking those spells, all the running and shifting, I’m running low on energy. Even I know I’m not invincible, and if Cade’s getting nearer, I have to believe he’ll find us.
I’m sorry, I tell her as I force my human form to take priority.
Once again, the shift is brutal. Bones snap, muscles twist, fire rips down my spine, and when I fall forward onto my hands and knees, naked and shaking, tears spill down my cheeks.
But they’re not from pain.
Not only, anyway.
Pulling on the clothes with numb fingers, I call out when I’m done, “Marius?”
He’s inside the cave before I finish saying his name—eyes glassy, breath unsteady.
“It’s really you,” he whispers.
I shrug awkwardly, not sure what expression I’m supposed to wear in a moment like this. “Why did you think I was Mom?”
The words spill out of me before I even know they’re going to.
He rubs at the stubble on his jaw, shaking his head. “I got word a few months ago that she was…that you’d lost her.” The ache in his words is almost too much to bear, too similar to my own. “But I couldn’t believe it. Jocelyn and I weren’t fated mates, but we had a connection. Nobody ever believed me, but I could sense her. All this time…”
“Then why didn’t you come for us?” The inner child in me can’t help herself. I have to know. Before anything else. That’s the million-dollar question that has lost me many nights of sleep and made me question my worth for years as a teenager. “Why?”
Marius comes closer and reaches for me. I want to back away, but I can’t move. I’m too paralyzed by the importance of what comes next. I need him to tell me something that will cause the years without him to all make sense.
