I pause. One heartbeat. Another.
“Okay.” Calm. Weary.
She lets me go without a single protest, and somehow, that is the worst thing she has ever done to me.
I head downstairs slowlyafter putting Ethan to bed.
My whole body feels numb. My head is another matter entirely. It’s loud in a way I can’t quiet down, my wolf circling the edges of my thoughts with its hackles still up, not satisfied, not even close, and the harder I push it back, the louder it gets.
She let you go. It circles the thought like a bruise it can’t stop pressing. She didn’t say a word.
Linda is in the kitchen by the stove, stirring something in a pot. She looks up when I appear in the doorway and presses her lips together disapprovingly. “You look like hell. Sit down. I’ll get you something.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re the furthest thing from fine.” She sets a mug on the counter and nods at the nearest stool. “Sit.”
I don’t sit. I lean against the doorframe with my arms crossed and try to empty my thoughts. It doesn’t work. I keep seeing it anyway. That tired, empty look. Okay. Like she didn’t have the energy left to be anything else.
It’s better this way. I know it’s better this way. The Accord doesn’t negotiate, and it doesn’t matter that she’s my fated mate if acting on it gets her killed.
I know all of this.
My wolf does not care about any of it.
“You should eat something,” Linda tries again. “It’s nearly noon.”
I push off the doorframe. My skin feels wrong, too tight across my shoulders, the familiar pressure building at the baseof my spine that means the wolf wants out. The pack land is fenced off. Private property signs every fifty yards, tree line so thick no one gets close enough to see anything. The estate alone stretches across several acres of it. Running here in daylight is technically safe. But technically safe is not the same as certain, and certain is the only standard that matters where Ethan is concerned. Not today.
“I’m going out.” I find my keys on the hook by the door and close my fist around them. “Look after Ethan. And Miranda.”
“Grayson.” Linda sets down her spoon, and her voice is careful. “Grayson, that human woman—”
“She’ll be gone soon. Don’t worry about it.” I force the words out. Once she’s recovered and debt-free, I’ll set her up in an apartment she never has to worry about paying rent for. A few properties so that money is never a problem for her. Once she’s safe and comfortable, I’ll never see her again.
My wolf is howling in misery, desperate to go back upstairs, to be near our hurting mate.
My fingers tighten around the keys, and I slam the door shut behind me as I leave.
I take the long route out of the estate, through the back roads where there’s no traffic and nothing to think about except keeping the car between the lines. The mountain drops away on either side. An hour of this and I’ll hit the city. I push the speed up until the engine noise fills the car and there’s nothing else.
It doesn’t work.
Why didn’t she just get angry with me? Why didn’t she tell me to go fuck myself, say something so I don’t feel like a total monster? Instead she lay there in bed, looking so fragile that—
I slam my hand against the steering wheel. Fuck!
If I’d known sooner, if my fucking wolf had just felt the bond when it should have, then I wouldn’t be sitting here feeling likeshit. I would never have let her into my life, into Ethan’s life. I would never have—
A loud ringtone interrupts my thoughts, and I look around, bewildered. It’s not my phone. It’s some ringtone I’ve never heard before. And it’s coming from the backseat. Stopping the car on the side of the road, I get out and search. The phone is under the seat.
It’s Miranda’s.
It must have slipped from her pocket when I carried her in. The screen shows an incoming call from a contact saved only as B.
Who the hell is B?
I let it ring out. It starts again immediately. Then a third time, back to back, with the single-mindedness of someone who already knows something is wrong.
