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Until then, I’ll walk the line between kindness and caution.
And I know just how to start…
Chapter 8
Willow
I’m out of prison, wandering around a bright, open communal floor with soaring floor-to-ceiling windows and gingko trees growing in massive planters scattered throughout the space. The smells of coffee and fresh baked scones at the café compete with the savory smells wafting from the sit-down restaurant on the other side of the atrium and the air is alive with laughter and conversation.
The ruckus grows muted for a moment as Hermione and I cross the polished marble floor to get in line for a coffee but resumes with renewed fervor in just a few minutes.
Clearly, these people are too excited about life to be quiet for long.
It’s so nice to see. Incredible, really.
Everywhere I look, there are groups of shifters chatting, eating, playing chess at the tables by the windows, or kicking a ball around the astro-turf outside on the large balcony space. Even the people in business suits chatting intently over laptops look relaxed, at ease.
It’s just a bunch of normal shifters having a normal day and by the time we get our coffees and grab a table for two not far from a gated, toddler playground, where little wolves are tumbling over each other, shifting back and forth between forms, playing as puppies, then babies, then puppies again, I have tears in my eyes.
“I’m sorry for what happened, and for making you relive it this morning,” Hermione says, her brow knitting as she empties a raw sugar packet into her cappuccino. “If you’d like to talk to someone, I can arrange for a crisis counselor to come to your room later. We have some really great people on staff.”
I blink faster, swiping a tear away with my napkin before it can fall. “No, no, it’s not that. I mean, last night was awful, but…” I trail off, biting my bottom lip as I try to put the feelings swirling inside me into words. “Things have just been so bad for our pack for so long. So long that bad became…normal. But it’s not. This is normal. People living their lives without watching everything they say and do or being terrified they’ll be punished for the tiniest little thing. For looking left on a day when the Alpha decided everyone should look right or something. Sometimes people were punished, even killed, for things that seemed that arbitrary. It was…traumatizing,” I say, realizing as I speak just how true the words are.
Only now, away from my pack and able to relax a little for the first time in years do I realize how scared I’ve been. How anxious and on edge. Even lying to Hermione this morning in an interrogation room was less stressful than my daily life in The Parallel.
But then, it didn’t really feel like a lie. No, Pax didn’t succeed in raping me, but he got damned close. I’m never going to forget what it felt like to have his big body leveraged over me, pinning me, naked, to the floor, while he tried to shove his flaccid penis inside me.
Honestly, the horror of it all didn’t hit until I was telling the story to Hermione. I was so focused on getting here and finding a way to win Maxim over that I haven’t stopped to think about those few minutes on the floor in Pax’s foyer.
I haven’t stopped to think about a lot of things that have happened in the past few years. Hell, the past decade. It’s just been one trauma after another for our pack and for my family.
So…yeah, a crisis counselor would probably be nice. Really nice. If I thought I could trust the counselor to keep everything I say between the two of us. But I’m not sure if doctor-patient confidentiality is a thing when you’re Maxim’s prisoner, and I can’t afford to screw up.
I’m on borrowed time as it is.
“Can I get back to you on the counselor?” I add, cupping my hands around my coffee with extra cream. “I’d kind of like to stop thinking about it right now, but it might be nice to talk to someone. Eventually.”
Hermione nods. “Of course, whenever you’re ready. I understand wanting to wait. I lost my dad five years ago, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it until last year, after Jukebox was poisoned. Seeing him in the hospital brought back all those grief feelings I’d pushed aside, but I felt ready to deal with them at that point. I wasn’t before.”
“I’m sorry you lost your dad,” I say, my throat tight.
“Thanks. Me too.” She glances over my shoulder, her pale brows lifting ever so slightly as she murmurs, “Will wonders never cease.”
I turn in my chair to see Maxim crossing the marble toward a table of laptop-juggling people by the windows, looking like a movie star playing a businessman in his black pants, white button down, and gray vest. He’s that gorgeous, the kind of person who’s too extraordinary to look like he belongs in the same world as the rest of us.
Until this point in my experience with the man, his perma-scowl has helped take the edge of his beauty, but now…
With his features relaxed and a softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before, he is…breathtaking.
And still sexy as hell.
Even fresh from rehashing memories of Pax and his cold, clammy, alcohol-soured skin pressed to mine, my body responds to the sight of Maxim Thorn. It’s crazy, really. No man has ever affected me this way. And yes, I know Alpha pheromones can be intense things, but I really thought I was a different kind of Beta.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I was a Beta. Women are never classified as Alphas in any of The Parallel packs.
Never. If you don’t have a dick, you don’t have dominant energy.
It’s a belief accepted as truth.
