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Ky closes the distance between us, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck. “Baby girl, all I want is for you to be happy, and love isn’t about being selfish. Asking that of me? To let you go? It would damn near kill me, but if it’s what you need…”
His voice trails off. I see him chew on his lip for a moment, and his fingers flex against my nape.
“Fuck it, I was telling you this, just before everything went to shit last night. Fox, you’re my goddamn dawn. You’re that daybreak about to make its way above the horizon over there.” He nods toward the forest beyond the end of the wooden decking.
“I don’t care what label you want to put on it, or whether you want none at all…but the only fucking thing that matters is that each day starts with you in my arms and that at night, I know you’re curled up by my side.”
He glances at Thorne and over to Raven, then back down at me. “Loving you is the most natural thing I’ve ever done, baby girl. And somehow, in amongst this insanity, I’ve been blessed to love these two assholes as well.”
I choke out a sob and a small laugh at the same time.
“I love you with everything I can give. But if that means loving you enough to let you find happiness, no matter what that looks like, I have to respect your decision.” Ky presses a featherlight kiss to my temple, and I fight back a soft whimper as his warm lips press against my skin.
Raw emotion inundates me; hearing those words of love from him is the healing balm to my fractured soul.
Turning away from Ky, I look over at my wolf. Who, through all of this, has stood by, quietly observing. Walls guard every part of his expression like a damn fortress. All while I’m a complete and utter emotional disaster ready to collapse in a shaking heap.
“What about you, wolf boy?” My lips twist, and through blinking lashes, I peer his way, puffy-eyed from all the tears I can’t seem to stop shedding.
Raven narrows his attention on me, flicking his stare up and down my body, leaving goosebumps tracking over my skin. His teeth clench, and the silver of his rings reflects the mist clinging to the tall trees surrounding us.
“You’d be happy with that? You’d let me go?” I ask.
He launches at me and grabs my chin with a snarl. “You get on that jet or leave this place, and know this…I’ll fucking haunt you for the rest of your days.”
I shudder at the possessiveness of his words. Drowning more and more in the well of love for him than I could ever have thought possible.
“I. Will. Fucking. Haunt. You.” He looms over me. Impossibly dark eyes swirl with the severity of that threat. A deadly promise.
My eyes bounce between the three powerful figures, all holding onto me.
I’m standing at the crossroads of my life, stripped bare and flayed raw with how deeply I’ve opened my heart to these men.
My monsters.
This is the point where I could easily walk away from them, and the Anguis, and the fucked up world of my bloodline. I could start over, now that the threats to my life have been eliminated for good.
I lick my lips. Trying to scoop up the words that keep trickling through my fingers like sand.
On a shaky breath, I meet Thorne’s steely gaze first.
“You’re saying that you just want me to be happy, and that you want me to make a decision that will benefit me, but have you actually stopped to think about what might make me happy?”
Turning my chin, my eyes seek out Ky, who hovers close, with an expression I can’t read.
“Maybe what will bring me happiness is standing right in front of me…My choice comes into this and know it might sound completely fucked up, but I have never been happier than with you all…I’ve never had a family. I’ve never had anyone care for me.” My words tumble out in a rush. “And while I understand that you’re giving me the opportunity to walk away—I value that, honestly and truthfully, I really do—what you don’t realize is how my life would be a complete and utter misery if that was the direction my head chose to take me in.”
With butterflies in my stomach, I shift now to look at Raven.
“Because my heart already knows what decision it wants to make.”
Nibbling on my bottom lip, I’m grateful they give me space to carry on speaking.
“It scares me to death how I feel about all of you. Never did it cross my mind I’d find anyone to openly love and give pieces of my fractured heart to, yet you stole three pieces and didn’t judge me for the battered condition you found those fragments in. You crept in and claimed the broken thing beating in my chest and now it finally has a home where those shards have started to weave their way back together.
“But even though it frightens me, I’m not scared of loving you, that part comes easily. What terrifies me is the thought of something happening to any of you. That’s the part I’m going to have to learn how to live with if you’ll show me how. If you’ll hold me on the days I’m not strong and put up with me in the moments l feel like I’m falling apart. I promise to always do the same for all of you.”
Ky swipes a thumb across my cheeks, collecting the tears that have welled and spilled over. Thorne holds my palm against his heart, studying me with yearning and a mirror of my own all-consuming trepidation. The enormity of how this moment and how it is finally unfolding.
