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“He told me to make a choice between you and Noah,” Cole confessed, his voice breaking. “I froze. I couldn't do it. I just stood there like an idiot, and now he has my son.”
The weight of those words pressed on me, but I had to be strong. Everything I’d been through had prepared me for this moment, and now I stood on the precipice. I’d spent so long avoiding my fear, avoiding things that could cause me harm. I’d tried a hundred different ways to stop bad things from happening to me, to the people I loved, and I still had nothing to show for it.
Maybe the fact was that there was no way to prevent people from hurting you. And maybe it was a fool’s errand to even try. Because at the end of the day, bad things happened to good people all around the globe. Bad people existed. There was nothing anyone could do to make them go away.
I’d spent so long trying to figure out what about me made me easy to hurt, to crush. I’d hypothesized and theorized, carving bits of myself away in the hope that if I made myself small enough, I would be a smaller target, harder to hurt.
But that would never be true. And making myself different to try to be untouchable was the very same thing as blaming myself for all of the pain that had happened to me in my life.
But none of this was my fault. None of it had ever been my fault.
I’d never done anything to deserve Wyatt’s abuse. I hadn’t deserved to be turned away by my family for doing what I’d thought was right. I was a child when I met Wyatt. Why hadn’t I been allowed to make a child’s mistakes?
I hadn’t done anything to deserve Wyatt following me. Nor had I done anything to be stalked and attacked by Curt. I hadn’t done anything to give Curt this warped idea that we were meant to be together.
Noah hadn’t done anything that had warranted his kidnapping.
Cole had never done anything to deserve being captured and tortured by Lanyon Clover.
Yet, we could do something to make it stop. We could fight. We could refuse to be victimized.
Curt may be dangerous, but he wouldn’t make me shrink into myself again. I had a husband to love. A son to raise. A pack to lead.
“This is an easy choice,” I said, though the words felt strange on my tongue, as if I wasn’t the one actually saying them. “I can protect myself much better than a child can. We'll make a trade—me for Noah. I'll do everything I can to protect the children while I'm in his custody.”
Cole’s eyes flared with anger. “I won't give you up, Marley. I won't lose you.”
“It's the safest, most controlled way,” I argued, tears blurring my vision. “I'll find a way out, just like every other time. And I’ll have the intelligence to stop the war. We can’t let this escalate further. Noah needs us to be smart about this.”
Cole's grip on the note tightened, but after a moment, he nodded.
“What does it say?” I asked.
Cole’s lips twisted, and he handed it over to me. “I found it with one of Noah’s toy trucks,” he said.
I carefully opened the paper and read the quick, messy scrawl inside.
See you soon, Marley.
-Curt
* * *
I pulled my coat a little tighter around me as I huffed out a warm breath into the cold night air. I’d been given a separate rendezvous point from the one where Cole would get Noah. Curt seemed to want me away from my security system, didn’t want to deal with the tears and blatant evidence that I wanted nothing to do with this. That I wanted nothing to do with him.
I would play the part of the willing captive, though. That’s what Cole and I had decided together—that I would go along with Curt’s delusion, earn his trust, and find some way to get in contact with Cole when I could figure out the best way to get out of Curt’s pack headquarters if I couldn’t escape on my own.
I stood in the mountains, not far at all from my own pack HQ, waiting in the chilly air for my host to come fetch me. My ears picked up on the sound of damp dirt shifting beneath rubber soles before my still-too-human eyes could see him.
He materialized from between two trees like a shadow given form.
“You came,” he said with a sickly smile. “I was worried you would try to trick me…and I’d have to order the little brat killed.”
My stomach tightened with disgust and anger, but I kept my features impassive. “I think we’ve all learned better than to try and outwit you,” I said. The complimentary words just felt wrong, clinging like plaque to my teeth.
Curt didn’t look immediately convinced, though I could hear the little uptick in his heart rate.
“I guess the only question remaining, then, is whether you’re going to be a good girl for me, or I’m going to have to keep you tied up so that you behave?”
