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“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve made a big deal about how I want to live,” she says quietly.
“And you’re ashamed of what? Living?” Why is she so confusing?
“No. I’m ashamed that I tried to kill myself,” she says, looking at her hands and not me. “That on the day Atticus—” She pauses and shakes her head. “I used the sleeping tablets George gave me to end it, and if it wasn’t for my wolf, I’d be dead.”
I frown. Her wolf stopped her? Where were her mates?
“I’m ashamed that the others were there for that. That they found me and had to help me. I’m ashamed of how much I’ve put them through.” She wipes her eyes, and gives me a soft smile. “And you get the after me, the one who wants to live. The one they’ve barely had the chance to meet.”
“I see.”
But I don’t. My brain can’t focus.
“I dreamt of the day Lainey died,” I reveal, and she nods. “I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of?” she asks, sniffing deeply. Can she smell my fear? Am I giving myself away?
I regard her before shrugging. But she doesn’t move those brown orbs of hers away, they peer into me as if she can read every secret I have.
I sigh. “I’m scared that you’re going to see me the same way I see myself.”
“I have that same worry,” she murmurs, getting comfortable under the blankets as she rolls onto her side. “Not with you, since you’re more damaged than I am—”
“Oh, lovely.”
She smirks. “A while back, I told Fin I needed a depressed friend. The universe heard and delivered.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“Not yet,” she sings, and, no, my lips don’t tilt up in a smile as I regard her cuteness. “But, yeah. I have my own worries that the real me will be revealed and everyone will hate me.”
“Fair enough.” I already know the real her, and I hate her, so maybe her concerns are valid. “Go to sleep, little darkling. I can hear the exhaustion in your voice.”
She nods, and her eyes flutter shut as her words play on replay in my mind.
You get the after me, the one who wants to live.
Is that what she expects from me?
Survival?
Doesn’t she know how fucking hard surviving is?
27
MALACHI
My veins feel like ice. An ice so fucking cold it’s like I’m being burned from the inside. They’re itchy, and it’s like a sensory overload.
“Tell me that again,” I say, glaring at Orson through the computer screen. The bear appears as calm as ever, the terrible fucking situation we’re in not seeming to faze him in the slightest.
Well, that’s until you look at his hair. It’s down, rather than in its usual bun, and he only does that when he’s got a headache.
“He’s missed a check-in,” Orson says with a small frown. “And Kennedy can’t get a hold of him, either.”
