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“You were a friend once,” Cevon says, looking at Malachi with a blank expression on his face. “But you’re nothing to me now.”
“You’re a pathetic cunt,” Malachi says. “Selling your own kind out to join the hunters?”
“And I’d do it again,” Cevon says. “I have no regrets for my actions. Everything I’ve done has been for one goal—revenge.”
Mal rolls his eyes. “Something a traitor would say.”
“Well, what about you? Don’t you think you’re a fucking traitor? Betraying me for the King who sees you as nothing more than a servant?” Cevon asks.
“That’s not fucking true,” Mal snaps.
But from here, things go from being even a little rational to a full blown argument that I’m annoyed I’m witnessing. Atticus, Malachi, and Cevon are the main participants, and it’s two against one. Cevon’s holding his own, but then Griffin will pipe up with some unhelpful insight, usually directed Cevon’s way.
Voss is just meddling for the sake of meddling. He finds it amusing, and he’s hyping Atticus and Malachi up, but then tearing them down in the next sentence.
Orson’s been pretty quiet and only interjects if one of them tries to bring me into the fighting.
Which leaves Micah, my overwhelmed tiger brother who is just sitting blankly as this all goes down.
“Shall we go to bed?” I ask, and his eyes dart my way.
“You really want to leave them like this?” he asks.
I shrug. “Cevon and Atticus have a lot to work through, and it seems so does he and Malachi. I don’t like the fighting. It’s upsetting my wolf.”
And me. My wolf is torn. She understands Cevon’s pain and knows how badly he deserves his revenge. The bloodlust he’s feeling right now is normal, and it’s one we understand. The need to hunt down our enemies and punish them for their wrongdoings.
It’s the way of the shifter world.
It’s hard for me to see Atticus’s point of view. Mistakes have been made, clearly, but it’s hard to blame Cevon for leaving considering what happened when he did.
“I’m going to bed,” I say, cutting off Malachi, who is telling Cevon how much he wants him to leave.
“Bed?” Atticus asks, confused. “But we’ve barely had the time to talk.”
“And whose fault is that?” I ask, cocking a brow. “You, Malachi, Griffin, and Orson chose not to greet me but to argue with my mate. You didn’t ask how the flight went, which was horrible by the way, you didn’t ask how I’m feeling, which is terrible by the way, and you ignored both me and my wolf, who is very pissed at you by the way.”
Orson seems upset, but the other three are just surprised.
“Wait, what?” Malachi demands.
“If you guys want to fight everything out, then go ahead,” I say, standing up and adjusting my hot water bottle. “But I don’t want to be part of it anymore. If we were going to talk about the future and make plans together, then that’s something I’m willing to be part of. But childish insults? Arguments of a past I wasn’t part of? It’s not interesting to me.”
“What do you mean figure out the future?” Griffin asks, a little confused.
“There are eight of us in this relationship,” I say, looking at them all. “And clearly our goals aren’t aligned anymore.”
“Because of him,” Malachi hisses, gesturing to Cevon. “If he dropped this stupid quest—”
“Stupid?” Cevon roars, jumping to his feet and nearly knocking me over. “It’s getting justice for a mate who was wronged. A mate who lost her life far too fucking soon. I’m not just twiddling my thumbs and doing this for shits and giggles. You should understand better than anyone.”
“All I understand is that the moment she came into the picture, I lost you,” Malachi says. “I barely even remembered her name when Atticus mentioned her last month because she meant that fucking little to me—”
Before anyone can stop him—or fine, maybe just before I could stop him—Cevon darts over the coffee table and punches Malachi so hard I hear a crunch as Mal’s head falls back. Blood drips down his face as Cevon turns to face the room.
“Insult Lainey, and you’ll meet a fate worse than that,” he says, shaking his head. “I came back here for Nora. Not any of you. She needs the rest of you whilst she’s suffering, but if it were up to me, I’d have kept her in the fucking house away from the lot of you.”
And then he walks away. I don’t follow, nobody does, as we stand looking awkwardly at each other. Mal comes back around, his eyes a little dazed, but nobody asks how he’s doing.
