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Well, he barely reacts. It upsets me knowing that I’m sitting here, baring my soul, and Atticus doesn’t even seem to care. It’s hard for me, but do I really have the right to demand his support after what I did?
No.
“I don’t know what you think you would do to win,” Griffin says with a smirk. “But trust me, baby girl, I’ll be the one murdering your ex-mate.”
“Anyway,” Voss says, enunciating the word and shooting Griffin a dirty look. “I’d kill your ex-mate. I’d go and find these hunters and tear them apart limb by limb because, sure, maybe they didn’t get to you while you were alive, but you know, they had a plan, and that’s good enough to warrant their death. And once all of that was done, I’d kill myself to join you.”
I gape at him, my jaw dropped, and I don’t even know how to speak. Mal nods as if he totally approves of the plan, and maybe he has the same one.
The others don’t seem to react, and that’s worrying in and of itself.
“What…” I trail off, still unable to communicate. The words are there, but I can’t make them form an intelligible sentence.
“You seem a little lost for words,” Voss says, grinning at me with his cheeky smirk, as if that undoes everything he just said. As if that negates the way he’s just told me if I kill myself he’ll be joining me once he’s got his revenge on everyone who wronged me.
“Of course, I am!” I snap. “You’re telling me that if I kill myself, you’re going to come and join me? Like what do you expect me to say to that? I’m killing myself because I’m mentally ill.” I look at him as if he’s this weird, foreign person, and he’s finding my reaction hilarious.
Again, for the record, I’m meant to be the mentally ill one.
“You’re killing yourself just to be with me. And I’m the one everyone is worried about?” I continue.
“You don’t get it, Nora,” Griffin says softly. “You are everything to us. You seem to think, and I don’t know if I’m off base here, so please correct me if I am, but you mean the world to us, all of us. Regardless of the mental health conditions, the way you have rituals on how to make tea, or the way that you do jigsaws like a crazy person, or anything else that people may find questionable. We all have our own quirks. We all have our own negative traits that we don’t like, or the ones that other people may find endearing. We all have things that we’d like to change about ourselves. That doesn’t change the fact that we are bonded mates, or change the fact that we love you.”
“You didn’t know me,” I whisper, and he immediately pauses to let me speak. “You didn’t know I had mental health issues when our bonds snapped into place.”
“Would you think less of me if I had mental health issues?” Orson asks, and I immediately shake my head. “So, why would we think that way about you?”
“Because we don’t, and you know that,” Griffin says, smiling at me softly. “You think that way about yourself. You’re creating a narrative in your own mind where you are the burden, and we are the ones who have no choice but to accept it.”
I nod my head because that’s exactly right.
“You’re rewriting our story to make yourself the villain.”
He’s right there, too.
Fuck’s sake.
5
NORA
Dinner continued in a bit more of a relaxed fashion once I opened up. Nobody really had much more to say, too busy digesting what I shared, and whilst I know I need to catch each one of my mates to have these conversations in private, where we can each discuss our own feelings, I feel like, as far as things are considered, it went pretty well.
I’ve got a lot to think about, a lot to work on with George… you know, if I decide that living is what I want to do.
Atticus raced off pretty much as soon as he ate his food, and he was the only one of my guys who didn’t really communicate. They all said something in one way or the other. They reassured me in their own way that things will be okay. Obviously, that is his prerogative. If he’s upset and struggling, I totally understand why he didn’t say anything.
That doesn’t change how I feel, though. It was hurtful—it is hurtful. I bared my soul, and not only did he not acknowledge it, he just left as soon as his lion was sated.
But, then, do I really have the right to be hurt?
He’s only reacting to a situation that’s occurred because of me. I acted in a selfish manner, a cowardly manner, and he’s the one struggling to process my actions.
Death is easy. That’s what I thought. I’d die, and I wouldn’t need to deal with any of this. Except, I tried to do it, and I failed. It can’t be that easy if the success is so low.
“Are you okay?” Micah asks, pressing a soft kiss to my shoulder. I shrug, and he smiles at me. He seems to have changed the most after our dinner, a more at ease atmosphere now surrounds him, and he’s content knowing that it’s not his fault.
The same can be said for most of the guys, actually. Malachi is less stressed, although I know his upset hasn’t totally disappeared, and he and Orson have gone down to the home gym together to work out a bit of their pent up energy.
