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“He’ll not be coming with you. The idea is for him to leave after you and Nora do, probably on Friday night, once it gets dark out. He’ll take a car, maybe a bike, I don’t know his preference, and he’ll follow behind you.He’ll probably get there Saturday morning, but he’s not to come to the pack with you. He’ll hang around and be there as backup, but his goal is to check out the other pack.”
Atticus thinks it over before slowly nodding.
“Sounds perfect,” he says.
“What about us?” Kai asks, glancing at Fin behind me.
“You don’t go anywhere with them,” I say, rolling my eyes and dismissing the tiger.
“I think I should reach out to Cevon,” Atticus says, and now we all pause.
“You’re going to reach out to Cevon?”
“Yes,” he says before frowning. “Maybe. He blocked my number. I know that much, but maybe I should tell him where we’re going, and see if he wants to meet up on neutral grounds.”
“You could,” Kai says, sounding a little bit hesitant. “You don’t have to, though.”
“No, I don’t know.” Atticus says with a sigh. “I’ll think about it more.”
“Maybe that’s something you do when you’re back,” Fin offers, coming to sit down on the sofa opposite Kai. “This weekend is about Nora getting some closure from her fucked up past, not you trying to mend relationships with the guy currently targeting her.”
“We don’t know if he’s actually targeting her,” Atticus says, but the protest is weak.
“Right. Let’s sit and plan this out properly,” I say, and that’s how we spend the next forty-five minutes.
I’m furious that we’ve left it until now, but I’ve still got a couple of days before they go, and we can get it sorted.
When the front door opens, the smell of greasy pizza fills the air, but if I inhale that little bit more, so does the sweet scent of cherries, alerting me to my mate being home. Micah and Voss are chatting, so they’ve found the tiger on their journey, but I don’t care about them.
Smelling her, hearing her dainty little footsteps as she kicks off her shoes, just knowing that she’s home and safe, calms me down in a way nothing else can.
“Has all the fighting stopped?” Nora calls, a hesitant lilt to her words. She’s paused outside the room, and I hate that she’s been worrying about this.
“Of course it has, baby girl,” Griffin says.
I hear her sigh in relief before the three of them come into the room. Micah’s got four pizzas in his hands, and Voss has three with a bag as well.
As we eat, Kai and I fill Voss in on the plan. He’s excited, so at least we know he’ll go along with it and do his part.
Voss loves it, the blood thirsty thug. The rest of them are a bit more reassured, knowing that at least it’s not just Atticus and Nora going.
Well, everyone is reassured, except Nora. The scent of her unease taints the dinner, but when prodded, she fakes a smile and reassures us all that she’s fine.
She’s not, and I hate that she thinks she’s not entitled to make waves.
We’d do anything to make her happy. That’s always the goal—right after her safety, of course—but if she won’t share her concerns, there’s not much I can do about it.
My bear doesn’t agree, though, whining and grumbling because he wants to fix our mate.
After dinner, I go up to bed with Nora. After brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed, she takes her sleeping tablet without complaint, something she has been doing over the last month, and gets into bed with me.
“I love you,” I say, kissing her head. She’s buried extremely close into my side, her nose pressed into my chest, and she’s sort of bundled up.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs, still seeming off. I hate it.
“You don’t have long before that tablet kicks in and we lose you to the land of the sheep.” She doesn’t give the usual laughter that that joke tends to inspire. “So can you open up and maybe tell me how you’re feeling?” I ask, rubbing her back as she nestles in even closer. She sighs, but I feel her tiny head nod ever so slightly.
“I’m upset,” she says. “I understand why we can’t all go. I think, I just, maybe… I’m struggling. I’m going to struggle with being away from everyone for the weekend.”
