I waited, slipping my hand beneath the sheet to find his. He laced our fingers together, and I squeezed him tight, sensing that he needed the reassurance.
“I… I’m atoning,” he said. “I never put it into words before, but I see that now. I wanted to help our kind in Blackmoon Bay because I couldn’t help them in Mendoza.”
“Atoning? That’s a strong word, Emilio.”
“Not strong enough.”
“But… atoning for what?”
He finally tore his gaze away from the window, turning to look at me once again. What I saw was shocking; there was so much pain and regret in his eyes, it scared the hell out of me. This man had faced death, come back from it. Yet whatever he was thinking about now had been more traumatic than even that. I had never seen him so wounded. So ashamed.
“Emilio,” I whispered, squeezing his hand even tighter. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Do you remember that night,” he said, “when we got the call about Reva? When you and Elena were having a midnight snack?”
“Of course.” I was still carrying the weight of my conversation with Elena—the things she’d revealed to me. Even after everything we’d endured since that night, her story still haunted me.
Her husband—her true mate—had been slaughtered, along with her three-year-old child.
“She told me that her husband and daughter had been killed,” I told him, though I suspected he’d heard as much. He’d interrupted us to tell us about a call from the RCPD—that Reva was waiting for us at the station. Still, it seemed like he needed me to say it again. To make absolutely sure I knew where the rest of this conversation was headed. “She said the two of you barely escaped Argentina with your lives. That even your parents… Everyone… I’m so sorry, Emilio.”
My words were useless, but I had to say them. Iwassorry. They’d lost their parents, their family, their pack. Sometimes I wondered how they even found the strength to get out bed in the morning.
“We lost everyone we loved except each other,” Emilio confirmed. “But Elena… Did she tell you why?”
“Not specifically. Just that your pack had been betrayed.”
“It’s true,” he said, and by the sadness in his voice, I suddenly knew what was coming next, even before he said the words. I wanted to press my fingers to his lips and stop him, to kiss away his confessions before they escaped, to preserve his and Elena’s private grief and the trauma of what was obviously a very personal, very terrible situation.
But when he met my eyes again, I saw the truth: Emilioneededto say these words. To confess.
Perhaps, I realized, it was the very first time he’d ever felt able to do so.
“Our packwasbetrayed,querida,” he said. “By me.”
Sixteen
RONAN
“These roads are absolute shite,” Beaumont grumbled.
“Be glad you’re not the one driving.” I took my foot off the gas again and peered out the windshield, trying to keep a little distance between our vehicle and the taillights in front of us—the van Lansky and Jael were in. But the task was proving futile. They were sliding around as much as we were, and even though the plows had been through recently, the snow was accumulating faster than they could keep up.
“This is insane,” Haley said from the backseat. “I’ve never seen so much snow.”
“That’s because it’s totally un-fucking-natural.” I clicked on the wipers, trying in vain to keep my view clear, but it was useless. The snow was falling in big gobs, reflecting the light from our headlights until it looked like we were doing warp speed through outer space. The woods didn’t help—the pines were several stories tall, their branches thick with heavy, wet snow, blocking out any ambient light we might’ve picked up from neighboring towns.
Our plans to lure the Darkwinter Knights out of the Bay had been temporarily put on hold in light of the crazy storm, and for the last couple of days our focus had been shoring up the house and making sure we had the supplies we needed to wait out the weather.
The five of us had just finished up a major supply run in Baldersville, a few towns down the highway from the Cape, middle of fucking nowhere. We’d tried all the stores in town closer to Elena’s place, but they’d already been cleaned out. Same story everywhere we stopped along the highway until we’d gone about two hours out of our way and spotted a well-lit plaza with a couple of big chain stores—it’d felt like a fucking oasis in the desert, and we dove right in. The weather hadn’t been as bad down there, either. But now that we were getting closer to the Cape again, forced onto the backroads due to highway closures, it was a frozen shitshow nightmare.
“I’m starting to think we might need a contingency plan,” Beaumont said as I slowed down again. We were only doing about fifteen miles an hour now, crawling like sloths along the road, our little caravan the only fuckers crazy enough to venture out on a night like this. But we had no choice—with so many people staying at Elena’s, we couldn’t risk running low on anything, especially with this insane fae-mojo weather. “Maybe we should find a place to stop for the night.”
“And day,” I reminded him. “If we stop now, we won’t be able to leave again until the sun goes down tomorrow.”
“Better delayed and safe than frozen solid,” he said.
“Look around. There’s no guarantee this is going to lighten up. For all we know, conditions will be a hundred times worse tomorrow night.”
