Melantha’s cruel hiss echoed through my skull, splitting it with a blinding pain.
And she shall perish in flames for an eternity… And you shall know the true depths of a grief you have not yet begun to fathom…
I shook my head, clearing away the words before the rest of the curse bubbled up through my memories. It burned inside me like a hot blade, and it made Haley’s forgiveness and her love all the more bittersweet. All the more torturous. The world’s most precious gifts I could never, ever reciprocate.
She waited for me to speak, to saysomethingeven if it wasn’t what she truly deserved to hear. But I was a fucking coward, and if I heard the sound of my own voice just then, I knew it would fucking break me, and before I could untangle the knot of my feelings and put them into words that wouldn’t get her killed, the guys were back, barreling into the room at the sight of her sitting up in bed, whole and healthy.
Sitting up in my arms.
“Did you find them?” I asked, untangling myself from her and getting to my feet.
Hudson gave a quick shake of his head, his jaw clenched tight with frustration.
“Angel, you look perfect,” Jax said, and I watched with a fire blazing in my chest as he kissed her. Hudson moved in next, pressing his mouth to hers with a lingering tenderness that made me ache. When Hudson finally broke away, she turned back to Jax for another of his kisses.
It was the happy reunion they all needed. Deserved.
But it wasn’t long before those sighs of relief and happiness turned into soft gasps of pleasure, each one crashing into the next until the soundtrack of her miraculous recovery became the soundtrack of my most abject pain.
I closed my eyes as her scent washed over me—her strawberries-and-cream skin, the scent as familiar to me as my own. Her warm blood, heated even more by their insistent touch. Her desire, that intoxicating perfume that had hypnotized me every time we touched, back when we still could, and every time they touched her now.
I burned for her. Ached for her. Longed in a way that left me gasping for a breath I couldn’t take.
I couldn’t watch this. Listen to it. Smell it, for fuck’s sake.
I was going out of my damn mind.
Again.
I took a step toward the door. But my girl, she saw me leaving, and she wasn’t having it. She reached for me, her eyes full of forgiveness and hope and desperation and yes, desire too. Desire for me, in whatever way she thought she could have me.
Damn it, Haley.
“Stay,” she whispered. Begged. “Stay with us, Elian. Please.”
My heart galloped like the wild mares of night, and I took her hand once more. I wanted to tell her no. To remind her she had to let me go. Let me fuckinggo,but I couldn’t.
Because no matter what I’d told her earlier about moving on, about accepting our inevitable end, deep down, Ididn’twant her to let me go.
“You’re still mine,” she whispered again, her soft smile another balm on my cracked heart. “Always.”
I squeezed her hand. And in that moment, something passed between us, some new understanding that this was it—this was how it had to be. The only way we could have anything at all. Friendship and loyalty up close, but love only from a distance. Words unspoken. Desires unfulfilled but for the fantasies we could both conjure, and the pleasure I could watch my brothers give to her.
And in that moment, I knew what she needed. The only gift I could give her that would ever mean a damn thing.
Not permission, no—she certainly didn’t need my permission to love who she loved. But I sensed she wanted a blessing of sorts. A smile that said it was okay for her to want this, to desire it. To feel the things she was feeling for men thatweren’tme. Men I still called my brothers, even if they didn’t feel the same way about me.
And that it was okay for her to want me to bear witness to it, however crazy it might’ve seemed.
Earlier, I’d told her I was a jealous asshole, and that was the fucking truth. But I’d also told her I wanted only the best for her, and that was the truth too. I wanted her to be happy. To find love, even if it couldn’t be with me. Even if it tore me apart to see it happening.
So maybe, after all the secrets and lies and the darkness, this was the middle where we met. The soft, safe place where the jagged edges of our darknesses and brutal pasts overlapped, creating something new and undefined. Something magick.
Hudson and Jax glanced up at me as if they, too, needed me to be okay with this.
I appreciated it more than they realized.
“Take care of her,” I said, swallowing back the last of my tears. “Make her sing for us.”
