A reluctant smile pulls at my lips, but it feels strange. Hilde doesn’t seem to care how I’m feeling, one way or another. She’s always been like that. A mother hen, yes, and she has zero tolerance for bullshit. But she also doesn’t judge. She might be one of the few who didn’t treat me like I was just some degenerate.
Mona is upstairs showering. I snuck inside like a coward last night. I almost slept in the woods again in wolf form. It still feels too much like freedom to have his form back, but I couldn’t stay away from her. I just needed to see her.
I swear I caught Ghost hovering outside her window in his falcon form just as I arrived, but he was gone in a flash. Bigger coward than I am.
Orion is with her, and while I’m sure with his shiny new bond he doesn’t want to let her out of his sight, apparently Grayson accepted Andrea as Mona’s personal bodyguard and, until Deidre is dealt with, Mona isn’t to be alone for a single moment, and the guys are taking that shit seriously.
Not that I’m not. If anyone knows what Deidre is capable of, it’s me.
I wonder how Mona feels about Gray’s old on-again, off-again flame being her bodyguard. Maybe I’ll ask her in front of Grayson.
I don’t know what it is about him that makes me want to push his buttons. I haven’t seen him in years, and I fucking missed the guy, more than I ever thought possible. But we’ve been needling each other since the first moment we reunited. Since the first moment we were born, too.
It helps, actually. If he were coddling, that would be worse.
“Eat this, too. You’re too skinny,” Hilde pinches my cheek. I grimace and pull away.
“Alright Hilde. That’s enough. I can’t even eat all this,” I complain.
She gives me a scathing look. “That’senough? You’ve been gone for five years, doing god knows what, and if the rumors are true, you were stuck with the witches—” Hilde huffs, then recomposes. “And you think this is enough? My boy, you’ve forgotten your roots. Now, shut up and eat your lunch.”
She bares her teeth this time, and it’s the strangest thing… I swear I catch a tear in her eye before she turns away from me. So, I shut up and finish eating. When Hilde leaves, she makes me promise I’ll swing by the kitchen later.
It’s more food than I’ve had in years, but I eat every crumb, and my wolf rumbles happily. Last night we ate rabbit we caught, but it wasn’t enough. When I’m finished, I put the plate in the sink, then get up and keep looking around, like I’m a visitor in my own home.
I am, in a way. Grayson, Orion and Mona… they’re building a family here.
Jealousy twists inside me, but it’s more than that. Deeper.
Longing.
Grayson follows as I look around—casually, like he’s not on some sort of mission. He’s been hovering since Hilde arrived. Longer, actually. He wants to talk about something, but fuck if I’m going to be the first one to break. Up the stairs, I wander down the hall toward my old room. I pause at the entrance, placing my palm flat on the door.
Then I push in.
It’s exactly the same as when I left it. The only thing missing is my scent. The bedroom faces the east side of the house. I never brought women here, so the room is fairly spartan. A low platform bed, a side table. I don’t even have my own bathroom.
There’s a small table by the window and a leather wingback beside it. I sit at the edge of the bed and take it all in. Gray takes a seat in the leather chair.
My twin. He has a hard look about him, more cutting than he used to be.
I wait, throat tight, wondering which of us will crack first. And I take in the smells of the cabin. My parents’ scents are long gone, but their spirit, their essence, is still in this house. Their faces beam from picture frames on the walls. The floorboards still scuffed with the marks of our childhood—when my brother and I were pups, our mother’s footsteps thundering behind us as we fled, shrieking down the hall to my bedroom, our laughterdrowning out her scolding for playing so hard indoors. We broke a lot of furniture when we were little.
I’m sucking in sharp, quick breaths. I gasp for air, but it won’t come, and before I realize what’s happening, Gray’s out of his chair and trapping me in his arms.
My eyes burn, and I try to shove him off, but he only crushes me tighter. I dig my fingers into his shoulders, trying to push him away, to keep the pain locked inside where it belongs. Shove it down deep, where I keep all the dark and dirty shit.
But he doesn’t let go.
When the suffocating tightness in my chest finally eases, he releases me without a word. Returns to his chair like nothing happened.
“We can talk about it, if you want,” he eventually says.
I shake my head. “You don’t want to hear it.”
“I do, Sy. I want to hear it all.”
I shake my head and let out a dark laugh. I give myself another moment to button it up, suck it all back in. There’s no way I’m tainting my brother with my darkness. But I know he won’t let it go. So, I say, “I don’t want to speak of it. Never again. What she did to me, what they did—it’s in the past.”
