“What are we doing tomorrow?” I ask.
“We’re going to the Witching Glen.” He says it easy. “I don’t care what my mother says. There’s something in there that canhelp us.” He glances back at me and winks. “Don’t worry. You’re coming with me.”
“You should eat too,” I tell him.
“I’ll eat when I know your belly’s full.” He leans back against the counter, crosses his arms, and watches me, and there’s no arguing with the look on his face.
I grin and bite into the steak, his eyes on me the whole time, soft and brown and mine again. After everything this man’s done to me today, I’ve got exactly one mercy left.
He can’t scent that I’m already ready to go again.
33
Aaron
I’ve been standing out here long enough to count every dark window in the Academy, and I’m no closer to a plan than I was when Mara went inside. The Glen is the whole problem. My mother’s set herself dead against it, and there’s nobody in any world harder to move than Angie Blackwood once she’s dug in.
Mara’s still inside with Headmistress Ebony, breaking the news that we won’t be back to teach for a while. I keep watch on the door and wait on her, magic flickering idle at my fingertips. Then something moves in the trees on the far side of the building.
I turn toward it, magic already gathering hot in my palm, and look hard into the black between the trunks. For a moment, there’s nothing. Then a pair of eyes opens in the dark, blue and burning, throwing their own light, and the rest of the trees fall away around them. I’d know those eyes anywhere.
I slide my hands into my pockets. “Please don’t tell me Mom sent you.”
Seth steps out of the treeline, chuckling, and jogs the rest of the way, skidding to a stop a few feet off, bare feet sliding in the wet grass. “Naw. Ma didn’t send me.”
“Okay.” I look him over, waiting on the catch, because Seth doesn’t come find me without one. “Then what do you want? Our sisters send you? Jacob?”
“Damn, man.” He spreads his hands wide. “A brother can’t care about your well-being?”
I just stare at him. “Since when have you ever given a damn?”
The humor drains right out of his face, and I know I’ve cut him. He frowns and holds a hand up.
“That. That right there is your problem. You’ve always seen me as the outcast. I’ve never been part of what you, Tiana, Kiara and Samara have. I’m just the brother who stands off to the side and watches the rest of you shine.”
“What are you talking about?” The old anger comes up. “You stood off to the side and watched us shine? I stood off to the side and watched our mother build a whole new family. A mother and a father, both, under one roof. The thing me and my sisters wanted our whole lives and never got to have. So don’t tell me about watching from the outside, Seth. I know exactly what it looks like from there.”
“My dad did nothing but try with you.” Seth’s chin comes up. “Every day. And it was never enough for you.”
“Because it can’t be.” I let out a slow breath. “I know Jacob tried. I love that wolf. I’ll always see him as the father who stepped up when mine didn’t. I’ll never forget the way House of Zorah took us in. Hell, all of Wintermoon did. But you have to understand it’s different, Seth. It always will be.”
He shakes his head, but I keep going, because if I stop now I’ll never say it right.
“Jacob loves you in a way he’ll never love me, and that’s not bitterness, Seth. It’s just true. You’re his blood. He lost his wholebloodline and grieved it for years, and our mother put it back in his arms the day she had you. You’re everything he thought he’d lost. I stopped trying to compete with that a long time ago.”
Seth’s eyes go soft, glassy at the edges, and I’m sure he’s about to cry right here in the dark. I look away. I can’t watch my little brother come apart and keep my own voice steady.
“I don’t want it to be this way. It’s just the hand I got dealt. My sisters found a way to make peace with it. I never could. But that was mine to carry, Seth, not yours. You never had a thing to do with any of it.”
“Well, I hate it.” It comes out cracked, and he won’t look at me.
“I hate it too,” I tell him.
And there it is, the thing I should’ve said to him years ago and never had the nerve to. I say it now, out loud, while I’ve got the chance.
“I’m sorry, brother.”
Seth’s head jerks up, his brows pulling together. “Huh?”
