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“Both of those sound great.” I return his smile and focus on the soft touch of the towel on my skin. “But I already feel better, thanks to you.”
Archer pauses in his drying, then lifts one hand to touch my face. “I think you’re just stronger than you know.”
He kisses me. It’s short and sweet but laced with some of the heat we shared inside the shower. My cheeks are flaming when he finally pulls away and goes back to drying me off.
After a lifetime of horror, I finally escaped my uncle’s captivity and discovered true friendship. I found four men I care about who seem to care about me in return—even Dare, wherever he is now.
Before I met them, nobody had ever made sure I had clean clothes to wear or food in my stomach. Nobody would have ever held me on my feet, washed my body, and then dried me off with a smile. Now, that level of care is a staple in my life.
But I don’t deserve it. I’m the enemy.
I close my eyes against my tears so that Archer won’t know the depths of my emotions. All I can see in the darkness behind my eyelids are those black scars on my skin.
&nbs
p; No matter how much I care about these men, I’m terrified I might hurt them.
5
Trystan
Ridge put me on egg duty, which was fucking stupid. Like I know anything about flipping eggs-over-easy. Two eggs in, I’ve already said fuck it, and I’m scrambling the whole lot of it.
Whipping it into a frenzy with the spatula doesn’t frustrate me as much as trying to flip the slimy shit. And after weeks in this cabin sharing breakfast with Sable, I know damn good and well she likes eggs in any form. In fact, I know she loves food of all kinds, and I know that’s because her uncle fucking starved her.
Fucking asshole. I jam the spatula under the sizzling, bubbling eggs, sending several small chunks flying. What kind of psychopath starves a kid? What kind of monster abuses his own niece, someone he should do anything to protect?
I know it’s the tension hanging in the air that’s getting to me, screwing up my patience with cooking breakfast, though I can admit I have a lack of patience to begin with. Even Ridge is on edge, dropping everything he picks up, cursing under his breath, glaring at sticks of butter like they’ve insulted his pack. Dude’s lost his mind, but I’m right behind him.
What the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?
For years, I’ve prided myself on being capable and smart, able to handle the ups and downs of leading my pack. Shit, it’s why I challenged my father for control of the West Pack. I was more capable of keeping them safe than he was, and I’m damn sure good at it. Nobody’s ever questioned my leadership the way they did my father’s.
But this? Fuck, I’m completely out of my depth here. This whole situation, from forging friendships with Ridge and Archer and letting old grudges fade, to Sable being my mate but also being a fucking witch… all of it is quickly spinning out of my control. And it started spiraling out of control the minute three different wolves claimed Sable as their mate just like I did.
Despite some tension between us, we worked together to get to know her, to give her wolf time to decide who was her true mate. It hasn’t been all bad. I’ve actually started to get along pretty well with the other alphas, something I never expected to happen.
And when her uncle took her right out from under our noses, we were all ready to rip every last inch of him to pieces to get her back. A little bit of luck—and the way Sable had opened up to us about her past—allowed us to find her and save her. And then after we got back to the cabin, when we thought she was going into heat…
Fuck, I’ll never forget a second of that night for as long as I live.
But as if it wasn’t strange enough that four men feel a mate bond pull toward the same woman, now we know Sable isn’t even a fucking wolf.
She’s a witch.
Our sworn enemy.
Dammit. I don’t know what to do with this overwhelming information. I’m on a runaway train without brakes, and nothing inside me believes this is going to end well.
Even so, I’m still here. Scraping eggs over a cast iron skillet, wearing a fucking oven mitt that has little cartoon wolves on it. Only thing I’m missing is a frilly pink apron to really solidify the image of domestic bliss.
I stayed, unlike Dare, the fucking coward, who ran at the first sign of magic. It’s easy to hate him for cutting out like a little bitch.
It’s harder to admit to myself that I understand why he did.
The hair on the back of my neck prickles, and I sense Sable’s presence before she walks into the kitchen. A moment later, her delicious scent permeates the room, fresh out of a shower and more tempting than anything we have cooking. I whip around, still holding the spatula in one hand.
Archer is guiding her, his fingers wrapped carefully around her arm as if she’s an invalid. She’s walking slowly, but she seems pretty steady on her feet, and a lot more put together than she looked in that bed when she first woke up. She’s wearing a sweatshirt, one of Ridge’s that got packed before our hasty trip to the cabin. It’s big and baggy on her and swallows her petite curves.
