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A twig cracks beneath my bare foot, and Kian shoves away from the tree, whirling on me with both fists clenched.
He looks wild. Almost as wild as Frost looked in the throes of his vicious attack. Fear snakes up my spine, but I straighten my shoulders and stare him down, waiting for him to get ahold of himself. Frost had a reason to be feral, since he’s so full of shadow magic that it’s nearly bursting out of him. Kian doesn’t.
After a moment, his fingers uncurl and his shoulders slump forward.
We eye each other in a loaded silence. There’s a tightness around his eyes that tells me whatever emotions he’s dealing with are still crowding his mind.
“Malix says Frost seems okay physically,” I tell him, careful to keep my voice calm and even, like I’m speaking to a wounded animal. “Just a bump on the head.”
It’s an attempt to reassure him. To make that worry around his eyes go away. But the truth is, maybe Frost will be all right. Physically, anyway. Mentally, though? There’s a big difference between being okay physically and being… okay.
If he never comes back from the wild, dark place he was in when he woke up, how is that okay?
It’s not.
It never can be.
Unfortunately, my lame attempt at soothing the beast fails spectacularly.
Kian snarls, a gut-wrenching, horrific sound that’s more pain than anger. Before I can move to stop him, he twists around and punches the tree again. Over and over, each time opening his wounds wider, spattering blood on the ridged bark.
I wince with every thud, my stomach clenching. Should I wait it out? Let him get that aggression out of his system?
If I try to intervene, there’s no guarantee he won’t accidentally punch me in his blind fury. So I hover behind him on the balls of my feet, trying to force a decision that feels impossible in this particular moment.
When I hear a popping sound that’s a little too close to bones cracking, my decision is made for me. I leap forward and grab his arm with a sharp, “Hey!”
Yanking with my whole weight, I force him away from the tree.
“Stop it. You’re hurting yourself,” I grit out, digging my fingers into his skin.
“Don’t touch me!” he snarls.
His eyes are wild and unfocused, and he rips his arm from my grasp as if I’ve burned him. With an inarticulate sound, he whirls around and shoves both hands through his hair. Blood smears over the tanned skin at his temple like war paint, and he stalks away from me, breathing so hard it’s a miracle that fire doesn’t emanate from his lungs.
“I fucking failed!” he growls, dropping his bloody hands to his sides. He turns back to face me, rage tightening every line of his rugged features. “What the fuck did I do? Quinton threatened my brother, and what the fuck did I do? I stood by and let it happen. I let Frost sacrifice himself.”
“You couldn’t have known—”
“I should have!”
“—what Quinton was going to do,” I finish doggedly, forcing myself to face his rage head on.
He’s terrifying like this, almost otherworldly in his wrath. But he isn’t directing the violence toward me. If this is what he needs—to rant and rage and scream—well, I can fucking relate to that. And I can be here for him as he does it.
Kian jabs his thumb into his chest. “It’s my job to protect them. Mine. This whole shitty situation is my fault. It’s on me.”
“It’s not,” I say firmly.
“Frost died today,” Kian roars, advancing on me with a wild glint in his eye. “I should have been the one who died.”
“Frost is alive because of you,” I point out. Surely he isn’t too far gone for facts and logic.
My heart stops beating as Kian strides toward me suddenly, bearing down on me like a runaway train. His hands grip my shoulders hard, and he pins me against the tree with stiff, unyielding arms as he snarls, “I never should have allowed this to happen!”
My heart flutters as his words echo in the air around us, finally fading away to a devastating silence. Our gazes lock, and my throat tightens as I fall into the depths of his gold-ringed brown eyes, lost in the painful void of our phantom mate bond.
Beneath the fury, I see something else. Something… lost and sad. Something almost like longing, the way a man might look at a woman he knows he can’t have.
An answering ache throbs in my own chest, and goosebumps spread across my skin as a cool breeze brushes over my body.
Speaking as softly as I can, I murmur, “You should never have allowed this to happen? Which ‘this’ do you mean, Kian? Quinton hurting Frost? Or the three of you mating with me and then discarding me?”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “All of it.”
A sharp slice of agony cuts me to my core, but I ignore it. This isn’t about me or the fact that he wanted the bond to fail forever when he snuck that potion into the antidote for the shadow poison.
Ignoring the unspoken words that fill the space between us like a soundless scream, I reach up to rest my hands over his on my shoulders. “What happened to Frost isn’t your fault, and you know it. All three of you look out for one another, and I know all three of you would die for each other. If Frost were in your position right now and you were in his, he’d be just as fucked up. He’d wish it were him, just like you wish it was you now. He wouldn’t want you to blame yourself for what happened.”
Kian stares at me, his jaw tight. His features are still hard as stone, full of fury and guilt. Full of so many emotions that I can’t even begin to identify them all.
Then, in the space of a single heartbeat, the stone cracks.
A new emotion rushes up to replace all the others, and his eyes spark with intensity as he yanks me against his body, crushing his lips to mine.
