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RAIKA
I barely slept that night.How could I, knowing that Shane had been in my room, that he was outside in the forest on pack lands?
Early in the morning, I got up, got dressed, and started breakfast. Today was a special day and I wanted to make a special breakfast for Minsi. With Phell always watching me, I baked a lot of cinnamon apple muffins and made hot chocolate for two. I placed one of the muffins on a white plate and topped it with sweet frosting and a pink candle. With the plate and lighter in my hand, I went to Minsi’s bedroom.
I thought I would have to wake her up, but when I pushed her door open and stepped in, I found her seated on her bed, hugging her pillow, her eyes red.
I put the plate and lighter on the side table and sat beside her. “Oh, Min.” I pulled her to me. “Why are you crying, sweetheart?”
She didn’t say anything. I didn’t think she would, but I knew why she was crying. It was her eleventh birthday and the one year anniversary of when everything changed.
I smoothed my hand down Minsi’s back. “You’re fine now. No one can hurt you anymore. I won’t let them.”
A sudden need to tell her about her brother hit me, but what good would that do? Minsi was already suffering. If I told her that her disgraced brother was back and taunting me—and that I had told him to leave—it would only make her suffering worse.
Holding Minsi now, I wondered if I had been too harsh on Shane. If I shouldn’t have told him to leave.
No, I wasn’t harsh. I had given it to him the same way he had given it to me. Hard, cold, and true.
We didn’t need his help. I would find a way out of this, even if it killed me.
“How about this: Let’s go downstairs and eat your breakfast. I made something special for you.” I pointed toward the cupcake on her nightstand. ”And then we can spend the rest of the day at the library … and no studying. We’ll just read and talk about books.” I still had to cook and feed the pack, especially because yesterday I hadn’t and they probably wanted to kill me, but that should be quick. “Would you like that?”
Minsi turned her face to me, her eyes shining with tears. “Yes,” she whispered.
My heart squeezed. That had been her first word in days, maybe even weeks.
I kissed the top of her head and helped her up. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Thankfully,the rest of the day went a little smoother. Minsi put on a pink skirt and white shirt I had found in her closet, and she allowed me to make her hair into a braid-tiara, with the rest loose down her back. She looked pretty, and after that good cry and hug, she seemed a little lighter.
She ate two muffins for breakfast, and we took the rest with us to the library—I would take some of them to the school. We settled on the rug and pillows in the middle of the library, and true to my word, we ditched the schoolwork and read fiction books. Minsi was reading a middle-grade series about dragon riders, and I started a new contemporary romance—I so needed a dose of non-supernatural in my life.
But after the first four chapters, I put the book down. It was great, but the romance was making me itchy because my love life was a mess.
I glanced at the bookshelves around us, my thoughts returning to Shane. I couldn’t stop thinking about him as much as I wanted to.
Sometimes, I thought we had been wrong that night at the fissure. Whatever we felt wasn’t the mating bond. It was just some kind of lust induced by having his naked body pressed against mine, the tight space, his scent clouding my judgment. It had to be.
I sighed. It was the mating bond, though. I knew that because of the way I felt whenever I was around him, how there was an invisible line pulling me to him, how I couldn’t not want him, even though I should hate him.
Why did fate have to be so cruel? Why did I have to be mated to him? Why couldn’t I have been mated to another low-ranked wolf? Someone who hadn’t been mean to me my whole life. Like Roman? Or maybe no mate at all! That would have worked too.
I left when it was time to meet Rue in the school’s kitchen. I took the muffins with me, one for each, and a handful more for whoever wanted seconds. Lonan kept saying I made the muffins to shut them up so they wouldn’t be mad at me anymore for making them miss one day of food. But Tyren, Lucille, Dom, and some others remembered that it was Minsi’s birthday … and the one year anniversary of when this mess started. In a couple of days, it would be the one year anniversary of the attack that killed most of the pack and turned the rest of us into prisoners.
I didn’t argue with Lonan, or the other wolves who decided to agree with him. They could think whatever they wanted because I knew the truth. Without me, Conri would have left them to die.
After cleaning up the kitchen, I went back to the library and spent the rest of the afternoon with Minsi. This time, I grabbed a crime book … I needed some justice in my life.
Here and there, I made a comment about a book or a movie—old ones, since we hadn’t seen any new movies in a year now. Ever since taking over, Conri controlled the TV remote at the house, and he destroyed most of our devices—phones, tablets, laptops. We had no way of communicating with or knowing what was happening in the outside world.
Minsi barely talked. She said another two or three words, and that was it.
Before the sun set, we made our way back to the house—with Dixon and Phell at our backs. As we entered the house, I looked at the forest behind it … was Shane still there? Watching over us? Over his sister?
It didn’t matter.
