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“You’re an idiot,” Holden muttered, drawing Desmond’s attention back to him.
“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t do the same thing. You can act as cold as you want, pretend because your heart doesn’t beat you don’t feel anything, but I’m not blind. None of us are fucking blind. You’re as goddamned in love with her as I am, and acting like a jackass to me doesn’t change that. If you were in my position, you’d do the same thing. ”
Holden opened his mouth to protest, but Desmond gave a violent head shake. “No. I’m not in the fucking mood to act coy about this. She shows up smelling like you sometimes. I’m not stupid. You’re not stupid. I see how you look at her, and it’s the same fucking way I look at her. I know a hopeless man when I see one. ”
This time Holden didn’t try to argue.
I sank all the way onto the floor and looked between them, struck mute both out of shock and my brain’s complete inability to form coherent thoughts that might become sensible words.
“You’re right,” Holden said after the silence had become thick enough to chew on.
My pulse tripped. Had Holden just admitted to loving me? And more importantly, had he admitted it to Desmond instead of me?
“You’re right,” he repeated. “I would fight to stay in control if it was me in your place. But I’m not in your position. I’m here, standing, functional. I actually can help her. All you’re doing is making her worry, making her feel guilty, and making things that much worse. ”
“Could we maybe stop talking about her like she’s not here?” I asked.
No such luck.
“She needs me,” Desmond replied.
“No. Right now she needs me. And she doesn’t need to be fretting about the length of the hair on your arms. So do us all a favor and shift already before I find a way to force that bloody beast out of you. ”
Desmond’s breaths came short and furious from his nostrils, and for a second I was dead certain he was going to leap across the room and try to tear Holden to pieces with his bare hands. I, for one, was still reeling from the almost-love confession Holden had given seconds before. It’s not often a girl hears a vampire admit to loving her right before threatening violence against her werewolf soul mate.
For me, though, I probably should have seen something like this coming.
Finally Desmond looked back at me, and the pain in his eyes made my heart stop.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Here he was, putting the decision in my hands. What must it feel like to trust someone that much? To willingly lay your life at their feet and say, What you do with it is up to you? I wasn’t sure if that level of selflessness would ever come naturally to me. It was brave of him to ask, and terrifying for me to hear.
“I can’t decide that—”
“Secret, you don’t get to take the easy way out on this one,” he said. “If you say change, I’ll change. If you say don’t, I won’t. But I came here for you, so this decision is yours. What do you want me to do?”
I stared at Holden, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. This was all on me.
Turning back to Desmond, I clutched his cold, sweaty palm in my own and squeezed. The pressure was too hard to provide comfort to him, but was meant more for me to hold him, anyway. To hang on to the realness and the humanity of him for a moment before I asked him to do the one thing I knew he didn’t want to do.
He’d have fought it until the end if I didn’t say the words.
“I want you to shift. ”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They kicked me out.
The one thing they could agree on—aside from their mutual white-knight complexes—was that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be in the room when Desmond shifted. I wanted to argue, but the logic behind it was compelling. I might not be able to resist my own change if my wolf saw Desmond make his, and it wasn’t worth the risk to test my control. I might have tried it at home, but I couldn’t take the chance here.
I was ushered into a bedroom connected to the foyer, and they closed the doors on me. Dumping my sword next to a small table, I took off my gun holster and began to pace the floor. It wasn’t as bad as being locked up in a turret, but I certainly felt like a pathetic damsel in distress while I walked uselessly, waiting for it to happen.
A shiver of energy washed over me, and my wolf perked up, as if being woken from a light sleep. She didn’t fight me, or try to get out, but we both knew the moment Desmond had shifted because something inside me felt it. The same tether that drew me to him and Lucas like an invisible leash gave a tug now to let me know something had happened at the other end.
From the foyer came a loud, low growl so unpleasant the door rattled slightly. Then there was a bark and a scuffling sound. I moved towards the door but froze in place when I heard a man curse and a lupine yelp. This time I didn’t hesitate, but grabbed the door handle and had begun to jerk it open when Holden crashed into the room and slammed it behind him.
Blood had soaked through the sleeve of his shirt, and his hair was disheveled.
