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Right. If he was trapped here, before making it into limbo, then he hadn’t let go of that. It was a tether that held him between the two realms.
The Troy who held his mate made that awful sound again, something from the depths of his soul, as if being torn apart himself. It wasn’t looped like Kase was, but rather a seemingly never-ending moment, trapped between one second and the next with nothing but that anguish to fill it.
“It almost killed me,” the other Troy said, voice calm. “After she died, when I moved away from the pack, I didn’t eat for days. Maybe weeks? I was just a skeleton then, just waiting for something to take me.”
I wanted to grab him, to shake him in anger at trying to let go. However, that wouldn’t help. My anger wouldn’t unstick him any faster, so I tried to stay focused.
“But you didn’t die,” I said.
“I didn’t.” His shoulders sank as if that were a failing of his. “A woman I didn’t know at the time took me to a meeting for people who had lost their spouses.”
“At the time?” A suspicion crept in.
He nodded. “Gran had her influence everywhere. She dragged me from the house and to that meeting.”
I thought back to when I’d been house hunting, to how she’d all but thrown me into the car and given the real estate agent the address to the house I’d ended up falling in love with and buying.
It made me let out a soft laugh at the way she seemed to have a handle on it all so long before I’d even understood there was something to know.
Of course, it also dug in that sorrow a bit more, because I no longer had her looking out for me. I didn’t have her hand there, guiding the pieces together, keeping things moving the right way.
Now I was on my own.
I thought back to the tunnel and shook my head. I wasnotalone.
“And the group fixed you?”
“No. There isn’t any fixing a pain that deep.”
“So what changed?”
“I listened to a man who talked about how his wife’s killer hadn’t been caught. It made me think about how horrible that had to be. You see, I dealt with Sasha’s killer. I went to bed knowing he wasn’t breathing, that he didn’t get to go on while she didn’t. That meeting made me realize that while I couldn’t bring Sasha back, Icouldgive that peace of mind to others by dealing with criminals.”
“And that’s why you became a cop?”
He nodded. “I was able to get the right documents for an identification, easily passed the tests and went through all the training. It’s what saved me, or at least what let me hang on.” He stared over at her lifeless body. “She would have been proud of what I’m doing. She always wanted to do something good, was the type of woman who put bird seed out every morning because she didn’t want them to ever go hungry, you know?”
That figured. Troy would have fit with a woman like that. Two noble, honestly good people.
It made me wonder how I was supposed to fit with him. He’d gone from some sunshine woman who fed the birds to a reaper who took out a bush in the front yard because the birds would sit on it and chirp and wake her—me—up.
However, this wasn’tmymental breakdown—it was Troy’s. I needed to focus on him and his problems, because only one person could lose their shit at a time and this was his turn.
“She would be proud,” I said, unsure what else to add. I knew what held him back was due to his mate, but what exactly was I supposed to do? He seemed okay, seemed to accept that he couldn’t have changed the outcome, had even found a way to try and carry on her memory, so what else was stopping him from crossing over?
I frowned as I turned back to the other Troy to find something changed.
He crouched over a body, shifted and looking monstrous, but it wasn’t his mate.
It was…me?
It took a moment to realize that it wasn’t a random image. It wasn’t a fantasy. This had to have been after I passed out, when I’d pushed Lilith’s presence from him.
He trembled as he had before, nuzzling me as if that would bring me to life again.
And that was when I understood. He had let go of his old mate, but he hadn’t let go of the fear that it would happen again, that he wouldn’t survive it a second time, that he might be the cause once again.
Which was whythisscene mattered so much to him. He hadn’t known if I’d live or not, only knowing that he’d nearly killed me, and that I might have been hurt or worse trying to save him.
