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What tethered him was the fear of going through it a second time…
“What would life be like if you’d never met her?” I asked.
A frown touched his features. “Empty, but less painful.”
“You say that because you don’t understand what it’s like to be alone.” I stared at the other him, at the broken man who seemed to clutch to his mate as if by holding her, he could change what was. “I spent my entire life alone, wanting nothing more than to have someone there. I went to sleep at night knowing that if I slid out through the window and disappeared, no one would care. No one would shed a tear or miss me.”
“I saw you after Gran died. Do you really thinkthatis better? That pain?”
I considered how it felt when I’d met Gran, when I’d hadsomeonewho cared about me, someone I cared about. Even with the pain from her loss, the answer was easy. “It was completely worth it.”
He shook his head. “A mate is different. How would you feel if you lostme?”
Andthathit differently. He was right…
My lungs froze at the question, at all thefuck thatwhich rushed through me.
But he’d made his point.
Losing Gran had felt like a shaking of my foundation, but to lose Troy? I thought back to when the reaper had charged them, to the fear that had swamped me as I’d watched them fight a losing battle.
What if the worst had happened? What if Troy had fallen—if they’dallfallen and I hadn’t been able to save them?
Still, even with how deep that hit me, with how terrifying the idea was, it didn’t change anything.
I rose to my feet and faced Troy. “I almost lost you more than once so far, but I’m stillhere, aren’t I? Every time we do any of this together, I know something could happen to you, but I’m still not giving you up.”
“How do you do that?”
“Because I’ve been without. I’ve lived alone, and there isn’t anything worse than that.”
He let out a sigh. “What does it matter, anyway? It isn’t as if I could let you go. I’ve shown that, haven’t I?”
“If you knew it for sure, you wouldn’t be stuckhere. If you’re here, then there is some part of you that can’t let it go.”
“So how do I let it go?”
I thought back to when I was trapped, to my own little piece of the abyss, to how I’d forgotten everything that mattered and focused only on that fear. “You look at me and you make the choice. Stop reacting, stop pretending this is all preordained. We might be mates, but you have to choose that.”
He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself, before he lifted his gaze to mine. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his silver eyes, the slightest hint of blue there. It hadn’t been that long since I’d seen him, but somehow this was different.
It took me back to our date, to his hesitation, to it all. He’d tried to accept me, to accept our connection, the uncertainty of it all, but some part of him hadn’t. Some piece of him had wanted the date to prove something, to show we could be normal, that we didn’t have to succumb to what he’d been through before.
And it all came down to a similar fear, at its core.
His wolf.That shine that happened in his eyes, when his body twisted, when he became something else. It wasn’t just that he was afraid of hurting me, but that he was afraid of his wolf. He blamed his wolf for his mate’s death, for dragging her into a world that had killed her and not being strong enough to stop it. He blamed the wolf for the fears about me, for everything wrong in his life.
I glanced to the side and saw it—a shadow there, a darkness in a form I recognized. His wolf didn’t frighten me. It never really had.
I rose to go there, but Troy grabbed my hand. His eyes were wide, pleading in them. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“I’m not afraid of it.”
“You should be. If I’d been normal, if I’d been human, she wouldn’t have died. You wouldn’t have almost died.”
I tugged my hand away from him, then crossed the darkness until I stood before the creature. It looked more massive than before, the claws longer, the body more misshapen. This was every bit the monster Troy saw it as, as if his human form forced it to normalize somewhat.
It stood almost two feet taller than I was, making me to crane my neck up. “Is this what you really look like?”
