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“She told you,” Wesley muttered, still flipping through his books. “She told all of us she can’t live with who she is. She can’t accept her past.”
“That’s fucking stupid,” West said. “She’s dealt with it before, she can deal with it again.”
“We know that, but she doesn’t quite believe it yet. She needs time,” Jack reasoned. “She needs support and help, and she needs to talk about it. She also needs to know the truth.”
“From us, not from some guy who’s trying to track her down and exterminate her,” I scoffed. I couldn’t help it. My temper was rising, and as our leader and her high priest, West was being so fucking obtuse.
West’s ice-blue eyes fastened on me, a warning lurking in their cold depths, but I didn’t give a shit anymore.
“Oh, and you’re the expert now, are you?” he asked quietly, dangerously. “You’re just as much to blame as the rest of us.”
I raised my eyebrows, keeping my temper in check. “Am I now? I didn’t even know who she was until a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t even know who I was until a couple of weeks ago. How is any of this my fault? If anything, it’s yours.”
Even Zayn looked up at that, and silence stretched across the room.
“I have done nothing except try to keep that girl safe. She just has a fucking death wish.”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe she does have a death wish. It wouldn’t be surprising. But yeah, you’ve done nothing except try to keep her from getting killed. Absolutely fuck all.” Zayn reached out and laid a hand gently on my arm.
“Steady,” he murmured softly, but I’d started now, and I wasn’t going to back down. I stood up and faced West head-on.
“Seriously, this whole episode has been one complete fuck up since day one. You didn’t tell her who she was when she came of age. She was right there the whole time. You’ve spent so much time with her, you and Jack. You could have broken it to her gently and told her the stories over the years—our version—and then when you finally revealed who she was, it wouldn’t have been such a shock and she wouldn’t have gone running off based on some twisted version of the facts told to her by some stranger. But no, you kept her in the dark. You didn’t tell her anything. You didn’t trust her. And now you’re wondering why she doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t even trust herself.”
I was breathing hard, and my hands clenched at my sides. I had such a burning to desire to either shift and tear his fucking throat out or, to be honest, just to punch the fucker.
“You didn’t trust her either,” Jack cut in. “You kept secrets as well.”
“Kept secrets about what I thought was my sexual deviancy! That’s not the same,” I insisted, softening my tone as I looked at him.
“She still felt betrayed by you. She still felt abandoned. She still felt like you didn’t trust her either.” Zayn’s voice came from behind me, and I turned. He wasn’t looking at me though, his eyes fixed on the pen he fiddled with on the desk. The fact that he was siding with West hit me like a thump in the chest. Zayn always backed me up, or at least, he had in past lives, but there was something else between us now, some tension, something that just felt wrong, and with Tory’s disappearance we hadn’t had a chance to address it. I clenched my jaw and nodded stiffly.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did contribute in some way, and that hunter was the last straw. But now our woman, who already felt trapped and desperate, believes she’s some kind of monster who’s going to kill everybody.”
Wesley sighed. “In all fairness, she’s gone a week without feeding. She could very well snap and kill somebody, and we can’t dismiss that either.”
“She could, but she won’t,” I said.
“What makes you so sure?” West asked.
“She’s lost and alone and scared, and she knows she’s a danger to humans when she hasn’t fed. It’s what she’s most afraid of. I think she’ll have tried her best to stay away from them, and that’s why we can’t find her on camera or why no one’s spotted her.”
“But she can’t keep running and hiding forever,” Jack mused. “Surely she’ll come back when she’s desperate. She knows we’re here for her. She knows we love her and we’ll take care of her.”
“She doesn’t,” Wesley murmured quietly, looking up at Jack.
“She knows we love her,” Zayn stated.
Wesley shook his head. “No. She doesn’t believe it. She thinks we’re lying to her just like we lied about everything else. She thinks it’s another way of controlling her, and she thinks she ruined our lives. She told me as much when we were trapped in the safe room that time the house was attacked. She told me she was worried we’d all had lives before we remembered her and who we were, and that she’d taken them from us.”
I looked over at West. “She’s gone from blaming us to blaming herself for everything. She can’t believe we love her if she thinks she’s responsible. Have you told her, West?” I asked quietly.
West turned on me. “Of course I did. I told her she meant everything, that I had given my service to her and she would never lose it. That I was completely devoted to her.”
I shook my head, the inclination to punch him returning. “And I’m sure the goddess inside felt great about that one, but did you ever tell the woman that you loved her? That you still love her?”
He looked at me, and pain flashed in his eyes. “No. I decided it would be best for me to keep my distance this time. I got too close and... I wasn’t going to let that happen again.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand what happened in the last few days, but this can’t be right. We all know how you feel about her, and she should know too. You can’t protect her by lying to her about how you feel.”
