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Shaw grinned in triumph.
I hugged Dylan goodbye, lingering over the hug even when he started to pull away. I couldn’t help feeling like I was already setting him up to leave me.
I needed him to be safe, even if I wasn’t. It felt inevitable to me that Nathan was still alive, like a cockroach; he was hard to kill. And it felt inevitable to me that either Nathan would finally kill me, as I’d expected all these years, or I would kill him.
Whatever happened, if I couldn’t escape to a new life, if I died… maybe Dylan could be safe and happy with Brennan’s kin. God knows my pack had never been a safe place for him. If I’d known what the King pack was like, I might have carried him here while he was still new and pink-faced and begged them to protect him.
But god, he needed me, and I needed him. My eyes blurred with tears at the too-sharp image of abandoning him here, and I buried my face in his hair and kissed him goodbye to cover my emotions before I let go of him.
Then he ran off with Stone and Cole, barely glancing back at me. Karissa looked at me as if she saw my distress, and squeezed my shoulder gently before she headed out of the kitchen.
“Are you all right?” Shaw asked me quietly.
I nodded. “I feel a lot better today, actually.”
“Well, the day is still yours,” he gave me a questioning look. “Whatever you want to do with it.”
“I want to watch TV in bed with my own personal hot water bottle,” I teased him, because he was so warm to the touch.
His lips parted in a smile. “Excellent. Because as someone who will never be alpha—and would never want to be—that’s actually my highest career ambition. Hot water bottle.”
“I think you’d be a good alpha,” I told him.
He crooked an eyebrow at me. “Don’t make me wash your mouth out.”
They were teasing words, but they brought up a sudden rush of memory—Nathan had no tolerance for women using unladylike language, even though he cursed himself—and I felt my smile turn frozen.
“Amelia,” Shaw said quietly. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“If you don’t tell me, I can’t watch what I say,” he told me.
“It’s not your job to watch what you say!”
“No, it’s not my job. But it’s something I want to do, for you. And I guarantee you that while those men are also assholes,” he swept his arm in a way that somehow encompassed both Stone and Cole, and maybe Liam too, “they would want to know as well. No one wants to hurt you when they could just… choose their words differently. It’s a small thing to do for someone.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact, as if it were nothing. But it made something tighten in my chest. Somehow I felt worse about the past lately than I had in a long time, as if being here made everything I went through seem worse.
“You’ve already done enough for me,” I told him as we climbed the stairs. It was easier to talk to him when we weren’t face to face. “Nathan thought it was disgusting when I was on period. It’s nice to have someone act like it’s just…normal.”
“It is normal.”
I shook my head as I opened the door to my room. “You don’t know what an amazing man you are, Shaw.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were true, and I knew I shouldn’t have said them. I was afraid I’d lose him when he realized how much I liked him, how much I wanted him. I liked my friendship with Shaw, the way I felt light and happy when I was around him. We couldn’t ruin that comfort.
“That’s a nice thought, but I’m not here for you. I actually just love Thai food andFriendsand romance novels.”
His words were so unexpected that I let out a laugh.
He rested his hands lightly on my shoulders, then began to massage the tension away. I hadn’t expected his warm, solid hands on my skin, but as I felt my muscles begin to unknot under his palms, I let my shoulders sag, let myself relax.
“Nathan was an asshole,” he told me quietly. “I’ve never minded a woman being on her period.”
The implication made my cheeks flush. “You would… have sex with a woman anyway?”
He laughed. “I’d do more than have sex. I’d eat her out if she wanted me to.”
