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“She can’t be anything else. She’s already mate marked.”
“Apparently you don’t know anything about mates, to go with not knowing anything about anything else,” Liam said.
“Liam, it’s already been a very long day, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation where you didn’t require all my patience. I’m already out of patience.” I didn’t have the capacity to coddle my brother today.
“We might not understand it yet, but she’s your mate,” Liam said. “And mine. And Shaw’s.”
Shaw let out a laugh that sounded a bit wild himself, then dragged his fingers through his curls. “I don’t want a mate. I never have.”
“Of course you don’t,” Liam said impatiently. “None of us want a mate. We wantAmelia.”
“You barely talked to her,” I reminded him impatiently.
Liam turned his affronted gaze on me. He looked deeply wounded. But I had never seen someone so incompetent at flirting. He hadn’t even managed to talk to Amelia without sounding like a maniac.
“Amelia and I have a relationship that is deeper and more intense than you can understand,” he said, sounding surprisingly like a pretentious prick for someone who never even wore shoes. “We don’t need words.”
“That’s going to make for some boring road trips,” Shaw said.
Liam turned his intense gaze on him. “Are you going to keep making jokes? Because that might help you pretend you don’t need Amelia, that your wolf isn’t going wild to find her, but it isn’t going to get you any closer.”
Shaw raised his hands. “You don’t need to act like I’m the enemy. And for that matter, Stone isn’t the enemy.” Shaw’s gaze swept toward mine, though his eyes narrowed. “I mean, I feel just as murdery as Karissa. But we need to work together now.”
To Liam, Shaw added, “You’re the one who can help us find Amelia.”
The thought of needing Liam felt like the ground shifting underneath my feet like fast-moving sand.
* * *
Liam
“We’re not goingto find Amelia,” I said. “Amelia wants to be left alone, understandably. She doesn’t need you near her right now, Stone.”
My voice came out hard, and Stone's lips tightened angrily, but he didn’t answer.
“But she does needyou,”I finished.
Stone’s eyes widened. I could still surprise my little brother.
“Because Nathan Longroad is alive,” I said. “and she needs you to fix that, so she can be safe.”
It wasn’t quite right. Amelia was meant to kill Nathan herself. I was sure of it. It would be another step in reclaiming her power. But maybe that was all mixed up. I got mixed up a lot, and it made sense for Stone to take that burden from her. She was so innocent. She shouldn’t have to kill.
Maybe no one should kill. I pictured Nathan lying on the ground, staring up at the sky, and I didn’t feel anything but relief. But the next second, the image morphed into Nathan as a child, the same age as Dylan.
He’d been innocent.
And time… the rest of the world was locked into time as it carried them forward. But time wasn’t like that for me. We were always in our worst moments. We were always free. We were always guilty. We were always innocent.
Killing him wouldn’t change what he had done to Amelia. We should have rescued her years ago. We hadn’t made things better with our campaign of violence. But rescuing Amelia would have been an act of mercy and understanding.
“You need to cage Nathan,” I amended, knowing that Stone had no such intention. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said to kill him.”
“He’s alive.” Stone’s hands curled into fists. “Does he have Amelia now?”
Stone believed me. Something tight in my chest eased. If he believed me, he would help Amelia.
“Look at him, Stone,” Shaw sounded exasperated with us both. “He’d already be gone if Nathan had her.”
