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“Like me.”
He nodded. “We gave Percy the option to give him a merciful death. He chose to do so, but he seems to blame us for it.”
“Technically, it’s my fault.” I resisted his opposition. “Juriah, please, it’s true. I know we shouldn’t go down that road again, but I should say it at least once. Rick is dead because of things that happened with me.”
“Did he love you?”
Concentration forced me to frown. “You know, I’m not sure. There were times when Rick took care of me—usually when Percy wasn’t around—but most of the time, he just treated me like trash. He…he did…”
I choked. Juriah tucked me under his arm. “You’re safe with me, Macy. He’s dead.”
“I know he’s dead. I just can’t shake the memories.”
“Take your time.”
Patience like his was divine. Then again, nobody had shown me such kindness in the past. He and his pack had practically spoiled me rotten. I chortled while rubbing my stomach, leaning harder into Juriah to get rid of the abrupt nausea rocking my gut.
“I’m so scared of this,” I admitted. “I’m scared to love you. It’s easier to pick at you and argue with you because that’s been my experience.”
He rubbed the space between my shoulder blades. Comfort emanated from the circles he massaged into my flesh.
“My pack hurt me so many times,” I explained. “Every time I tried to run away, they would chase me down. They would hurt me some more. They would shame me in front of everyone else.”
“What did they do to you?”
I cringed. “Percy made me wear a shock collar for a week.”
He clutched my shoulder. “That’s barbaric, Macy.”
“That’s not even the worst thing he did to me.” I closed my eyes, releasing some of the tears I had been holding back. “When he sent me off with Rick, I thought it was because he was giving me some room to grow. I just had to pay my debts like the elders kept demanding.”
“What debts did they hold over your head?”
I laughed. “Anything. Everything. My mother had used them as her personal piggy bank until she drowned in her own vomit.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That was my life. I was a teenager who had nowhere to go, and Percy had a nice house with clean clothes and a good bed.” I glared at the water, wiggling my toes to keep myself grounded in the cool liquid. “Yeah, well, all that looked glamorous to a kid who had only slept in closets.”
He rubbed my back some more. “What about your father?”
“I don’t think my mother had any idea who he was, honestly. He was probably a drifter or something.”
“Such pain in your life. I wish I could heal it.”
I looked up at him then, beaming from ear to ear despite spilling my awful trauma all over his lap like bad spaghetti. “But you do. All the time. Like literally every day.”
“How?”
“By being yourself.”
He smiled tearfully while reaching for my stomach. He’d been doing that a lot more lately, reverently running his fingers over the small pudge that contained a supernatural force greater than anything I’d ever experienced.
I rested my hand over his. “One Elderling child mixed with a werewolf.”
“Don’t worry. Raven and Rynar would be happy to teach our child the ways of being a hybrid.”
“What if they get picked on or something?” I worriedly stared at the lake. “What if they can’t fly? Or can’t shift? Or get picked on?”
