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FIFTY-FIVE
DRAKE
It was finally over. Vex was safe. Ebony was stable, and we could bring them home.
And somehow, stepping back through the doors to our home left me with a cold sense of dread.
I’d tried to go to her nest with her and the others, but I just couldn’t do it.
Ebony found me in the theatre and took a seat beside me.
I shut my eyes.
I could feel him through the bond, faint—though growing stronger every day. I’d almost lost him… We’d almost lost him.
This pack, who’d taken me in, had paid the price for my demons.
After a long silence between us, I spoke, voice rough. “She told me I was enough. Even when you were all pushing her away, I was there for her.”
“You were.”
I shook my head. “But this whole time, it’s been because of me. It’s all because of me.”
His calculating gaze found me. He took a while before he replied. “That’s not how this works.”
Bitterness twisted my expression. He was wrong. “They were my past. If you hadn’t got involved, she would never have suffered.”
He was going to try and make me feel better, I knew it was why he was here.
Well, he couldn’t.
“I didn’t,” he said at last.
“Didn’t what?”
“Save you,” he said. “That’s not what happened.”
I turned to him, trying to figure out his angle.
“You were a trophy that I took from a pack I wanted to destroy. I didn’t save you. I claimed you.”
I breathed a bitter laugh, resting my head on the back of the couch.
Right.
“The day you got here,” Ebony went on. “I didn’t just make you an offer to join the pack.”
I stared at him, jaw clenched as I tried to work out his angle.
“You told me,” he went on, “that you weren’t sure. You didn’t believe my pack wanted your baggage—”
“And I was right. She might have matched you without me—”
Ebony snorted. “And then what? She posts online, gets taken, and a different set of pricks who take her to get to us?”
I was on my feet in a moment, rage flaring. “It would have been better than this. Anything would be better. You almost died—”
He got to his feet, matching me, and I was surprised at the flash of anger in his eyes. He was still faint in the bond, but he felt… different. “I don’t make claims I don’t defend,” he hissed.
