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“Yeah. Just like that.”
His lips twisted with disgust. “You still fucking blame me, don’t you?”
My jaw dropped. Across my mind, the memory of that day flooded in yet again: Kingston, crawling across the grass on his belly, dragging his ruined leg behind him as Melony drove away.
“I never—” I began, but my words came too late.
“Save it, Xan.” Kingston slammed the brake lever back. “You do blame me. I can see it in your fucking eyes. And you should. I should’ve lost more than my leg that day.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Another knife in my heart. Another twist of the blade in my chest.
His eyes were cold and dead when they met mine.
“Then, at least that makes one of us.”
He broke the gaze and wheeled around me, then away.
* * *
I roamed the manor like a lost dog. The argument with Kingston clung to my skin, sinking into already taut muscles, winding my jaw so tight it made my head ache. Everything else piled up behind it, a recipe for disaster. My chest was a dam doomed to break soon.
I needed Felicity. I didn’t care if she wanted to shout her fury at me like Kingston had, or just stand quietly by my side.
I was better when she was close to me. With her hand in mine, I could do anything, fix anything, win any war, fight any fight.
Without her, I was lost and angry and too bitter to do anything but look from wall to wall, thinking about how nice it would be to put my fist through it.
The manor had plenty of rooms to hide her. I searched them one by one, finding only empty space behind every door, until there was only one place in the mansion left to turn.
My mother’s old bedroom smelled like a florist’s shop. Looked like one, too. Roses in every color mingled with daisies and irises, peonies and orchids in a myriad of vases on every available surface.
It was where all the sympathy arrangements had ended up.
In the midst of them all, my mother lay prone in a hospice bed, blonde hair splayed across the pillow beneath her like a halo, eyes closed. If she was a sleeping beauty, it was hard to tell beneath the IV lines and the oxygen mask. Across her neck, bandages covered the scars from where Quincy Houghton had tried to tear out her throat.
The head wound she’d sustained during the same incident had left her comatose. Thanks to Felicity’s quick thinking—while in labor, no less—Ma’s body had healed. But somewhere within it, Ma’s mind was still locked away.
“Xander?” Dad blinked up at me, eyes bleary. He sat hunched in an armchair right next to Ma’s bedside. He hadn’t left it since I broke the news to him about the boys.
“No updates,” I told him before any semblance of false hope could glimmer in his eyes. He’d lost too much already: his wife and mate, his grandsons, so much weight. The swell of wishful thinking followed by the sharp crash of disappointment was liable to send him into cardiac arrest. “I’m looking for Felicity. Has she been in here?”
“She sat with me for a little while this morning.” Dad gestured to the empty dining chair next to him. “She said you’d left.”
I blinked, dumbfounded. I had left, I supposed. I’d slipped out in the darkness of our bedroom before she woke. There’d been no need to leave a note or a text to tell her where I’d gone. I’d been searching for the boys. Where else would I be? There was nothing else to do.
But the way Dad said it—left—made it sound so final. Like I’d abandoned my own mate in grief.
“Well, I’m back now.” My gaze strayed instinctively toward Ma. She’d left us, too. For a while. When she finally decided to return to us, it had been too late. The damage of her meddling had already been done. “Any idea where she might have gone?”
“No. Sorry, kid.” Dad reached for Ma’s hand. His fingers avoided her IV like he’d mapped out their paths around it by memory. “But she was in a pretty black mood.”
“Aren’t we all. What’d she say?”
“Nothing. But I could feel it.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.”
It was no surprise. Felicity had talked to the police, had issued a plea for our sons’ safe return on the news, had even given carefully prepared statements to the ravenous reporters outside. Where it mattered, she’d held herself together like a true stoic.
But in private, she’d gone dark. She hadn’t said much to me since the kidnapping—I could count the number of words on my fingers. When the police were gone and the cameras were off, I couldn’t even pretend she was taking off her mask. As soon as we were alone, she just put on a new one. No eyes. No lips. No expression at all.
