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m my books. I bit my lip as I waited to see if whoever it was would go away. I was in no shape to entertain. And if it was another Were coming by to ask me what I’d come up with, I’d lose it.
The knock came again.
Screw it. “Come in.”
“Hey,” Meredith said. “How are you doing?”
Why wasn’t she just coming in? We were suitemates. We’d passed the whole knock-before-entering thing weeks ago. “I’m… I have no idea how I am. How are you?” Ever since Shannon left, she’d been distant. I’d planned on giving her until tomorrow to deal, and then I was going to talk to her about it. But she’d just beat me to it.
She wrung her hands together and looked anywhere in the room except at me. “I feel like I should apologize again.”
“Why?” She had nothing to be sorry for. Not in the slightest. “You already apologized, and you didn’t need to in the first place. It’s totally fine.”
“No. It’s not fine. I…” She licked her lips and let out a sigh. “I was wrong. About Shannon. You kept telling me that something was up with her, and I kept thinking it was just because she was jealous of you and Dastien. I—I didn’t think she was capable of defecting from our pack. But I was rude to you when you tried to bring it up and I should’ve listened to you.”
I scooted to the end of my bed and stood slowly. “Seriously. There’s nothing to apologize for. I thought it was all about Dastien at first, too, but after what happened with you… It wasn’t right. The way she was acting. She was straight up nasty.”
“I know. I saw it, but I kept making excuses. Seeing her leaving with the others was a rude awakening.”
“Are you okay?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t it feel like these past few weeks have been nuts?”
“Past few weeks? Try past few months. My life has taken a serious turn for the crazy ever since I got to Texas.”
“No kidding, right?” She scrunched up her nose for a second.
With that, I knew that everything was going to be okay. At least with us. “For sure.”
“So what now?”
I turned back to my bed, surveying the mess all over it. The white sheets were barely visible under the books and notes. I’d surrounded myself with every resource I had, determined to find some sort of magic spell to make all this go away. So far, I’d come up with nil.
I pulled my hair into a messy knot at the nape of my neck. “I have no idea. I’m trying to figure out how to counter Luciana, but without knowing what she’s up to….” I’d been thinking of doing something totally batshit the past couple of days. Maybe it was because Claudia had brought up the idea, but now, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Or maybe it was all the waiting around. But whatever it was, I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to do something. “I have an idea. Something Claudia said on the phone the other day… But it’s super dangerous—I mean it’s stupid dangerous—and Dastien is going to freak out… But I mean—I’m not getting anywhere here.”
“Oh, boy.” She crossed her arms. “What kind of crazy idea is in your head now?”
I braced myself for her to flip, and then spit the words out. “Believe me. This is the last place that I want to go. Really. But Claudia said that there could be something in Luciana’s craft room and if we go—”
“What!” Meredith screeched.
And there it was.
“Have you completely lost your mind? No! Under no circumstances will you ever be going back there. Not only is it incredibly dangerous and stupid, but you’re right—Dastien would freak out.” Her eyes flared from glass blue to electric. “You weren’t here when he lost it last time. You weren’t holding him down to get sedated. You didn’t help drag him off to the feral cages. And you certainly didn’t watch him throwing himself against the door over and over and over, trying to escape and get you back. And you didn’t see yourself when you came back here. Broken.” She poked my breastbone hard enough to knock me back. “So, no. That’s not fucking happening. Not on my watch.”
All of a sudden, my room got much more crowded, as Chris, Donovan, and Dastien burst through the door.
Shit. She must’ve told Donovan on me.
Dastien came to stand in between us, facing Meredith so that he could protect me. Little did he know that he was about to be on Meredith’s side. “What’s going on?”
“Your mate over there thinks it’s a good idea to go back to the compound and dig around Luciana’s stuff. For what? Some kind of clue as to what she’s up to?”
Dastien’s pain, anger, and fear ran though our bond before he turned. “Non.” He started yelling and gesturing wildly in French. I didn’t understand what he was saying—I knew only three phrases and a handful of words in French—but the meaning and intention were clear enough even without the emotions pouring through our bond.
I took a breath, praying for patience. “I know. I don’t want to go back there—please know that I don’t want to. The thought terrifies me. But I’ve been at this for days, and if we don’t start going on the offensive, we’re always going to be one step behind. We will lose this fight. It’s a war, and we’re always reacting. Never acting. And we can’t do that. Not anymore. When she did that to Daniel—her own son—she crossed a line. She has to be stopped. And after what I’ve seen—”
