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I snapped my head up and glared at her. “I don’t—”
“Do you remember what I told you before you left with my sons?”
“You told me you trusted me with your sons.”
“Yes. And I meant that.”
“You also said you would rip me apart if I betrayed that trust,” I reminded her.
“And I meant that too,” she said, eyes flashing orange. “But that was the only way you would have understood me, Gordo. If I’d said it any other way, you wouldn’t have believed me. For the longest time, you dealt only in threats. For the pack. And then against us. Against yourself. Thomas… he was to blame for that. Maybe not completely, but a large part. And that is something he never forgave himself for. He loved you, Gordo. He loved you. He came to you when he needed you most. With Joe. He knew that even though you were so angry at him, that you had such rage in your heart, that deep down, you were still the Bennett witch, even if neither of you could say it out loud. Men are stubborn that way. Ridiculous and stubborn.”
“He threatened me. Told me if I didn’t help, he’d—”
“Because that’s the only thing you would have responded to,” she said. “But you’re not that person anymore. You haven’t been for a long time. You protected my sons. You brought them all home. You made yourself a pack, and even if you didn’t believe it, they believed in you. None of us, Gordo, none of us would be the same without you. And Mark? Mark has loved you since he knew what love was.”
“But I couldn’t,” I told her, needing her to understand. “In the end, I couldn’t protect them. If this is him, if this is my father, then he’s doing this because of me. Carter and Mark and—”
“You are not your father,” she said fiercely. “You’re so much more than he could ever be. You have a pack, Gordo. You have the strength of the wolves behind you. You have the humans, those wonderful humans who would follow you anywhere. Can’t you see? What my son just asked of you wasn’t because he thinks you’d be the only one who could do it. He—he asked you bec
ause he knew he could trust you. In the end, he asked you because there was no one else he trusted more. Just like his father. Just like me.”
I bowed my head.
She cupped my face. “You are not alone, Gordo. You haven’t been for a long time. It’s only now you’re finally seeing that. You’ve felt this way for too long, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for everything.”
She wiped away the single tear that trickled down my cheek. She tilted my face up until I could look her in the eye. “But I know something they don’t. And I think you know it too. Don’t you?”
I nodded slowly.
“We’re not going to let it get that far, are we?”
“No.”
“Because this is our town. This is our pack. And no one is going to take that away from us. Not again.”
The roses on my arm began to bloom. I felt their petals expanding on my skin. “Never again.”
Her eyes were shining orange. “Not witches. Not hunters. Not an Alpha who wants what has never belonged to her. And not your father.”
“No. None of them will.”
She nodded slowly. “You know something, don’t you? I can feel it. Through the bonds. It’s dark under all that blue. But it’s there.”
And I hesitated.
“Gordo?” she asked. “What is it?”
There was a wolf, Gordo. He came to me. I knew him. Even though I’d never met him in this life, I knew him. Gordo, he said you have to open the door. You have to throw it wide open if you expect to survive this.
We’re coming, okay? We’ll do what we can, but he said you have to open the door. He said you’d understand. That I had to tell you nevermore and you’d understand. Thomas said—
“Nevermore,” I breathed.
“He used to say that about you. When we were alone.” Elizabeth Bennett looked upon me with the wolf crawling underneath her skin. “‘Tell me, I implore!’/Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”
And all I felt buried in the deep, deep blue was pack and pack and pack.
JESSIE SAID, “It’s happening, isn’t it.”
