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“How long was I here?”
He hesitated. “You showed up about a month after we left. We were gone for almost three years, and you were part of Ox’s pack by the time we got back. We think you were sent to spy on the pack while it was fractured. But something changed. You stayed.”
“But that’s—that would mean I was here for years.” I stood up from the cot, letting the blanket fall to the floor. I began to pace, my head full, thoughts racing.
He never looked away from me. It was as if he thought I was going to disappear if he did. “You were. Middle of 2013 to when you were taken, in the beginning of 2019. So almost six years.”
Six years. If he—and all of them—were to be believed, then Ezra took the better part of a decade away from me. “Why would he do this?”
Again he hesitated. I wondered if the others were listening in. I could hear their hearts and breaths above me. Not all of them. Joe and Ox. Elizabeth. Mark. The others didn’t seem to be in the house.
He said, “Michelle… you always had a soft spot for her. You were with her for a year before she sent you west to Green Creek. And even with everything that happened after, even after all she did, you still believed there was something good in her.”
I shook my head. “I know her. She wouldn’t—”
He stood, grimacing. His eyes burned with something fiery that had nothing to do with being a wolf. It was all human anger. “She would,” he snapped. “And I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, because it hurts me, okay? To have to see that goddamn look on your face. But she did this. To you. To me. All of us. What happened to you may not have
been by her own hand, but she knew about it. She is complicit. The stories I could tell you about her, about what she’s done, Jesus Christ, Robbie.”
“I don’t believe—”
“She sent hunters here to kill us,” he said hotly. “All of us. Including you. You pleaded with her. You begged her. And she didn’t listen. After Carter and Mark were infected by whatever magic Livingstone put on them to turn them and all the others into Omegas—”
“What?”
“—she told us we had to kill them both. Put Carter and Mark down. Her words.” He was breathing heavily. His hands clenched into fists. “We said no, so she sent hunters to Green Creek to kill every single one of us. We survived. The hunters didn’t. But other people died too. Good people. And still she refused to listen to us.”
“That’s not like her,” I growled. “She wouldn’t—”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Do you hear yourself? I know it’s a lot, okay? But you have to meet me halfway. You have to listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”
“I don’t even know you,” I said coldly. “If this is all real, then that person you knew, that guy in the photos, on the missing poster, that guy you all seemed to be desperate to find, he’s gone. This is what I am. This is who I am.”
He was angry. It smelled like a forest fire. I wanted it to consume me, to burn the flesh from my bones just so I could find relief from the storm in my head. But it was good. Anger I could deal with. Anger I could handle. The begging, the pleading, the look of cautious hope and affection in his eyes—I didn’t want that.
He spoke as if each word was getting punched out of him. “Memories are all well and good, but they aren’t everything. You’re still you. You’re still the man I lo—”
Words. Like grenades about to explode at my feet. Instead I picked them up and hurled them back. “I don’t love you.”
He paled. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
I was sweating. Aching. Everything hurt. “I don’t know you. How the fuck could I love you? You have to see that. You said we were mates.”
“We are—”
“Then why don’t I feel you? Mate bonds connect two people. Two halves of the same whole. It’s a gift. A treasure. Something wonderful. And that’s not us. There’s nothing between us. For all I know, this mark I have was put there by your witch. That woman Jessie, she said Ezra put a glamour on me. Covered it up. What if there was nothing there to begin with? What if it was something Gordo did to me? To fuck with my head. To cause as much pain as possible.”
He was shocked. And devastated. The forest fire had turned to ice. It was all blue. “We wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that.”
I shrugged. Aloof. Cold. Dismissive. “How the hell am I supposed to know that? I don’t know any of you. Say what you’re telling me is true. It means nothing now. I don’t remember—”
The blue receded. It still pulled at me, but something else replaced it. Something that felt like resolve. He said, “You’re lying.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Really? Listen to my heart, Kelly. Oh. Wait. You can’t do that, can you?”
He didn’t flinch. And I admired him for it. It came out of nowhere, and it slapped me across the face because I was impressed.
Before I could recover, he said three words that sucked the air from the room.
