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She sat down in it, on the very edge, her hands nodded and twisting in her lap.
I thought she would have some demand or be worried for Amelia. Instead, Rose blurted out, “You don't trust Aiden.”
Teresa leaned against the wall.
“I have some concerns about the Longroad pack at the moment,” I said dryly.
She bit her lower lip nervously. “But you aren't going to hurt him?”
“No.” I didn't have a witch to drag answers out of him without hurting him now. When I imagined Amelia looking at me again with those hurt, distrustful eyes, it resurrected feelings of guilt and shame. “Not unless he betrays Amelia again.”
I wasn't sure at all that Aiden had betrayed Amelia, but there was something about Rose's nerves that made me think she knew who did. I hope I could get the confession out of her. I still wanted revenge for my brother.
If Aiden was responsible for Brennan’s death… I’d fantasized about executing the people who murdered my brother. For the last five years, in the rare moments when I daydreamed, it was about slow, intense violence, imagining them feeling the same fear and desperation Brennan must have felt as I beat them to death with my bare hands.
I didn’t know if I could let go of those fantasies for anyone.
But now, the thought felt both inevitable and empty. It didn’t feel as if violence would settle his ghost.
“He didn't betray her in the first place.” Her voice came out a whisper. “I just wanted to be sure he was safe here.”
“Someone betrayed her.” I said. “If you're so sure that it wasn't Aiden, then do you know who it was?”
She shook her head. She was obviously lying. I made a small impatient noise, and her eyes flew to me, opening wide.
“You do know,” I told her, and I made no move toward her, but let some of my alpha power rumble under my voice. “Tell me, Rose.”
“Please,” she said softly, a plea for mercy. To keep her secrets.
Everything in me wanted to lean forward—to leap at her and scare her into telling me what I had waited five years to learn—but I held myself still. “Tell me.”
Teresa had quietly left the wall and moved between Rose and the door. She shot me a warning look, although I wasn’t sure what she warned me about.
Rose drew a deep breath, as if she were pushing down her fear. The look of resolve that came over her face filled me with certainty. She knew… and she would tell me.
My heart raced. I'd meant everything I told Amelia when I bared my soul only for her not to forgive me. I knew that nothing was going to bring Brennan back intellectually, and yet… something had to stop the constant, bleeding pain of losing him.
“Don't ask, Stone,” Teresa mouthed me over her shoulder.
I frowned, curious what Theresa had picked up on. But I wasn't going to stop now. I forged on. “Who was it?”
For long seconds, the room was so silent that the depth of the quiet pressed in on us. The airy library felt claustrophobic as a cave.
“Me,” she said in a whisper, her voice barely audible.
I wasn’t sure I’d heard or understood her. “What?”
“I was eleven.” She spoke more to the table than to me, her face partially reflected in the gleaming wooden tabletop. Her shoulders were rigid, her hands knotted in her lap as if she were trying to keep herself from falling apart. “I didn't want Amelia to leave our pack forever because I loved her, and I couldn’t imagine living in that house without her, and I thought she was choosing some man over our family like Mom did.”
“None of that matters, though. It was stupid and selfish and I can’t…” Her voice rose as she spoke, becoming hard and flat as she confessed it all. When she blinked, tears glittered on her eyelashes. “I told my mom, and she must have told Nathan... and I can never make it right.”
I had planned for years the violence I would do when I caught up to the traitor who led to Brennan's death.
Now here she was.
She bit her lower lip, still staring down as the tears slid down her cheeks. Her shoulders curled inward, her body bracing for an attack although she didn’t move to defend herself. She knew how useless it would be.
I did not know what the fuck to do when the traitor was a crying teenage girl.
