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I’d thrown myself between him and our father a dozen times during our childhood. Absently, I touched the old scar, buried in my hair but still raised. My father had thrown me headfirst into a wall to get to Liam.
When we were kids hiding in the forest, how many times had Liam told me I already was a better man than our father, and my body just had to catch up? That I would protect our pack, our family? I’d always been torn between believing he was spinning stories and believing Liam glimpsed the truth in all his shadows. But no matter whether I convinced myself he was right or not, it had been a vision of who I could be.
Rage had boiled under my skin all the time when I was a kid. I could’ve become a bully. Instead, his words had taken the sharp, barbed strands of the abuse and woven them into a picture of someone who was strong and capable and protective. Maybe he had dreamt me into existence as a better man than I would’ve been otherwise, with his visions, with his whispered words.
“Maybe you do take care of us all,” I admitted. “In your own way.”
Liam took another step toward me. It felt like coaxing a wild animal out of its hiding place. Except now that he was out of the shadows, he looked so normal it was unsettling. Without his wild hair, he looked like any other one of the King brothers: tall, muscular, dark-haired and dangerous.
“I’m slipping again, aren’t I?” he asked.
“It’s been rough lately.” Maybe I should stay in the past with him where he didn’t think I was a cruel idiot. Maybe he hadn’t been as good at reading the future as I’d thought.
“Sometimes I think I can change things,” he said. “People. Just for a second. But not myself. Isn’t that strange? I can’t change myself for a second. Can you?”
I rubbed my hand over my face. He was always giving me riddles, with some kernel of truth or insight buried deep inside if I had the endless energy to search for it. And I would. Later. Not tonight.
“I need you to get it together, Liam,” I told him. “For her. You don’t want to stay in the past, because she’s not in it.”
He frowned, and I realized I hadn’t used Amelia’s name. She was always on my mind, but it was stupid to think he’d understand.
“She’s always mixed up in it,” he said. “All the way through.”
“Great,” I managed. “Well, she needs you. She needs to know that you’re…fine.”
He folded his arms over his chest as if he were holding himself together. His fingers dug into his biceps as if that were a desperate attempt. It was a pose I knew from both sides of his captivity. “Of course. I’m fine.”
“Of course.” I had to admit, he looked mostly fine on the outside… but the rambling was worse than it had been in a while. “I don’t want you to scare her.”
Liam looked up at me, his gray eyes sharpening, and a disbelieving laugh shattered the quiet peace between us. “You don’t wantmeto scare her?”
The truth of that question ached in my chest. “I’m sorry about what I did to her.”
“Does she know that?”
“Liam. I’m not in the mood for advice from you. Especially when I had to come out here to try to drag you back to being human.”
Liam shook his head. “You’re the one who forgets how to be human.”
“Fine.” My voice came out sharp, but putting up walls with Liam only ever made him worse. “You’re right. I fucked up. And I don’t know how to make it right with her, but I’m trying.Youdidn’t fuck up. You’re the hero. So why are you the one hiding in the woods?”
Liam winced at the wordhero,his shoulders drawing up protectively around his shoulders. “Terrible things.”
“Necessary things.” I corrected. Then more softly, I added, “For her. You said you’d break your vows for her.”
“You don’t understand about my vows.”
“I sure fucking don’t.” I pointed in the direction of the house, though it was miles away through the woods. We were deep into the forest, on the border near the neutral territory that separated our pack from Longroad pack. Liam kept running back to the border, though I didn’t understand why. “But she needs you.”
“She needs you too.”
Those words cut to my soul—I doubted Amelia saw it that way—but I forged on. “She’s guilty over what you did for her. What it cost. So show her you’re better now.”
“I’m not.”
“Then make yourself better!”
“And how are you going to make yourself better?”
