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It was his resigned tone that scared me the most. I drew breath, not sure what I could actually say in response to that, but Bea beat me to it.
“Oh,listento yourself, whelp. Did someone ask you to be superhuman?” She huffed. “How about worrying about the best way to support your omega going forward, since you don’t have a time machine to go back and change the past?”
“Omegas,” I murmured unthinkingly. “Plural. Byron, we’re going to make things right with the pack. We’re going to make thiswork. All of us.Properly. But for now, you need to rest and recuperate.”
“You’d all be better off without me,” Byron rasped.
I leaned forward, resting a hand on the back of Bea’s chair. “Better off without the man who rescued a teenager from his own personal hell, and didn’t even take any credit for it afterward? You’ll excuse me if I disagree.”
Byron’s red-rimmed eyes shot to his adopted grandmother.
Bea shrugged. “Yeah, he knows. Don’t worry, it’s fine.”
“Itisfine. Better than fine,” I agreed. “Oh, and one more thing. Emiel and Mia have invited Nat to stay with us while he’s recuperating. Thought you might want to know, given your, erm,historywith him.”
The way Byron’s exhausted eyes went wide and round was its own reward.
FORTY-FOUR
Byron
SOMEHOW, I’D MANAGEDto forget that my secret was well and truly out. In my defense, getting stabbed, having a gun pointed in your face, and then shooting someone in the chest tended to have that effect on a person’s memory.
“There’s nothing between Nat Bell and me,” I said weakly, hating the way my voice sounded like a sick old man’s. “We hooked up before I ever met Mia. I didn’t know who he was; he didn’t know who I was. End of story.”
If anything, I should be worrying more that Zalen knew about Tony.Don’t worry, it’s fine, Bea had said—but there was a goddamned reason I’d gone to such lengths to keep it from him.
Zalen was still focused on the Nat thing, though.
“You’re all right with him staying at the house while he recovers, then?” he asked, with studied innocence.
In fact, I was not all right with Mia’s husband staying at the house. I wasn’tremotelyall right with it.
“Sure,” I said, because the alternative involved making a scene. If I made a scene, it would be a lot harder to maintain plausible deniability about how little those casual hookups meant to me.
“Great,” Zalen said with false cheer. “Now, about that nameless teenager...”
“You aren’t supposed to know about that,” I growled, still sounding like someone bound for a retirement home. “How about you forget whatever you think you’ve learned, and we never mention it again?”
I couldn’t truly picture Zalen dragging Tony back to his parents. Especially since Bea seemed so blasé about the whole thing. As long as he hadn’t told any of the others, we could pretend it had never happened. The poor kid only needed a few more months in hiding, and then he’d be free once and for all.
“He was the one who found out where you were being held,” Zalen said, devastatingly matter-of-fact. “I figured you’d want to know that. He worships the ground you walk on, Byron.”
My throat tightened—wasn’t someone in this place supposed to give me a cup of water to soothe the dry ache... or at least some ice chips?