Page 18

Julia was pale as she emerged from the witch’s cottage, staggering across the clearing like a sleepwalker. She flinched when I reached out to steady her, staring at me like a frightened rabbit stares at a wolf. Fear looked wrong on her face, and I hated that it was directed at me.

“What did she do to you?” I asked urgent, but Julia shook her head.

“Nothing. She was nice.”

“You’re pale,” I insisted. It was an understatement, to be honest. Julia was pale and shaking; she looked worse than when we’d fled Arbor, even worse than when she collapsed on the bridge.

“Am I?” Even her voice sounded weak, as if she were barely present. “Eve just—she asked me to show her some of my magic. I guess after yesterday, it really took it out of me.”

I started to ask if she was sure, but Julia held up a trembling hand to stop me.

“She didn’t hurt me, Ethan. I’m fine. She’s going to come to town tomorrow and help me train.”

I frowned.

“Is that a good idea? If just a little demonstration wiped you out this much—”

Her eyes lost their glazed look, so she could glare at me. It was a relief: if she was too weak to fight with me, that was a sign that she was really in trouble.

“I said I’m fine. You’re not my brother, Ethan.”

“I’m incredibly aware of that,” I replied, utterly deadpan. Julia blinked at me, her expression frozen with surprise.

“Did you just crack a joke?” she asked, and I shrugged.

“I guess?”

With that, Julia abruptly turned her back on me and set off back toward town. Beneath the crunching of twigs and leaves beneath her feet, I heard her mutter,

“Now he cracks a joke.”

As we made our way back toward town, Julia seemed to improve; the hike brought a bit of color back to her cheeks, and she no longer looked haunted and shocked.

She remained taciturn, though, refusing to start up a conversation or respond to any of my questions.

I might only be her temporary husband, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t interested in her developing power.

I wanted to know what the witch had told her, but far from being excited to share as I’d expected, Julia gave me nothing but one-word answers all the way back to town.

I tried to remind myself that she didn’t owe me any of that information.

In fact, I should take it as a good sign: if she was keeping me at arm’s length, then perhaps we were returning to normality.

Perhaps she’d finally accepted that we weren’t mates, and had returned to uncomplicated hatred of me.

The thought sent an unexpected pang through my chest. As difficult as she was sometimes, I had been beginning to hope that this little excursion of ours would soften her attitude toward me.

I knew it would take more than a couple of compliments, but I was working on something.

I was working on giving her the respect she deserved, on treating her like she was a capable person and not just my best friend’s little sister.

When we reached the outskirts of town, I stopped giving her space.

Even a woman like Julia—especially a woman like Julia—wasn’t safe walking through Ensign town.

Women here were considered the property of their father or their mate, and they rarely ventured out alone.

Julia, at least, was sensible about this, allowing me to lay a possessive hand on her arm as we walked.

I felt the now-familiar spark of electricity at the touch of her skin against mine, but this time it didn’t inspire lust. This time, all I wanted was to gather her close, to comfort her until she was no longer strange, distant, and upset.

I pushed the urge away. We’d simply been together far too long, suffered too much alongside each other. It didn’t mean anything.

The streets of Ensign weren’t busy in the late afternoon, which was a mercy, and we arrived back at Xander’s without incident.

“You should eat something,” I said as soon as the front door closed behind us. “I don’t know how long dinner’s gonna be, and you need—”

“Do me a favor?” she asked, and I nodded.

“Anything.”

“Leave me alone.” Then she was gone, rushing up the stairs, and a distant door slammed.

“Trouble in paradise?” Xander said from behind me, making me jump. When I turned, he was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. “Don’t tell me my favorite newlyweds are already out of the honeymoon stage?”

“Stop acting like you know shit, Xander. It only makes you look stupid,” I snapped.

“Wow, okay. Struck a nerve there.” He was grinning like this was all a spectacular joke, and maybe it was, to outsiders.

Julia Thorne and Ethan Cain, who famously hated each other, getting married at an illegal auction on Arbor: it was enough to keep the gossip mill turning for a year. I gritted my teeth.

“Xander, I swear—”

“Sounds like something you might need to talk about.”

That took me aback.

“With you?”

“Rude,” said Xander. “I’m not Grandma Leo, but I have been around the block a few times. I know when my friends are suffering, and I don’t like to see it. Sit down, have a drink.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right.

I often forgot that Xander was older than I was.

While I had been forced to grow up fast, Xander had been Heir to Ensign until he was twenty-six, and he’d always joked around with our younger friends as if he were one of them.

Reluctantly, I followed him into the lounge, perching on his couch as Xander poured two generous measures of whiskey.

It was smokey and smooth on my tongue, and the burn of it was satisfying as it warmed my chest. I didn’t have time to savor it, because Xander cut straight to the chase.

“What’s up? I know the two of you aren’t exactly best friends, but…

” he trailed off, expecting me to jump in and explain what was wrong between me and Julia.

The trouble was, I didn’t know. I’d wanted to kiss her on the bridge, and I thought she wanted to kiss me back.

I hadn’t—to my knowledge—done or said anything to piss her off since then.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“Try me.”

“We slept together on the Solstice,” I admitted, “and again on Argent.”

To his credit, Xander neither yelled nor gasped nor made a face. He simply swirled his whiskey, taking a thoughtful sip.

“You’ve slept with plenty of other females,” he said. “What’s different about this?”

“She thinks we’re mates.” At any other time, I would never have told Xander that, believing he’d tease her mercilessly and make the whole situation worse.

So far, though, he’d been surprisingly level-headed about the whole thing; he couldn’t be less helpful than Leo, who was just as delusional as Julia.

He certainly seemed to consider my words more than Leo had, taking another long sip of his drink before he asked,

“And why does she think that?”

I wanted to say that it wasn’t different, that she was simply young and inexperienced, reading into things that weren’t there, but that would be a lie.

“That first time was—it was intense. Even now, when I touch her, it’s like my wolf goes feral,” I said. “He’s crazy possessive, too—”

“You don’t say,” said Xander, mildly, and I remembered my outburst on the way back from Ensign Bridge.

“That was nothing,” I told him. “I nearly killed one of Leo’s Betas.

” Then I’d stalked Julia into the woods and knotted her up against a tree, but he didn’t need to know that part.

Even without it, Xander was giving me a look I didn’t like, and as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, I knew what he was going to say.

“You might not want to hear this, but—”

I cut him off.

“I know what it sounds like. If I didn’t know better, I might agree, but it’s just not biologically possible.”

I shouldn’t have to explain to my adult friends how a mating bond worked, but it seemed like I was going to have to do it for the second time this week.

“That’s what Caleb thought about the twins,” Xander said, before I could start teaching him middle-school biology.

“What?”

“I’m just saying. He thought there was no biological way that they could be his, but then he learned better. Witches are crazy, man. They work differently.”

That—that hadn’t occurred to me. I supposed it was possible since Julia hadn’t even realized she was a witch until the night of the Solstice, the same time we both felt that undeniable pull. I said as much to Xander, who smirked.

“Interesting.”

“You can’t just decide that’s an explanation,” I pointed out. Just because something was possible didn’t make it true.

“Why not?” Xander argued. “It makes sense: if shifters find their mate the first time they touch after they’ve shifted, then a witch-shifter might not find her mate until she’s also come into her magic.”

I wanted to stop talking about this. I wanted to go back in time to before Julia had magic and before I’d ever touched her.

“That’s a nice theory, but you don’t know it’s the answer,” I insisted.

“You don’t know it isn’t,” Xander shot back. He was a stubborn bastard, just like me, and he wasn’t going to let this go, no matter how much I needed him to. I tried once more, unable to keep the crack from my voice.

“You can’t just—this is mating we’re talking about. It’s serious.”

“I am taking it seriously.” Xander wasn’t backing down, but his demeanor had softened. He smiled as he continued, “I don’t want you to miss out on a life with an incredible mate just because you’re being a stubborn idiot.”

“Maybe I don’t want a life with a mate, no matter how incredible she is.” The words were out before I could even process them, and Xander was leaning forward again, fixing me with his impossibly black stare.

“Alright, now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Why?”

“I’ve already got a whole island to worry about.

I don’t need a mate and young to worry about on top of it.

I don’t need anything else to feel responsible for.

” The words were familiar, I’d thought them to myself so many times over the years, but in that moment they felt more like an unconscious reflex.

“Every Alpha’s got a whole island to deal with,” Xander countered. “You’re not special.”

He was right, but only to a certain extent.

Unlike him, I’d been forced into my position of responsibility far before I was ready for it.

I might have been seventeen when my father died, but the disease that took him out had been weakening him for years.

I’d never had anything resembling a childhood, never had any rebellious adolescence, never had the chance to know myself outside of being Alpha.

It was a lonely existence, but I liked it that way. Better to be alone than to have someone else who always needed something from me. I hadn’t had enough whiskey to admit that to Xander, though, so I sat silently until he sighed, knocking back the last of his drink.

“You want my advice?”

“Not really, but you’re going to give it to me anyway.”

“You bet I am,” he said. “Look, I can’t say whether Julia’s your mate, but I can say that the pair of you have always had very weird, intense energy about each other.

Hearing that you’re mates would be the least surprising news ever.

If you’re just commitment-phobic, then pull your head out of your ass, dude.

Julia deserves better than to be messed around with.

Either give her a real chance or stop fucking her. ”

That hadn’t been what I expected him to say, but it was what I needed to hear.

If I truly wanted to improve my relationship with Julia, I had to stop acting like I had a claim to her.

We might be married, but we both knew how little that really meant.

I had no right to object to Cody, to her wearing Leo’s clothes, or to Xander putting an arm around her waist to help her when she was exhausted.

Julia might not be my mate, but I could no longer pretend I didn’t care about her.

“You’re right,” I told him. This time, there was no smirk, no smug expression. Xander looked deadly serious as he met my eye and said,

“Damn straight I am.”