Page 45

Stacy

We’re sitting in the rubble that used to be the office and I feel like he’s having internal aftershocks for a few minutes before he finally loosens his grip on me as our eyes meet.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Guessin’ it was my rage at feeling the shit you’ve been through,” he says, looking almost broken. And it hurts to see him looking like this, looking like he’s in pain. I see it and boy, do I feel it. It feels like my heart is being shredded at what I feel from him.

“Must be down to my new magic. Never felt anything that extreme before. I saw your trauma, babe. Don’t know if I saw it all but I saw a lot. Saw it just now inside my own head. Saw where you got this.” He fingers the scar on my calf. “Saw how many took you on all fours against your wishes, know you couldn’t fight, couldn’t even say no, because of that fucking…” His lip curls, his nostrils flare. “I want to fucking murder that fuck,” he growls. “I must have tapped into coven magic and saw what my cousin Ronnie sees when she touches you. All the pain, all the abuse, all the ugliness your fuckin’ brother has inflicted.”

I frown. When she touches me? She only did once. And now I understand why her face changed so drastically.

“I feel it, Blossom. All of it. And I want your brother’s blood. I want it spilled here in this fuckin’ hellhole he created. Then I want us walking away from it forever. I’m tellin’ Brody, Mitch, all of these people need to get the fuck out of this place. There’s too much bad here. Too. Fucking. Much. The energy here? No. It’s not good here.”

He shakes his head with disgust, driving his fingers through his hair.

If this is what the truth does to Grey, how can he expect me to willingly upset him in the future?

“No! Don’t keep shit from me, woman. If you’d told me this already, he’d already be dead and out of our goddamn hair.”

I jerk back and try to get out of his grip.

He doesn’t let go of me, so I curl into a ball.

“Stacy!” he snaps, holding me tighter, mouth right at my ear. “That’s not blame. Don’t take on a new helping of blame that’s not yours. Hear me? Things are gonna work out how they’re supposed to. We’ve gotta trust in that. Trust it, be smart, and deal with things as they come. Whether that’s the sick, the evil, having a baby, whatever it is. Yeah? All I ask is just be fuckin’ honest with me, no matter you think I’ll like what you have to say or not.”

I stop trying to pull away and instead I wrap my arms around him, sniffling.

“Okay?” he pushes.

I nod, inhaling his scent, which never fails to comfort me.

“Talk to me,” he finally requests, voice softening, fingers tangling into my hair as I burrow as close as I can get.

“I wish I could purr for you too, Grey,” I tell him. “I wish I could give you as much as you give me.”

“I don’t need you to purr, I just need you within reach. And as long as I’ve got that, babe, I’ll have everything I need.”

I sigh. How did I go from so unlucky to so very lucky?

“I want to comfort you, too, I mean…”

“Nothing will give me that until this shit is done. What’d make it worse is not leveling with me about everything. Everything, mate. Please.”

“Okay.”

“Talk to me,” he repeats.

“He raped Aphra Starling the day after he did that to me. Beat her up pretty badly. I took care of her. He’d muttered that it worked with Father twice. So that means he thinks the same as me… that my mother might have been Father’s cousin. Or… he knows it for a fact. I don’t know.”

“Fuck.”

“When he offered to pair me up with Mal and take me off the rotation, I knew I wouldn’t have to endure it from anybody but Mal and Mal was always nice to me so I thought maybe he wouldn’t have even made me do it or if he did, maybe he’d be gentler than some of the others. If Wy knew a guy liked a girl, he wouldn’t let him have her unless he paid dearly. The same if a girl liked a guy. He controlled the rotation like he controlled everything else around here – whatever way benefited him the most.”

Grey’s eyes rage with his anger as he says, “Based on what Joel says, that guy in our cell is in love with you, wife. He wanted more than an alliance with you. He wants you.”

“I just wanted to get Wyatt to stop destroying us. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I don’t love Malachi, Grey. But… could you ask Joel to let him out of the cell? He doesn’t belong there.”

Grey’s eyes work over me for a minute before he nods. “And I know you don’t love him,” he rasps then clears his throat. “And it’s obvious you’ve done whatever you can do to help your people. Your people love you for it. The look of relief on their faces last night when you told them how it is with our pack – they trust you. You’ve taken the role of an alpha’s wife here. You give them hope and for the sick especially, hope makes a difference. Too bad your brother didn’t take the role of what an alpha is supposed to be to his pack seriously.”

“I hate him, Grey. I’ve thought for a long time that maybe it’d be better if he was dead, better for all of us, but now I don’t only think that it’d be better, I want to see it. I want to watch the life leave his body the way it left Roger’s. Pain in his expression. I want him to hurt, and I want to know his hollow heart has stopped so I’ll know down to my soul that he won’t be able to hurt anybody anymore. I’m sure that makes me heartless, but–”

Grey grips me tighter. “Absolutely not. They say blood is thicker than water but not if blood treats you like what I saw. Not by a longshot.”

I sniffle. We’re surrounded by rubble and the dust is in my nose.

“No more secrets from your mate, wife.”

“No more secrets, Grey.”

“Even if you think something will piss me off.”

“Okay.”

I look up into his eyes and see understanding. He’s gotten a glimpse into my life through Ronnie’s magical gift, and this has helped him understand me better. “I left a loving home at six years old so technically I didn’t grow up with much love, encouragement or understanding. Father was gruff, self-absorbed. He didn’t know how to raise a little girl. He mostly ignored me. I thought he wasn’t all that much better than Wy at running a pack, but then again, he wasn’t trying to kill everyone. Father never sold the girls into sex trafficking. But honestly, I have no frame of reference for a healthy relationship.”

He tucks hair behind my ear. “Yet your whole pack loves you. Because of the care you give. I love you, Stace. I’m in awe of you. How good you are. How nurturing. You’ve had a shit life here, babe, but you’ve got the respect of your people because you’ve worked your ass off to look after everyone. And you’re done struggling. I promise you that. You’re gonna get to live a good life now. Believe it.”

I burrow deeper into him.

“And stop thinking about me rejecting you. Not gonna fucking happen. Don’t make me say it again, because it doesn’t even bear thinking about and if you keep thinking it that means I’m not a good mate, that I’m not showing you how much you mean to me.”

“Point taken.”

We sit still, holding one another, and I swear I’m feeling our still-deepening bond grow even stronger. We stay in the moment for a solid minute before the sounds of traffic has us separating. I dust myself off as Grey watches over the mounds of debris around us to see who’s pulling up.