Page 7 of Pirate Witch

“We’re sorry,” Cas begins. “We should never have left the ship when we knew how close Nos was to the edge.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she agrees. “How many people took their final journey to the Stars because of you? Dozens? A hundred? Not to mention what Val and I went through…”

I can’t answer because thinking about it is making me sick. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to need us to.

“This whole situation with your beasts has gotten out of hand, and I think I deserve to know why.”

Goddess, she really does, but my tongue seems glued to the inside of my mouth. The words won’t seem to form.

I turn my head toward my twin, my expression pleading.

“Nos has been suppressing his beast for so long, and now it’s turning on him,” he replies.

It’s nothing Nilsa doesn’t already know, and her disappointed exhale confirms it.

“I won’t mate either of you if you keep secrets from me,” she says, pacing away from the table and taking her comforting scent with her. “I deserve mates who tell me the truth, especially if it’s about something that’s going to impact me like it did yesterday.”

We’re going to lose her, I realise, and my nausea ratchets up another degree.We’re going to lose our beautiful, impossible mate, and it will all be my fault.

All because I can’t accept my beast. No. Because I’mafraidof accepting my beast and owning up to our past. I scent my twin’s fear beside me, and I know he’s thinking the same thing.

He won’t break his silence, though. Cas’s loyalty is absolute, despite the hurtful words we threw at one another only a few hours ago.

Goddess, I don’t deserve him. He doesn’t deserve to lose her because of me, which hewillif I can’t find some words to talk about the subject we’ve ignored for twenty years.

I take a deep, steadying breath.

“It’s complicated,” I begin. “So much of it is caught up in the bargain; it’s difficult to know what we can and can’t say.”

She’s silent, and the long pause in the conversation pressures me into continuing.

“I was touched by Fate at sixteen. That’s old for a seer. Most of the time, we’re chosen as toddlers. It’s less cruel that way because they don’t remember what it’s like to see.”

Perhaps, if I’d been marked from birth, I wouldn’t be so bitter about it. Maybe I’d have turned out like Klaus’s sister; happy to worship and serve the third goddess.

“The whole pack was at a loss for what to do with me. Shifters are rarely chosen. The Goddess usually picks humans or mages—races without the complications of instinct or a beast side. Before it happened, Cas and I were both being prepared by our alpha to take over leading them one day. We were too strong to be anything other than future alphas, but the instant I woke up without my sight, that changed.”

“I tried to change our alpha’s mind,” Cas adds. “I begged him to look beyond it and see you were still too strong to be comfortable as just a regular member of the pack. He refused.”

I know. I heard those arguments through the door. Our father went from stern but fair to overprotective overnight. His alpha instincts told him that he had to protect his son, much like Cas’s still do.

True alphas care for the pack and protect the weak and vulnerable. But no teenage boy wants to rely on his family’s protection.

“For weeks I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without an escort,” I continue. “Cas was insufferable when he was with me, and off training for the role that we should have shared when he wasn’t. I was suffocating. I couldn’t control my visions. I couldn’t control my life. Everyone treated me differently. It was like my whole world was yanked out from under me in one night.”

I can’t continue, but it doesn’t matter. Cas takes over for me in the next breath.

“He ran. His beast took over in frustration and swam as far from our home as he could. I went after him because I wanted to find him before anyone else discovered what he’d done.”

I finish his sentence for him. “But I was already captured, and when Cas caught up, they took him too.”

My throat closes up and I gag, then choke, before I can say the rest. My twin thumps my back, trying to help me breathe again. It takes a few seconds, but eventually I get air into my burning lungs.

“By the Eagle,” Nilsa guesses.

I shake my head. “It’s too complicated to explain.” Perhaps when the bargain is broken, I’ll admit that shameful section of my past. “Our captors were superstitious enough that they wouldn’t harm a seer, but they ensured Cas was punished every time I tried to disobey them. I was forbidden to shift into my leviathan—not that Iwantedto after what my beast had gotten us into—and Cas was forced to stay shifted or be beaten. Every time I went against their orders, they hurt my twin. It took decades to meet Rysen and Kier and convince them to break us both out, and that drewherattention. That’s how theDeadwoodended up trapped in the bargain. It was all because of me.”

Even Cas can’t dispute that. “Our beasts act out because it isn’t normal for a shifter to stay in one form for so long,” he explains, ignoring my admission completely. “Now we’re damaged goods.”