She brushed past me. But before she left the kitchen, she said, “Please take care of my sons. I’m trusting you with them, Gordo. If I find out you have betrayed that trust, or if you stood idly by as they faced that monster, there will be nowhere you could hide that I wouldn’t find you. I will tear you to pieces, and the regret I feel will be minimal.”
Then she was gone.
HE STOOD out on the porch, staring off into nothing, hands clasped behind his back. Once he’d been a boy with pretty blue eyes like ice, the brother to a future king. Now he was a man, hardened by the rough edges of the world. His brother was gone. His Alpha was leaving. There was blood in the air, death on the wind.
Mark Bennett said, “Is she all right?”
Because of course he knew I was there. Wolves always did. Especially when it came to their—“No.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
He didn’t turn. The porch light gleamed dully off his shaved head. He took in a deep breath, broad shoulders rising and falling. The skin of my palms itched. “It’s strange, don’t you think?”
Always the enigmatic asshole. “What is?”
“You left once. And here you are, leaving again.”
I bristled at that. “You left me first.”
“And I came back as often as I could.”
“It wasn’t enough.” But that wasn’t quite right, was it? Not even close. Even though my mother was long gone, her poison had still dripped into my ears: the wolves did this, the wolves took everything, they always will because it is in their nature to do so. They lied, she told me. They always lied.
He let it slide. “I know.”
“This isn’t—I’m not trying to start anything here.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “You never are.”
“Mark.”
“Gordo.”
“Fuck you.”
He finally turned, still as handsome as he was the day I’d met him, though I’d been a child and hadn’t known what it meant. He was big and strong, and his eyes were that icy blue they’d always been, clever and all-knowing. I had no doubt he could feel the anger and despair that swirled within me, no matter how hard I tried to block them. The bonds between us were broken and had been for a long time, but there was still something there, no matter how much I’d tried to bury it.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his fingers disappearing into that full beard. I remembered when he’d first started growing it at seventeen, a patchy thing I’d given him endless shit over. I felt a pang in my chest, but I was used to it by now. It didn’t mean anything. Not anymore.
I was almost convinced.
He dropped his hand and said, “Take care of yourself, okay?” He smiled a brittle smile and then moved toward the door to the Bennett house.
And I was going to let him go. I was going to let him pass right on by. That would be it. I wouldn’t see him again until… until. He would stay here, and I would leave, a reversal of the way it’d once been.
I was going to let him go because it would be easier that way. For all the days ahead.
But I’d always been stupid when it came to Mark Bennett.
I reached out and grabbed his arm before he could leave me.
He stopped.
We stood shoulder to shoulder. I faced the road ahead. He faced all that we would leave behind.
He waited.