“I told you before. I would always come back—”
“But you didn’t,” I snapped at him. “You fucking left and—no. You know what? I’m not doing this now. Or ever. There are more important things we have to worry about.”
“You don’t trust us,” Mark said, as if I hadn’t spoken. I gave very real thought to calling on my magic and knocking him through the window. I was pretty sure he’d survive the fall. “And I’m to blame for that. Me. Elizabeth.” He swallowed thickly. “Thomas. And I will regret for the rest of my life not fighting harder.”
“He was your Alpha,” I muttered. “Kinda hard to say no when he could make you do anything he wanted.”
“He wasn’t like that.”
“Sure.”
“Gordo.”
I sighed. “I know.” Because no matter the complicated feelings I had toward Thomas Bennett, he wasn’t…. He had never taken away the free will of his pack. They may have made decisions he hadn’t liked, but he would always listen to them.
“Do you?” Mark asked me.
“Yeah.”
Mark shook his head. “It was—anything I could say to you about him, it would be the truth. You wouldn’t have to believe me, but I have never lied to you, Gordo. Not once. Not ever.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“It killed him to leave you here. To leave you behind. He fought fang and claw for you. Against those in Maine. You were his. You belonged to him just as much as he belonged to you. He was your Alpha, Gordo. You were his witch. We were all young. We were all surviving. And we were all grieving those we’d lost.”
“He could have stayed here,” I said hoarsely, looking down at my hands. “But instead he left a child alone so he could go be king. A child who also had almost everything taken away. Thomas just finished the job.”
“That wasn’t—” Mark’s jaw tensed. “It wasn’t like that. He—if there was no Alpha of all, then there was a chance the wolves could have descended into chaos. He had to weigh the needs of the few with the needs of the many.”
“And we know where I fell in that decision, don’t we?”
“He was so angry, Gordo.”
“So was I.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mark snarled. “Can you listen for once in your goddamn life?”
I snapped my head up. Mark was always cool. Calm. And collected. But right now he was fucking furious. “I didn’t—”
“I’m trying to have an honest conversation with you, the first one we’ve had in years, and you’re being an asshole.”
The raven closed its talons around a stem of thorns. A rose felt like it was blooming.
“He fought for you,” Mark said, voice hard. “Those speciesist assholes hated that you were human. They were still terrified of what had happened to the Bennett pack because of the hunters. Humans weren’t—it wasn’t like it was in our pack. My father thought humans were the strength behind the wolf. Everyone else thought they were a weakness. A liability. Witches were the exception, because they had magic.”
“Then what the fuck was their—my father.”
Mark nodded. “You were your father’s son. That’s all they saw. You weren’t your own person. Your father lost control. You were a child when my father made you his witch. And then hunters came, and it was… compounded. It was too much. And Thomas knew, he knew that there would be anarchy unless he accepted his place as Alpha of all. I hated him for it. Elizabeth did too, at least a little bit. But nothing compared to the hate my brother had for himself. We had lost our father. Our aunts and uncles.” Mark bowed his head. “Our little cousins. It was—we were lost, Gordo. I don’t think even Thomas knew how lost we were. But I believe Osmond did. And I think he played upon that. Whether he was already working with Richard Collins by then, I don’t know. But it was Osmond who convinced Thomas to return. And it was Osmond who said you needed to stay.” He looked back up at me with an unreadable expression. “Thomas didn’t lie to you. He was always going to come back for you. It just took him longer than he thought it would. And by the time we came home, you didn’t want anything to do with us. With wolves.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. You left me, Mark. You fucking left me. Thomas told you to follow him, and you just—”
“I almost broke bonds with the pack. Because of that.”
“What?” I asked, startled.
“I almost left the pack.”
“Why?”