Brave (A Wicked Trilogy 3)

Ren immediately stopped, his brows pinching together.

“I mean, I don’t know if you should come near me right now.” The next part killed me to admit. “I . . . I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Understanding flared. “I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t.” I looked away. “You shouldn’t have trusted me before.”

“I did, and you didn’t hurt me.”

“Didn’t hurt you?” I gasped. “I fed on you. I saw what you looked like afterwards—”

“I was fine—I am fine. I was just tired. That was all.”

“But that wasn’t all I did.” My cheeks burned as the memory of ripping open his pants resurfaced.

“What came after you fed?” His voice deepened. “I didn’t have a single problem with it. That was—”

“It was messed up,” I said, shaking my head. “I was out of my mind. I fed on you and I—”

“I told you to take from me what you needed and I meant that. I gave you what you needed, no matter what that was.”

“You didn’t think it was wrong?” My voice dropped to a whisper.

“I think how we got to that moment was wrong, but what we did on that table wasn’t. It never is between us.”

As I watched him, I knew that he believed that, but I still felt like I’d done something wrong. I folded my arms over my waist, looking away.

He was quiet for a moment. “I ran into Faye. She told me you’d woken up and were fine. That you went up to our room. I came as soon as I heard. Would’ve been there. I wanted to be there, but—”

“I know. They wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to suck the life out of you.” My lips twisted into a gross reflection of a smile.

“I never once believed you’d do that.” His gaze was steady as he reached to his side. That was when I realized he was carrying the thorn stake. He unhooked it, laying it on the small table by the door. I guessed the whole not carrying weapons thing was now off the table. “Not once, Ivy.”

“Really?” I looked at him again and welcomed the same razor-sharp anger I’d felt toward Tink despite how good their intentions were. Being angry was sure as hell a lot easier than the roaring confusion and nearly overwhelming anxiety.

“You could’ve done it, but you didn’t. You stopped.” Ren stepped forward before stopping again. “I know that you will always stop.”

He may have believed that, but I didn’t. “You’re an idiot if you believe that. You should’ve never agreed to me feeding off you. It was too dangerous—”

“I would risk it again.” Another step forward. “A hundred percent, I would risk all of it again to save you.”

Disbelief thundered through me, as did fury. “You know what can happen to humans when they’ve been fed on. We’ve had to put them down. You have!”

“Like I said, I would risk it all over again.” He held my gaze. “That was my choice.”

“It was never your choice, Ren! It was mine, and it was taken away from me.”

“What choice did you have?” He stopped, nostrils flaring. “You were dying, Ivy. There was no time to get a surgeon or take you to the hospital. You were bleeding out right in front of me. There was no choice, because allowing you to die was never an option.”

“If you’d done that at least then I wouldn’t have been forced to feed on you just like the Prince made me do!” The moment those words came out of my mouth, I wished I hadn’t said them.

Ren’s face paled. “You’d rather be dead, Ivy?”

I sucked in a breath. “I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying exactly, and Sweetness, I need you to be real detailed, because I’m thinking the worst.”

I turned away, thrusting my hands through my hair. I wasn’t stupid. If Tink and Ren hadn’t forced Faye to do the compulsion, I would be dead. And I didn’t want to be dead.

But I didn’t want to be this.

God, I just didn’t want any of this.

“Ivy.”

He’d spoken my name so softly that I reacted to him without thought. I faced him, lowering my hands.

“When I found you outside, I thought I was too late. When I carried you into that damn room, I was covered in your blood. Drenched in it.” As he spoke, his gaze never left mine. “And when that fae doctor said that you were dying, it felt like a piece of me died right then and there.”

I opened my mouth.

“Let me get this out and you can yell at me and be pissed all you want,” he insisted, and I snapped my mouth shut. “I have never been more afraid than I was right then and there. I was going to lose you before I even got to have you. And when Tink said there may be another way, it was the only choice I had and I made that choice knowing you could hate me for it. I made that choice knowing that it could hurt me. I made that choice knowing that you may never forgive me for it.”

Ren’s voice thickened. “I’d rather have you pissed off at me for the rest of your very long life than to allow the world’s brightest fucking star to go out. You can hate me today and tomorrow, but at least you’ll have a tomorrow, and I’ll make damn sure you have a whole bunch of them to be angry with me.”

Oh God.

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Emotion crawled up my throat. Tears filled my eyes. I stepped back and then to the side. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I leaned forward, dropping my arms into my lap.

Ren didn’t make a sound, but I felt him move closer. He dropped down to his knees in front of me, surprising me. Looking up, he placed his hands on either side of my hips, close but not touching me. “I’m sorry that I took part in making you feed. I hated doing that, knowing what you’d been through. I hated the fact that I wasn’t with you when you were attacked. Fuck,” he bit out. “I wish I hadn’t walked away from you the night you told me you were a halfling. I could’ve stopped all of this.”

I stiffened. “Ren—”

“Yeah, you’re going to say that wasn’t my fault, but if I hadn’t acted like a dick and gotten myself captured, the Prince would’ve never been able to masquerade as me. None of this bad shit would’ve happened.”

That wasn’t true. Even if Ren had fully accepted what I was the moment I’d told him, Drake would’ve found another way.

He was creepy and psychotic like that.

“And I have to live with that for the rest of my life,” Ren added, slowly lifting his hands. He found mine, threading his fingers through them. “And I’ll have to live with the choice I made and the choice I took from you. I am more than willing to do that, but I do not regret one second making that choice to save you, even if it means that you hate me.”

Deep down, I knew the truth and how messed up it was. If the shoes were on different feet, and Ren was a halfling and dying, I would’ve done the same to save him.

I would’ve taken his choice from him.

I would’ve taken his will away.

I would’ve saved him even if it cost me his love.

My chest squeezed and I whispered the truest thing I could say in that moment. “I don’t hate you.”

Ren’s grip tightened on my hands as he bowed his head. His curls fell forward and when he spoke, his voice was rough. “I can’t lose you.”

“You haven’t.”

He brought my hands to his mouth, kissing the top of both of them. “Then why does it feel like I already have?”

Startled, I pulled on my hands, but he held on. “Why do you think that?”

He looked up at me, his eyes the color of dewy grass. “Do you really have to ask that, Sweetness?”

I started to say yes, but the word died on my tongue. My thoughts raced to find a way to deny why he’d feel that way, but I came up empty. Not because he was right. Not in the way he thought.

Because it wasn’t him losing me.

It was me losing myself.

Chapter 10