“How could you think this would ever be okay?” he choked out. “How could you ever think…? I couldn’t get to you in time. I couldn’t—and then he was there, the monster from my dreams he was there, and his hand was inside you—”
He broke off as he began to shudder.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face into his stomach.
“I couldn’t stop him in time,” Joe said, no longer even and smooth. His heartbeat had skyrocketed. He gripped my hair. He was speaking through fangs. “I couldn’t reach you in time. I had to watch you—when he… did what he did. And all I can remember, all I can remember thinking is how this was a dream. That it was all a dream. But it wasn’t because you’d told me once that you can’t actually feel pain in your dreams, that that’s the difference between dreaming and being awake. Ox. I wasn’t dreaming because I felt it. Everything. He tore into you and he tore into me and then his head was gone and you were bleeding.”
He hunched over me, as if trying to protect me from everything around him.
His breath was ragged in my ear.
He said, “You fucking bastard. How dare you die in front of me.”
It was then I found my voice.
Because I needed to speak.
And because he needed to hear me.
I should have said I’m sorry.
Or everything will be okay now.
Or the monster is dead and I’m here and I’ll never leave you.
I didn’t say that, though. Any of it.
When I spoke, my words were muffled against him.
My voice was deeper than it’d ever been, like I was trapped somewhere between man and wolf.
I said, “I would do it again. If it meant keeping you safe.”
He inhaled sharply.
And it was the truth. I would gladly give up my life if it meant Joe would live another day. Or any of them in our pack. Because that’s what an Alpha did. Thomas had taught me that. An Alpha put his pack above all else. It was an Alpha’s job to keep his pack whole. To keep them safe. To keep them alive.
Richard Collins might have tried to come after them, even after he’d given me his word.
But that was a risk I’d had to take.
Because it meant they’d be safe.
I turned, lying on my back to stare up at him.
He looked down at me.
A single tear fell, landing on my forehead.
“I hate you,” he whispered.
I nodded, because I knew he did. For this one thing. “You would do the same. For me. And for that, I hate you too.”
He laughed wetly. “Goddamn you.”
The angle was rough when he bent over to kiss me. His back was curved as much as it could, and I raised my head slightly to meet him. It was just a graze, a brush of his lips against mine. But it felt like more than any time that had come before. There was desperation in it, and longing and hurt, so much goddamn hurt, but there was green too. So much green shot through it because we were here. We were both here and not even a monster could tear us apart.
HE TRACED his fingers over the skin of my stomach where Richard’s claws had gutted me. There wasn’t a mark, the skin completely healed. There wasn’t even any pain. It was like it’d happened to someone else.