By the end of her tirade, she’s a little out of breath, twin spots of color rising in her cheeks. Her emerald green eyes are wide, shining with unshed tears, and it hits me in a rush that her tears are for us. She cares about us enough to feel pain on our behalf.
Holy shit. If I didn’t already adore the woman, seeing her so passionate about our fucked up pasts would make me fall head over heels for her.
I think about mentioning it. Thanking her for caring so much or whatever. But after so much time in her presence, I know her too well for that. She’s like Kian in that way—explosively passionate inside even though she doesn’t like expressing it on the outside. If I draw attention to her soft side, it’ll just make her clam up.
So instead, I slip an arm around her shoulders and press a kiss to her forehead as I say, “I can’t argue with you about that. He is shitty.”
Kian slouches deeper into his chair, and his fingers tighten on his water bottle with a crunch of plastic. “It took a long time to realize the truth, but there’s no going back now.”
Frost makes a quiet noise in his throat. “There was no going back the moment we chose Amora over him.”
I ruffle her hair. “We’re glad you woke us up, kitty. Hell, my feelings for Quinton were always complicated. He raised us, you know. We all had this ingrained instinct to please him and earn his respect.”
Amora drapes one long leg over my thighs and leans back against Frost’s chest, wriggling against the cushions as she makes a little nest for herself between us. “Not to mention he basically forced you to think that your only purpose was to find a weakness in the barrier between earth and the shadow realm and do his bidding.”
“Got it in one,” I agree. “But even with all that, there were times I resented him.”
“Hated him,” Frost adds.
I blink at my brother, then glance at Kian, who looks just as shocked by the admission as I am.
But I guess it makes sense.
Shit changed for all of us the night Quinton tried to kill our mate. Seeing her at the business end of that weapon made something snap inside me. In that moment, nothing mattered more than getting her out of there safely. I could see clearly for the first time that Quinton wasn’t worth following anymore.
The truth is, though, he’d never been worth following, and I think on some level, all of us knew that.
That’s why even though he was like a father to us, Frost could hate him too.
Amora’s toes dig into my side. “You zoned out. What are you thinking?”
Snapping back into the present, I grab her ankle in both my hands and start massaging the taut muscles in her calf. The angle of her leg gives me a nice view right up her pant leg to the apex of her thighs. I tug open the fabric more and leer inside. “Mm. Kitty’s kitty.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Amora groans, kicking me in the chest and dislodging my hand, even as she flushes a little and laughs.
We’re interrupted by a knock at the door. Kian, Frost, and I all stand, our heads swiveling toward the door as we go on high alert.
Amora sighs. “Guys, they told us they were going to bring us food when it was ready.”
She’s right, of course, but that doesn’t stop us from tag teaming the door. Frost and I loom behind Kian as he accepts the bag of food from an older woman who looks about as threatening as a wet paper bag. Cormac is still camped out on the porch across the street, and he watches us intently as Kian accepts the paper bag of food and thanks the old lady in his gruff way. Then we all back up inside, and I slam the door—after I blow Cormac a kiss, of course.
We return to the living area to split up the goods. The food is like my every daydream come true. Some kind of southwestern style meatloaf, potato casserole, green beans with hunks of ham, and freshly baked cornbread still steaming from the oven. I help myself to giant heaping portions of each, thankful the ladies in the cafeteria thought to ensure there was enough to feed ten large shifters, then dig in. The meatloaf explodes with juices and flavors, heavy with cayenne and rosemary, flecked with cheese and corn. Much better than the cheeseburgers I dreamed of on the way here.
Amora pops a piece of cornbread in her mouth, speaking around it. “We need to talk about Felicity and the best way to approach our conversation with her tomorrow.”
Frost stabs a large green bean. “Honesty.”
“Obviously,” Amora agrees. “But she’s still unsure about you guys. We have to show her you aren’t the enemy.”
I laugh and shove my fork under a pile of scalloped potatoes. “I don’t know if that’s even possible. Anything related to her ex is the enemy.”
“But we aren’t the enemy,” Amora says firmly. “She has to see that. We have to figure out what’s going to prove to her that we have good intentions.”
Kian sighs. “Leave it to us. We know Felicity.”
“Yeah, but that’s the problem,” Amora shoots back. “She knows you too. And even though you no longer work for Quinton, I’m sure part of her still associates you with the man who broke her fucking heart. The man she hates more than anything.”
“True.” Kian inclines his head in acknowledgement. “But the fact that she helped Frost is a good sign. If she hated us as much as she hates Quinton, she would’ve let Frost’s shadows tear him apart and then danced on his grave.”
The conversation continues, Kian and Amora both leaning forward intently as they bat around different ideas for how to convince Felicity to keep helping us.
As the sound of their sometimes heated discussion fills the air, I watch Frost closely, looking for any indication that he’s not okay. But he seems more like himself than before, and the tightness in his expression has eased.
Maybe Felicity really did save him.
Maybe he’ll be all right.
Maybe… just fucking maybe, we all will.