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She wore glasses even though she didn’t need them. She said they made her feel better about herself. Smarter, somehow. She thought it was silly, but I’d never seen anyone more beautiful.
He said, “Hey.” He said, “Hi.” He said, “Hello.” He said, “I see you, you know?” and “I see you” and “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry we let you go, I’m so sorry I let you go, but I swear to you, I swear it’ll never happen again. You’re safe. You’re safe now. Finally, after all this time.”
“It’s me. It’s Kelly.” And I said, “Who?” His face crumpled immediately, and I was submerged in the blue, drowning in an ocean that rose around me. He hurt. He hurt so fucking bad that I didn’t know how he could stand it. “Kelly,” he whispered. “I’m Kelly.”
I wasn’t looking at the camera or at any of the others. I only had eyes for one person. And oh, was he smiling at me as if I were the only thing in his entire world. Our hands were joined between us, and Kelly Bennett had stars in his eyes. He was taller than me, his head tilted downward as he watched me. I looked as if I were in the middle of telling a story he’d heard a million times. And even though it looked cold, he was wearing a thin shirt. No jacket. Peeking out from the collar was a dimple in the skin. The top of a scar. Without thinking, I reached up and touched my own neck. Rigid
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He said, “You’re mine, Robbie. My wolf. My pack. My Beta. My love. My brother. And I won’t let anything happen to you. No one will take you from us ever again.” He bent his face toward mine and pressed a soft kiss against my forehead. And I said, “Oh,” before all I knew was darkness.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t look so offended. We don’t have boundaries here. The quicker you learn—relearn—that, the better off we’ll be. It’s probably not healthy, but it works for us.” He paused. “Well, most of the time.” He shuddered. “I could have gone through the rest of my life without knowing Joe is a screamer.”
“No. It was before you. Years ago.” He paused like he was thinking hard. Then, “Seven years, to be exact. Seven years in a couple of weeks. Wow. I don’t … That’s a long time. Longer than I thought.” “How old were you?” And, “How old are you?” His lips quirked. “Almost twenty-one then. And I’m twenty-seven now.”
He never looked away from me. It was as if he thought I was going to disappear if he did. “You were. Middle of 2013 to when you were taken, in the beginning of 2019. So almost six years.” Six years. If he—and all of them—were to be believed, then Ezra took the better part of a decade away from me.
He shrugged. “Yes. But that’s not all it is. I want to see you as much as I can. I want to touch you. I want to lay my head in your lap and have your hand in my hair. I want you to smile at me like you know me. Like I’m the only thing you see.”
But it was one scent I chased after more than all the others. It was grass. And lake water. And sunshine.
It struck me then just how much I wanted this. It was sudden and fierce. I wanted this. Here. With them. In this place so very far from all I thought I knew. I didn’t deserve it. My heart hurt.
“It is,” Elizabeth agreed. “A big one. He turns thirty tomorrow. We’re celebrating today because it seemed right. Tradition, you know.”
He said, “My mother. She liked to dance. In the kitchen. Once, we were doing the dishes, and there was a soap bubble in my ear. She popped it. And then we danced. That was a good day, for many reasons.”
Kelly said, “I knew. The moment I saw you standing on the porch when we came back from hunting Richard Collins. I knew.” “Knew what?” “That you were my mate.”
“The way you loved me.” It was a punch to the stomach. “You loved me,” Kelly said softly, “without reservation. Without expecting anything in return. You loved me, and I knew that you wouldn’t stop, not unless you were forced to. And I knew then that I wouldn’t stop, no matter what it took.”
“And I know you’re still you, Robbie. I know it with everything I have, because that’s not your wolf. It’s Kelly’s.” I took in a stuttering breath. He was in front of me then, and he bent over, trailing his nose along my hairline to my ear. “You took it with you wherever you went,” he whispered. “Because you loved it so and couldn’t bear to leave it behind. With you, it was safe. With you, he was safe. After he was taken from your mind, part of you still held on. Even if you can’t remember anything else, remember that. I asked you once why you carried it with you all the time. You said it was
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He watched Carter wrestling with the timber wolf, their violet eyes flashing in the dark.
“There was something … I don’t know. Endless. About you and me.” He took my hand off his knee and turned it over. He set the blade of grass in my palm and closed his hand over mine. He looked toward the sky and the stars through the canopy of leaves. “We came here sometimes. Just the two of us. And you would pretend to know all the stars. You would make up stories that absolutely weren’t true, and I remember looking at you, thinking how wonderful it was to be by your side. And if we were lucky, there’d be—ah. Look. Again.” His voice was wet and soft, and it cracked me right down the middle.
Kelly was asleep by the time we returned. The pack was spread out through the house, and no one said a word about the Mylar balloons I was struggling to fit through the front door. They didn’t need to. I could see the amusement on their faces.
He burned so bright. It was all grass and lake water and sunshine, and I wanted nothing more than to have it for my own.
“Because you filled a hole in me I didn’t even know was there. You make me complete. You make me happy. I see you, Robbie. I see you.”
“You can’t have him,” Carter said, and his voice was quaking. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but I will never let you touch him. Not while I’m still standing. You want him? You have to go through me.”
As for Carter … well. The roles seemed to have reversed. Wherever the wolf went, Carter followed, as if he thought the wolf was going to take off the moment he looked away. He muttered unintelligibly under his breath. It sounded vaguely like ominous threats, but I couldn’t quite make them out.
Impossibly, ridiculously, Carter whispered through a mouthful of blood, “Oh shit. I think I’m bisexual.”
“Mom,” he croaked as a tear spilled down his cheek, chest hitching. And ah, god, there was so much blue pouring off him, I thought it would drown us all. “He … left. Mom? Why—why did he go? Why did he leave? I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
He said, “Hey,” and “Hi,” and “Hello,” and I knew I would do whatever it took. He never stopped fighting for me. I needed to do the same. For him. For myself. For us.
It wasn’t fierce, the way he loved me. It wasn’t the burning fire of passion. It was heavy and soft. It was love unlike anything else I’d felt.
