Page 102 of Renegade Kings

“I’m worried about him,” I confessed to Tank. “Dean has always put Damon on a pedestal. I don’t think he’s ever going to cope if we can’t get this thing out of his head. He’ll never accept failing him.”

“You’re worrying about things you don’t even know will come to pass,” Tank pointed out. “There’s so much going on that I can see why your mind wants to get stuck with one problem at a time. But don’t fixate on the one we don’t have an answer to yet. Don’t get distracted by the impossible when you can’t afford to take your focus away from everything else. I truly think we’ll find the answer to this. I just don’t think we’re going to do it yet. We don’t have enough information, and unfortunately for Dean, it’s going to take time for us to gather it.”

It was easier said than done. Besides, we weren’t exactly a sit-back-and-wait kind of group. Action was what our life had revolved around before, and it was hard to turn away from that now.

“I just need to figure out how to distract Dean then,” I reasoned.

And Tank sighed.

“You don’t need to distract him. This is his version of working through the shit in his head. Let him brood if it’s what he needs to do. As long as he keeps the idea of the Damon you all remember in his mind, he’s going to fight for him. We all need something to fight for, something to cling to.”

I thought about what he was saying. It was strange how Tank had such a clear view of the man Dean was when he hadn’t known him for very long.

“You’re good at this, you know,” I admitted.

“At what?”

“Seeing what people need. Giving advice.”

“Believe it or not, but I have been around people before. I know what it’s like to have a family,” Tank joked, laughing.

“Don’t you want to go back to them?” I asked quietly.

I’d never considered what life for Tank had been like back in the human realm. He was just the massive bear at the garage. Of course, he had a family. And we’d dragged him into another realm away from them in our desperate need to save our brother.

“Nah. My sleuth moved on before we came here. I have nothing to go back to.”

The way he said it so casually shocked me.

“They left you behind?”

Tank glanced at me, clearly surprised that I was so upset on his behalf. How could I not be? He was fast becoming another man I’d call a brother. I couldn’t see how anyone who could say the same thing would just leave him behind.

“I forget sometimes that you guys knew nothing of our world before we came here,” Tank said wryly. “It’s not easy being a shifter back in the human realm. But the most difficult hurdle we face is that we don’t age the same as the humans do. A shifter can live for a couple hundred years, and that’s not an easy thing to hide when you have friends and neighbours who will eventually grow old while you stay exactly the same. Shifters have no choice but to move on when it becomes noticeable. The whole sleuth was moving to a new home, dropping an entire life and getting ready to step into a new one. It’s what they do to protect themselves. To protect our secret.”

“And you couldn’t do that,” I realised.

He shrugged, his gaze moving to where Alyssa was talking with a few of the crew who stared at her like she was the answer to their prayers. “I never would have left her behind, and I couldn’t ask her to come with us.”

I knew exactly how he felt and it rocked me to the core that in the same situation, I’d probably have come to the same decision. Family meant everything to me, but what was the point of family if she wasn’t in it?

Chapter 40

Alyssa

As I carefully folded my clothes and placed them on top of the dresser, I knew I was just trying to buy myself time. We hadn’t exactly thought to pack anything to sleep in, so the shirt I was wearing would have to do. Again. Thank god we could at least bathe on this ship.

It was strange to be alone in the cabin as I got ready for bed. I was so used to having my mates around me; I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

I knew they couldn’t be in any trouble. We were on a ship in the middle of the ocean, after all. But it still felt wrong to be in this room alone. Codependency was not where I’d seen my future going.

I looked around at the cabin as if to delay getting into the cold bed alone. Rhidian had insisted we took the captain’s cabin, and I had to admit it was pretty nice. It was the only one big enough to house the five of us. The awkward way that Rhidian had pointed that out had nearly been worth signing up for this fight alone.

It was nice to have privacy, and I was grateful that he’d even thought of us in the first place. It should have been his privacy, though. That was the whole point of him having this place set up. Rhidian might have tried to convince me he preferred to be with his men, but I wasn’t buying it.

Not only that, but it didn’t exactly sit right with me that we were kicking him out of his room so I could take it with my mates. I might act like I didn’t see the way he looked at me, but that wasn’t the case. I’d known him all my life. He was the only other fae that understood how I felt. It should have made us closer than any other, and it did. Unfortunately for Rhidian, it made me feel like he was the brother I’d never had. I knew it wasn’t the same for him, and there had been times before when I’d wondered if I could push through that familial feeling and find something else on the other side.

But then I’d met my mates, and how I felt about them wasn’t something that could be manufactured just because you felt like you should. It wasn’t an obligation. It was an overwhelming need that filled me with every breath I took.

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