Page 28 of Freed Wolfsbane

“Yeah. I’m sorry, pretty girl.” Bastian hangs his head like he’s personally responsible. I give his hand a comforting squeeze, not wanting him to feel bad. “We had to choose between rescuing the shifters and stopping the Knights jumping ship like the cowards they are.”

“You made the right choice. Please just tell me that you caught the guy who was at the church with us. The one with the gnarly scar on his face.” I guess I thought, with them storming the facility, they had killed or captured all the Knights there. I didn’t even stop to think that Ryker and his lackeys could’ve gotten away.

Bastian shakes his head. “None of our teams saw him. Are you sure he was even there?”

I let out a slightly hysterical laugh. “Extremely sure. Ryker and I spent more time together than I ever wanted to.”

I don’t know if it would’ve been better or worse if Ryker had zero interest in me. From what I could tell, most of the other shifters were only taken to experiments once a week, and they usually didn’t leave with broken bones like I did. But I also knew as long as I didn’t fully shift, I wouldn’t suddenly disappear like some of the other shifters.

“Don’t worry, little shadow. We won’t let him get to you again.” Saint grabs my free hand and clutches it to him, like I’ll vanish into thin air if he isn’t touching me.

“That wasn’t my biggest worry, but thank you, Saint.” I try to force a smile for him, but I’m pretty sure it comes out as a grimace.

“What are you worried about, baby girl?” Malachi asks from behind me.

I tilt my head back to try to look at him but stop after Xander grumbles at me to be still. I close my eyes and reluctantly admit, “I gave him what he needed to expand the curse to all shifters.”

The room erupts with shouting, and I tense as I prepare to get yelled at for probably the biggest fuck up of my life.

CHAPTER14

BRIAR

“Quiet!” Malachi barks in his alpha voice. Bastian and Xander instantly fall silent, and Saint follows suit of his own volition. Taking a deep breath, Malachi brushes some of my hair off my forehead before asking, “What do you mean?”

As much as I want to keep my eyes shut to hide from it all, I have to own up to what I did. Reluctantly blinking open my eyes, I stare blankly at the ceiling as I admit, “I shifted before I was rescued. That’s all Ryker needed to strengthen the curse to all shifters.”

“Fuck,” Xander hisses under his breath.

“I know I messed up, okay? I didn’t have any other choice. Ryker was going to kill another kid if I didn’t do it.” My voice wobbles. I free my hand from Bastian and throw an arm over my eyes to prevent any of the unshed tears from getting loose. The bolt of pain that shoots through me at the movement helps soothe some of my racing thoughts as I desperately try not to think about everything that led up to it all.

For all the death my life has been steeped in, I’ve never actually seen someone killed in front of me. Sure, I killed Patrick, but I didn’t really see it. He also deserved it a thousand times over. A helpless teenager being shot right in front of me is a hell of a lot different. No matter how hard I try to shove it away, I can’t get how scared Jake was and how badly I let him down out of my head.

“Sweetheart, look at me.” When I don’t comply with Xander’s softly spoken order, he gently pries my arm away from my face. Dark green eyes filled with concern hover over me as Xander’s gaze bounces around my face. “I wasn’t blaming you or judging you. It’s a shitty situation, but I know you did your absolute best.”

I’m already shaking my head before he even finishes. “If I did my best, he would still be here.”

“You don’t know that, pretty girl.” I open my mouth to argue with Bastian but stop when he raises a brow at me. “It’s easy to make yourself sick with what you could’ve done, but the reality is that you weren’t in control of the situation. You did everything you could in the circumstances you were in. And sometimes, it’s still not enough to save yourself or others, no matter how fucking much you wish it were.”

I don’t know what it is about what Bastian says, but it opens the floodgates. The tears I was desperately trying to hold back start pouring down my face. A sob lodges in my throat as I think about the people I’ve lost that I was powerless to save—my dad, my mom, almost Xander, Jake, and the other shifters in the facility who died while I was there. Thinking about it all makes my chest feel like someone attacked it with a sledgehammer, leaving my heart a bloody, pulverized mess.

“Why?” I choke out. “Why wasn’t I enough to save them?”

“Oh, little shadow.” Saint lies down with me, and I turn my head to look at him. Cupping the back of my head, he presses our foreheads together as he desperately tries to comfort me. “As fucked up as it is, that’s the way life is sometimes. People leave, no matter how much we want and need them to stay. It hurts when they leave, not because we failed them, but because they left a hole in us that can’t be filled by anyone or anything else. Caring about them changed us, and that hurts for a while. I’m not sure that pain ever fully goes away, but it will get easier, baby. I promise.”

Tears keep streaming down my cheeks as I process Saint’s words. The ragged hole in my chest and the crushing sense of failure make it feel like it will always hurt so much it’s hard to breathe.

Everything I should’ve done differently to save my parents and Jake wars with Saint’s words telling me that it doesn’t hurt because I failed them. It hurts because they meant something to me, which doesn’t really make the pain shred my insides any less. But it does give me hope that one day I won’t be drowning in it all.

“Is she stitched up?” Malachi demands as I silently cry. Through blurry eyes, I see Xander nod. Then I feel Malachi’s hands under my shoulders. I only have time to widen my eyes before I’m hauled up and into his lap with my legs to either side of his waist. He tangles his fingers in my hair and presses my face into his neck. “Please don’t cry, baby girl.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumble into his neck as my tears soak into his shirt for the second time today.

He huffs a laugh. “Don’t apologize. I just hate seeing you hurting so much. If I could take it all away for you, I would.”

“I know,” I whisper past the lump in my throat. “But there are just some things in the world you can’t fix, no matter how much you want to.”

“Yeah,” he rasps into my hair as he hugs me to him. He rubs his other hand soothingly along my back as he offers me wordless comfort, which is exactly what I need right now. At some point, I feel someone move behind me. From his winter berry scent, I can tell it’s Saint who rests his forehead on my upper back and cups his hands around my hips. Bastian and Xander press up against me on either side so that I’m completely surrounded by my mates.

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